Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 110

Business Leaders And Republican Voters Support Obama’s Climate Plan. What Will GOP Candidates Do?

A recent poll of Republican presidential primary voters in the early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina finds an unexpected result for the 17 candidates campaigning there. Most of these voters support regulating carbon pollution — even using President Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP).

In New Hampshire, half of likely Republican primary voters said they favored the EPA’s proposal “to set strict carbon dioxide limits on existing coal-fired power plants with a goal of reducing emissions significantly by the year 2030,” while 42 percent opposed. In South Carolina, 52 percent favored the proposal while 43 percent opposed it. Close to 60 percent of these voters in each state supported limiting carbon pollution.

The survey, commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund and the League of Conservation Voters, talked to 400 likely GOP primary voters in each state.

52 percent of GOP primary voters in South Carolina favor the CPP.

When asked about their state developing a plan “to reduce carbon pollution and increase the use of clean energy and energy efficiency” in order to meet federal government requirements, 75 percent of South Carolina GOP primary voters are in favor, 45 percent strongly so. In New Hampshire, 74 percent favor their state developing a plan, with 42 percent strongly favoring it. This is exactly what the EPA had in mind when they wrote the regulations — for states to develop their own plans.

For all the anti-climate rhetoric employed by GOP candidates looking for votes, only 20 percent of those in both states somewhat or strongly oppose this idea. Though support for the CPP drops after the poll’s respondents hear arguments from both sides, more than 40 percent in both states still agree with the arguments provided for the plan.

Majorities of these voters in both states wanted candidates who supported renewable energy, energy efficiency, and cutting oil company tax loopholes. And almost two-thirds did not want to weaken environmental laws.

Earlier this year, a poll found half of all Republicans nationwide supported government action to curb climate change.

Looking at all voters in swing states, a new PPP poll out Wednesday found that after hearing about the CPP, majorities of between 66 percent and 55 percent in Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia supported it. Higher majorities would favor candidates who supported the plan.

This follows a Hart Research poll in November 2014 which found majorities of over 60 percent supporting the CPP in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Republicans in Colorado, Iowa, and North Carolina either favor or are evenly split on the plan.

While the Democratic candidates either support the plan or want to make it stronger, their Republican counterparts came out swinging.

“…if they are paying really close attention, they should be issuing their own plans for how to address climate change instead of just attacking.”

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker called it “the Costly Power Plan,” and later said it would be “a buzz saw to the nation’s economy.” Chris Christie, who pulled New Jersey out of the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative when he became governor, said Obama’s plan was evidence of “the overregulation of the Obama administration.” Mike Huckabee said Obama’s “crusade against carbon” amounted to an “unconstitutional, executive power grab that will kill 1.4 million American jobs.”

Hillary Clinton, who said she would build upon the rule, warned that advocates would need to defend the rule “because Republican doubters and defeatists — including every Republican candidate for president — won’t offer any credible solution. The truth is, they don’t want one.”

Indeed, Ted Cruz upped the ante, saying that the “reckless policy” was a “lawless and radical attempt to destabilize the nation’s energy system,” and was “flatly unconstitutional.” He urged leaders “to stand up against this administration’s dangerous agenda of economic decline.”

He did not explain why he thought the President of the United States would ever want to destabilize the electric grid or try to push the country into economic decline. And though opponents will fight the rule in court and in Congress, it’s got a strong legal rationale.

Politico’s Mike Allen asked if the president was exaggerating the impacts of climate change, and Cruz said “there’s a different word than exaggerating that I might use.” He disputed the satellite data and climate models showed warming, accusing scientists of changing the data to meet their conclusions. “Enron used to do their books the same way.” To Cruz, climate change is the “perfect theory” for “any power-greedy politician” because it’s “always proven right.”

For Cruz to be right, there would have to be a massive, ongoing, and uniform conspiracy among all the world’s scientists, despite the multiple lines of evidence confirming the science of climate change. Such a conspiracy would be impossible — a legitimate scientist has a huge incentive to find evidence disproving the consensus. And a recent study found that climate models are actually more accurate than previously thought.

It’s not as clear whether the less-extreme Republican candidates will seek to make headway with their primary voters who support the Clean Power Plan by standing for regulating carbon pollution. But some may just refrain from attacking it.

“Given today’s politics, I think it’s more likely that more moderate candidates may simply hold some of their fire against the Clean Power Plan if they take this poll to heart,” said David Willett, LCV’s senior vice president for communications. “And if they are paying really close attention, they should be issuing their own plans for how to address climate change instead of just attacking.”

The schism between locals supporting climate action while their more conservative national “representatives” oppose it can also be seen in between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and local chambers of commerce.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes the plan, but many local chambers support it.

The national group, the U.S. Chamber, is well-funded by large businesses — including fossil fuel and industrial corporations that oppose climate action. The trade group’s response to the release of the final rule was predictable — in fact, the Chamber’s president and CEO Thomas J. Donohue issued his statement well before the actual rule was released that day. He blasted the EPA’s “attempt to impose an unprecedented takeover of our energy system” and promised to block it, with “litigation if necessary.”

Local chambers of commerce saw it differently.

The National Advisory Council of Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy, a network of over 400 local chambers of commerce, issued a statement praising the economic opportunities that energy efficiency and renewable energy provide for local communities.

“We welcome their inclusion in the Clean Power Plan and strongly encourage state leaders to include energy efficiency and renewable energy as big elements of our state plans,” the statement said.

Those applauding the Clean Power Plan included chamber of commerce leaders from states such as Tennessee, Ohio, Arkansas, North Carolina, Utah, South Carolina, Missouri, Michigan, and Colorado.

It’s not just local business pushing for climate action. Last week 365 companies, from corporate giants like Staples, Gap, and Nestle to smaller companies like breweries all sent a letter to the nation’s governors urging them to back the Clean Power Plan. A group of CEOs managing $12 trillion called for a strong global climate deal.

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Could Western States Band Together To Comply With The Clean Power Plan?

