•  Campaign Videos (April 2012) « Obama for America
  

[Music] Obama: Here's a bit of history for you.

Back in 1969, a U.S. senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, decided protecting our environment had to be a bigger part of the national conversation.

So he organized what he called an environmental teach-in for April of the next year. And every year, on Earth Day, we take stock of how we're doing to protect our air, our water, the country we love - and how we can do better.

We've got a lot of progress to report.

We've made historic investments in the development of clean energy to support hundreds of thousands of jobs and have doubled the amount of electricity we get from wind and solar energy.

We've developed fuel efficiency standards that will nearly double fuel economy for passenger cars by 2025, cut greenhouse gas emissions from our vehicles by half, and save drivers more than $8,000 at the pump.

Our dependence on foreign oil is the lowest it's been in 16 years—we're importing an average of 2.6 million fewer barrels of oil and petroleum products every day.

We'll save thousands of lives by implementing the first national standards to cut down on mercury and other toxic air emissions from power plants.

And we're promoting conservation projects in all 50 states so the forests and landscapes we love will still be around for our kids.

None of this progress came easy. We worked hard for it.

And what we do over the next few months will decide whether we'll have the chance to make even more progress.

Take a second right now to sign up for Environmentalists for Obama at green.barackobama.com and ask a friend to do the same. Thanks, and see you out there.

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Notes:

Copyright © 2012 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action.