Exclusive: Department of Environment confirms agency's 'mid-September' move from Melbourne 'to improve operating efficiency'
The move comes after members David Karoly, left, and Clive Hamilton refused to endorse the Climate Change Authority's report.
Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP
The Climate Change Authority will be moved from Melbourne to Canberra
within the next fortnight, putting its independence from government
under the spotlight.
A spokesperson for the Department of Environment has confirmed the
move in "mid-September" to Guardian Australia, and said it was being
done "in order to improve its operating efficiency".
Guardian Australia understands none of the authority's staff, besides
the chief executive, will stay with it after the move, which has been
known about in relevant circles for some time.
The move has raised concerns it will bring the authority, which was
set up in 2011 in Melbourne as an independent statutory agency, closer
to government and limit its independence.
The Department of Environment spokesperson said the authority would
continue to have "its own staff". But whether those staff would be on
secondment from the department is not yet known.
Several people close to the authority warned that since the expert
staff of the authority did much of the agency's work – including writing
the reports that are directed and signed off by the board members – how
close they were to government could affect the degree of independence
it maintained.
Bernie Fraser, former chair of the Climate Change Authority and
former chair of the Reserve Bank of Australia, told Guardian Australia
that "the independence is one of the great features of bodies like the
Climate Change Authority".
Fraser said the personnel – both the staff and the board – need to
work to uphold the independence of the authority. He said when he was
head of the authority, the staff were "tremendously impressive".
"Unfortunately that started to erode, after the change of
government, and the talk of abolishing the authority – those good people
thought the government isn't going to listen and is going to get rid of
the authority at the first opportunity," Fraser said.
He said there was "something to" the concerns about independence if
it was moved to Canberra, and particularly if the staffing turned out to
be seconded from the department rather than hired independently.
Ian Chubb, a former member of the authority and the former chief
scientist of Australia, said if the board was expert enough, then the
independence of the staff shouldn't impact the independence of the
authority itself.
"I don't think moving the secretariat to Canberra is moving the
authority closer to government, other than literally," he told Guardian
Australia. "There are lots of organisations in Canberra at arm's length
from government. The independent board ought to have enough knowledge
collectively not to let the wool get pulled over their eyes."
The Coalition attempted to abolish the Climate Change Authority in
its last term in government but failed to get the legislation through
the Senate, and continues to maintain its policy that it should be
abolished.
In the Coalition's 2016-17 budget, the Climate Change Authority was provided with an operating budget from existing Department of Environment funds until the end of 2016 only.
The move follows a dispute between members of the authority over a report on whether Australia should have an emissions trading scheme, leading to two members releasing a "minority report" and receiving a sharp rebuke from the authority's chair, Wendy Craik.
Craik
released a statement saying their report was "misleading". She said
while it "purports to be a minority report to the authority's third and
final report of its special review", it "was not released or endorsed by
the authority, and has no status as an authority report".
Asked about whether the two dissenting members would continue on the
board of the authority, a spokeswoman for the Climate Change Authority
told Guardian Australia: "Whether the two members who wrote the
dissenting report continue as members of the authority is a matter for
them."
Both dissenting members, the economist Clive Hamilton and the climate
scientist David Karoly, said they would not resign over the matter, and
they didn't believe there were any grounds for them to be dismissed.
Fraser said he had read both the majority report and the
minority report. "I thought the points in the minority point were very
well made and deserve serious consideration, he told Guardian Australia.
Asked about the dispute and the future of the organisation, the
environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, said the disagreement
was a matter for the authority but the government had no plans to
commission any further reports from it.
The authority is still required to complete two more reports: a
review of the carbon farming initiative legislation and a review of the
national greenhouse and energy reporting legislation.
Climate change impacts such as rising temperatures and changes in ocean
salinity, acidity, and oxygen levels are expected to result in decreased
catches
"Developing countries most dependent on fisheries for food and revenue will be hardest hit," study's lead author says. Photo: twoblueday, Flickr
Global fisheries stand to lose approximately $10 billion of their
annual revenue by 2050 if climate change continues unchecked, and
countries that are most dependent on fisheries for food will be the
hardest hit, finds new University of British Columbia research.
Climate change impacts such as rising temperatures and changes in
ocean salinity, acidity, and oxygen levels are expected to result in
decreased catches, as previous research from UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries
has found. In this study, the authors examined the financial impact of
these projected losses for all fishing countries in 2050, compared to
2000.
