"After Obama’s Reelection, The Environment Became A Top Priority"

"On the night in early June 2008 when Barack Obama had finally won enough contests to secure the Democratic nomination for president, he marked the momentous occasion with a prediction.

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,” he said at a campaign rally in St. Paul, Minn. on the last night of voting of that primary season. Obama had made history by winning the nomination, and that night he spoke from the same stage where John McCain, his GOP rival, would accept his party’s nomination that September.

Obama’s rhetoric about his impact on the Earth struck some as grandiose and fanciful. The line was mocked by critics, and by every scientific measure the planet’s precarious situation has gotten worse, not better since he made that claim."

Juliet Eilperin reports for the Washington Post August 16, 2016.