When Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, he declared that future generations would remember it as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” More than three years later, the oceans are still rising and our planet has done more howling – in the form of extreme weather – than healing. In fact, the current political climate is actually headed in the wrong direction….
It’s not all Obama’s fault: His plans to rebuild America’s energy infrastructure have been hampered by the recession, and his efforts on global warming have been stymied by Tea Party wackos and weak-kneed Democrats in Congress. But the president has spent far too much time blaming others, when he could have been taking action on his own. Here are 10 things Obama could do right now – without any say-so from Congress – to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. All it takes is the will – and some political courage.
Jeff Goodell has a good piece in Rolling Stone on 10 steps Obama can take on climate without any Congressional approval.
He interviewed me, and you can probably guess what I said. My suggestion is number 10 on the list. I won’t reprint the whole piece, just the specific suggestions along with some excerpts.
What did Rolling Stone miss?
ONE: Stop the [Keystone XL Tar Sands] Pipeline
… Environmental choices don’t get much starker than this. “Obama is alone at the top of the key,” McKibben recently wrote. “Will he take the 20-foot jumper – or pass the ball?”
TWO: Prevent Oil Spills
THREE: Crack Down on Carbon
Following a 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court, the EPA has the responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant….
The agency is working on new rules that would cut carbon pollution from power plants – the country’s single biggest source of planet-warming emissions. The question is: How tough will they be? To make Big Coal really clean up its act, the standards need to be set at roughly the same pollution levels produced by natural gas – about 1,100 pounds of pollution per megawatt hour of electricity. “That would essentially end the construction of conventional coal plants in America,” says Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund.
“But if the standards are significantly looser, they could have the perverse effect of actually encouraging the construction of a new generation of plants.” The ultimate outcome – no more coal plants, or far too many – is entirely in Obama’s hands.
Obama has just announced a delay in these rules, and I expect that they will ultimately disappoint.
FOUR: Strike a Deal With China
… David Doniger, policy director of the National Resources Defense Council’s climate center, believes a deal with China to phase out so-called “super greenhouse gases,” such as hydrofluorocarbons, is within reach. “It’s not going to solve the problem of climate change,” he says. “But it’s a step in the right direction.”
FIVE: Make Coal Clean Up Its [ash] Mess
SIX: Hang Tough on Fuel Standards
SEVEN: Make Conservation Patriotic
… As president, Obama should act immediately to make energy efficiency a patriotic cause….
EIGHT: Give Fish a Chance [by Creating Marine Reserves]
NINE: Pardon Tim DeChristopher
Duh.
TEN: Use the Bully Pulpit
Ever notice how often the phrase “climate change” pops up in Obama’s speeches? Not much – only 20 times in the past year, and fewer than half as many as the year before. The president has failed to make a big issue-defining speech on global warming, failed to defend the climate scientists being attacked by Big Oil, and failed to blast congressional climate deniers like Sen. James Inhofe, who shamelessly and stupidly dismiss global warming as a “hoax.”
In fact, Obama’s refusal to speak out on the risks and moral obligations of climate change may well be his biggest failure as president. “He has been silent on the defining issue of our time, letting Big Oil and the deniers define the debate,” says Joe Romm, a leading climate advocate who served as assistant energy secretary under Bill Clinton. “In some sense, he has been a bigger failure than Bush – because Obama knows better. He knows exactly what is at stake.”
Insiders insist the president is running a “stealth campaign” on climate change, quietly going after coal and oil by tightening air-pollution and fuel-efficiency standards. But Obama alone has the power to elevate global warming to the forefront of the international agenda, where it belongs. He must use his remarkable rhetorical skill to explain to the world that the fossil-fuel era is coming to an end – and inspire us all to take action, no matter what the cost. “Obama needs to make a decision,” Romm says. “Does he want to be remembered as the president who had the best chance of taking action on climate – but who failed to stop the catastrophe?“
What would you add to the list?
Related Post:
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
In the intro – Id add “top ten Obvious things” and I’d also add “could have done” and “probably wont do.”
Near the top: Mandate upgrades to a smart grid. Id also add aggressively subsidize American clean energy and research with funds primarily generated from penalties on high carbon fossil fuels, update the nations nuclear power fleet, build new reactors to replace existing coal and NG.
Closer to the bottom but needed: pass regulatory guidelines on energy companies in the placement of new nuclear, wind, solar installations and renewable technologies to maximize their benefit, while minimizing risk and underutilization.
Most of that could happen through the EPA.
