President Barack Obama's visit to Alaska helped show him the dichotomy between fossil fuels and climate change, he said in an interview with Rolling Stone during his visit to the state earlier this month.
The magazine posted a 9,000-word story and interview transcript Wednesday drawn from reporter Jeff Goodell's interview with Obama during his visit to Kotzebue earlier this month.
The interview was the only time Obama took any substantive questions from the press during this trip to Alaska -- a one-on-one sit-down that lasted more than an hour and did not include any local reporters or members of the White House travel pool from Washington, D.C.
The story is undoubtedly written from a position of faith in human-caused climate change and in the president's efforts to combat it -- as well as faith in Obama in general.
Goodell describes the sit-down with Obama thusly: "He spoke in measured tones, but with a seriousness that suggested that he believed -- not unjustifiably -- that the fate of human civilization was in his hands. Only near the end, when I asked if he felt any sadness about what we are losing in the world as a result of our rapidly changing climate, did he show any emotion -- he averted his eyes for a moment and looked away, as if the knowledge of what's coming in the next few decades was almost too much to bear."
While the article is mostly straightforward and dominated by a Q&A with the commander-in-chief, Goodell appears to have taken some liberty with description, claiming that on Sept. 2 at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, "the air was hazy with smoke from the wildfires that had burned millions of acres in Alaska."
A fire report for the day does note nine fires burning in the Matanuska-Susitna region. But the sky that day was clear. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lists zero days of haze in Anchorage during the month prior, and the National Weather Service reported 10 miles of visibility the day Obama flew to Dillingham. Air quality in Anchorage that day was listed as "good" -- indicating the lowest level of air pollution.
With some literary flair, Goodell noted that Obama "accelerated the construction of a new U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker" -- he actually proposed that Congress accelerate a replacement icebreaker -- to 2020 from 2022. And Goodell notes that Alaska "is melting like a popsicle on a summer sidewalk," a turn of phrase that many may see as an exaggeration.
In the interview, Obama addressed the point of his trip to Alaska and his goals for an international agreement on climate change. He also defended his administration's approval of test drilling for oil in the Arctic.
Goodell dubs Alaska the perfect backdrop for Obama's message: "Climatewise, it is the dark heart of the fossil-fuel beast," he wrote, citing rising temperatures, retreating glaciers and "35,000 walruses huddled on the beach in northern Alaska because the sea ice they used as resting spots while hunting had melted away." And on the flipside, he notes the state's dependence on oil, employing the story's only outside quote, from Bob Shavelson, executive director of Cook Inletkeeper, declaring the state a "banana republic."
Why Alaska?
The central reason for Obama's visit to Alaska, the president told Rolling Stone, was to shift the hearts and minds of Americans -- and the world -- on climate change. That requires a strategic approach, the president said.
In politics, the shortest distance between points A and B is hardly ever a straight line, Obama said. In "a democracy, I may have to zig and zag occasionally and take into account very real concerns and interests," he said.
"And right now, in this country, our politics is going through a particularly broken period -- Congress has trouble passing a transportation bill, much less solving big problems like this. That's part of the reason why we're having to do so much action, administratively. And that's part of the reason why I took this trip."
Arctic drilling
Obama defended his administration's decision to allow test drilling in the Arctic as part of an overall carbon reduction strategy that focuses on reducing demand for fossil fuels rather than domestic production. And he touted limits on drilling in Alaska in Bristol Bay.
"And regardless of how urgent I think the science is, if I howl at the moon without being able to build a political consensus behind me, it's not going to get done. And in fact, we end up potentially marginalizing supporters or people who recognize there's a need to act but also have some real interests at stake," Obama said.
Average Americans are still more concerned about gas prices than climate change, Obama said.
The president did take a few swipes at the oil and coal industries at large, saying that efforts to cut solar subsidies are simply "spin" designed to eliminate competition.
"Everybody is very selective when they start talking about free-market principles and innovation and entrepreneurship," Obama said.
Obama said he is not opposed to the positive benefits that that fossil fuels have brought the world, but that "mindless free-market ideologies that ignore the externalities that any capitalist system produces can cause massive problems." Pollution, he said, is "the classic market failure" that requires controls from the hand of government.
Russia
Obama called Russia a "constructive partner" on Arctic issues and said it's unsurprising that the country has been more focused on the Arctic than the U.S. But that needs to change, and the U.S. must work with other countries to "establish some clear rules of the road so we don't start seeing some of the same kinds of problems that we've been seeing in the South China Sea around maritime rules and borders and boundaries."
Obama said he does worry, however, that Russia, a major oil producer, "may not be as concerned about climate change as they need to be."
Paris
The point of Obama's efforts to win over the world on climate change is December's international climate conference in Paris, where he hopes to secure an international agreement on curbing carbon emissions -- and a legacy.
Success, Obama told Rolling Stone, will include "aggressive-enough targets" from major countries that smaller countries jump on board.