As soon as President Obama’s Clean Power Plan enters into the Federal Register, states will have up to two years to craft their plans to meet the EPA’s regulations for carbon pollution from power plants. There are a lot of ways states can go about meeting the targets set for them by the EPA — one of the real selling points of the plan, from the EPA’s perspective, is its flexibility in allowing states to craft individual approaches that work best with their unique energy infrastructure.

But power structures in the United States aren’t just set up on a state-by-state basis. Across the country, different regions handle their energy needs in different ways, depending on the utilities that operate in that region and the resources available. Sometimes, those regions band together to create markets for energy — like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the Northeast and the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) between California, Quebec, and British Columbia.

According to both private and government sources that spoke with ThinkProgress, it’s unlikely that the Clean Power Plan will immediately inspire Western states — mainly California, Oregon, and Washington, but also potentially Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — to join into any sort of formal RGGI-like pact. But that doesn’t mean that those states — and the utilities that operate there — aren’t looking at each state’s Clean Power Plan as a chance to build some kind of regional energy market across the West.

“There has been a lot of discussion particularly in the West, where states are more loosely connected across the electricity grid, about an arrangement where states could adopt some common elements, and thereby allow the compliance entities in that state to trade among states that might not have submitted a joint plan but still have common elements in their plans,” Colin McConnaha, greenhouse gas specialist with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, told ThinkProgress.

Unlike formal agreements, like RGGI or WCI, trading through the Clean Power Plan wouldn’t have to undergo legislative approval. Under the final plan, states would simply need to include certain “trade ready” elements — things like common measurements and common tracking systems to ensure that all compliance credits swapped between states are properly accounted for across state lines.

This could help states with few people and lots of, say, wind power, more easily sell energy to states with more people and less wind power, while collaborating to close the dirtiest coal plants. The only thing that states looking to implement a trading-ready plan need to have approved by the EPA would be the emission allowance and tracking scheme — any individual trading plans don’t have to go through the EPA.

There was speculation as to whether or not the EPA would include the idea of “trading-ready” plans in the final CPP — in the final plan itself, the EPA states that it received “numerous comments

… from industry, states, and other stakeholders in this rulemaking that … encouraged EPA to facilitate trading across state lines through the use of trading-ready state plans.” Under the final plan, states can adopt trading-ready plans to participate in the trading of emission credits between power plants in multiple states without opting into a formal agreement like RGGI or WCI.

That’s something that could appeal to multi-state utilities that operate across Western states — like Puget Sound Energy, which owns both natural-gas fired plants in Washington as well as part of the Colstrip Generating Station in Eastern Montana. This coal-fired facility was the eighth-largest greenhouse gas emitter among power plants in the United States in 2010, according to the EPA. Utilities in Oregon, like Portland General Electric, function similarly, owning natural gas and hydro-powered plants in Oregon, wind-powered plants in Washington, and part of the coal-powered Colstrip plant in Montana.

“The rule looks like it’s setting the utilities up to think in that way,” Ruchi Sadhir, senior policy advisor at the Public Utility Commission of Oregon, told ThinkProgress of trading-ready elements.

Increasingly, utilities like PSE and PGE are under political pressure to transition away from their investments in fossil fuels, like the Colstrip power plant, without compromising the energy security of their costumers. That’s something that regional trading-ready elements might be able to help with, according to Brad Cebulko, a regulatory analyst at the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission.

“The West Coast states receive a significant amount of their energy from plants located outside their borders, particularly from Montana and Wyoming,” Cebulko told ThinkProgress. “Regional mechanisms would allow the state to achieve political goals, and work with the other counter party states to shut [the Colstrip] plant down.” Cebulko explained that Montana and Wyoming also have huge potential for generating power through renewable resources, especially wind. What they lack, he said, are population centers to capitalize on that generation.

For Oregon — whose residents pay energy rates dependent on resources that come from Montana, Utah, and Wyoming — there’s an incentive to make sure that those states are complying with the EPA’s regulations in a way that is cost-effective for Oregonians, Sadhir said.

“We have an incentive to see lower-cost compliance in those states,” Sadhir said. “That would imply discussion with them about potential trading regimes.”

Cebulko agrees that the absence of a formal agreement doesn’t mean that Western states won’t be looking to their neighbors to see how they’re crafting their state plans — and how individual state plans might be able to fit together more cohesively.

“I think it would make sense for neighboring states and regions to have collaborative discussions to discuss what is best for the states and regions and see if those align,” Cebulko said. “I imagine Washington state will be talking to their neighbors about what they are doing, because that’s exactly what we’ve been doing this whole time.”

It is not out of the realm of possibility for other western states to look into joining California’s cap-and-trade system, as the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario have.

The Pacific states in particular have been working together on climate policy issues — formally and informally — for years. The Pacific Coast Collaborative began in 2008 as a way for California, Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia to exchange knowledge and wisdom about climate policy issues, from electric vehicles to ocean acidification, while working toward putting a price on carbon that could work on a regional scale.

So far, efforts to put a price on carbon have failed in Washington and Oregon due, in large part, to legislative infighting. The week before the release of the final Clean Power Plan, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced that he would circumvent the state legislature to put a cap on carbon, using the state’s Department of Ecology instead. But Jessie Turner, a project coordinator working on the PCC with the Seattle-based Cascadia Law Group, told ThinkProgress that the Clean Power Plan could incentivize the creation of the kind of regional markets that have been thwarted by legislative battles, by encouraging legislators to create a solution to the CPP that bolsters state and regional economies through a market-based solution.

“It’s the stick and the carrot, where before it might have just been the stick,” she said. “All the momentum behind these regional collaboratives in the last couple years has been dependent on legislative infighting. What this does, in my mind, is give state legislators the ability of being the hero, of fixing the problem, rather than imposing this ‘awful’ program on residents.”

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This Indian Rapper Did An Awesome Cover Of ‘Anaconda.’ Here’s Why It Matters.

Since its release in 2014, Nicki Minaj’s hit single “Anaconda” has spawned countless covers, but none have been met with as much enthusiasm and passion as Sofia Ashraf’s “Kodaikanal Won’t.” The video, which was released last week, calls for consumer goods company Unilever to address the effects of mercury poisoning caused by its factory in Kodaikanal, India.

