The President and Mrs. Obama visited the city of Aquila, Italy as part of his G-8 tour focusing on this ancient city as a reference for potential world economic rebirth after its massive earthquake earlier this year.  He spoke in reference to the ancient art and architecture and of continuing scholarships to affirm the U.S. connection to Italy.

After visiting with the Pope and returning to the U.S. via a visit to Ghana, the trip will have included new ethical guidelines from the Vatican, a visit to Accra, and embarkment points from the history of the European slave trade.

Issues of Global Warming and international standards were heighted by demonstrations by Greenpeace activists in Italy and on Mount Rushmore.  "2 degrees was too little, too late" for this important community based organization. 

Climate change impacts all of us.  The ability to grow food and the weather.  Greenpeace unfurled a poster you can see on youtube.com or their website.  They reminded all of us to dust off "Inconvenient Truth" and make sure that we hold the president and all our leaders to clean air, water, and the right to a hopeful future.

Symbollically carried the conversation forward by 11 daring Greenpeace climbers hung a banner on Mount Rushmore challenging President Obama to deal with Greenhouse gases and show real leadership on global warming, for the world.  Ms. Muffett stated "While President Obama's speeches on global warming have been inspiring, we've seen a growing gap between the president's words and his actions."

The best science shows that to avoid catastrophic global warming, governments must take action to keep global temperature rise as far below 2 degrees Celsius as possible. "Given President Obama's pledge to follow the science, it's troubling that his administration has not yet endorsed emission targets strong enough to keep us below that critical threshold."

Global warming is the greatest crisis humankind has ever faced and it is the defining test of leadership for this generation. It's an open question whether President Obama will pass that test," said Greenpeace USA Deputy Campaigns Director Carroll Muffett.

References:

Cut and Carbon Approach

o http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/

o http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalwarming.nsf/content/

ResourceCenterToolsGHGCalculator.html

http://uscarbonreport.com/greenpeace-mount-mt-rushmore/#more-753