"We're not going to be able to burn it all." With those 10 words, Barack Obama uttered one of the most stunning, far-reaching statements ever made by a U.S. president. He also completely contradicted his own energy policy. Yet no one seemed to notice. In an interview that Showtime television's climate documentary series Years of Living Dangerously aired on June 9-which also ran in the New York Times-Obama was asked about the international goal of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) since the start of the industrial era. Going past 2 degrees, noted the interviewer, columnist Thomas Friedman, would "cross into some really dangerous, unstable territory: Arctic melting, massive sea-level rise, disruptive storms." The International Energy Agency has concluded that meeting the 2C target will require leaving two-thirds of the earth's known reserves of oil, gas, and coal underground, unburned, Friedman said. Did Obama agree with that conclusion?
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