Environmental Awareness

Little by little, reports from the United Nations and other organizations regarding sea temperature rise and the already perceivable, serious effects of climate change are reaching the American public opinion and, most importantly, the White House, which has decided to act. To growing worry expressed in both academic and social environments, a new official report has been put together by the U.S. government that has been assessed as the most prominent sign of alarm emitted as of now about the effects of climate change in the United States.

The report was prepared over a more than four year period by more than 200 scientists and various governmental agencies. Its conclusions detail the harm that increased temperatures are causing in different regions of the nation, with the intensification of hurricanes, droughts and floods. The report also includes the current costs of the phenomena and predictions of what remains for the century.

In accordance with this change of perception, President Barack Obama, who failed in his attempt to pass a law regarding these issues in his first term, has decided to use his executive powers to push an environmental program and negotiate the continual hindrances posed by in the Republican majority in Congress. Last week, he announced that he would increase the protected area of the Pacific Remote Islands, located between Hawaii and the Mariana Islands, from currently 235,300 square km to more than 2 million (about four times the size of Spain), converting it into one of the world’s most important marine sanctuaries. The project includes an integral program to stop illegal fishing, which represents around 20 percent of wild catch. As Obama noted, the protection of the oceans is a key issue of international security.

Surely the most ambitious reform, however, is the decree to impose environmental steps to achieve carbon dioxide gas emissions 30 percent lower than those in 2005. It is the first time that limits of this kind have been established, which has caused some experts to consider it one of the most important environmental decisions in the United States in the last 40 years.

In this way, Obama is trying to keep his promise to convert the fight against climate change into a priority during his second term (although he still must make a decision about the polemic Keystone pipeline). The fact that the second most polluted nation in the world, the first being China, is aware of the danger of climate change and has decided to begin these steps is excellent news, especially facing the perspective of the Paris summit, anticipated to take place within the year, where a new world protocol will be discussed that goes far beyond the objectives agreed upon in Kyoto in 1997.