"Developing countries most dependent on fisheries for food and
revenue will be hardest hit," said Vicky Lam, a postdoctoral fellow at
UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, and the study's lead
author. "It is necessary to implement better marine resource management
plans to increase stock resilience to climate change."
While many communities are considering aquaculture, also known as
fish farming, as a solution to ease the financial burden of fishing
losses and improve food security under climate change, when researchers
examined the growing industry, they found it may exacerbate the negative
impact on revenues
"Climate adaptation programs such as aquaculture development may be
seen as a solution," said William Cheung, associate professor at UBC's
Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and a study co-author. "However,
rather than easing the financial burden of fishing losses and improving
food security, it may drive down the price of seafood, leading to
further decreases in fisheries revenues."
The researchers used climate models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
to examine the economic impact of climate change on fish stocks and
fisheries revenues under two emission scenarios. In a high emission
scenario, the rates continue to rise unchecked, while a low emission
scenario meant ocean warming is kept under two degrees Celsius.
"Global fisheries revenues amount to about $100 billion every year,"
said co-author, Rashid Sumaila, professor at UBC's Institute for the
Oceans and Fisheries and Liu Institute for Global Studies.
"Our modeling shows that a high emissions scenario could reduce global
fishing revenue by an average of 10 per cent, while a low emissions
scenario could reduce revenues by 7 per cent."
The researchers found the countries that rely highly on fish are the
most vulnerable, including island countries like Tokelau, Cayman
Islands, and Tuvalu. Meanwhile, many developed countries, such as
Greenland and Iceland, could see revenue increases as fish move into
cooler waters.
The study was published Sept. 7 in Scientific Reports.
Australia is set to triple its large-scale solar energy capacity
after funding from a threatened federal agency helped drive down costs
almost to those of wind farms.
The Australian Renewable Energy
Agency (ARENA) announced the 12 projects that will share part of its
latest funding round of $92 million on Thursday.
UNSW researchers break world record for solar cell efficiency. Australian researchers find a way to hugely increase the efficiency of solar panels.
Queensland was a big winner, landing six of the projects, while NSW won five and WA the other one. (See map below.)
Solar energy costs continue to fall in Australia and overseas. Photo: FRV
The plants will generate about one-tenth of the power needed to meet
Australia's 2020 Renewable Energy Target, supply enough electricity for
150,000 average homes and create 2,300 direct jobs alone, ARENA said.
The
agency's chief executive, Ivor Frischknecht, said that when announced
last September the funds had been expected to enable 200 megawatts of
new solar capacity, compared with the 240 megawatts already in place.
Instead, the dozen ventures will deliver an extra 480 megawatts if
all proceed, and drive $1 billion of investment in regional Australia.
The
level of grant funding needed to make the large-scale solar
photovoltaic projects had dropped from about half the cost to just 10
per cent in three years, Mr Frischknecht said.
Solar panels being installed at the Sydney Town Hall. Photo: Damian Shaw
"It's a phenomenal change from the Moree solar farm and AGL's [two
plants in NSW], where it was a little less than one commercial dollar
for every subsidy dollar," he told Fairfax Media.
The success of
ARENA's solar support comes at a critical time for the program's future.
The Turnbull government wants to end all grant funding by the agency
and strip $1.3 billion from its budget.
Labor, which went to the
July election quarantining $300 million of those cuts, may decide as
soon as Tuesday's caucus meeting whether it will back the government's
omnibus funding through Parliament.
Opponents of the grant cuts
say the move would trigger the loss of possibly hundreds of research
positions at universities, the CSIRO and elsewhere, and slow advances in
renewable energy at a time when Australia has to shift to a low-carbon
future.
While large-scale solar costs are about 10 per cent more
than wind farms, many other technologies require support to make them
less expensive, Mr Frischknecht said. These include large-scale
batteries and so-called dispatchable renewables such as solar thermal
and bio power that can be switched on and off as needed.
Josh
Frydenberg, minister for environment and energy, said the latest round
brought federal investment through ARENA to $1.2 billion for around 250
projects, drawing a further $1.6 billion from the private sector.
"ARENA
will continue to be a major supporter of renewable energy through the
$1 billion Clean Energy Innovation Fund [for concessional loans] which
will see new jobs and investment in the sector," Mr Frydenberg said.
Biggest plant
The winners include what will become the country's largest solar
farm, with ARENA chipping in $20 million towards the $216.7 million
needed to build the 110 MW plant.
That project, to be owned by Origin Energy, will be on Queensland's Darling Downs. (See list of winning projects below.)
