On August 3, President Barack Obama unveiled a plan by the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to cut carbon emissions from American power stations, the country’s main driver of climate change.

Calling for a 32 per cent cut on carbon dioxide below 2005 levels, the Clean Power Plan aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from US power stations within the next 15 years. If adopted, it could lead to the closing of hundreds of coal-fired power stations.

In the face of tough resistance from the coal industry, Obama holds that it is up to the US to adopt tough standards so that other countries are encouraged to take similar steps. In 2011, China overtook the US as the world’s top energy consumer.

The new policy is sheathed in higher values after an encyclical from Pope Francis last June decreed action on climate change to be a “moral obligation”.

Historically, both Democrats and Republicans have dragged their feet on Americans playing their part to save the planet from drought, forest fires, fierce storms and rising seas. The 2005 Kyoto Protocol never made it to the Senate under either party. It was viewed by both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton as unfair to Western industrialised nations while favouring developing polluters such as China and India.

Democratic presidential front-runner for the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton has said that if voted in she would build on Obama’s plan, promising half a billion solar panels in her first term and an ambitious target of clean energy for every home in America within a decade. The green pledge from Clinton is being billed as the path to a clean energy economy that will create millions of jobs.

At the same time Clinton has faced criticism from green groups for evading questions about the Canadian tar sands and drilling for oil in the Arctic.

Exceptionally, California has been a clean energy leader since 2006, legislating under rebel Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for new public-owned base load power stations to harness renewable energy.

Yet, up until now, EPA regulations on smokestack pollution for fossil fuel power stations have lacked strong targets as they focused on how existing utilities could be adapted to produce less pollution.

Now individual targets are to be assigned for state grids to reduce carbon emissions. Draft state action plans must be out by 2016 and finalised within the following two years.

With the new regulation in place, future power stations will be required to limit emissions to half that of current power stations. This would effectively ensure that no new coal-fired stations are built in the US. This is where the plan is meeting staunch resistance with a Republican Party funded by the coal industry trying to block the EPA plan in court.

In states where there is opposition to the Clean Power Plan, a lawsuit has been filed, arguing that the decision represents too broad an interpretation of the Clean Air Act.

Responding to the legal challenge, the White House has made it clear that the plan is based on an enabling law (Clean Air Act, 1970) which empowers the EPA to regulate any pollutant deemed to be a danger to human health and well-being. The agency’s finding that carbon dioxide in large amounts qualifies as a dangerous pollutant, since it contributes to climate change, has the backing of the Supreme Court.

All major science agencies are on board, yet climate deniers still whinge about the dent any action to save the planet could make on pockets

A number of failed lawsuits over the years unsuccessfully claimed that EPA standards infringed traditional rights and usurped state authority. In June a federal court threw out a case against the environment agency filed by a coal-fired power station in the state of Georgia, ruling that the EPA had the right to regulate.

Will the Republicans ever rediscover their traditional environmental roots in time for the new American dream of becoming a ‘clean energy superpower’ and global leader in the fight against climate change?

By general rule of thumb, the US, with five per cent of the world’s population, has been consuming a quarter of global oil, coal and gas resources. A sedate lowering of consumption in recent years has been partly caused by energy efficiency and partly economic downturn, rather than any heroic effort to save the planet from climate change.

“It is time for all of us to do what the science tells us we must,” wrote Secretary of State John Kerry in his introduction to the 300-page US climate action report presented to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2014. All major science agencies are on board, yet climate deniers still whinge about the dent any action to save the planet could make on pockets.

Despite promises that a clean environment and strong economy go hand in hand, there are fears that electricity prices will rise. As one observer remarked: “It’s not a question of can we afford it… but whether we as a species want to go on existing.”

The current US government wants to be seen as a leader in global efforts to address climate change. Staking no claim on saving the world single-handedly, Obama’s plan will have to be accompanied by supporting international action.

After the plan was proposed last year, China and Brazil announced their commitments to further reduce carbon pollution ahead of Paris talks to reach an international climate agreement in December.

Critics of the Clean Power Plan say it reflects a need to act, but urgency is missing. Scientific American magazine’s energy and environment editor David Biello gives his perspective:

“The plan will lock in an energy transition that is already under way. But the roughly 1,000 fossil fuel-fired power stations in the US will largely continue to operate as usual, using some combination of efficiency improvements, emissions trading and offsets to meet Clean Power Plan state targets. This plan is likely to be the most the US can do given current political realities and therefore is an important step, but that doesn’t mean it’s sufficient.”

Climate change researcher James Hansen notes that so far no major politician in the US has backed a policy that has any chance of preventing an average of 2°C of warming this century, a widely agreed upon ‘point of no return’ for climate change.

According to Hansen, a credible candidate on climate change should be talking about policy that would allow the price of fossil fuels to rise gradually:

“It would take a few decades but you could rapidly phase down emissions. You have to recognise that as long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest energy we’ll just keep burning them.”

If the present models for climate change turn out to be too conservative, as is now believed by some scientists, then sea level rise of several metres could occur within this century if governments fail to rapidly and substantially diminish fossil fuel emissions. The cost to low-lying coastal cities is incalculable.

www.regions20.org

www.state.gov/documents/organization/219038.pdf

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