“Kodaikanal won’t, Kodaikanal won’t, Kodaikanal won’t step down ’til you make amends now,” the hook rings. Over a catchy beat made familiar to us first by Sir Mix-a-Lot, Ashraf raps: “Prolonged exposure got many men killed / There’s children born being seriously ill / The environment is polluted still / Now that’s some toxic sh*t.”

Fourteen years ago, Indian subsidiary Hindustan Unilever shut down its thermometer factory after the mercury poisoning came to light through several employee health complaints. The company initially denied allegations that it had caused mercury pollution, but after glass waste containing mercury was found near the factory, which was created in 1983, the company admitted it was responsible for the waste and cleaned up the toxic scraps from the site.

Unilever, however, maintains that its mercury waste did not cause any lingering negative effects. “There were no adverse impacts on the health of employees or the environment. This has been confirmed by many independent studies,” the company says on its website.

Former employees disagree, noting that their health issues are proof that they were harmfully exposed to the element. They reported health problems ranging from kidney and liver disease to loose teeth and hair. A Bangalore health study found former workers with “gum and skin allergy related problems which appeared to be due to exposure to mercury.”

In her rap, Ashraf mentions that families and children are still suffering the health consequences of the poisoning years later. Studies confirm that occupational exposure to mercury can cause nerve tissue damage as well as mental health issues. “The problem with mercury is that there’s a whole spectrum of diseases, so it’s not one thing,” said Dr. Thomas Duplinsky, researcher and professor at Yale University. The people of Kodaikanal aren’t the only ones suffering. When exposed to mercury even in small amounts, flora and fauna are harmed, too. The toxin penetrates soil and water, poisoning fish and the animals that feed on them.

Protests against the Kodaikanal factory started less than 20 years after what many call the world’s worst industrial disaster. In 1984, a Union Carbide factory leaked at least 30 tons of toxic gas, filling central India’s Bhopal and surrounding towns. Thousands died or were injured in the tragedy, and locals continue to see the effects today in children who have physical or mental disabilities.

Some in Bhopal think the country didn’t learn its lesson after the Union Carbide disaster. “There are four issues in learning — one is the infrastructure of the government, second is rules and regulations, third is enforcing of the rules and regulations, fourth is the total awareness of the subject,” the director of Bhopal-based Institute of Industrial Management for Safety, Health and Environment, Dr. S.A. Pillai told the International Business Times. “If these four issues are taken care of, this type of disaster will not be repeated. Are we on that track or not? If you ask me, I will say no.”

Ashraf’s video has gotten a lot of attention on social media, garnering over 1.2 million views in less than a week. Activists are demanding that Unilever follow through on its responsibility to Kodaikanal by cleaning up the pollution and compensating families for health expenses. In response, the company tweeted that studies found no harm to workers or the environment, but that they are working to find a fair resolution.

Unilever CEO Paul Polman, who frequently tweets about business as a force for good, has not publicly addressed the issue since “Kodaikanal Won’t” went viral. “We all have role to play. What happens in future depends on what we do in present,” Polman wrote in one recent tweet. Now, he’ll have to play a big role in righting the wrongs inflicted upon the people of Kodaikanal.

Rupali Srivastava is an intern with ThinkProgress.

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Media Experts Blast New York Times Over Glowing Profile Of Koch Brothers

The New York Times published a fawning front-page profile of the Koch brothers last Friday. The article never mentions their efforts to secure unfettered fossil fuel consumption, which would destroy humanity’s livable climate. It was quickly criticized by leading experts as “poor journalism” and “gullible.”

The Times wants you to believe that the Kochs are “very private” but “brave,” that they are “sensitive to criticism,” and that “Charles [Koch] obviously is a classical liberal, who believes in the Bill of Rights.” What’s next for the Times — rehabbing the misunderstand Bernie Madoff?

This 1300-word piece never once mentions the Koch’s insidious efforts to fund climate science denial, block all climate action, and roll back clean energy standards at a state level. The Koch’s belief in the First Amendment extends to being the leading funder in the world of efforts to spread disinformation, smear and harass climate scientists, and generally destroy any honest national discussion of how to spare Americans and billions of people worldwide needless misery for centuries to come. Any classical liberal would do the same.

On Sunday, one of the Koch Brothers’ political groups, Freedom Partners, hosted a political forum for wealthy conservative donors. Charles Koch compared his network’s influence over U.S. elections to past “freedom movements.”

Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, whom the Times has called “an expert on environmental communications,” told Climate Progress that “the NYT seems to be acting as if it was a PR agency for the Kochs. It is dismaying to see such poor journalism.”

Peter Dykstra — a 17-year CNN veteran and one of the country’s most award-winning environmental journalists — tweeted:

NY Times foregoes reporting on Kochs' media makeover. They're participating in it. Textbook Bad Journalism. @sulliview

— Peter Dykstra (@pdykstra) July 31, 2015

Dykstra, an editor at Environmental Health News, who won an Emmy, a Dupont-Columbia Award, and a Peabody Award during his time at CNN, told ClimateProgress, “It’s a mashup of pull-quotes that a Koch publicist would give an eye tooth to have, and thanks to the Times, now they have them. The piece has great potential as a Journalism 101 lesson of how not to report.”

In its effort to win “worst headline of the year,” this New York Times weighs in with “Koch Brothers Brave Spotlight to Try to Alter Their Image.” The Times has the same dreadful print headline, web headline, and URL — so all the editors apparently agreed from the start that this nonsense headline somehow reflects reality.

The ridiculous thesis of this piece is that the Kochs are somehow shy and retiring but those mean liberals made them brave the public spotlight to set the record straight: “After two elections in which Democrats and liberals sought to cast them as the secretive, benighted face of the Republican Party, the Kochs are seeking to remake public perceptions of their family, their business and their politics, unsettling a corporate culture deeply allergic to the spotlight.”

[image error]What’s laughable about that sentence is that the Kochs have instilled a corporate culture “deeply allergic to the spotlight” because they don’t want the public to know they are reckless polluters who fund politicians and political activity to allow them to keep polluting. As Think Progress detailed back in 2011 with 10 specific examples, “Much of the entire Koch political machine is geared towards ensuring that Koch Industries never has to compensate the people and ecosystems damaged by Koch Industries pollution.”

