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More clean energy, less waste in last 5 years: Obama
US President Barack Obama has said that his government has been using more clean energy and wasting less power in the last five years but stressed that more needs to be done to address the generational problem.
As dangers of climate change poses threaten the very existence of human life on earth, the US President said that the question is not whether there is a need to act but whether we have the will to act.
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More clean energy, less waste in last 5 years: Obama
"The overwhelming judgment of science, accumulated and measured and reviewed and sliced and diced over decades, has put that to rest.
“The question is whether we have the will to act before it's too late," he said.
"Because if we fail to protect the world we leave our children, then we fail in the most fundamental purpose of us being here in the first place," he said.
In his address to the League of Conservation Voters Capital Dinner, Obama said right now, America generates more clean energy than ever before.
As a consequence of the investments made by his administration, electricity generate from wind has tripled since 2008, he said.
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More clean energy, less waste in last 5 years: Obama
"The energy we generate from the sun, has increased more than tenfold. Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar.
“And last year alone, solar jobs jumped 20 per cent," he said.
"So that's the first part of our plan: generating and using more clean energy. Then we've got to use less dirty energy," Obama said.
"By the end of the next decade, these combined efficiency standards for appliances and federal buildings will reduce carbon pollution by at least 3 billion tons compared to when I took office, and that's an amount equal to what our entire energy sector emits in nearly half a year," Obama said.
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More clean energy, less waste in last 5 years: Obama
However, Obama said there is need to do more.
"Everybody here knows, for the sake of our kids, we have got to do more.
“Today, about 40 per cent of America's carbon pollution comes from our power plants.
“There are no federal limits to the amount those plants can pump into the air," he said.
"We limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury, and sulfur, and arsenic in our air and water, but power plants can dump as much carbon pollution into our atmosphere as they want," he said.