The title of largest plant, though, may be up for grabs. Genex's 50
MW Kidston Solar Plant, which has a 20-year supply deal with the
Queensland government, has plans to extend to 150 MW.
For NSW, the
ARENA-funded projects will support as many as 800 jobs during
construction and, when fully operational, will provide enough
electricity to power about 62,000 homes or 2,800 schools.
"These
five new solar facilities save about 350,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas
emissions per year, the equivalent of taking 78,000 cars off the road,"
Mark Speakman, the state's environment minister, said.
Falling costs
The recent steep drop in large-scale solar costs is mostly from domestic gains, ARENA said.
A
falling Australian dollar had largely nullified the drop in global
price of imported panels, inverters and other equipment, which typically
make up 40 to 50 per cent of total costs, Mr Frischknecht said.
Banks
were becoming more comfortable supporting large-scale solar, resulting
in cheaper finance, he said, while expanded scale and improved
construction process through experience also helped make plants more
competitive.
Kellie Caught, a spokeswoman for WWF Australia, said
the winning bids amounted to "one billion reasons" for the government to
maintain full grant funding.
"ARENA plays a critically important
role in building new technologies, reducing the cost of renewable
energy, increasing renewable energy supply and diversity in Australia,
improving grid stability and reliability, building industry skills,
developing export capabilities and creating thousands of jobs," she
said.
Open letter
Details of solar's advance came as 11 major energy companies issued
an open letter to federal politicians calling on them to protect ARENA's
funding.
The companies – which include AGL, General Electric,
First Solar, wind turbine maker Vestas, electric car and battery maker
Tesla and wind farm operator Infigen Energy – said investment confidence
would be undermined in the sector if one of the new Parliament's first
moves was to cut ARENA's support.
"The grants provided by the
agency are modest investments that will lead to the jobs and investment
of the future," Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy
Council, said.
"Hundreds of projects have been funded to date,
and hundreds more are needed if we are to transform Australia's energy
system at the lowest possible cost to consumers."
Queensland's
Energy Minister, Mark Bailey, said additional support from the
Palaszczuk government had helped boost the "competitiveness of so many
Queensland projects in the ARENA process".
The backing is in the form of long-term revenue contracts to aid investor confidence.
Mr
Frischknecht said the current funding round would be "a litmus test" to
determine whether additional rounds would be needed in the future for
large-scale solar PV – an outcome that could be known within six to 12
months.
The Guardian - Andrew Simms A UK cross-party initiative addresses the appetite and mechanics for the
cooperation needed to help us live within Earth's limits
'New alliances in the UK are being explored to reverse inequality and live within the Earth's limits.'
Photograph: Deco / Alamy/Alamy
Four months and counting
China and the US's announcement that they will join the Paris climate accord comes at a time when the UK's own climate and energy policies appear at best in disarray, and worst at odds.
Imagine you're stuck in a burning building. Stay and you perish, but
the complexity of the building means that to physically escape you have
to work with the others also trapped. If everyone does their own thing,
many valiant efforts will be made, but ultimately you'll all be doomed.
Tackling climate change is fundamentally a challenge of first
accepting that action sufficient to prevent irreversible warming is
non-negotiable – you need to get out of the burning building – and then
of solidarity and cooperation, you need to make the escape plan happen
together.
In the UK only the Green party has climate targets roughly in line
with what climate science says is needed. Meanwhile, solidarity and
cooperation within parties is proving hard enough to achieve after the
vote for the UK to leave the EU, let alone presenting the electorate
with an undivided progressive choice in elections.
Post-Brexit we can expect little of the UK government on sufficient
and clear climate action. The great irony of the lobby to leave, which railed against the "red tape" of Brussels,
is that it has triggered probably Britain's biggest ever open-ended,
bureaucratic exercise. Forty years' worth of legislation and
cross-border agreements need rewriting in a more complicated, multipolar
world. Not only will this distract, decisively, from achieving much
else, but international treaty negotiation will be dictated by the old
economics of competition and division.
Fortunately, new alliances in the UK are being explored to reverse inequality and live within the Earth's limits.
Caroline
Lucas has joined with Lisa Nandy, Labour's former shadow spokesperson
on energy and climate change, and Liberal Democrats including the
current leader, Tim Farron, to launch an initiative for greater direct
political cooperation, called for in a new book, The Alternative: Towards a New Progressive Politics. The title echoes the name of the mould breaking new political party in Denmark of the same name, The Alternative, set up in 2013 to be a fresh, collaborative and progressive voice and change the divisive tone of domestic politics.
