Obama admin: We’re “not giving up” on climate action

From a press conference today at the AGU, with the prez's chief science advisor:

Bud Ward: It seems that over the last two years the momentum on climate change has been lost. The Obama administration came in with climate as one of the adminstration's top priority, and the President is a great communicator. Two years ago it seemed that there was sympathy for the administration's point of view in Congress, and the administration has great scientific credentials, but increasingly the issue seems to have gotten confused, and it's no longer being taken seriously. it seems that things have fallen apart. How could that happen? 

John Holdren, the president's chief science advisor: "To say things are falling apart is an overstatement. This administration has faced a number of challenges, unscheduled developments you might say, including a recession which was far more serious than anyone imagined at the outset. We had the H1N1 flu epidemic, the Gulf Oil spill, which consumed a vast amount of our resources, and North Korea and nuclear proliferation. There's only so many things an administration can give priority to and get done. The choice was made to try and get comprehensive health care legislation done before energy and climate change. That struggle proved longer and more difficult than anyone thought at the outset. I think there are a lot of reasons why we didn't get as far or as fast as we wanted to on climate change, but that doesn't mean we're giving up." 

[Holdren went on to say that there is "a myth out there" that the public has lost interest in climate change, and pointed to data from a Stanford researcher showing that's not so, that there is a climate majority supporting action.}