He ought to name and shame the pathocrats behind the denialist industry. They should not be allowed to endanger the lives and welfare of billions, in pursuit of money, and remain anonymous as well.
I agree Mulga and he could start by making the connections using the facility at:
Exxon Secrets
Here is a map I spun out earlier, note the web of which Michaels is at the centre:
Sample Map based on Biggest Exxon Winners
Also see the connections for Christy, Spencer, Lindzen, the Idsos, Soon and Baliunas amongst others.
Try your own explorations and explore the info database. Try in my example pulling down Bob Carter to a clear patch and click on ‘Show Organisations’.
Warning, I find the default text a bit small at my screen res’ (used for photo’ work and dtp design) and I have trouble with the move image when zoomed – this in Firefox – on zooming out I have to reload the page to regain slide bars.
Anybody know of a similar resource for the Kochtopus?
A very good piece by Mr. Goodell, from the standpoint of things he could do.
I do have to take issue with this quote though:
“his efforts on global warming have been stymied by Tea Party wackos and weak-kneed Democrats in Congress”
Um, no. President Obama threw climate action over the side and made the wrong choices almost from the very beginning of his administration in spite of the Congress (the House at least) – the first tar sands pipeline Keystone 1 to midwest refineries (first large scale market for tar sands oil) was approved by our President in June of 2009, having to be pushed to lobby House Members for the climate change bill (stunned Pelosi and company that they had to do this) and the list goes on and on – he’s been making fossil fuel industry choices from the beginning.
That’s sad to hear about the delay in our last shot – the 2012 final CO2 powerplant emissions rules.
Joe, thanks for the heads up on that (and they’re going to be even more watered down? good god they weren’t going to be very tough anyways…what’s he going to do, compromise and agree to shut down 10 times the KWh of wind farms for every coal plants shut down?) – although this (pushing it back so he doesn’t have to stand up for it) is totally expected.
If President Obama looses next year he will have presided over the squandering (and destruction for the foreseeable future) of every major avenue of true action, at the Federal level, on climate change in 4 years (that’s assuming he pushes back rollout of powerplant CO2 emissions regulations out till 2013 so the GOP can kill them). I’ll be he sleeps great too.
On the flip side, at least we’re starting to run out of things he can sell us out on…
How about Social Security and Medicare?
I think item 10 should be number one. He can use his Saturday chats to focus on this issue, how the deniers are seeing to it that we will lose the race for clean energy / economy, and the world will lose the race to minimize the impact of climate change.
He should stand on a moral principle that he values effective action over political considerations with respect to reelection. Even with the scary people likely to be nominated by the Republicans, I have little hope at this point that Obama will be serving a second term.
I agree #10 should be number one (and Joe Romm’s comment says it all) but pardoning Tim DeChristopher should be #1.5.
In all the buzz about the Keystone protestors, I had completly forgotten about someone who paid a much steeper price than any those arrested at the White House for his highly principled act of civil disobedience.
Bill McKibben should find a way to work the “free Tim” message into his future nationwide Keystone protests.
Promote feed in tariffs. Makes electricity, makes jobs, empowers people.
And how would he prevent any fossil fuels this displaced being bought and burnt elsewhere ?
Bring more government resources to bear on climate science.
On #3, the coal industry (via americaspower.org) is meanwhile advertising on NBC News, calling for viewers to pressure politicians to get the EPA to “slow down” for the sake of jobs. Question is, how slow can they go? Ironically, the ad was on just before a brief story about near-record Arctic sea ice melt and consequences for wildlife.
Obama should act as a TV talk show host with climate scientists as guests. They should go into great depth and detail on the topic of climate history. I believe that nothing has greater potential to persuade the public of the reality of dangerous climate change than the strong evidence for climate-caused mass extinctions. Focus on the end-Permian extinction and then each of the other major extinctions in turn as models for our future under the guidance of the invisible hand of market fundamentalism.
Excellent idea, except that a big chunk of the country doesn’t believe in evolution or the established age of Earth. That shouldn’t stop him from doing such a thing, though.
Instruct the US Department of Justice to work closely with the US EPA so that the federal government may fulfill its Clean Air Act regulatory obligations, as interpreted by the US Supreme Court in Connecticut v. American Electric Power.
The “Court held that the Clean Air Act authorizes federal regulation of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases..”
The decision did not suggest that the EPA had sole responsibility.
Well he could step down and allow a true progressive to run for the Democratic nomination. Unfortunately President Obama has made his choices sometime back and it is the rest of the planet that will have to live with the consequences of his decision to go AWOL when it comes to dealing with climate change.
