Obama can't keep pushing climate away.

by Kiley Kroh

President Barack Obama raised expectations for climate action when he said in his election night acceptance speech that “we want our children to live in an America that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”

But in his first post-election press conference, he backed away, implying that climate must take a back seat to dealing with the country’s economic woes – a distinction echoed by his spokesperson Jay Carney shortly thereafter. The President is exactly right in his first statement and dead wrong in his second.

Sweeping action to address climate change faces enormous political opposition, especially when the economy is the dominant issue of the day. But the reality is that they can be approached simultaneously. In fact, this decision to separate the economy and the environment is a marked reversal from the president’s previous statements.

In March, for example, Obama stated quite clearly that environmental and economic prosperity are not mutually exclusive:

“There will always be people in this country who say we’ve got to choose between clean air and clean water and a growing economy, between doing right by our environment and putting people back to work. And I’m here to tell you that is a false choice. That is a false choice. With smart, sustainable policies, we can grow our economy today and protect our environment for ourselves and our children.”

In addition to addressing the urgent need to curb our carbon emissions, the economic benefits of dealing with climate change should merit their inclusion in both short-term policy discussions about deficit reduction and long-term economic growth strategies.

For example, a recent analysis from the Congressional Research Service found that a modest carbon tax of $20 per ton that rises 5.6 percent annually could cut the projected 10-year deficit by 50 percent — from $2.3 trillion down to $1.1 trillion. If designed correctly, a carbon tax could help shift the burden of paying for pollution (and solutions to it) from taxpayers to polluters, as well as generate much-needed revenue that could be used for a variety of purposes, including paying down the debt, incentivizing clean energy, and building our resiliency to climate change.

Climate action through clean energy investment has a variety of economic benefits in both the near and long term, driving investments that put people back to work now and increase our economy’s productivity over time. Such policies simultaneously reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, curb carbon emissions, and mitigate the negative effects of climate change.  A few specific examples:

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Photo: 350 Africa

by Justin Guay

For the past few years, the Beyond Coal campaign has been working with local activists across the United States to finally move our country off coal.

But now, according to a new report from World Resources Institute, coal companies are in a dead sprint to build 1,231 new dirty coal-fired power plants worldwide. If built, the air pollution from these plants could kill a quarter million people every year, and all but ensure runaway climate change. The dark future this expansion promises must be stopped before it’s too late.

But there is another grassroots success story that you may not have heard of. From Malaysia, to Kosovo , from Turkey to India, communities around the world are standing up, fighting back, and beating this expansion. Take rural India, where villagers stood firm against lethal violence at the hands of police and security forces to defeat a proposed plant in Sompeta. Or Turkey, where residents of the Black Sea town of Gerze set up 24-hour vigils to keep out coal companies.

Wherever you look, communities across the globe are standing up to the wealth and power of the coal industry. And in many cases, they’re winning. These brave activists are often all that stands between the 1,231 planned new coal-fired power plants and the 250,000 people they will kill every year.

You can read about these fights and more in a new Sierra club report: Move Beyond Coal, Now! Victories From The Frontlines. The report details how grassroots campaigns around the globe are fighting against the coal industry’s push to build new plants in developing countries.

This movement undercuts the industry’s narrative of a global “super cycle” used to support a massive expansion in export facilities in the U.S. and Australia. In the U.S., coal producers plan to open new strip mines in the Powder River Basin, transport coal over 800 miles by train (endangering local communities), and then ship over 140 tons per year to Asian markets to offset historic lows in domestic consumption. In Australia, the unscrupulous Gina Rinehart is pushing for an even larger expansion of 330 million tons, a plan that directly threatens the Great Barrier Reef.

But appearances can be deceiving. A rash of media reports cast doubt on the reality of a super cycle. In India, the Reserve Bank has warned the financial industry to freeze lines of credit to new coal plants, which it called a “distressed sector,” as several coal plants declared bankruptcy. In the U.S., a recent $7 billion export deal brokered by the state of Kentucky may be permanently scuttled due to financial irregularities associated with the ‘Coal-Gate’ scandal rocking the Indian government. And in China, unwanted coal is piling up at ports, which coupled with declining U.S. demand, is forcing bankruptcy declarations.

The truth isl that global coal markets are far riskier than you think.

The industry knows that if it doesn’t act now the dominance it has enjoyed will come crashing down. When it does, it will be because rice farmers in Indonesia, fishermen in Malaysia, and parents from Chicago stood up and fought back against seemingly insurmountable odds — showing the world that coal is the problem, not the solution.

Justin Guay leads the Sierra Club’s International Program.