PROMISES, PROMISES Can Obama Redeem His Environmental Failures? by Mark Hertsgaard
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
R E P 0 R T PROMISES, PROMISES Can Obama redeem his environmental failures? By Mark Hertsgaard John Pod~stii\li.£"b~gllh advising was a top concern for· Podesta~and, of staff had steered Bill Clinton's pres~ , Barack Obama in die, summer of it seemed, for Obama himself. In July, idency through the impeachment cri~ 2008, when the junior senator's im~ a group of experts informally repre~ sis, soon became Obama's · transition pr~bable rise from mixed;.race son of a senting the Democratic candidate manager, helping him identify andvet single mother to president ofthe traveled to Beijing for confidential prospective Cabinet members and United States .was acquiring a ,giddy talks with Chinese officials, hoping to other high~ranking officials. "I fought sense of inevitability. Climate change foster a new era of climate coopera~ very hard to create a separate office [in Mark Hertsgaard is the author of six books, tion after eight years of obstruction on the White House] for climate and en~ including, most recently, Hot: Living the part of the Bush Administration. ergy," Podesta told me. And the person Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. Podesta, who as White House chief initially chosen to run that office-the Bubbles of air trapped in snowstorms 5,000 to" 10,000 years ago emerge from an ice sheet melting as deposits of soot and small rock particles, or cryoconite, 28 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ JULY 2014 increase heat absorption© James Balog/Aurora Photos .~, ,_!it$214 M a an ma u: z.z ewe former EPA administrator Carol began serving as White House coun~ voters under age thirty~five, regardless Browner-was, in Podesta's opinion, sel. Since then, the president seems to of party affiliation. There was the po~ "extraordinarily well qualified." have begun tackling the issue with re~ etry of Obama pledging, on the night But when I interviewed Podesta last newed vigor. In his 2014 State of the he clinched the Democratic Party's November, he did not pretend that Union address, he framed it as a mor~ nomination, that this would be re~ Obama's climate record as president al imperative, pledging to "do every~ membered ·as "the moment when the had been satisfactory. Seated at his thing we could" to leave our grand~ rise of the oceans began to slow." kitchen table in Washington, D.C., children "a safe, stable climate." And More pragmatically, there was his en~ Podesta was dressed in running clothes; in June, the EPA is scheduled to, an~ dorsement of tough, ambitious poli~ at age .sixty.,.five, he still competes in nounce what may be among Obama's des, including making polluters pay marathons. I began by asking, "How furthest-reaching initiatives: new reg~ for the right to emit carbon and cut will history judge President Obama on ulations on the greenhouse gases ting greenhouse.-gas emissions by climate change, if history is still being emitted by the nation's 1,500 power 80 percent by 2050. writnen fifty years from now?" plants, historically the largest source When Obama took the stage in Obama will be viewed as someone of U.S. carbon pollution. Chicago, flashing that incandescent "who tried to address the challenge," But Podesta ~eemed to realize, if smile and flanked by his wife and replied Podesta. He was willing to take only privately, that Obama had a long daughters, he did not disappoint his risks and expend political capital on way to go on climate change. In No~ young supporters. ''A planet in peril," the issue-a rare and commendable vember, the once and future presiden~ he announced, would be one of his thing. "But fifty years from now, is that tial aide told me that Obama would top three priorities. This was a first. going to seem like enough? I think the likely go down in history as someone By implicitly giving climate change answer to that is going to be no." "who couldn't break through contem~ equal. status with the economic melt Of course, the president faced bitter porary politics to the place· down and the wars in Afghanistan opposition from the Republicans. But we need to go."1 and Iraq, Obama was elevating it to a Podesta believed that some of Obama's level of importance no previous top aides shared the blame for his 0 bama's record on climate U.S. president had granted. lackluster record. "There were people change is important not only for the So why, aside from the demands of inside the White House in the first obvious reason that everyone on the financial crisis, did he change two years who were not there" on earth requires a livable planet, but course so completely? For many of his climate change, he said. Their attitude also