Writing in the book, Uffe Elbæk, its party leader, compares the
emergence of The Alternative to Syriza and Podemos as a reaction to a
failure of the political system so serious that it leaves democracy
itself under threat. But, far from strident, their response is to
advocate for new, shared values that are the inverse of the emergent
chest-beating and fearful nationalism threatening international
cooperation on everything, including climate change. They speak instead
of political mobilisation based on humility, empathy, courage,
generosity and even humour.
The scope and ambition of contributors to the UK initiative addresses the appetite and mechanics for cooperation.
In a chapter on re-imagining Britain's approach to the environment, I
argue in the book that from government to anti-austerity groups in
opposition, there is a kind of denial about the full economic
implications of preventing irreversible climatic upheaval. The clamour
for a return to growth inevitably results in a kind of business as usual
consumerism.
In terms of alternative economic visions among progressive circles,
if any are discernible they tend toward the vague promise of "fully automated luxury communism" - a world in which technology and redistribution deliver lives of leisure and plenty.
But not only does this founder on broken planetary, environmental
boundaries, it also contains a kind of impoverished digital
disengagement with the real, material world. The alternative is a green,
circular and genuinely shared economy of "better not more". In this,
reskilled and reconnected, rather than passive, disposable consumerism,
we take back more control of our lives making, mending, re-using and
sharing more of the things we need.
Not only does this bring greater independence, wellbeing, cost and
resource savings, but it draws on long-standing working class traditions
of self and mutual help that let people and communities flourish in
tough economic times. The cultivation of new skills and craft also
counter the alienation of much modern work.
A new more plural, progressive politics, capable of supporting the
changes needed to prevent climate disaster, itself needs a new economic
model, judged not by how quickly it grows, but by how well it allows us
all to thrive within planetary environmental boundaries.
Australian PM Malcolm
Turnbull spoke to Pacific Island leaders, including the PM of the Cook
Islands Henry Puna, in Pohnpei, Micronesia. Picture: Lyndon
Mechielsen/News Corp. Source:News Corp Australia
THERE is “no more pressing need” in
the region than climate change, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has told
Pacific leaders in Micronesia.
Mr Turnbull announced $300 million to help the Pacific “manage climate change and improve disaster resilience”.
The
Prime Minister landed in Pohnpei on Friday for his third round of
regional talks — having visited Hangzhou in China for the G20 and
Vientiane in Laos for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
summit.
“Over the next four years we’ll provide $300 million to
Pacific island countries including $75 million for disaster
preparedness. This is an additional $80 million on the current levels,”
he said.
Mr Turnbull also said Australia would ratify the Paris climate change agreement this year or early next year.
“We
will ratify it as soon as parliamentary processes allow ... Its
ratification is not controversial,” he told the Pacific Island Forum in
Pohnpei.
Earlier Mr Turnbull met with Federated States of
Micronesia Peter Christian; Mr Christian said he was ashamed Micronesia
did not have an embassy in Australia and that he would like to find “a
little building somewhere in Canberra”.
The two also discussed the
Pacific patrol vessels Australia will build, which will replace the
existing boats used to stop illegal fishing in the area, for search and
rescue, and for national security.
Held in the backdrop of green
hills, blue water and palm trees, Mr Turnbull looked decidedly relaxed
as he sported a green and blue leaf motif shirt at the 47th Pacific
Islands Forum — themed ‘Small and Far: Challenge for Growth”.
Speaking in the lead-up to the forum, FSM Vice President Yosiwo
George said due to the distance and smallness of forum countries they
face transportation, economic growth and development and foreign
investment barriers. “Many of our economies have the same
characteristics: low productivity, low growth, and an inefficient public
sector involvement in job creation,” he said.
How to solve these
issues as well as grappling with the increasing threat of climate change
and disaster mitigation will top the forum’s agenda.
According to
the World Bank, FSM already incurs, on average, $US8.8 million ($A11.5
million) per year (about 3.1 per of GDP) in losses due to typhoons,
earthquakes and tsunamis.
Climate change will only increase this
vulnerability — resulting in more intense typhoons, sea level rises
storm surges, floods and droughts — adversely impacting agriculture,
fisheries, coastal zones and water resources.
Malcolm Turnbull will
discuss the increasing impacts of climate change with Pacific Island
leaders in Pohnpei, Micronesia. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/News Corp. Source:News Corp Australia
On the opening day of the forum on Thursday, Papua New Guinea Prime
Minister Peter O’Neill heralded the recent commitment by the United
States and China to ratify the Paris Agreement — something Australia
aims to do by the end of the year.
