Barack Obama sets sizzling climate action pace in push to leave legacy

The White House has churned out about 40 new measures to fight carbon pollution just since the start of 2015, stepping up the pace ahead of critical talks for a global climate change deal.

Two years after Barack Obama’s sweeping promise to fight climate change on 25 June 2013, the president has used his executive powers to spit out new climate events or announcements at a dizzying rate of one every 4.5 days this year, according to the running tally kept by the White House.

Those measures are offset by furious attempts by Republicans and industry to stop the climate plan in its tracks, and other Obama policies which campaigners say would increase the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change, such as opening up the Arctic, one of the world’s great “carbon bombs”, to oil drilling and expanding coalmining in Wyoming’s Powder river basin.

A new free trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, could also weaken climate protections, campaigners said.

But Obama is still constructing a significant record on climate change.

“You are seeing a president who believes that one of his deep legacies will be bending the curve on addressing emissions in the United States and abroad,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. “This is the place where the administration made a clear decision that it can get something done with or without Congress, and it can do something politically on a substantial issue.”

Obama first set out his climate ambitions on a sweltering June day in 2013, telling students at Georgetown University: “I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing.”

Since then, Obama has taken initial action on all 75 of the goals set out in the plan to cut carbon pollution, prepare the US for climate change, and help reach a global warming deal, according to an analysis by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES).

“The administration is making good progress, and cities, states and businesses are all taking stronger climate action,” said the C2ES president, Bob Perciasepe. But he said it would be impossible to meet all of those goals during Obama’s remaining time in office. “We’ll need continued federal leadership to reduce the emissions causing climate change and prepare for climate impacts.”

The centrepiece of Obama’s climate plan, the first rules to set limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, are due to be finalised by the Environmental Protection Agency in August – much to the fury of industry and a Republican-controlled Congress.

The House voted 247-180 on Wednesday on a bill to cripple the EPA power plant plan, allowing states to opt out, and delaying the rules almost indefinitely, until all court challenges are resolved. The White House said it would veto the bill.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is moving ahead with other carbon-cutting regulations. In June alone, the EPA proposed new rules to cut emissions from 18-wheelers and other heavy-duty trucks by 24% and moved for the first time to limit carbon pollution from planes and agriculture.

In May, Obama told the graduating class of the US Coast Guard academy that ignoring the security threat posed by climate change would amount to a “dereliction of duty”.

“Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security,” he told graduates. “Make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. And so we need to act – and we need to act now.”

In March, the Interior Department set out the first rules for fracking on public lands. The EPA is expected to unveil new rules cutting methane emissions from the oil and gas industry later this summer. Such leaks from oil and gas wells are one of the fastest-growing sources of emissions, and methane in the short term is far more potent than carbon dioxide.

Also in March, Obama committed to even greater cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, pledging reductions of 26% to 28% on 2005 levels by 2025.

Meanwhile, the administration has been working for stronger climate commitments from China, India, Mexico and other countries.

Chinese and US officials meeting in Washington this week agreed on joint initiatives for zero-emissions city buses and stopping plastic ocean pollution.

The spate of climate measures surfacing over the past six months were set in motion at the start of Obama’s second term, when he committed to making climate change one of his top priorities, and directed government agencies to incorporate climate change into their policies.

“He has without Congress achieved a great deal,” said Melinda Pierce, chief lobbyist for the Sierra Club. “It’s really been all across the federal government landscape where he has put forward this climate agenda.”

The timing was dictated in part by the slow grind of rule-making. But the White House was also conscious of cementing Obama’s climate legacy before he leaves office in 2016. To do that, Obama needs to help steer international climate negotiations towards a strong deal in Paris at the end of the year.

“President Obama has promised he will put this at the top of his agenda with every country he is engaged with bilaterally,” the president’s adviser, Brian Deese, said this week at a White House forum on climate change and public health. “In order to do that we need to show leadership at home.”

Campaigners, however, accuse Obama of undermining his legacy by expanding drilling off the Atlantic coast and opening up the pristine waters of the Arctic to oil companies. They say some of the climate measures promoted by Obama – such as the methane rule – are much too weak, and that his plan overall, while admirable, is still not enough to avoid dangerous climate change.

“I still think they are a little bit schizophrenic when it comes to climate change and fossil fuel production. They are not willing yet to go all in,” Pica said.