Barack Obama pledges to bypass Congress to tackle climate change

US president says country is already paying price of inaction and backs nuclear energy and fracking in comprehensive strategy

guardian.co.uk, Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent,  25 June 2013

Barack Obama addresses students at Georgetown University. 'I refuse to
 condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that's beyond
fixing,' he said. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

Barack Obama has taken an historic step forward in confronting climate change, asserting his power as US president to cut carbon pollution and protect future generations from catastrophic global warming.

In a speech on Tuesday at Georgetown University, delivered outdoors on a sweltering hot day, Obama went further than any previous US president in outlining a comprehensive strategy for dealing with climate change. He also said he would continue to press the issue as a priority of his second term even in the face of implacable opposition from Republicans in Congress.

"I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that's beyond fixing," Obama said to a gathering of students.

The high costs of climate change were already apparent, Obama said, in hurricanes, droughts, and wildfire. "Americans across the country are already paying the price of inaction," he said.

He went on to reaffirm America's commitment to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

Obama outlined a broad range of measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions and promote the development of renewable energy, protect coastlines and cities from flooding and sea-level rise, and encourage efforts to reach a global climate deal.

But his boldest move by far was the decision to bypass a deadlocked Congress and issue an executive memo to the Environmental Protection Agency, calling for new rules curbing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Obama said it was well past the time to stop the "limitless dumping of carbon pollution" from coal-fired power plants. "It's not right, it's not safe and it needs to stop," he said.

Power plants are responsible for a third of America's greenhouse gas emissions. Campaigners had been pressing Obama for a year to curb emissions for coal-fired power plants.

However, the measure ran into fierce opposition from Republicans and industry, even before Obama had delivered his speech.

Obama took on another contentious issue – the Keystone tar sands pipeline, which campaigners have cast as the defining environmental issue of the day.

The president gave no indication of how he will decide on the project, which would open up Canada's vast store of carbon. However, he offered campaigners a measure of reassurance, saying climate implications would be critical to making a final determination. "The net effects of pipeline impact on our climate will be absolutely critical in determining if the project is allowed to go forward," he said.

However, not all of Obama's speech will prove popular with environmental campaigners, or even his fellow Democrats.

The president embraced America's natural gas boom, made possible through fracking, as a transition fuel. He also reiterated support for nuclear power.

As some analysts noted, Obama failed to mention putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions. White House officials have flatly rejected a "carbon tax", and there was no indication whether Obama would support a version of a carbon tax now pending in the Senate.

But there was overwhelmingly strong support among an environmental community that has often been frustrated and disappointed with the president on climate change.

"They are following through on what we asked for," said Kevin Kennedy, who directs the US climate programme for the World Resources Institute. "You can't be serious about reducing US greenhouse gas emissions if you are not going to take on existing power plants."

The Sierra Club, which has pushed Obama hard to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, was effusive. "This is the change Americans have been waiting for on climate. President Obama is finally putting action behind his words," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club – although he went on to ask the president to stop the pipeline.

Obama claimed climate change as one of his core issues in his inauguration address. He stoked expectations even further in his state of the union address in February, telling Congress to act on climate change – or he would.

Since then, however, there have been mixed signals from the White House on climate change. The White House delayed a range of environmental rules, and Obama told supporters at a number of fundraisers that the politics of climate change were hard.

With Tuesday's speech, however, Obama appears to have firmly adopted climate action as his own brand.

The significance of Tuesday's strategy, however, will only become apparent in time.

Administration officials briefing reporters on the climate plan said the White House hoped to propose the rules for existing power plants by June 2014, finalising the rules one year later. They said proposed rules for new plants could be forthcoming as early as September.

That timetable could set in place mechanisms to deliver meaningful cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by the time Obama leaves office.

But there are bound to be legal and political challenges, and it was not immediately clear how stringent the new power plant rules would be.

It was also unclear how the actions promised by Obama would play out in the long term.

Most analysts believed at the time that America's original 17% emissions target was too low to avoid serious climate change. There was even greater uncertainty about whether America would be on track for the even more ambitious mid-century target of an 80% cut in emissions. That would depend on the stringency of the EPA measures, and how quickly the new rules could be adopted, Kennedy said.

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