Looks like wishin’ and hopin’ to me, and pleading for action here is like a battered wife politely asking her husband to stop beating her up. Obama’s key decisions have all come down on the side of the oil and coal companies, and the wealthy who piss that money away on yachts, mansions, and campaign contributions. The tar sands pipeline will be the final nail, but our coffin is already quite robust.
He could pivot here- the man is certainly smart enough. It’s a question of whether he wants to lead or continue to obey the dark side of our country. This move would take inner strength that so far we have no real evidence of. And believing that a great man could emerge from our current weak spiritual state is a dream all its own.
If you dislike Obama on climate change, you’re really going to dislike President Perry or Romney.
Yes, I suspect things will be worse at one level but under Obama he is sowing confusion in the mind of the public by promising one thing and doing something completely different. At least under a Governor Perry there would be little distinction between what he says and what he does on climate change. Ultimately this would offer Americans a clear choice.
In the end I think the point is moot since it is highly unlikely Obama is going to get elected due to his failure to deliver on any number of his campaign promises. What he has delivered on is a corporatist agenda which advances the interests of the elite.
The most glaring example of this is that only at this point in his presidency does he seem to have woken up to the fact that there is high unemployment.
I do believe the next decade is going to be a difficult one for the world and the US. My own guess is that the Democratic Party is heading towards an historic defeat mainly because of its unwillingness to clearly communicate and stand-up for progressive causes.
After the 2012 election given the vast disenfranchisement that the GOP are executing in many states by making it more difficult to register to vote and even vote it is likely they will have manufactured a permanent majority for sometime. This does not bode well for action on climate change and again I expect that the country will go into reverse on many of the policies it had previously pursued.
One can only hope that at some point the American people wake up and realize that their republic has been co-opted in the pursuit of crony capitalism.
I suggest Obama to address denialist BS using the appropriate terminology, BS.
Since day one he became President BO has surrounded himself with the same Plutocrats/Bankers that where responsible for the the 2008 meltdown- the greatest economic implosion since 1929. Obama’s greatest failure was not in recognizing the historic event that happened. We needed swift action like FDR in 1933- not the weak nebulous stimulus package passed.
I have yet to hear Obama mention the term ‘Anthropogenic Climate change’ or any derivative of that term since he took office.
If he truly wanted to redefine himself, he needs to stop the weak kneed political mamby-bamby vanilla approach and do something really progressive for both the economy and the climate.
If not he is just done. The really hard work will be delayed on the climate, time we do not have. Obama continues to appeal to a shrinking moderate electorate- in a country that has grown increasingly polarized.
Right on, Peter. I don’t think he realizes just how much of his enthusiastic base in 2008 has evaporated with his wishy-washyness on just about everything. FDR publicy welcomed the hatred of his opponents; BHO is still trying to make nice with them. Makes one wonder if he has any real principles or whether he is just another opportunist who knows how to talk pretty.
BO has turned out to be the antithesis of what we needed to solve our profound problems.
Those problems become worse- making the future all the more precarious, searching & hoping for a leader that BO has failed miserably to become.
Tell NASA to launch the Deep Space Climate Observatory .
He could authorize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider certifying the alternative designs for reactors which are inherently safe and produce no radioactive waste. Bill Gates has invested in one of the companies, TerraPower, which has designed a traveling-wave reactor that will use nuclear waste as it’s fuel. But the NRC has no process or the necessary staff to review new designs and Bill Gates has said TerraPower isn’t going to happen in America any time soon. I’ll repeat that: Bill Gates has invested in a company that has a solution to our energy riddle but he says it can’t happen here under the current conditions. We need a solution now. Hyperion has a reactor in testing at Los Alamos that could be in commercial use in three years. It is 7.5 feet tall, is delivered on a truck and buried 100 meters in the ground and then is self-sufficient to power 20,000 homes and 20,000 electric vehicles for 7 years before refueling. Once it’s put into production, it can come off the assembly line as fast as one every few weeks. This is the way to address our pressing need for a solution. Solar and wind power have increased their share of the total energy output by .8% last year. At that rate it will take over 75 years to replace fossil fuels. We’ll be well past the tipping point by then.
The most obvious and most effective single action would be to impose a BTU tax. Of course, such a move needs Congressional approval, and so any bill to that effect offered by the administration is DOA in Congress. I guess that means I am not answering the question. But I do think he could use the bully pulpit to excoriate the Congress for failing to act; humiliate the Republican candidates for denying Climate Change science and propose the BTU tax as a rallying point. He needs to lead on the issue – that’s the most important thing.
