Obama: Climate Change Hurts Minorities the Worst

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

President Obama defended his new draconian rules on coal fired power plants today, using a moral argument for battling back the dangers of climate change.

As part of his argument for his new policies, President Obama insisted that more minorities were being hurt by air pollution.

He argued that African-American children was more than twice as likely to be hospitalized from asthma and a Latino child was 40 percent more likely to die from asthma.

“If you care about low income minority Americans, start protecting the air they breath and stop trying to rob them of health care,” he said as the audience applauded.

He added. “You could also expand Medicaid in your states as well,” as the audience laughed.

Obama was critical of Republicans who blamed his climate polices for hurting the U.S. economy and hurting jobs, particularly for minorities. He also accused them of blocking healthcare and job training programs for people in coal country to answer for the joblessness in response to the dramatic impact of his new policies.

“We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, we’re the last generation that can do something about it,” he said. “We only get one home, we only get one planet, there’s no plan B.”

Obama told Americans that it would be “shameful” not to do anything about the dangers posed by climate change.

“I don’t want my grandkids not being able to swim in Hawaii or not to be able to climb a mountain and see a glacier because we didn’t do something about it. I don’t want millions of people’s lives disrupted and this world more dangerous because we didn’t do something about it,” he said.

He insisted that climate change posed a great danger to the human race, warning that it it could reach a point that it became irreversible.

“There is such a thing as being too late when it comes to climate change,” he said.

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