The New Yorker, which did a spot-on profile of the Kochs in 2010 headlined “Covert Operations,” nailed this point exactly. The article states that “the Kochs have long depended on the public’s not knowing all the details about them.”

Memo to Times: There is a difference between being “private” people who “brave [the] spotlight” to somehow set the record straight — which the Kochs most certainly are not — and being secretive people like the Kochs who have always chosen to avoid the spotlight because of what they and their company are doing behind the scenes.

The fact is there’s nothing whatsoever private about the behavior of the Kochs — nor is there any news whatsoever in the fact that the Kochs have always spent millions of dollars to try to improve their image.

[image error]“Private” people don’t donate $100 million to M.I.T. in 2007 to get their name on a research institute. Private people don’t donate $15 million to fund and put their name on a dubious evolution and climate change exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History — and then join the Smithsonian board.

If the Kochs (and their company) wanted to stay far away from the spotlight, then they would not have overtaken ExxonMobil years ago as the top funder of politicians and organizations pushing climate inaction and anti-scientific disinformation. Koch Industries and the Kochs have spent more than $48.5 million from 1997 to 2010 to fund disinformation. From 2005 to 2008, the Kochs outspent Exxon-Mobil well over 2-to-1 in funding the climate denial machine.

The New York Times itself, in January, had a front-page story the began “The political network overseen by the conservative billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch plans to spend close to $900 million on the 2016 campaign.” That story, written by the same reporter who wrote Sunday’s piece, details the Kochs’ huge network of organizations and has a photo of David Koch with this blunt caption:

The brothers’ financial goal, announced on Monday at the annual Koch winter donor retreat in Palm Springs, Calif., effectively transforms the Koch organization into a third major political party.

So it is embarrassing that the paper would now run an article implying that the creators of what is effectively the country’s “third major political party” must “brave [the] spotlight.” Dykstra — a former Board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and a judge of the Oakes Award for Environmental Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism — says:

Only the Times knows the reason it would publish such a gullible piece on the Kochs’ image remake. By doing so, they helped the remake considerably. The reporter glossed over the Brothers’ history and didn’t mention their lavish efforts to support climate denial and oppose clean energy. The story included only one direct quote from a Koch critic while relying on quotes from the recipient of an eight-figure donation and others who hailed Charles Koch as “amazing” and, bizarrely, “a classical liberal.” It’s hagiographic, maybe even a bit hallucinatory, and a prime exhibit of how political reporting often fails its readership.

Long after this puff piece is forgotten, future generations and historians are very unlikely to view the Kochs as anything other than modern-day robber barons who used their wealth to try to skirt or rewrite environmental laws, with a livable climate in the balance.

In his June encyclical urging immediate climate action, the Pope ends by calling on God to “Enlighten those who possess power and money that they may avoid the sin of indifference, that they may love the common good, advance the weak, and care for this world in which we live. The poor and the earth are crying out.”

If indifference to the dangers of climate inaction by the rich and powerful is a sin, what would the Pope say about a company and it’s multi-billionaire owners who are fostering lies in order to spread indifference among the public, the media, and policy-makers?

He wouldn’t use the words “brave” or “amazing” or “liberal.”

UPDATE

This piece has been updated to correct that Peter Dykstra is a current, not former, judge of the Oakes Award for Environmental Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and also to note that both New York Times pieces profiling the Kochs were written by the same reporter.

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California’s Largest Fire Is Moving At An ‘Unprecedented’ Rate

Wildfires continue to rage in California, where the largest of the 21 blazes covered 65,000 acres Tuesday morning and has killed at least one person.

Four other people have been killed this fire season in California, which started early this year and has been exacerbated by drought and high temperatures. There are also active wildfires in Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, and Alaska.

[image error]

A map from the US Forest Service shows fires all along the Western states.

CREDIT: US Forest Service

At least two dozen homes have been destroyed by the Rocky Fire in Northern California, which jumped Highway 20 — a planned containment line — on Monday night. The blaze is only 12 percent contained and is not expected to be contained for at least another week, according to CAL FIRE, the state’s fire department.

The Rocky Fire burned 20,000 acres in five hours, an “unprecedented” rate, according to Daniel Berlant, chief of public information for CAL FIRE.

“We’ve been running fires here since the beginning of January,” Berlant said on KFBK radio Tuesday morning. The fire season “never really ended last year,” he added, blaming the four years of drought in the state. He said thousands of homes are still threatened.

But not only do fires present a risk to the lives and homes of people in the affected areas, fires also dangerous to human health, studies have shown. Anyone whose air has ever been inundated with smoke and particulate matter from a nearby (or hundreds of miles away) fire knows how difficult it can be to breathe in that situation. Research released earlier this summer found a link between heart problems and particulate matter from fires.

Experts warned that this season was going to be bad.

The length of the fire season — and the number of large fires — is expected to increase as an effect of climate change. In June, a study looking at global patterns found that wildfire seasons are worsening worldwide. The researchers found that as global temperatures have increased (by about .2°C decade since 1979), the length of wildfire seasons has increased by 18.7 percent. In turn, a longer, harsher fire season could exacerbate climate change, releasing carbon stored in forests into the atmosphere.

Drought — which has been linked to climate change — has put the western United States at particular risk this year. Drought not only makes it easier for fires to start (wildfires are usually a natural occurrence and are often set off by heat lightning), it makes it more difficult for firefighters to get water. In April, some reservoirs used for fighting large fires in California went dry due to the loss of snowpack, a key source of water for the state.

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Federal Judge Rules Idaho Ag-Gag Law Unconstitutional

On Monday, a federal judge ruled that an Idaho law that prohibits the secret filming of animal abuse at agricultural facilities is unconstitutional, potentially calling into question the validity of such laws across the country.

U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill found that the law violates the First Amendment, writing in his 29-page ruling that “prohibiting undercover investigators or whistleblowers from recording an agricultural facility’s operations inevitably suppresses a key type of speech because it limits the information that might later be published or broadcast.”

