US president Barack Obama has laid out a broad new plan to fight climate change, using executive powers to get around "flat Earth" science deniers who have blocked action in Congress.
Mr Obama called for new restrictions on existing and new power plants to curb carbon emissions, pledged to push new generation clean energy sources and to lead a fresh global effort to stem global warming.
Officials said the plan would allow the United States to meet a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020, a pledge Mr Obama made at the inconclusive Copenhagen summit in 2009.
Barack Obama's climate action plan
Read Barack Obama's plan to tackle the issue of climate change in the United States.
The president argued that Americans across the country were already paying the "price of inaction" against climate change, describing 2012 as the warmest year in human history, which parched farmlands in the US heartland.
"As a president, as a father, and as an American, I am here to say we need to act," he said, in a speech delivered in the sweltering early afternoon heat outside Georgetown University, with an eye on his political legacy.
Mr Obama said he had no patience for climate change deniers, including many in Congress, who dispute the science holding that carbon dioxide emissions contribute to a dangerously warming planet.
"We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society," he said.
"Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it is not going to protect you from the coming storm."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-26/obama-lays-out-plan-to-fight-climate-change/4780474