“We must continue to show leadership and encourage all countries to ratify the agreement,” Mr O’Neill added.
In
a report released earlier this week, Oxfam Australia said Australia was
not doing enough in the Pacific to help them battle the effects of
climate change and called on the government to commit $A3.2 billion by
2020.
Mr Turnbull has already flagged that he will be announcing a
“substantial” assistance package at the forum, but details are yet to
be released. Australia will also be giving up to 21 patrol boats to
Pacific Island countries to promote air surveillance to monitor illegal
maritime activities.
On Thursday Mr Turnbull’s invitation to South-East Asian leaders to attend a special meeting in Australia has been enthusiastically received.
Mr Turnbull invited leaders to a special Australia-ASEAN summit in 2018.
“That
invitation has been received with great enthusiasm and we look forward
to that as another building block in this already very strong
relationship,” he told reporters in Vientiane on Thursday.
Morale is falling among CSIRO workers and staff
optimism about the future of the research organisation is low, according
to a staff survey.
The survey commissioned by the organisation
also reveals a massive disconnect between the organisation's management
and its staff overall.
It comes as the organisation prepares to axe hundreds of jobs, largely in the oceans, atmosphere, land and water climate science teams.
The
survey found 97 per cent of the leadership team believed in the next
year CSIRO would change for the better — compared to just 21 per cent of
staff who shared that view.
Staff at CSIRO are half as optimistic
for the future compared to other organisations in Australia and similar
research institutions around the world.
More than 3400, or around 64 per cent of staff, participated in the survey in July this year.
It
sets out the scale of the task at hand for chief executive Larry
Marshall, who has just had his contract renewed by the board until the
end of the decade.
"Dr Marshall has our support to continue to
implement [the] Strategy 2020," CSIRO chairman David Thodey said in an
email to staff.
In another report released today, a review of the decision-making
processes that led to the controversial job cuts by consultants Ernst
and Young found oversights in governance and risk management.
It
found consistent problems in the way management handled the cuts, known
internally as the Science Prioritisation and Implementation (SPI)
process.
The review recommends CSIRO "reassess the existing organisational
structure and practices … to provide appropriate management and
coordination to all phases of the SPI process".
"The lack of
proper planning and assignment of responsibility of each phase of the
SPI process … led to perceived levels of inadequacy in rigour and
consistency of Executive Team decisions," the consultant's report found.
"There
was also limited documentation of the role each of these key
stakeholders had to play; when they should be involved; or how they
should coordinate activity.
"There was found to be a lack of rigour and protocols regarding the documentation of key meetings and decisions."
CSIRO
said in its initial response to the review that by the end of the year,
the chief executive would "continue to assess the appropriateness of
the current organisation structure and practices and implement changes
accordingly".
New York Times - Julie Hirschfeld Davis | Mark Landler | Coral Davenport
MIDWAY
ATOLL — Seventy-four years ago, a naval battle off this remote spit of
land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean changed the course of World War
II. Last week, President Obama
flew here to swim with Hawaiian monk seals and draw attention to a
quieter war — one he has waged against rising seas, freakish storms,
deadly droughts and other symptoms of a planet choking on its own fumes.
Bombs
may not be falling. The sound of gunfire does not concentrate the mind.
What Mr. Obama has seen instead are the charts and graphs of a warming
planet. "And they're terrifying," he said in a recent interview in
Honolulu.
"What makes climate change
difficult is that it is not an instantaneous catastrophic event," he
said. "It's a slow-moving issue that, on a day-to-day basis, people
don't experience and don't see."
In an exclusive interview on his legacy, President Obama speaks to The Times's Mark Landler and Coral Davenport on climate change while visiting Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Photo by A.J. Chavar/The New York Times.
Climate change, Mr. Obama often says, is the greatest long-term threat facing the world, as well as a danger already manifesting itself
as droughts, storms, heat waves and flooding. More than health care,
more than righting a sinking economic ship, more than the historic first
of an African-American president, he believes that his efforts to slow
the warming of the planet will be the most consequential legacy of his
presidency.
