Obama Vows Swift Action On Global Warming and Energy Programs

Meeting with Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former vice-president Al Gore, President-elect Barack Obama said that combating global warming is a matter “of urgency and of national security” and said his administration will move immediately to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and “re-power” America with renewable energy initiatives. Conferring with Gore and Vice President-elect Joe Biden in Chicago, Obama said, “All three of us are in agreement that the time for delay is over, the time for denial is over.” The meeting with Gore, the U.S.’s most prominent champion of weaning the country off carbon-based fuels, was a high-profile signal that Obama intended to deal, as he put it, in a “serious way” with the climate issue. The president-elect said that the drive to improve the energy efficiency of the nation’s buildings and invest in renewable energy technologies was not only a key element of his economic recovery plan but also a way of simultaneously “saving the planet.”