The Idaho law is the first “ag-gag” law to be struck down in court — and since the law was struck down on federal constitutional grounds, Leslie Brueckner, senior attorney for Public Justice, which served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs in the case, is hopeful that the ruling will set strong precedent for other challenges to ag-gag laws across the country.

“This ruling is so clear, so definitive, so sweeping,” Brueckner told ThinkProgress. “We couldn’t ask for a better building block in terms of striking these laws down in other states.”

Seven other states have enacted similar laws, including North Carolina, whose state legislature recently overrode Gov. Pat McCroy’s veto to pass a law that makes it easier for businesses to sue someone that enters a nonpublic area in order to obtain workplace secrets or document workplace violations. Of the remaining states with similar laws, only Utah’s has so far been challenged in court.

Idaho enacted the law in 2014 after animal rights groups released undercover videos showing dairy workers at an Idaho farm abusing and beating cows. Idaho is the third-largest producer of milk in the United States, with the state’s dairy industry generating over $2.5 billion in 2012. The bill that Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter signed into law was heavily influenced by the dairy industry, with Idaho Dairymen’s Association lobbyists helping to draft the bill and testifying in support of it before the state legislature.

The undercover video — taken at Bettencourt Dairies’ Dry Creek Dairy, which counts among its customers Kraft Foods, Wendy’s, and Burger King — resulted in criminal charges for the workers shown abusing animals, but the tactic also raised ire among Idaho legislators, who likened the video to propaganda and the medieval tactic of burning enemy crops. The ensuing law made secretly filming agricultural operations a misdemeanor offense, punishable by up to a year in prison and a $5,000 fine. For contrast, the Idaho Statesman points out that a person found guilty of animal cruelty in Idaho, on first offense, could face up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $5,000.

In March of 2014, a broad coalition of animal right’s groups, environmental organizations, and journalists, filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming that the law was a violation of freedom of speech. The plaintiffs also claimed the law violated the Fourteenth Amendments’ Equal Protection Clause, as it unfairly singles out animal rights activists.

The law’s supporters — including the dairy industry — argued that the secret videos, which were highly edited, unfairly hurt their reputation. Judge Winmill seemed unconvinced by that argument.

“The remedy for misleading speech, or speech we do not like, is more speech, not enforced silence,” he wrote in his decision.

Winmill also cited Upton Sinclair, the American author whose work of undercover journalism “The Jungle” exposed health and safety violations within the early-20th century meatpacking industry, leading to widespread reform.

“As the story of Upton Sinclair illustrates, an agricultural facility’s operations that affect food and worker safety are not exclusively a private matter. Food and worker safety are matters of public concern,” Winmill wrote.

Brueckner applauded the court’s decision, arguing that undercover investigations are necessary to reveal public health and environmental violations by food and agriculture companies that largely operate out of the public eye.

“America’s food comes out of factory farms, and the conditions inside these farms are directly relevant to the safety of our food supply. When factory farms are allowed to operate in secret, bad things happen,” Brueckner said. “Right now, whistleblowers are the only way that anyone ever gets to see the truth about how america’s food system works.”

In a press statement, the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) — a co-plaintiff in the case — called the ruling a “landmark victory,” and called for other states with similar laws to fight them in court.

“With Idaho’s statue ruled unconstitutional, there are seven states remaining with Ag-Gag laws on the books,” the ALDF said in an emailed statement. “This landmark Idaho decision is the first step in defeating similar Ag-Gag laws across the country including North Carolina’s.”

Todd Dvorak, spokesman for Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, told Food Safety News that the state had not yet decided whether it would appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.

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What To Expect From Republicans And The Coal Industry Now That Obama’s Climate Plan Is Final

The Obama administration’s regulatory plan to fight climate change may now be final, but the political and legal battles to repeal it have just begun.

On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency released the final version of its Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of which is a regulation that requires power plants to slash their carbon emissions. The final version was expected to be “stronger in many ways than the proposed rule,” but was also expected to accommodate some of the intense opposition the plan has faced from the coal industry and politicians looking to preserve it.

But accommodations for the coal industry likely won’t stop it from trying to repeal the plan. Senate Majority Leader and coal industry advocate Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has vowed to use “every possible tool at his disposal” to roll back or delay it, arguing the limits on carbon will spell death for the industry in his state and across the country.

Already, McConnell and others have launched various campaigns to thwart the Clean Power Plan. The majority leader began telling individual states earlier this year to ignore the plan and refuse to comply with its requirements. He also warned other countries not to trust Obama’s promise that the regulations would succeed, a tactic to undermine the president’s international climate negotiations.

“There’s a very good chance that the case will end up at the Supreme Court, no matter who wins.”

Various lawsuits have also been launched by states and coal company Murray Energy claiming the EPA lacks authority to issue the regulations. But those lawsuits were thrown out by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals because they were deemed premature. Agency rulemaking has to be finalized before legitimate legal challenges can be filed, the court ruled.

Now that the regulatory plan is indeed final, at least two more big options are on the table for opponents. And one is, obviously, new lawsuits.

“The challenges that we expect, and that I would say are all but certain, are petitions for review of the rule to the D.C. Circuit,” said Jessica Olson, a partner at Ayres Law Group LLP who practices clean air and climate law. “These are run of the mill challenges to EPA. This is normal procedure, and exactly what we would expect.”

Olson told ThinkProgress that lawsuits challenging the rule could be filed with the D.C. Circuit minutes after the final rule is published in the Federal Register. That’s because legal petitions to review the agency rulemaking don’t have to immediately explain exactly why the rule is unlawful. It’s likely, Olson said, that attorneys for the most vocal opponents — McConnell, coal companies, and mostly Republican-led states — already have petitions written up and ready to go.

It’s likely that more than one legal challenge will be filed, Olson said, so the D.C. Circuit will probably not move forward immediately on the first petition. Instead, the court may wait for additional legal challenges, allow environmental groups and states that support the rule to join the proceedings, and consolidate everything into one case.

“[The court] knows this is a big deal,” Olson said. “There’s a very good chance that the case will end up at the Supreme Court no matter who wins.”