During
his seven and a half years in office, Mr. Obama said, a majority of
Americans have come to believe "that climate change is real, that it's
important and we should do something about it." He enacted rules to cut
planet-heating emissions across much of the United States economy, from cars to coal plants. He was a central broker of the Paris climate agreement, the first accord committing nearly every country to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Air Force One over Midway Atoll, which Mr. Obama visited last week to expand the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. Credit A.J. Chavar/The New York Times
But
while climate change has played to Mr. Obama's highest ideals — critics
would call them messianic impulses — it has also exposed his
weaknesses, namely an inability to forge consensus, even within his own
party, on a problem that demands a bipartisan response.
He
acknowledged that his rallying cry to save the planet had not
galvanized Americans. He has been harshly criticized for policies that
objectors see as abuses of executive power and far too burdensome for
the economy.
That
has made Mr. Obama's record on climate curiously contradictory, marked
by historic achievements abroad and frustrating setbacks at home. The
threat of global warming inspired Mr. Obama to conduct some of the most
masterful diplomacy of his presidency, which has bound the United States
into a web of agreements and obligations overseas. Yet his
determination to act alone inflamed his opponents, helped polarize the
debate on climate change and will carry a significant economic cost.
Mr. Obama chalks up the contradictions both to politics and to the amorphous, unseen nature of the threat.
"It feels like, 'Meh, we can put this off a little bit,'" he said.
The
president spoke in a cottage on a Marine base that overlooks Kaneohe
Bay in his home state, Hawaii. Angry waves crashed on the rocks below
the house, the sea churned by one of two hurricanes spinning close to
the island. Hawaii, as one of Mr. Obama's climate advisers pointed out,
normally does not get back-to-back hurricanes.
"When
you see severe environmental strains of one sort or another on
cultures, on civilizations, on nations, the byproducts of that are
unpredictable and can be very dangerous," Mr. Obama said. "If the
current projections, the current trend lines on a warming planet
continue, it is certainly going to be enormously disruptive worldwide."
'All Bets Are Off'
Eight
years ago, when Mr. Obama ran for president against Senator John McCain
of Arizona, both men had essentially the same position on global
warming: It is caused by humans, and Congress should enact legislation
to cap greenhouse gas emissions and force polluters to buy and trade
permits that would slowly lower overall emissions of climate-warming
gases.
But in the summer of 2010, a cap-and-trade bill Mr. Obama had tried to push through Congress failed, blocked by senators from both parties.
"One
would have hoped for transformational leadership, in the way J.F.K.
would have done it," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
A coal-burning power plant in Buchanan County, Va. Mr. Obama has introduced rules that could force hundreds of such plants to close. Credit George Etheredge for The New York Times
That domestic defeat was compounded by failure on the world stage after efforts to enact a highly anticipated United Nations climate change treaty in Copenhagen fell apart in 2009.
By the fall of 2010, Tea Party "super PACs"
supported by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch had
seized on cap-and-trade as a political weapon, with attacks that helped
Republicans take control of the House.
Polls
showed that few Americans thought of climate change as a high public
policy priority, and the percentage of voters who accepted the reality
that it was caused by humans had tumbled.
"There
is the notion that there's something I might have done that would
prevent Republicans to deny climate change," Mr. Obama said. "I guess
hypothetically, maybe there was some trick up my sleeve that would have
cast a spell on the Republican caucus and changed their minds."
In fact, some Republicans, including Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, were willing to go forward with a more limited climate bill
that would have restricted emissions only from power plants. But the
president's own party would not unify even around that, with Democrats
from industrial and coal states digging in against him. Ironically, Mr.
Obama would end up with regulations that narrowly target power plant
emissions.
"The
White House wanted 60 votes on climate, and they weren't interested in
Republican votes," Mr. Alexander said in an interview. "Now it's back to
power plant only. The lesson here is that if people who want a result
would be a little bit more flexible, they might actually get one."
In defeat, the president appeared cowed. Campaigning against Mitt Romney in 2012, he barely mentioned climate change.
But
soon after Election Day, Mr. Obama interrupted a broad discussion with
historians about the country's challenges with a surprising assertion.
Douglas Brinkley, a historian who attended the session, recalled, "Out
of nowhere, he said, 'If we don't do anything on the climate issue, all
bets are off.'"
Mr.
Obama, who understood that a legislative push would be fruitless, told
his advisers to figure out how to enact deep emissions cuts without Congress. They found a way through the Clean Air Act of 1970, which gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to issue regulations on dangerous pollutants.
In 2014, Mr. Obama unveiled the first draft of what would become the Clean Power Plan: a set of Clean Air Act rules that could lead to the closing of hundreds of coal-fired power plants.
The move enraged critics, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, whose state relies heavily on coal.
