In general, Obama has given out conflicting messages about how serious he is about tackling the central problem of limiting carbon emissions. While his administration worked to get some things done, like improving auto fuel efficiency standards, the president gave the go-ahead for more Gulf oil drilling, even after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Recently, he gave the green light for Arctic oil drilling by Royal Dutch Shell, despite widespread protests.
Everyone knows we have to move away from fossil fuels to control climate change. Why is Obama approving more oil drilling?
Last week, six years into his presidency, Obama announced a new "Clean Power Plan" which plots an outline for tackling climate change. He laid out some steps for curbing carbon emissions from power plants --- which contribute the most CO2 to the atmosphere --- and moving to renewables like wind and solar power.
That's fine, as far as it goes. But it's late. We're now past 400 ppm of carbon in the air. Why didn't he announce this plan five years ago?
The administration behind the scenes has done some good work getting preliminary agreements from other major industrial nations like Brazil and China (two nations which previously had been reluctant to work out a deal on climate change) on the need to reduce carbon emissions and move to renewables. The recent talks set the stage for reaching some meaningful agreements at the Paris summit later this year.
One possible idea that could be discussed in the Paris talks is setting up a system to impose a world-wide carbon tax. That would mean that the production, distribution and use of all carbon fuels --- coal, oil or natural gas --- would be hit with a special tax. As the price of carbon fuels rose, it would make the market move more rapidly to the development of non-carbon sources --- wind, solar and geo-thermal.
Whatever specifics emerge for any carbon reduction plan, it's clear that a strong, binding international agreement on slowing climate change is desperately needed --- now.
It's five minutes to midnight.
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