Facing Republican resistance at home and delays abroad, the Obama administration Tuesday pledged its most ambitious target yet for cutting global warming pollution.
President Barack Obama, who’s made fighting climate change a second-term priority, formally submitted a plan he outlined in November to slash U.S. greenhouse gases by more than a quarter over the next decade. The filing with the United Nations is intended to boost talks aimed at reaching a final agreement in Paris this December on how nations can avoid irreversible damage to the climate.
Obama’s strategy relies on deep cuts in carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants that congressional Republicans and the coal industry have vowed to fight. Meanwhile, the talks are facing challenges, with major greenhouse-gas emitters including China, India, Australia and Canada expected to miss Tuesday’s informal deadline for submitting plans to the United Nations. The White House said it hoped Tuesday’s blueprint from the world’s biggest economy would spur other countries to act.
“The U.S. has already cut more carbon pollution than any other country,” Brian Deese, an Obama adviser, told reporters on a conference call. “We are committing to build on that process and to pick up the pace.”
The United States, the biggest greenhouse gas emitter after China, joins Mexico, Switzerland, Norway and the 28 members of the European Union in filing its pledge. After the U.S. announcement, Russia filed its plan Tuesday, saying it would cut greenhouse pollution by at least a quarter below 1990 levels by 2030.
Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, attacked Tuesday’s proposal, saying the Obama administration has declared a “war on coal” that threatens the economy and energy supplies. Republicans are seeking to weaken regulations – including limits on power plants and methane leaks from oil and gas drilling – intended to drive down emissions rates.
Obama’s plans “will not see the light of day” in the current Congress, Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who heads the chamber’s environment committee, said in a statement. “Americans are beginning to question if the cost of billions of dollars to our economy and tens of thousands of lost job opportunities is really worth it for potentially no gain.”
Deese, the White House adviser, said Obama had already achieved the biggest reductions in greenhouse pollution while still overseeing the creation of 12 million jobs. “We don’t need to choose between economic growth and protecting our environment,” he said.
The report to the United Nations said the U.S. can reach its emissions goals under existing legislation, a signal to international negotiators that the pledge isn’t dependent on the tides of Washington politics.
“The undoing of the kind of regulations we are putting in place is something that is very tough to do,” Todd Stern, the U.S. envoy to the climate talks, said. “Countries ask me about the solidity of what we’re doing all the time and that’s exactly what I explain.”