“It seems like a pretty unsuccessful path, but I don’t think that means they won’t try.”

The second big challenge the EPA’s climate plan now faces is congressional legislation. Now that the rule is final, members of Congress can attempt to delay and ultimately repeal it under the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

Under the CRA, members of Congress are given the power to repeal a final rule issued by the Executive Branch within 60 legislative days of being published in the Federal Register.

This is where McConnell is likely to come in. He already tried to use the CRA to block the rule last year, when it was in its proposed stage. But that attempt was rebuked by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which said McConnell could not trigger review of the regulation until it was in its final stage.

Now that the regulation is final, McConnell — or any other member of Congress — can file for review under the CRA.

But success in that arena won’t be easy. McConnell does only need a majority for it to pass the Senate, but Obama is sure to veto it, meaning at least two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote for repeal for the effort to be successful. According to the Hill, assuming all Republicans would vote for a CRA measure, 13 Democrats in the Senate and 45 Democrats in the House would be needed to override a veto.

“It seems like a pretty unsuccessful path, but I don’t think that means they won’t try,” Olson said. “They will do it because it will be a platform for them to voice their opposition to the rule, and it’ll be a show for their constituents that they strongly object to this.”

Only one regulation has ever been successfully struck down by the CRA, though it’s been tried at least 43 times, according to the GAO.

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Memo To Media: Obama’s Clean Power Plan Is Not Primarily About Politics

The most important benefits of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan do not involve either President Obama or his “legacy” — seriously, New York Times?

The Clean Power Plan is primarily about public health and preserving a livable climate by reducing carbon pollution from the dirtiest coal plants. It is directly aimed at improving the health of tens of thousands of Americans — and enabling a global treaty that might ultimately save most of the country from turning into a near-permanent Dust Bowl.

At one time, the New York Times was considered the pinnacle of “serious” journalism, the “paper of record.” But consider their Politico-style analysis of Obama’s Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon pollution from existing power plants — a plan that he was legally obligated to put forward, a plan that is objectively the bare minimum the United States can do in the global fight to prevent catastrophic climate change from ruining the lives of billions of people for decades and centuries to come.

The Times’ front-page headline in its big Sunday story with leaked details of the plan is “Obama to Unveil Tougher Environmental Plan With His Legacy in Mind.” That is the print headline, the web headline, and the URL — so apparently the editors were in complete agreement from the start that this dreadful headline captures the most important news about why the President unveiled this plan.

Significantly, the Times provides exactly ZERO named sources to justify this “view from nowhere” headline and story:

As the president came to see the fight against climate change as central to his legacy, as important as the Affordable Care Act, he moved to strengthen the energy proposals, advisers said. The health law became the dominant political issue of the 2010 congressional elections and faced dozens of legislative assaults before surviving two Supreme Court challenges largely intact.

It’s all about politics and legacy, according to the Times panjandrums … and those famous unnamed “advisers.” The Times further asserts (baselessly): “But over all, the final rule is even stronger than earlier drafts and can be seen as an effort by Mr. Obama to stake out an uncompromising position on the issue during his final months in office.”

“Uncompromising?” Really? The Times is aware that Team Obama tried the legislative route in its first term: “Mr. Obama tried but failed to push through a cap-and-trade bill in his first term….” I guess Obama failed to “push through” that bill — if that phrase means “making concession after concession to get any Republicans to actually vote for it.”

The Times never mentions the fact the president is legally obligated to put forward a plan. As I’ve explained, after Senate conservatives rejected any compromise over legislation that would have reduced carbon pollution from power plants, something from the EPA very much like the Clean Power Plan became legally inevitable.

At no time does the Times even entertain the notion that the president cares about the health and well-being of Americans — or the moral responsibility the country bears as the biggest cumulative polluter. This despite Obama holding a major “White House Public Health and Climate Change Summit” on June 23!

You have to read more than 900 words to even get to the scientific necessity of the matter:

Climate scientists warn that rising greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly moving the planet toward a global atmospheric temperature increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the point past which the world will be locked into a future of rising sea levels, more devastating storms and droughts, and shortages of food and water. Mr. Obama’s new rules alone will not be enough to stave off that future. But experts say that if the rules are combined with similar action from the world’s other major economies, as well as additional action by the next American president, emissions could level off enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

That would have been great as a third or fourth paragraph, but as an 18th paragraph, it’s unlikely many people who see the headline will ever get that far.

Also, the statement in boldface is not scientifically accurate because of the phrase “emissions could level off enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change.” Emissions leveling off will NOT cause carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to level off. In fact, they would continue rising and rising, which would guarantee the worst effects of climate change.

What the New York Times should have written was “global emissions could eventually drop fast enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change.” We need a 50 percent drop in global emissions by mid-century. The public and policymakers and the media remain very confused on this point — and with stories like this it’s no wonder.

NOTE: I was originally going to criticize the AP for its Clean Power Plan story, “Who wins and loses under Obama’s stricter power plant limits” (viewable here). It had many of the same Politico-style flaws as the Times piece — especially an “inside the DC beltway” focus whereby the “winners” included environmentalists, but not actually public health or a livable climate.

But the AP appears to have replaced that with a vastly superior piece, “Obama heralds impact of power plant greenhouse gas limits,” which makes the key moral point that the most newsworthy beneficiaries are humanity: “Calling it a moral obligation, President Barack Obama unveiled the final version of his plan to dramatically cut emissions from U.S. power plants, as he warned anew that climate change will threaten future generations if left unchecked.”

Kudos to the AP for this fix.

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Obama Reveals His Most Ambitious Plan To Tackle Climate Change

The Environmental Protection Agency released its long-awaited final rule to regulate carbon pollution from existing power plants on Monday afternoon. This is the most significant action any American president has ever taken to rein in climate change.

Addressing a crowd of scientists in the East Room of the White House, President Obama ticked through a list of threats that confronted the world since he took office: economic calamity, terrorism, nuclear weapons.

“But I am convinced that no challenge poses a greater threat to our future and future generations than a changing climate,” he said. “I believe there is such a thing as being too late. That shouldn’t make us hopeless. It’s not as if there’s nothing we can do about it. We can take action.”