Another critic, Laurence H. Tribe, likened the rules
to "burning the Constitution" — a charge that might have stung, since
Mr. Tribe, a liberal constitutional scholar, was a mentor to Mr. Obama
at Harvard Law School.
Mr. Obama dismissed the criticism as the voice of Mr. Tribe's client, Peabody Energy, the nation's largest coal company, which filed for bankruptcy protection
in April. "You know, I love Larry," he said, but "when it comes to
energy issues, Larry has a history of representing fossil fuel
industries in big litigation cases."
The legality of the climate rules is likely to be decided by the Supreme Court, the composition of which depends on the outcome
of the presidential election. Deep-pocketed corporations will not give
up the legal fight easily, even after a Supreme Court decision, and
Republicans in Congress will continue their legislative attacks. If the
rules survive, they will almost certainly cost the coal industry
thousands of jobs.
"What
we owe the remaining people who are making a living mining coal is to
be honest with them," Mr. Obama said, "and to say that, look, the
economy is shifting. How we use energy is shifting. That's going to be
true here, but it's also going to be true internationally."
Scrutinizing the Science
Few
people would have described Mr. Obama as a climate evangelist when he
ran for the White House in 2008. While he invoked the rising seas and
heating planet to thrill his young supporters, he did not have the long
record of climate activism of Al Gore or John Kerry, who is now his
secretary of state. Like many things with Mr. Obama, his evolution on
climate was essentially an intellectual journey.
Mr.
Obama immersed himself in the scientific literature, which left little
doubt that the planet was warming at an accelerating rate. "My top
science adviser, John Holdren, periodically will issue some chart or
report or graph in the morning meetings," he said, "and they're
terrifying."
Unusual weather events like the floods that inundated Louisiana last month are occurring more frequently. Credit Bryan Tarnowski for The New York Times
The
morning Mr. Obama unveiled the final version of the Clean Power Plan
last year, he summoned his senior climate adviser, Brian Deese, to the
Oval Office. Mr. Deese expected that the president would hand him some
last-minute changes to his speech. Instead, he brought up an article in
the journal Science on melting permafrost.
The research not only documented faster increases in temperatures, but also drew direct links between fossil fuel emissions and extreme weather.
Mr. Obama scrutinized reports like the 2014 National Climate Assessment, which tied climate change to events like flooding in Miami and longer, hotter heat waves in the Southwest.
"More
and more, there are events that are happening that are astoundingly
unusual, that knock your socks off, like the flooding in Louisiana,"
said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international
affairs at Princeton University. "Those are the kinds of events where
it's becoming possible to draw attribution."
Benjamin J. Rhodes, one of the president's closest aides, recalled Mr. Obama talking about "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,"
Jared Diamond's 2005 best seller, which explored the environmental
changes that wiped out ancient societies like Easter Island and
discussed how modern equivalents like climate change and overpopulation
could yield the same destruction.
The
president's Pacific roots also came into play. In Honolulu last week,
he told a meeting of Pacific Island leaders that few people understood
the stakes of climate change better than residents of their part of the
planet. Crops are withering in the Marshall Islands, he noted. Kiribati is buying property in another country for the day that its own land vanishes beneath the waves. And villagers in Fiji have been forced from their homes by high seas. Shifting monsoon patterns in South Asia could affect a billion people who depend on low-lying agriculture, Mr. Obama said in his interview.
"If
you have even a portion of those billion people displaced," he said,
"you now have the sorts of refugee crises and potential conflicts that
we haven't seen in our lifetimes."
"That," he added, "promises to make life a lot more difficult for our children and grandchildren."
Joining Forces With China
Mr.
Obama and Hillary Clinton never seem to tire of telling the story of
Copenhagen: In December 2009, with the climate conference on the verge
of failure, the two learned of a meeting of the leaders of Brazil,
China, India and South Africa, from which they had been pointedly
excluded. Elbowing their way past a Chinese security guard, they crashed
the meeting, and over the course of 90 minutes of tense negotiations
with the abashed leaders, they extracted an agreement to set goals for lowering emissions.
The
Europeans, who had been cut out of the talks, derided the deal as
toothless, but Mr. Obama learned from the experience. A global climate
accord could not simply be a compact among developed economies, he said.
It had to include the major developing economies, even if they resented
being held to standards that had never applied to the club of wealthy
nations. And any agreement had to be led by the two largest emitters,
the United States and China.
Mr.
