Obama Announces Executive Order Aimed At Environmental Sustainability In Development, Other Climate Change Actions

News outlets discuss U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech at the U.N. Climate Summit and new U.S. actions on climate change, as well as other speeches and developments related to the summit.

Foreign Policy: Obama to World Leaders: ‘Nobody Gets a Pass’ on Climate Change
“Speaking at a special climate summit at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, President Barack Obama on Tuesday unveiled a set of new initiatives to help developing countries deal with the effects of climate change and called on world leaders to reach an agreement to limit carbon emissions by the end of next year…” (McCormick, 9/23).

Politico: Obama at climate summit: ‘We have to lead’
“…The speech came as the White House announced a series of measures to boost global resilience to the effects of climate change, including an executive order signed Tuesday, and the U.S. and other nations announced initiatives to address pieces of the problem through efforts like sustainable agriculture…” (Schor/King, 9/23).

Salon: What Obama said (and didn’t say) at the U.N. Climate Summit
“…As predicted, Obama didn’t announce any new emissions commitments, saying those will come next year. He did, however, announce a new executive order requiring federal agencies to take environmental sustainability into consideration when designing international development programs (Oxfam America noted, in a statement to the media, that USAID has already been doing this since 2012, but added that ‘it is promising that other U.S. funded agencies will begin to do the same’)…” (Abrams, 9/23).

Reuters: U.N. Women chief: Climate change impacts fall hardest on women
“Women must take a greater leadership role in fighting climate change because its effects fall hardest on women, the head of U.N. Women said this week. … She spoke on Monday at the start of a discussion focused on the needs of women in terms of climate policy…” (Anderson, 9/24).

Reuters: U.N. climate summit sets goals to save forests, use clean energy
“A United Nations summit on climate change agreed on Tuesday to widen the use of renewable energy and raise billions of dollars in aid for developing countries in an effort to increase the prospects for a wide-ranging deal to slow global warming…” (Doyle, 9/23).

U.N. News Centre: Leaders at U.N. summit take steps to ensure food security for 9 billion people by 2050
“…[On Tuesday], at the biggest climate conference in history, more than 20 governments, and 30 organizations and companies announced they would join the newly launched Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, which aims to enable 500 million farmers worldwide to practice climate-smart agriculture…” (9/23).

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