Existing power plants will no longer be able to pollute unlimited amounts of carbon dioxide into the air in the United States once the plan takes effect, which will be 60 days following the as-yet determined date the plan is published in the Federal Register.

The coal, oil, and gas burned in most of these plants is responsible for nearly 40 percent of all carbon pollution in the United States. The Clean Power Plan sets the first-ever federal limits on the main pollutant that causes climate change.

“We now have a real shot of protecting this beautiful planet of ours,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said before she introduced President Obama at Monday’s event. McCarthy summed up her agency’s approach in this video from the EPA:

The final rule’s national emissions targets were what had been expected. “Nationwide, by 2030, this final CAA section 111(d) existing source rule will achieve CO2 emission reductions from the utility power sector of approximately 32 percent from CO2 emission levels in 2005,” the rule stated. These reductions will result in $25-45 billion in net climate and health benefits by 2030, according to the agency’s analysis.

Obama also explained the plan at Monday’s event: each state will be able to come up with its own plan to cut emissions in a way that works for them. By 2030, each state must meet a certain emissions reduction target, custom-tailored to their current energy mix. The EPA does not implement a top-down solution across the country to cut emissions, or force specific coal plants to close.

“We’ll reward states that take actions sooner, rather than later, because time is not on our side,” Obama said.

Every state can meet its targets however it wants — closing old coal plants, building more renewable generation, increasing energy efficiency, or working with other states to balance emissions and cuts through market-based systems like the cap-and-trade model already being used by the RGGI states in the Northeast.

Since many states are already regulating carbon pollution, the president said that this federal action was just Washington catching up to that leadership demonstrated by the rest of the country.

Compared to the proposed rule, the new final version cuts more carbon pollution from the power sector, does it with more renewable energy and less natural gas, while providing more flexibility along the way to states trying to meet their targets.

The solar and energy efficiency industries lauded the rule. The wind power industry said it’s up to the task to help states comply.

“American wind power can do this,” Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, said in a statement. “Low-cost wind energy reduced carbon emissions by five percent in 2014, and we’re capable of doing a lot more.”

Obama ticked through several of the criticisms the plan had received, including electricity rates, coal jobs, and government overreach. He received a standing ovation for this passage about the plan’s impact on minority and low-income communities:

Even more cynical, we’ve got critics of this plan who are actually claiming that this will harm minority and low-income communities. Even though climate change hurts those Americans the most, who are the most vulnerable. Today, an African American child is more than twice as likely to be hospitalized from asthma. A Latino child is 40 percent more likely to die from asthma. So if you care about low income and minority communities, start protecting the air that they breathe and stop trying to rob them of their health care.

Carbon dioxide released from power plants traps heat and pollutants in the air, and so air quality diminishes. This helps to trigger asthma and heart attacks. The EPA says up to 90,000 asthma attacks will be avoided each year under the rule.

Later, the president went off script, saying “sometimes we feel as if there’s nothing we can do.”

“Tomorrow’s my birthday,” he said, and began to reflect on his younger college days. He said he arrived in Los Angeles in 1979 for college and wanted to go outside and take a run. But after five minutes, he couldn’t breathe, because of the horrible smog problem it faced. He listed other environmental calamities, such as Ohio’s Cuyahoga River being so polluted that it caught on fire.

Even with those horrible problems, he said, the nation came together to fix them. California’s air is much cleaner, as are Ohio’s waterways. The parallel to climate change was clear.

“We can figure this stuff out as long as we’re not lazy about it,” he said.

These rules are not the result of new congressional legislation. They are the result of what the Clean Air Act tells the executive branch it has to do.

When Congress passed, and President George H.W. Bush signed, the 1990 update to the Clean Air Act, it included a section on pollutants not specified or envisioned by lawmakers at the time. In 2007, the Supreme Court decided in Mass. v. EPA that carbon dioxide qualified as a pollutant that could be regulated under that section of the Clean Air Act if the EPA found it to be a danger to public health. In 2009, the EPA found exactly that, and so the Obama administration began regulating sources of carbon dioxide. It started with mobile sources, and setting greenhouse gas emission standards for cars, trucks, and heavy-duty vehicles. The Clean Power Plan is just the next step in regulating carbon pollution as required by the Clean Air Act. Monday’s announcement will set the EPA, working with the states, to regulating power plant carbon pollution.

The EPA also released its final rule for new, modified, and reconstructed power plants. Unlike the rule for existing plants, this rule sets a specific limit on coal-fired plants: 1,400 pounds of CO2 per megawatt‐hour, which is less-stringent than the proposed rule’s standard of 1,100 pounds of CO2 per megawatt‐hour. This change was made, after feedback the EPA received about the cost of implementing a carbon capture and sequestration system.

“I don’t want to fool you, this will be hard,” the president said in his Monday speech. “We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, we’re the last generation that can do something about it. We only get one home. We only get one planet. There’s no Plan B.”

As the speech concluded, Obama got emotional, his voice softening. “I don’t want my grandkids not to be able to swim in Hawaii or not to be able to climb a mountain and see a glacier because we didn’t do something about it. I don’t want millions of people’s lives disrupted and this world more dangerous because we didn’t so something about it. That’d be shameful of us.”

“This is our moment to get this right and leave something better for our kids,” he said. “Let’s make the most of this opportunity.”

The event was supposed to be held outside on the White House South Lawn, but was moved inside due to high heat and humidity. Monday was the 11th straight day that cracked 90 in Washington, D.C.

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How The U.S. Can Go Beyond The Clean Power Plan In Carbon Reduction

Burning fossil fuels to generate electricity is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, accounting for 31 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in 2013. On Monday, President Obama is taking a big step toward regulating those emissions with the release of the final Clean Power Plan rule, the first rule designed to regulate carbon pollution from existing power plants. If the rule holds up to legal challenges, encourages international action from other major economies, and survives the next presidency, it would help to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst of global warming.

But what about the other 69 percent of greenhouse gas emissions that the CPP doesn’t cover? As Slate’s Eric Holthaus points out, necessary emissions reductions might call for something like an 80 percent reduction by 2030 — far higher than the 6 percent reduction that Vox’s Brad Plumer calculates would be achieved if the finalized CPP was carried out in full.

