Standing before the Old North building at Georgetown University, the same building President George Washington spoke from in 1797, Obama staked out what many subsequently described as a revolutionary set of proposals on climate change.
And he vowed to make climate change and renewable energy a priority no matter what the Congress and climate-change deniers do to slow his administration's progress in its final two-and-a-half years.
“We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat-earth society,” he said.
The president said the high human and monetary costs of climate change are already apparent in an allusion to last year's Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the highly populated Northeastern US last year and epic tornadoes that smashed through Oklahoma in recent weeks.
"I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that's beyond fixing," Obama said.
He then outlined s wide range of initiatives intended to dramatically reduce greenhouse admissions, fired up the development of renewable energy, and to better safeguard the country's populous coastal communities.
As part of a promise to bring down US greenhouse gas emissions 175 from 2005 levels by the end of the decade, the president issued a directive to the Environmental Protection Agency to significantly curtail emissions from coal-fired power plants.
"Limitless dumping of carbon pollution .. is not right," he said. "It's not safe and it needs to stop."
“I'm directing the [EPA] to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants and complete new pollution standards for both new and existing power plants,” he added.
Administration officials said Tuesday President Obama hopes to see proposals doe new emissions rules for existing power plants by this time next year, ands wants to see them finalized before he leaves office.
Although the president refrained from tipping his hand in the ongoing debate over the Keystone XL pipeline, which would be used to transport tar said oil from Canada deep into the heart of the US, he promised environmentalist the implications for the climate would be critical in his decision-making.
“The question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science, of chemistry and physics and millions of measurements, has put all that to rest,” the president told students who had gathered on a steamy summer afternoon in Washington to hear him speak. “So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it's too late.”
Almost as soon as he was done speaking, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, released a statement saying, " “The president has always been hostile to affordable sources of American energy that power most of our economy, but this program – which amounts to a National Energy Tax – only escalates his attack.”
Such opinions, however, were largely drowned out from the jubilation of the other side.
"This is the change Americans have been waiting for on climate. President Obama is finally putting action behind his words," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra.
“The president nailed it: this can’t wait,” said Frances Beinecke, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“We must cut this carbon pollution today so our children don’t inherit climate chaos tomorrow,” Beinecke said.
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