because his approach to the eli~ supporters, it's something of a/ puzzle. was dismissive at best: "Yeah, fine, mate issue reflects a great deal about "It was as if the issue evaporated into fine, fine, but it's ninth on our list of his presidency as a whole. As much as thin air," said Lee Wasserman, the di~ eight really important problems." his handling of the economy, health . rector of the Rockefeller Family Fund. "You headed his transition team," I care, or foreign policy, it illuminates To be sure, Obama took sorri.e im~ pointed out. "Do you feel any tespon~ both his early promise and his subse~ portant steps to combat climate change sibility for helping select those people?" quent shortfalls; both the victories once he was elected. He included an "Which people?'' won and the defeats suffered, the unprecedented $80 billion for clean I mentioned that Rahm Emanuel, blunders committed and the mysteries energy in the American Recovery and the White House chief of staff during begging explanation. Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the stim~ Obama's first two years in office, was As I rushed to Grant Park to cover ~Ius bill that passed a month after he frequently accused of being climate Obama's victory speech in 2008, I took office. The legislation was primar~ non~enthusiast number one. Law~ saw group after group of people in ily viewed as a life preserver for a foun~ renee Summers, the president's chief their twenties streaming through the dering economy, but as the journalist economic adviser, was criticized in streets of Chicago, their faces flushed Michael Grunwald writes in The New similar terms. with elation, chanting, "Yes we did!" New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change Podesta stared at me in silence, It was the young, after all, who were in the Obama Era (2012), it was also then he asked if we might speak off largely responsible for his victory. "the biggest and most transformative the record. We did. When we re~ They made up the bulk of the volun~ energy bill in U.S. history." turned, he limited himself to noting teer army that did so much-from "We'll look back and say, 'That was that decisions about the economic raising record amounts of money on~ a turning point,'" Carol Browner told team and its policies were "made by line to registering more than 800,000 me. Renewable~energy executives and the president, and they were not new voters-to give the nation its analysts agree. ARR~s ample invest made :around the question of climate first African~American president. ment in green technologies lowered change. We were in the middle of a And they did so in no small part production costs and market barriers, fiscal crisis." becal).se of what the candidate said stimulating the extraordinary spike in What Podesta did not tell me in about climate change, which polls wind and especially solar power over the November-perhaps he didn't know showed was a major preoccupation of past five years. By 2013, the cost of roof~ yet-was that he would soon return top solar was falling so rapidly that Jon to Obama's inner circle to try to sal~ 1 President Obama, through a White House Wellinghoff, then the chair of the Fed~ vage his climate legacy: in January, he spokesman, declined to comment. eral Energy Regulatory Commission, REPORT 29 was telling reporters that it was "going A second cnt1c1sm of the cally unavoidable. After all, the bill to overtake everything." Waxman-Markey bill was that it un, established a nationwide limit on There were also the tougher fuel, dermined the Clean Air Act-and emissions, so it did not much matter efficiency rules that Obama mandat here we encounter one of the tower, if this or that individual facility kept ed when his administration rescued ing ironies of Obama's climate policy. polluting-,-such a facility's owners the failing U.S. auto industry. Gina On paper, he has all the authority he would be required to pay for a cor, McCarthy, who succeeded Lisa Jaclv needs to slash U.S. greenhouse,gas responding amount of emissions re, son as EPA chief in 2013, told me • emissions. Indeed, he has not just the ducdons elsewhere. In any case, with, that the new standards will produce authority but the obligation to do so, out such restrictions on the Clean "one of the biggest reductions in car, according to the Clean Air Act. The Air Act, energy companies and their bon pollution that this country has verb the act repeatedly employs is allies in Congress would simply sink seen." She put the number at about "shall"-as in "must." the bill.Z 6 billion metric tons-an amount Signed into law by President Rich, "There were only a few instances equal to the emissions of the entire ard Nixon in December 1970, just in which Clean Air Act authority United States in 2010.