“There are lots of other really important emissions sources that the administration should be addressing,” Kristin Meek, an associate with the World Resource Institute’s climate team, told ThinkProgress. But the good news, Meek adds, is that the administration is already starting to tackle these emission sources. “The recent action, especially over the last six months, shows they are beginning to address this,” she said.

So what are the other major sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the country — and what is being done to reduce their contribution to climate change?

Part of the CPP’s appeal is that it will force the transition from coal — an extremely dirty source of power — to cleaner alternatives. But environmentalists worry that it could simply encourage states to move from coal to natural gas — an energy source that still comes with environmental downsides. Natural gas is cleaner than coal — studies have shown that is releases half as much carbon dioxide when burned as coal, but it’s not without its issues. Natural gas production can leak methane, a greenhouse gas 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period. If natural gas production isn’t tightly controlled, methane leaks could ostensibly detract from its environmental benefits, which is why environmentalists argue that any meaningful natural gas push meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions should include some kind of methane-reduction strategy. In January, the EPA announced plans to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector 40 to 45 percent by 2025 compared to 2012 levels. But those regulations only cover new oil and gas constructions — not existing ones.

“We need a regulatory approach to get at existing methane pollution,” Alison Cassady, Director of Domestic Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress told ThinkProgress. “We need to make sure every oil and gas well and pipeline is releasing as little methane as possible.”

Besides the power sector, the transportation sector is the second-highest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. That includes things like highway vehicles, airplanes, marine transport — anything that relies on the combustion of fossil fuel to transport people and goods, according to the EPA. In 2013, transportation was responsible for 26 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

“Transportation is also a big source of emissions,” Meeks said. “But this is one area that the administration has really been proactive on.”

Sixty-two percent of transportation-related emissions come from light-duty vehicles, like passenger vehicles. In 2012, the Obama administration finalized Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards that raised fuel efficiency standards to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, calling the new standards “historic.” In the year after the CAFE standards were set, the fuel economy of vehicles sold in the United States increased by 1.4 miles per gallon. Since then, cars have become increasingly more fuel efficient, exceeding emission standards by a “wide margin,” according to the EPA.

But in order to really make a dent in U.S.-related greenhouse gases, light-duty vehicles will need to become even more fuel efficient. In June, the World Resources Institute looked at how the United States could achieve meaningful emissions reductions without Congress — and one of the key takeaways is that light-duty vehicles will need to quickly become more fuel efficient, through deployment of next-generation technologies like battery and fuel cells. WRI also argues that the EPA and the DOT should set a 63 mile-per-gallon CAFE standard by 2030, which would encourage innovation in the manufacturing sector and spur state and federal governments to expand infrastructure for alternative vehicles.

Cassady agrees that encouraging the transition to clean vehicles will be crucial for cutting emissions in the transportation sector.

“One opportunity that the country has is to expand opportunities for electric vehicles,” she said. “Right now, they just aren’t broadly deployed, but as our power sector gets even cleaner the advantage of using electric vehicles will be even greater.”

Earlier this summer, the Obama administration also began taking steps to regulate emissions from airplanes and medium- and heavy-duty trucks. On June 10, the EPA announced that emissions from airplanes constitute a health hazard due to their contribution to global warming, and argued that they should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. In the United States, aircraft emissions account for eight percent of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with transportation. The agency has yet to issue a rule on airline emissions, however, saying that they’re waiting for international negotiations on carbon emissions in the aviation industry to wrap up in February of 2016. Aviation emissions only account for two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, though it’s one of the fastest-growing sources, and could increase by 70 percent over 2005 levels by 2020, according to the New York Times.

Medium- and heavy-duty trucks are the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions within the transportation sector. In June, the EPA and the Department of Transportation released fuel efficiency standards for heavy-duty trucks, calling for a 24 percent reduction in CO2 emissions and fuel consumption from semi-trucks, large pickup trucks and vans, buses, and work trucks released between 2021 and 2027, compared to 2018 models.

Industry is another large contributor to United States’ total greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 12 percent of the country’s total in 2013. According to the WRI, barriers like remaining financially competitive, regulation, and lack of information combine to hinder industry’s ability to quickly adapt to new energy-efficient technologies. To combat these barriers, the WRI proposes expanding federal programs like the president’s Better Buildings Challenge, which could help commercial and industrial buildings become 20 percent more energy efficient by 2020. Expanding renewable energy could also benefit industry, which could use clean options like distributed wind or solar to help reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

“It’s tricky because there are so many different sub-sectors: pulp and paper, cement, refineries,” Meek said. “They’re all very different, so coming up with smart, flexible standards for each of these different sub-sectors will take time.”

Beyond industry, agriculture is another large source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. In 2013, the agricultural sector accounted for 7.7 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the country, primarily by releasing methane, through livestock production, and nitrous oxide, through fertilizer runoff. In April, the United States Department of Agriculture announced a set of initiatives to help farmers, ranchers, and forest land owners mitigate their contribution to climate change. The measures are all voluntary, though the USDA hopes to incentivize participation by offering grants, low-interest loans, and technical assistance.

The most comprehensive solution to carbon pollution would be to put a price on carbon, in the form of a carbon tax or through a cap-and-trade approach, which would help drive down carbon pollution across all these sectors, Cassady said. But the administration’s attempts to pass a cap-and-trade bill died in the Senate in 2009 — since then, the Obama administration has taken a more piecemeal approach to climate policy, using the executive branch’s authority under the Clean Air Act to drive down emissions bit by bit across a number of sectors.

The Clean Power Plan is a huge part of that approach, and one that Obama reportedly sees as central to his legacy. But the CPP could do more than cut carbon pollution from the power sector — it could give the United States a strong bargaining chip heading into the U.N. Climate Conference in Paris.

“By taking bold action, the U.S. will have leverage,” Cassady said. “We are leading by example, so when we go into the Paris climate negotiations, we can point to the CPP and the cuts we are willing to make to spur action by other countries.”

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