Virginia Welcomes President Obama’s Plan to Fight Global Warming

In an area where the population is at extra risk of health damage from air pollution, Northern Virginians have new reason to hope for a safer, more sustainable future.

Last month, President Obama unveiled his plan to fight global warming, which is fueling weather-related disaster across the nation and around the world.

The American Lung Association recently ranked Northern Virginia having the ninth worst ozone pollution of any metro city area in the country, and Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun and Stafford counties all receiving failing grades in 2012.

The president's Climate Action Plan not only limits carbon pollution from dirty power plants, which produce 40 percent of America’s climate change-inducing greenhouse gases, but also advances energy efficiency, increases the nation’s commitment to renewable energy, ensures that communities are better equipped to prepare for and react to global warming-related impacts, and looks to rebuild American leadership on this issue on the global stage.

Millions of Americans have been calling for just this kind of bold action. Last year, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency first proposed limiting carbon pollution from power plants, Americans submitted more than 3.2 million public comments in support, including 130,000 from Virginians.

Now, by confronting our nation’s biggest carbon polluters, the president is showing he’s committed to solving global warming.

Last year, Virginians witnessed the devastating impacts of unchecked industrial carbon pollution through climate-associated extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy. In fact, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2012 was the hottest year on record, with more than 34,000 high temperature records set and more than $100 billion in damages incurred from extreme weather-related disasters around the country.

Climate scientists predict that storms will to continue to increase in frequency and severity as the impacts of global warming bear down on us. Since 2007, federally-declared, weather-related disasters have affected 126 of 136 counties and independent cities in Virginia, home to 7.8 million people-- more than 95 percent of our population.

In 2011, Hurricane Irene resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and led 5,000 citizens to take refuge in eighty shelters across the state. The storm also claimed four lives and left 2.5 million Virginians in the dark. Given that climate change will likely fuel even more extreme weather, we need to cut dangerous carbon pollution now.

Fulfilling our moral obligation to protect future generations of Virginians from the worst impacts of global warming will take all of us working together, and the president’s announcement finally puts America firmly on the right path. We will need to continue to show our support for this process every step of the way until we can reduce global warming pollution to levels science says are safe.

On the way there, we know polluters will find ways to attack the president’s plan through the courts and will encourage their allies to do all they can to block, delay, or weaken progress in Congress. But given both the scientific and physical evidence of global warming, the vast majority of people across the country know that we must control the largest sources of carbon pollution.

No one action will get us to 100 percent renewable energy or stop global warming overnight. We still have a long road ahead, but standing together, with President’s Obama’s leadership and that of Virginia’s leaders, we can leave behind stronger communities and a better environment for posterity.