Obama’s climate change plan signals a welcome shift in US policy.
After years of resistance from Republicans left Congress paralysed on mitigating carbon emissions to combat climate change, US President Barack Obama on June 2 employed executive powers to bypass it entirely. He used new Environmental Protection Agency rules to unveil a plan that requires power plants to cut greenhouse gas output by 30 per cent (from 2005 levels) by 2030. No American president has previously attempted such a measure, and this marks one of the biggest steps any US leader has taken on climate change.
The US’s inaction on global warming so far has been routinely invoked by emerging economies such as China and, yes, India to justify the limited measures they have taken to cut emissions. If part of Obama’s objective is to encourage, by example, the adoption of similar emissions-reducing targets in the developing world, he will be heartened by a senior Chinese official’s announcement a day later that it would limit its carbon emissions, with specific targets written into the next five-year plan, effective 2016. Given that the US and China together account for more than 40 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, a demonstration of their intent to address climate change could create a new resolve to negotiate a climate treaty at the next UN climate summit in Paris late next year.
