Obama's approval of Arctic drilling 'undermines his climate message'

(guardian-, 1 Sep 2015) US president’s call for action on climate change is at odds with letting Shell drill for oil in the Arctic, says Bill McKibben.

Barrack Obama has fatally undermined the message of his visit to the Arctic to highlight the dangers of climate change because his administration allowed Shell to drill there, a leading US environmentalist has said.

Bill McKibben, winner of the Right Livelihood prize in 2014, sometimes referred to as an alternative Nobel, and founder of 350.org, said that Obama’s actions were a “bad contradiction”.

“It is very difficult for Barrack Obama or anybody else to say, ‘look we take this completely seriously, this is the greatest problem the world’s ever faced but it’s OK to go ahead and start drilling a whole new oil field up in the Arctic.’ Those two things are at odds,” McKibben told a conference on fossil fuel divestment in Paris on Tuesday.

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guardian-, 1 Sep 2015: Obama's approval of Arctic drilling 'undermines his climate message'