The Obama administration delighted environmental groups and the international community Tuesday with a pledge to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 28 percent by 2025 — a prelude to a possible global climate agreement to be negotiated in Paris later this year.
But with leaders of the Republican-controlled Congress vowing to dismantle, block and otherwise stymie the president's climate efforts — including undermining any potential global climate treaty — the ability of the United States to deliver on its promises is far from certain.
"Under President Obama’s leadership, the United States is doing our part to take on this global challenge," said Brian Deese, a White House senior advisor on climate issues, in announcing the pledge on the Medium web site. He added that more nations needed to offer up their own pledges ahead of a United Nations climate meeting to be held in Paris in December. "It’s time for other countries to do what the United States, Mexico, and the E.U. members have done and submit timely, transparent, measurable, and above all ambitious targets for cutting carbon pollution and building lower-carbon economies."
President Obama's plan essentially relies on a collection of pending and in-place executive actions — largely being administered through the Environmental Protection Agency — that would cut emissions from the power sector, increase vehicle efficiency and otherwise work to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions somewhere between 26 percent and 28 percent below what they were in 2005, the administration's favored benchmark year.
Environmental groups welcomed the step, though noted that much more would need to be done.
“Politically, today’s announcement is a big deal," said Lou Leonard, vice president for climate change with the environmental group WWF, in a statement responding to the administration's announcement. But he also said that more and deeper cuts in emissions were needed. "In fact the U.S. must do more than just deliver on this pledge," Leonard said. "The 28 percent domestic target can and must be a floor not a ceiling. As the largest contributor to climate impacts already here today, the United States has a responsibility to lead and do its fair share. When compared to what scientists warn us is needed to avoid the worst impacts to our cities, our food systems and water supplies, the U.S. pledge falls short."
But a more ambitious pledge would appear unlikely, and even the modest ambitions outlined by President Obama will face an onslaught of Republican efforts to undercut them.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, called the president's plans to curb power plant emissions — dubbed the Clean Power Plan — "job-killing and likely illegal" in a statement responding to the climate pledge Tuesday. "Considering that two-thirds of the U.S. federal government hasn’t even signed off on the Clean Power Plan and 13 states have already pledged to fight it, our international partners should proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal," McConnell said.
Other Republicans quibbled with the administration's approach to emissions reduction, suggesting that it was too heavily focused on sources of renewable power that simply cannot be scaled-up quickly enough to replace fossil fuels.
"The Obama administration’s national energy policy is practically a national windmill policy – which is like going to war in sailboats when nuclear warships are available," said Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee. "If the administration is serious about achieving energy independence and protecting our environment, it should work with Congress to unleash the clean, cheap, reliable sources of energy we need to power our 21st-century economy. That means doubling government-sponsored energy research, building more nuclear reactors, ending Washington’s obsession with wasteful subsidies like the wind production tax credit and solving our country’s nuclear waste stalemate."
Even if Obama is able to stave off Congressional efforts to thwart his climate agenda during his remaining time in office — less than two years — the odds are currently high that a Republican successor would seek to dismantle whatever regulations are put in place. Virtually all of the current GOP presidential hopefuls, announced or speculative, continue to question the science of global warming and the need to address it with urgency.
"If you look at global warming alarmists, they don't like to look at the actual facts and the data," said Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican and recently announced presidential contender. "The satellite data demonstrate that there has been no significant warming whatsoever for 17 years. Now that's a real problem for the global warming alarmists. Because all those computer models on which this whole issue is based predicted significant warming, and yet the satellite data show it ain't happening."
The recent pause in planetary warming — or a so-called "hiatus" — is often mischaracterized by climate skeptics as a cessation of rising temperatures. While global average temperatures have been rising more slowly than scientists expected over the last 15 years or so, they continue to go up.
