Leading by Example



Elizabeth Cutright

“A low-carbon, clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come. And I want America to build that engine. I want America to build that future—right here in the United States of America. That’s our task.” –President Barack Obama, Remarks by the President on Climate Change (Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., June 25, 2013)

Last week, President Obama delivered an historic speech outlining his administration’s climate change action plan. At the heart of the President’s comments was a commitment to substituting executive action in place of congressional failure. If congress cannot or will not act, the President explained, the executive branch was ready, willing, and able to step in.

The President framed his speech by expanding upon a three-point plan to reduce the Nation’s carbon emissions. First, we must begin by “using less dirty energy.” Equally important is to “use more clean energy.” And finally, the President declared that we “waste less energy—in our cars, our homes, our businesses.”

Harkening back to the ease with which the Clean Air Act was enacted, the President explained that while that legislation passed the Senate unanimously (and only faced one opposing vote in the House of Representatives), any current legislation would not benefit from such bipartisan unity.

“I don’t know who the one guy was—I haven’t looked that up,” the President said, drawing laughter from the crowd.

“You can barely get that many votes to name a post office these days.”

While the main focus of the President’s Climate Action Plan involves reducing carbon pollution and preparing the country for the effects of climate change, for those of us focused on energy efficiency and reliability, there’s plenty of acknowledgement of the importance clean energy efficiency innovation will have now and in the future. Calling the nation’s ability to adapt to changes in the natural gas market a “good start,” the President called out current weather conditions as indicative of the extreme changes in climate we can anticipate in the future if our policies and programs do not change, saying “the reason we’re all here in the heat today is because we know we’ve got more to do.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the President also committed to ushering the US toward an international leadership role, highlighting the need for the country to be at the forefront of international efforts aimed at addressing global climate change.

“And make no mistake,” said the President, “the world still looks to America to lead.”

Key to meeting these goals will be deployment of clean energy, innovations in transportation technologies, increased energy efficiency both at residential and commercial/manufacturing level, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Even more significantly, the President’s plan emphasizes that this action will begin at the federal level.

Using the Clean Air Act (1970) as an example of past federal energy policy success stories, the President promised, “This plan begins with cutting carbon pollution by changing the way we use energy—using less dirty energy, using more clean energy, wasting less energy throughout our economy.”

Pointing specifically to the importance of energy efficiency for future GHG emission reduction, the President related the support energy efficiency programs already maintain on state and local levels.

“Nearly a dozen states have already implemented or are implementing their own market-based programs to reduce carbon pollution,” he explained. “More than 25 have set energy efficiency targets. More than 35 have set renewable energy targets. Over 1,000 mayors have signed agreements to cut carbon pollution. So, the idea of setting higher pollution standards for our power plants is not new. It’s just time for Washington to catch up with the rest of the country.” 

“America intends to take bold action to reduce carbon pollution,” declared the President near the end of his speech. 

“We will continue to lead by the power of our example, because that’s what the United States of America has always done.”

You can read the president’s plan, via Slate magazine, here.

You can read the whole speech here.


© Copyright 1996-2013 Forester Media, Inc.
http://www.distributedenergy.com/DE/Blogs/1717.aspx