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UPDATED: July 3, 2013
Obama's Climate Plan
In a broad-reaching speech, the U.S. president pledges a strong stand against carbon pollution and the foundation for new protections against global warming. Is this the moment environmentalists have been waiting for?
By Corrie Dosh
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U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his climate change speech at Georgetown University on June 25 (CRI)

Last week President Barack Obama announced a plan to tackle climate change, including regulations on gas and coal emissions and new protections against rising sea levels.

"As a president, as a father and as an American, I'm here to say we need to act," Obama said in a major speech at Georgetown University, adding that he would put an end to "limitless dumping" of carbon pollution.

Obama's plan reaffirms a 17-percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and ties climate change with expensive natural disasters such as wildfires and increased prices for food production. Obama also plans to expand his effective policy to increase acceptable millage standards in passenger cars to include heavy trucks. The policy has saved approximately 4 billion barrels of oil and reduced emissions by 2 billion metric tons by requiring more efficient engines.

Obama's announcement comes almost exactly 20 years after the first national climate plan in the nation's history was issued. The Clinton-Gore Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) contained 44 actions that could be enacted without the support of Congress and funded by supplemental spending approvals.

Contrasting to two plans shows just how far environmental protection efforts have come, writes Dr. Peter Fox-Penner, author of Smart Power.

"In 1993, the idea of adapting our infrastructure to weather the effects of climate change was not a significant part of the policy discussion, and the Clinton plan says virtually nothing about it," says Fox-Penner. "The Obama plan contains an entire section on adaptation showing, among other things, that it has absorbed many lessons from its assistance to stricken cities and states in the wake of storms, floods, and droughts. The programs in this area include grants to transit systems and communities to better prepare for floods, programs to help hospitals cope with severe storms, and programs to reduce wildfires and their impacts on rural communities."

The proposal also points to the president's recent agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping to work to reduce especially potent greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons. These international efforts are critical to the success of reducing toxins in the environment. China and the U.S. are enormous consumers of coal, and clean air means moving toward renewable sources of energy or limiting the toxic emissions released by breaking down carbon. Natural gas, a cleaner energy source than coal, is expensive in China and President Obama has done well to encourage a new pipeline from Russia to China that will bring prices down. Exports of U.S. natural gas to China would also help encourage its use.

Clean energy and cooperation on climate change may set the foundation for U.S.-Sino relations for years to come. Each side gains in these efforts to make the world a better place.

"This new policy sends a message that coal is not an acceptable fuel source for the 21st century," said Justin Guay, international climate and energy representative of the Sierra Club.

Obama's proposal is sure to meet with resistance from Republican-led state governments and the public has paid relatively little attention to the issue in a news cycle dominated by a scandal involving a TV chef and a fugitive government contractor accused of spying.

Conservative Republicans fell back on arguments that climate change has not been proven to exist and that new regulations would be a "job killer." Obama dismissed the criticisms, and mocked those who deny global warming.

"We don't have time for a meeting of the flat-earth society," Obama said.

Like the Clinton-Gore efforts twenty years prior, Obama will have to use some creative accounting to fund his environmental protection efforts. He can, through the Clean Air Act of 1970 – direct the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions. He does not have to seek permission from the Republican-held congress. It's the feisty move that Obama supporters have wanted to see from their leader, and a sign that the President is less conciliatory to the opposition in his second term.

Obama pledged he would redouble "efforts to engage our international partners in reaching a new global agreement to reduce carbon pollution through concrete action." If successful, the world will look back on this policy as the moment the U.S. took meaningful action to correct the damage caused by unregulated burning of fossil fuels. The stakes are high and the political will is weak, but the world has perhaps reached a point where it can no longer ignore climate change, and must take action to preserve the environment for future generations.

The author is a contributing writer to Beijing Review, living in New York City



 
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