16 Sep 2011: More Americans Believe
Climate is Warming, Poll Finds
A new poll finds that the percentage of Americans who believe that the climate is warming has increased in the past year, a shift in opinion that follows one of the warmest summers in U.S. history and increased debate about climate change among Republican presidential candidates. According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted from Sept. 8 to 12, 83 percent of respondents said they believe the climate is getting warmer, compared with 75 percent last year. Seventy-one percent said they believe human activities are partly or mostly to blame for climate change, while 27 percent said they believe it is the result of natural causes. Stanford University Professor Jon Krosnick said this summer’s wild weather — including prolonged heat waves, droughts in some regions, and flooding in others — is changing public opinion. He also said that discussion of climate issues during recent Republican presidential debates seems to paradoxically have caused more people to believe the climate is warming; most of the Republican candidates have attacked climate science, but Krosnick said those attacks appear to have led more Americans to think about global warming and conclude that, in fact, its is real. While more Americans believe in warming, the poll found that so-called climate skeptics are becoming more entrenched in their positions, with 53 percent saying they are certain in their views, compared with 35 percent last year. A recent Yale survey found that respondents who identify themselves as Tea Party members are much more likely to say they “do not need any more information” on the issue to make up their minds. http://e360.yale.edu/digest/more_americans_believe_climate_is_warming_poll_finds/3124/
Very interesting, thanks.
Defeating the money, as always, will be the hard part. Polls weren’t invented in the 19th century, but I would guess that 75% of Americans opposed it in the 1850′s. Plantation profits were just too big to make opposition effective. Same thing now.
I forgot to note opposed slavery, of course.
Well, approving the largest expansion of offshore oil drilling in US history certainly wasn’t helpful.
Neither is the massive expansion of coal mining on public lands to produce hundreds of millions of tons of coal for export to China.
And of course, neither is the Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama is likely to approve.
There are lots of things that Obama could do. But when you are digging yourself into a hole, the first thing you need to do is stop digging.
“NINE: Pardon Tim DeChristopher”
What the heck?? I stopped taking this story seriously when I read that one, sorry.
99% of Americans don’t even know who Tim DeChristopher is.
They will if Obama pardons him.
Just as a matter of curiosity, I wonder how many know these names: Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, Mark Rich, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. All were involved in scandals of one sort or another. Only one was not given a presidential pardon or commutation of sentence.
He and his staff can build up portfolios on what climate change is doing in each congressional district, and chat with congressional representatives about how they understand the risks back home. He can push the conversation past the special interests’ lobbying points.
Locate his backbone – and two other jewels of his anatomy.
1. Declare a state of emergency.
2. Declare war on GW.
The title of the list should be “Ten more reasons to donate to Rick Perry for President to repeal the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts which kill jobs”.
Dictators often generate strong reactionary responses to their policies if an organized opposition exists.
For reasons I don’t understand, environmentalists have become totally disorganized, perhaps because they are spending too much time at Tea Party demonstrations, Certainly environmentalists are not doing anything about the destruction of communities and lives, mostly in the South. Perhaps this is the new face of racism – from outside the South, one can condemn the oil industry, but nothing is done within the their own community to slash oil demand at home so there is less profit in deep water drilling or the XL Pipeline.
Obama’s strategy is to implement change by winning the commitment of those who have money on the line. The new CAFE standards are a good example – the automakers agreed for two reasons: the foreign makers to put the US makers at a disadvantage; the US makers because they needed money controlled by Obama (even Ford needed credit facility). Certainly the US makers knew they needed to compete globally with higher mileage cars and trucks, but that is for next year; CAFE is NOW. And even Ford got stimulus money to meet new CAFE standards.
The CAFE standards are not under attack by Republicans even though they were driven by Obama.
On the other hand, Obama is under attack for the lighting efficiency standards signed in 2005 by Bush. Obama is being attacked for dictating every household buy expensive mercury polluting CFLs that require an EPA permit to clean up instead of the safe Edison lamp. The “green” activists were the ones who provided the initial line of attack used by Congressman Barton to attack the 2005 Energy bill as an example of Obama’s excessive government takeover.
For Obama, the light bulb attack is nothing he worries about – a President Perry will not result in the effective repeal of the lighting efficiency standards. Globally the lighting, and power, industries are united behind replacing the Edison era lighting.
On the other hand, Obama is attacked from the left and right over BP’s pollution, with superPACs using the Gulf to raise millions to defeat Obama. But for Barton, no superPAC has been created to defeat him as number one on the 21st Century Dirty Dozen because…why?? Because greenies want low taxes and low prices so they will vote for Barton to block taxes on carbon?
