ENVIRONMENT
Obama and Climate Change
By TOM ZELLER JR.
ON THE NIGHT of his re-election,
President Barack Obama described grand ambitions for his
second term, including a desire to
bequeath to future generations a
nation not only free of debt and
unencumbered by inequality, but
also one “that isn’t threatened by
the destructive power of a warming planet.”
The laws of both physics and
politics suggest he’ll have his
work cut out for him, and his
second-term success will surely
be measured on far more concrete terms. The president, after
all, faces several lingering and
highly divisive decisions, including whether and how to clean up
the nation’s aging fleet of coalfired power plants, which pump
vast amounts of carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases into
the atmosphere. He also must decide whether or not to approve
the controversial Keystone XL
pipeline project, which would
transport heavy, carbon-intensive
oil from the scarred landscape of
“If past is prologue, Obama is unlikely
to make anyone fully satisfied.”
Alberta, Canada, to ports on the
American Gulf Coast.
If past is prologue, Obama is unlikely to make anyone fully satisfied.
While many conservatives
spent much of the last four years
condemning the president as an
environmental zealot bent on sacrificing jobs and economic growth
to the altar of green, Obama also
took substantial heat from his
environmental base. A broad col-