You might remember me referring to Obama as “Man with world’s largest carbon footprint” numerous times. Obama admits I’m correct
(Weekly Standard) President Obama once “ruefully” admitted to staff that he personally is the planet’s largest source of carbon emissions, according to an anecdote published in The Atlantic.
The brief aside was mentioned by author Jeffrey Goldberg in a passage about the burden of Obama’s worldwide travel arrangements.
With that, Obama stood up and said, “Okay, gotta go.” He headed out of his office and down the stairs, to the red carpet and the honor guard and the cluster of Malaysian officials waiting to greet him, and then to his armored limousine, flown to Kuala Lumpur ahead of him. (Early in his first term, still unaccustomed to the massive military operation it takes to move a president from one place to another, he noted ruefully to aides, “I have the world’s largest carbon footprint.”) (WT: emphasis mine)
You know what they say, the first step to fixing the problem is admitting to the problem. Of course, Obama failed to follow through on fixing his problem. He’ll still take a helicopter flight over to Andrews AFB to jump on his giant fossil fueled jumbo jet, accompanied by a backup jumbo jet and multiple fighter jets, for a cross country flight, which is followed by numerous movements of large fossil fueled vehicle convoys, all to give a short official speech followed by multiple fundraisers, maybe a party, maybe golf. And, sometimes, those fundraisers aren’t even in the same city as the speech, which necessitates another fossil fueled flight.
But, he does want to change your use of fossil fuels, hence we end up with things like his so-called Clean Power Plan. And he’s more than willing to give your money away to the United Nations to be spread to dictators via their Green Climate Fund. And reward his donors with taxpayer money for failed solar projects. This is the same guy who fought against put solar panels on the White House.
And, yes, much of the footprint is just a part of doing the job of President. But, he’s taken almost no steps to reduce that footprint in his own life and his presidential life. That is what’s called “hypocrisy”. It’s a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude. Which is prevalent throughout the Cult of Climastrology.
A President is simply expected to travel a lot: it’s just part of the job. But, having said that, there were some ways that even President Obama could have cut back just a little, such as the time that his lovely wife and he took separate flights to one of their vacations. That was just ridiculous.
However, as President, he could take steps to reduce excessive travel by his minions. I’ve harped on this before, but the word for the environmentalists ought to be “videoconference!” Think of the almost countless times that both public and private individuals have taken trips for meetings that could have just as well been conducted by videoconference. Of course, that would be cutting back on an elitist perk, wouldn’t it?
Good work, Teach. YOU alone were able to corner the President and force him to admit that US Presidents travel a lot!! LOL
If you’re so inclined you could calculate what percentage of total CO2 added to the atmosphere by humans comes from US President travels. Care to estimate? 50%? 10%? 1%? 0.1%?, 0.01%?, 0.001%? even less?
As a conscientious reporter can you back up this claim? Or is it merely your uninformed opinion?
Yes Obama currently has the World’s Biggest Carbon Footprint record, but I think that Bush still has the all time record, He certainly flew Air Force One more than Obama and usually travelled with a bigger entourage. http://www.factcheck.org/2011/07/the-traveling-president/
I am unsure of exactly HOW Obama could have reduced his “own” carbon footprint. By turning out the lights in the bathroom ?
Teach things like that, or how many are in his entourage are actually not determined by Obama.
One of the J Boys wrote:
Howsomever, President Bush wasn’t lecturing us about our ‘carbon footprints’ (feetprint?) the way Barack Hussein Obama has been, so it wasn’t hypocrisy on his part.
Well, ‘twould be a start. Our second worst President — thanks to Mr Obama seizing the first worst spot from him — turned the thermostats down to 68º and made his speech in an ugly cardigan.
But, perhaps if you read the first comment on this article, you’d have seen a fairly good example of how our worst President could reduce the carbon footprint of his Administration.
And the other J boy wrote:
I find this a strange comment: if Jeffrey believes that we must all reduce our carbon footprints, why is he telling us that it would be completely insignificant if the man with the biggest footprint reduced his?
Perhaps the problem is that Jeffrey doesn’t understand what leadership means, just like he cannot understand the concept of hypocrisy, at least when it applies to the left. Our second worst President at least understood the concept of leading by example as well as by word, and perhaps if President Obama showed that kind of leadership, his actions would inspire others to follow his example. If he told his minions to expand the use of videoconferencing and cut back on travel, it would make a (very small) dent in their carbon footprints, but it could also serve as an example to business in America, encouraging the same in the private sector.
The biggest single problem for the warmists has been their persistent, across-the-board failure to put their lifestyles where their keyboards are. There is so much hot air coming from them about what other people have to do, yet very little action from them on doing those same things themselves. One would think that the left could see that it’s difficult to take their climate warning seriously when they don’t act as though they take those warnings seriously themselves.