If you care about the environment, think of Obama being in office for less than 18 months and the next President, Perry, immediately issuing executive orders reversing everything Obama does, or has done, by executive order or by rule making, within his first month in office.
Now think about how you protect the climate in two years:
1. elect Republicans to control Congress and White House by joining with Tea Party to attack Obama and Democrats
2. elect Democrats to control Congress and the White House by working to defeat the worst threats to the environment of the Republicans
The idea in the “Ten things Obama must do” list is Obama must make democracy work by dictating to the people they must do what they refuse to do because in a democracy, a dictator is the only way to get people to think right. At least such list makers agree with Perry and Bachmann: execute them, or government funded brainwash away gayness, are the democratic process to perfection.
Uhh, the CAFE standards are under attack. So is the stimulus money Ford got.
” the next President, Perry, immediately issuing executive orders reversing everything Obama does, or has done”
Great, so no more Bush tax cuts, no more Keystone XL pipeline, no more expanded coal production, no more expanded offshore oil production. Thanks, now I’m liking Perry a whole lot better! :-)
Obama should actively, vocally, and loudly support sustainable, organic agriculture, reforestation, and increased wetland restoration in riparian flood zones.
I sure hope Obama doesn’t do most of those things, because most of them would be the equivalent of handing the government to Perry, who would just reverse them before instituting the equivalent of end times for the environment.
A lot of environmentalists should do a lot of soul searching when that happens, but suspect many won’t, they’ll never acknowledge their responsibility. Hate dominates the right and childish self-indulgence the left. Scary times.
You’ll find some additional ideas on what Obama can and should do in the three reports of the Presidential Climate Action Project. Our last report urged the Administration to produce a “state of the nation’s ecosystem” report every two years and to give a State of the Climate Address each Earth Day; to finalize the requirement that climate impacts be assessed before federally funded projects can proceed; to count greenhouse gas emissions imbedded in imports; to make the Department of Defense renewable energy goals a high budget priority; to create a national security surcharge on imported oil with the authority granted by the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988; to create a presidential council to develop a national roadmap to the clean energy economy; and much more. Check out all three reports at http://www.climateactionproject.com.
Thanks for posting this link. Now reading the report for 2011. Have the reports had any influence?
Adrian, yes. From the feedback we’ve received, they influenced some in the NGO community by demonstrating that much more than cap-and-trade could and should be done. In regard to the Administration, we did a crosscheck between its actions during the first two years and PCAP’s recommendations and found gratifying correlations. But as we know, the President hasn’t done two of the biggest things: put his full weight behind a carbon pricing bill or establish aggressive goals for US greenhouse gas reductions.
Obama can ensure that climate change factors are included in the “consequences” section of each NEPA review of federally-funded projects.
Bill Becker wrote in the comment on “Can We Handle Nature’s (Temporary) New Norm?”:
“Last February, I saw an analysis that said CEQ’s guidance on NEPA assessment of climate impacts was scheduled to be finalized before the end of this year. Perhaps someone reading this blog can give an update. “
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S OBJECTIVES INCLUDE:
• Restore or modernize America’s infrastructure,
• Develop and deploy clean-energy technology, and
• Create jobs and Restore America’s economic health.
Whatever objectives the President articulates, if it’s dependent on Congressional approval, the right-wing Republicans will block it solely to deny Obama any success.
It’s apparent that if President Obama is to succeed in implementing the above objectives, he must find a way to legally work around the 112th Congress–several possibilities are suggested in the opinion piece referenced below, which proposes that President Obama appeal directly to wealthy individuals, private corporations, and state governors to establish and fund several single-purpose consortiums to achieve the above objectives.
What is a consortium? Please see the brief summary descriptions of “Commercial”, “Airbus example”, and “Coopetition”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consortium
Please consider these suggestions, not as fully-developed, detailed solutions, but instead as a conceptual framework within which to develop a solid and workable strategy that enables Obama to achieve the above objectives.
http://www.stephen-heitmann.info/content/what-could-obama-do-bypass-congress.pdf
FYI:
For readers who blame President Obama for not implementing most of his common-sense agenda, since he took office, please consider this:
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/opinion/blow-rise-of-the-fallen.html?permid=27#comment27
At Copenhagen, as I understand it, President Obama pledged (with other leaders) to put some money behind monitoring CO2 emissions in order to get a better handle on where and by whom the gas is being emitted.
How’s that coming along?