Thank you, Mr. President.
In his endorsement of you a few weeks ago, Mayor Bloomberg said he was motivated by the
belief that you would do more to confront the threat of climate change than your opponent.
Tomorrow you're going up to New York City, where you're going to, I assume, see people
who are still suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy, which many people say is further evidence
of how a warming globe is changing our weather.
What specifically do you plan to do in a second term to tackle the issue of climate change?
And do you think the political will exists in Washington to pass legislation that could
include some kind of a tax on carbon?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, as you know, Mark (sp), we can't attribute any particular weather
event to climate change.
What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted
even 10 years ago.
We do know that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than was predicted even five years
ago.
We do know that there have been extraordinarily -- there have been an extraordinarily large
number of severe weather events here in North America, but also around the globe.
And I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior
and carbon emissions.
And as a consequence, I think we've got an obligation to future generations to do something
about it.
Now, in my first term, we doubled fuel efficiency standards on cars and trucks.
That will have an impact.
That will a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere.
We doubled the production of clean energy, which promises to reduce the utilization of
fossil fuels for power generation.
And we continue to invest in potential breakthrough technologies that could further remove carbon
from our atmosphere.
But we haven't done as much as we need to.
So what I'm going to be doing over the next several weeks, next several months, is having
a conversation, a wide-ranging conversation with scientists, engineers and elected officials
to find out what can -- what more can we do to make short-term progress in reducing carbons,
and then working through an education process that I think is necessary, a discussion, the
conversation across the country about, you know, what realistically can we do long term
to make sure that this is not something we're passing on to future generations that's going
to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.
I don't know what -- what either Democrats or Republicans are prepared to do at this
point, because, you know, this is one of those issues that's not just a partisan issue.
I also think there's -- there are regional differences.
There's no doubt that for us to take on climate change in a serious way would involve making
some tough political choices, and you know, understandably, I think the American people
right now have been so focused and will continue to be focused on our economy and jobs and
growth that, you know, if the message is somehow we're going to ignore jobs and growth simply
to address climate change, I don't think anybody's going to go for that.
I won't go for that.
If, on the other hand, we can shape an agenda that says we can create jobs, advance growth
and make a serious dent in climate change and be an international leader, I think that's
something that the American people would support.
So you know, you can expect that you'll hear more from me in the coming months and years
about how we can shape an agenda that garners bipartisan support and helps move this -- moves
this agenda forward.