Obama set about persuading President Xi Jinping of China to join the
United States in setting ambitious reduction targets for carbon
emissions. Tensions were already high over China's hacking of American companies, and the United States was balking at China's slow-motion colonization of the South China Sea. A casual, get-acquainted summit meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi at the Sunnylands estate in California in June 2013 had failed to break the ice.
Mr. Obama with President Xi Jinping of China in California in June 2013. Despite their differences, the two leaders have worked together on landmark agreements to address climate change. Credit Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
But
the meeting did produce one headline: an agreement to explore ways to
reduce emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, known as HFCs, potent
planet-warming chemicals found in refrigerants. In hindsight, it would
prove significant. The final international accord on the chemicals is expected to be ratified next month in Rwanda.
"It
was a place Obama and Xi found some common ground," said John D.
Podesta, a chief of staff to President Bill Clinton whom Mr. Obama
recruited to lead his climate efforts in his second term. (Mr. Podesta
is now the chairman of Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.)
Mr.
Podesta and Todd Stern, the State Department's climate envoy, began
arduous negotiations with China. They were backed by Mr. Kerry and Mr.
Obama, who sent Mr. Xi a letter with a proposal in which the United
States would pledge to increase its target for reducing carbon emissions
by 2025 if the Chinese pledged to cap and then gradually reduce their
emissions.
China
had historically resisted such agreements, but the air pollution there
had become so bad, Mr. Obama noted, that the most-visited Twitter page
in China was the daily air-quality monitor maintained by the United States Embassy in Beijing.
"One
of the reasons I think that China was prepared to go further than it
had been prepared to go previously," Mr. Obama said, "is that their
overriding concern tends to be political stability. Interestingly, one
of their greatest political vulnerabilities is the environment. People
who go to Beijing know that it can be hard to breathe."
The Chinese were also swayed by Mr. Obama's announcement
in 2014 of his regulations to reduce emissions from coal-fired power
plants, which gave Mr. Kerry and his team of climate diplomats the
leverage they needed in months of meetings with China. On Nov. 11, 2014,
after a quiet stroll across a bridge in the Chinese leadership compound
beside the Forbidden City, Mr. Xi and Mr. Obama sealed their agreement.
"By
locking in China," Mr. Obama said, "it now allowed me to go to India
and South Africa and Brazil and others and say to them: 'Look, we don't
expect countries with big poverty rates and relatively low per-capita
carbon emissions to do exactly the same thing that the United States or
Germany or other advanced countries are doing. But you've got to do
something.'"
A little more than a year later, in Paris, the United States led negotiations among 195 countries that resulted in the most significant climate change agreement in history. And this past weekend in Hangzhou, China, Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi formally committed
their two nations to the Paris accord. For Mr. Obama, it was not just
redemption for Copenhagen, but a vindication of his theory of the United
States' role in the world.
"There
are certain things that the United States can do by itself," Mr. Obama
said. "But if we're going to actually solve a problem, then our most
important role is as a leader, vision setter and convener."
An Ambitious, Divisive Legacy
To
his successor, Mr. Obama leaves an ambitious and divisive legacy: a
raft of new emissions rules that promise to transform the United States
economy but are likely to draw continuing fire from Republicans, and an
aggressive — some say unrealistic — pledge made in Paris to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050.
Mr. Obama in a meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, left, during the climate talks in Paris in December. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
All
of this, he acknowledges, could be undone at the ballot box. "I think
it's fair to say that if Donald Trump is elected, for example, you have a
pretty big shift now with how the E.P.A. operates," he said.
Mrs.
Clinton has embraced Mr. Obama's go-it-alone approach, promising to
meet and in some cases exceed his goals without trying to pass
cap-and-trade legislation. She is proposing marquee projects like
installing 500 million solar panels by 2020 and giving states and cities
$60 billion to invest in energy-efficient public transportation and
buildings.
"It will be first-order business," Mr. Podesta said.
But Mrs. Clinton will face the same partisan fire Mr. Obama has. He noted that, like him, Mrs. Clinton had been pilloried in coal country
for acknowledging that coal mining would have a declining role in a
21st-century economy. Mr. Obama's bet is that as his regulations get
woven into the fabric of the economy, they will be harder for anyone to
unwind. He says that his successor should promote past victories,
including those of Republicans like Richard M. Nixon and George Bush.
For
his part, Mr. Obama said he planned to stay active in fighting climate
change in his post-presidential life. During his tour of the wildlife on
Midway, he paused to make an improbable remark.
"My
hope," he said, "is that maybe as ex-president I can have a little more
influence on some of my Republican friends, who I think up until now
have been resistant to the science."
