President Obama’s final State of the Union Address comes at the perfect time for a celebration of the historic progress this administration has made in protecting our planet from catastrophic climate change. As we look back at this Presidency, there is a simple litmus test here: has the President made the world a better place for our children? Sierra Club can unequivocally say yes, and that is in spite of Congress working to undermine his every move. At the same time, this moment also provides an opportunity for recognizing that while the United States has made tremendous progress, more can and must be done to ensure that our nation achieves the ambitious targets the world has just committed to.
When the history books are written generations from now, they will say that President Obama played a pivotal role in ensuring that the world seized its last, best chance to save itself by agreeing to act on climate in Paris. History will also record that it was not simply skilful international diplomacy which resulted in a universal agreement adopted by nearly 200 nations, but the fact that the President has consistently laid out bold policies and established ambitious goals to grow clean energy and cut carbon pollution in the United States. Indeed, under his administration our progress has dwarfed the prior efforts of all earlier American presidents.
Because of President Obama’s policies and vision, alongside the grassroots work of clean air and climate advocates across the country who have helped retire more than 200 coal plants, America went in to December’s climate negotiations in Paris as a global leader in tackling the climate crisis and lowering domestic emissions--all despite total inaction in Congress. Central to the President’s leadership is his landmark Clean Power Plan, which protects Americans from the dangers of climate change by setting the first ever national limits on carbon pollution from power plants.
But despite all the attention it has justifiably received, the Clean Power Plan is just the biggest and most recent domestic policy initiative which the President’s administration has advanced during his time in office. Early in his tenure, President Obama secured the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which prevented our economy from falling off a cliff in part by investing tens of billions into clean, renewable energy and other environmental priorities, helping pave the way for the explosive growth of the booming clean energy economy powered by wind and solar. The dramatic gains in the solar industry are personified in the story of Mark Davis, the owner of a Washington, D.C.-based solar company, who was invited by the First Lady to sit in her box during the speech. After all, the solar industry is growing ten times faster than the rest of the economy.
Beyond that, Obama has increased fuel-efficiency standards for cars to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, sparking not just climate and clean air benefits but saving consumers money at the pump. Less noticed and even more surprisingly, his administration has created a wide-ranging set of new energy efficiency protections which will prevent huge amounts of greenhouse gas pollution. On its own, a single new efficiency measure for commercial air conditioners will reduce U.S. energy use by an incredible 1 percent economy wide.
By rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline just before the Paris climate talks, the President demonstrated the need to stop major new dirty fossil fuel infrastructure projects before they start polluting our air and water. Importantly, he made crystal clear that we need to “keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”
At the same time as we are making real progress, the President has also acknowledge that these accomplishments are just the beginning. We must continue the task of putting America, and the world, on track to achieve the ambitious global targets we’re committed to by limiting global temperature increases to well below 2 degrees celsius to as low as 1.5C.
In order to put us on a path to achieve this ambitious goal, there are a number of key policies which can and should be pursued during the remainder of President Obama’s time in office, and thereafter carried forward by the next administration.
Top among these is tackling the dangers posed by the super-warming pollutant methane. While the Environmental Protection has proposed protections against methane pollution from new and modified sources from the oil and gas industry, it does not yet tackle the the problem of existing sources. Existing sources are, obviously, the largest sources of methane emissions, which makes it critical that new standards be proposed and finalized this year. At the same time, the Bureau of Land Management should propose and finalize its venting and flaring standard to limit oil and gas methane emissions on public and tribal lands.
In Paris, the world set an expiration date on fossil fuels. That’s why it's even clearer now than it was before that we need to start keeping significantly more fossil fuels in the ground. In order to build on the progress of rejecting the destructive Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama can start by committing to significant coal leasing reforms on federal lands so American taxpayers stop subsidizing the dirtiest industry on earth.
At the same time, the President can and should also provide the Arctic and Atlantic oceans with permanent protection from all future exploratory drilling, because the risks of another catastrophic oil spill on our coasts are simply too great.
Finally, there is even more the President can do to reduce carbon pollution from the transportation sector. In addition to continuing to promote the growth of zero-emission electric vehicles, the President should set carbon pollution standards for heavy-duty vehicle and airplanes at the highest levels feasible, as well as require state and metropolitan transportation plans to include targets for cutting carbon pollution.
Taken together, President Obama’s accomplishments and leadership are truly historic. At the end of the day, the climate crisis is a scientific fact and not a political issue, and because of President Obama, the politics are finally catching up with the urgency the science--and our planet--demands. With one year left in office, the President has a final opportunity to do even more to ensure that we address this crisis through every authority available to him.