The video, the words, the passion of Barack Obama in the presentation of the Clean Power Plan. The most ambitious plan in the United States against climate change.
Cutting CO2 emissions from the energy sector, in particular from the most polluting power plants such as coal-fired ones, by 32 per cent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, equivalent to 87 million tonnes of greenhouse gases avoided. This is the main objective of the Clean Power Plan presented on Monday 3 August by the President of the United States, Barack Obama.
According to the plan, by the same year, 28 per cent of the electricity consumed by Americans must be produced from alternative and renewable sources, because "nothing threatens our future and that of the next generations more than climate change," Obama declared during the presentation.
"In six years we have faced many challenges, from the recession to rebuilding the economy" through to the deadlock and violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, but "I am convinced," Obama continued, "that nothing threatens our future more" than a changing climate. Today the need is to "ensure that there is clean water and clean air and a future for our children," because "climate change is a reality today" and represents "an immediate risk to national security." That is why we are the first generation to feel its impact first-hand, but we are the last that can still do something to avoid the worst damage.
This version of the plan is an update on the one presented together with the American Environmental Protection Agency in 2012 and then in 2014. Compared to then, there is greater emphasis on the importance of renewable energy, including over natural gas, as an alternative to coal and for the conversion of the most polluting power plants.
Obama then referred to the words contained in the encyclical on the environment published in June by Pope Francis, to support the argument that countering the negative effects of global warming on the planet and the life forms that inhabit it is "a moral obligation."
A final reference to the Copenhagen climate conference of 2008, when an Obama who had just arrived at the White House found himself having to confront a failure on the road to tackling CO2. The American president in fact made his own one of the most widely used slogans on the streets and on the placards of people demanding more action from governments: "We only get one home. We only get one planet. There's no plan B." We have only one home, we have only one planet. There is no plan B. That is why we have no choice but to act, and the ideal place to do so, after Washington, is Paris.