Obama's Ace Card on Climate Policy
Posted at 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 24
The prospects of robust climate change legislation moving through Congress is highly unlikely in the current partisan environment, despite President Obama’s recent indications that he plans to push the issue in his second term. The National Journal looks at the most powerful executive action available to the president.
“Under the terms of a Supreme Court ruling and the nation’s clean-air laws, the Environmental Protection Agency is required to issue a regulation that would force existing industrial polluters, such as coal-fired power plants and oil refineries, to slash their emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. The rule could have a profound environmental impact by reducing the nation’s global-warming pollutants by up to 20 percent.”
“There is no way, experts say, that the U.S. can meet its existing climate pledge, let alone sign on with any credibility to a future global treaty, without either a new climate law from Congress or new EPA rules on existing power plants… if new U.S. climate rules do act as a catalyst for a meaningful global climate treaty that would turn the tide of the worst of global warming, it would stand as a hallmark achievement of Obama’s legacy.”
