Obama and Climate Change

In his 2008 presidential campaign speeches, Barack Obama promised that if he was elected president of the United States, glaciers would stop melting, the sea level would not rise and the planet would begin to heal its wounds from climate change. Five years later, already far from that electoral rhetoric, Obama has at last taken the first steps to keep a promise always postponed. The U.S. is the second largest emitter of CO2 in the world after China, although if it’s a question of emissions per person, it is in first place.

It is true that in his previous term he always came up against firm Republican Party obstructionism and that the elections to the House of Representatives did not give him enough of a majority to remove this obstacle. But also, the thing is that he could have used the federal powers of the president, those which he is now using to issue regulation without the need for congressional approval. The announced measures are ambitious but they lack precision in their application. The goal is to achieve a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, in relation to 2005 figures.

The plan includes incentives for renewable energy and limits on CO2 emissions, as much on transportation as on industry. Especially relevant is the limitation of emissions on 1,100 coal plants, which produce 37 percent of electricity in the U.S., but also 40 percent of CO2 emissions. The plan does not impose a precise timetable and allows states great flexibility in its application.

Conscious of the disappointment that his inaction has caused throughout the world and urged on by the consequences of the massive communication espionage scandal, Obama now wants to appear as a champion in the fight against climate change. For that he has committed himself to harmonize with the three other greatest polluting powers — China, India and Brazil — to make agreements that they would adopt the same targets. But this initiative is strange for a problem that affects the entire planet and that already has multilateral agreements to tackle it. The Kyoto Protocol is the agreed-upon tool, and Obama has not dared to sign it.