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McClatchy
WASHINGTON
The long-anticipated – and hotly contested – carbon pollution plan is being finalized by the Obama administration Monday, setting off a scramble in the states to comply with it and one in Congress and the courts to stop it.First proposed a year ago, the plan had been expected to be finalized this summer – a timetable the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stuck to despite push-back from some states and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a separate clean-air rule.
Called the “Clean Power Plan” by the EPA, the rule is a centerpiece of a major push by President Barack Obama to help the United States – and the planet – attack climate change by reducing the amount of carbon pollution pumped into the air.
The rule was announced in draft form amid fanfare in June 2014, and Obama and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy have talked up its benefits, saying it would be a boon to public health, helping to reduce asthma and other respiratory ailments.
DW
President Obama’s new climate change rules are no panacea to global warming and won’t turn the US into a green economy overnight. Still, their importance, both domestically and internationally, can’t be overestimated.Rhetorically, at least, climate change has been a key issue for Barack Obama right from the start. He made it a central political topic during his first presidential campaign back in 2008, promising to make the US the global leader on environmental issues again, should he get elected. But after he did win the White House he first bungled the historic Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 and then dithered away his first term without making any significant progress on the issue.
Al Jazeera America
Environmental activists praised President Barack Obama’s new power plant regulations as the most important step to date in battling climate change but warn that it won't be enough without a dramatic cut in U.S. reliance on fossil fuels.The White House is expected on Monday to announce new limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, requiring states to bring their emissions down to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. In a statement on Monday, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune hailed that change as “the most significant single action any president has ever taken.”
“With 200 coal plants announced to retire and clean energy growing at record levels, the U.S. is now taking a huge next step to curb dangerous carbon pollution,” he said. “Today is a victory for every American who wants clean air to breath and for the millions of activists and concerned citizens who organized to make sure this day would finally come.”
The Guardian
Hundreds of businesses including eBay, Nestle and General Mills have issued their support for Barack Obama’s clean power plan, billed as the strongest action ever on climate change by a US president.The rules, announced on Monday, are designed to cut emissions from power plants and have been strengthened in terms of the long-term ambition as originally proposed by the president last year, but slightly weakened in the short-term in a concession to states reliant on highly-polluting coal.
White House adviser Brian Deese said the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules represented the “biggest step that any single president has made to curb the carbon pollution that is fuelling climate change”. The US is the world’s second biggest carbon emitter after China.
Reuters
President Barack Obama challenged America and the world to step up efforts to fight global warming on Monday at the formal unveiling of his administration's controversial, ramped-up plan to cut carbon emissions from U.S. power plants.Declaring climate change the greatest threat facing the world, Obama said the regulation requiring the power sector to cut its emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 would reduce Americans' energy bills and improve the health of vulnerable populations nationwide.
The plan, which also mandates a shift to renewable energy from coal-fired electricity, is meant to put the United States in a strong position at international talks in Paris later this year on reaching a deal to curb global warming.