President Barack Obama’s climate plan is no longer just at the center of a domestic debate about coal country and the Environmental Protection Agency. On Tuesday, the Obama administration made the president’s greenhouse-gas emissions strategy an official international commitment, staking the good faith and reputation of the United States on its fulfillment. It’s an important step that should prod other nations to follow suit.
The components of Obama’s plan were largely known before Tuesday. The EPA will demand a 30 percent cut in greenhouse emissions by 2030 from the carbon-heavy electricity sector, an effort that will contribute to the closure of old coal-fired power plants the country should have retired years ago. The plan also calls for efficiency improvements in commercial buildings and appliances, vehicles that burn less fuel, the phaseout of harmful refrigerants and a reduction of methane leaks from natural gas operations. Administration officials say the plan can be implemented under existing law — and will be before Obama leaves office. They say it can achieve an economy-wide emissions cut of 26 to 28 percent by 2025.
Proof that this sort of U.S. leadership matters came in November, when the emerging U.S. carbon dioxide plan helped persuade China — the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter but traditionally a reluctant partner in anti-emissions efforts — to commit to an ambitious greenhouse-gas control plan of its own. Critics who insisted that American effort wouldn’t do any good because no one would follow were proved wrong. Mexico since has submitted a serious emissions commitment, as well. The major nations of the world must respond to scientists’ warnings, and U.S. leadership is a necessary prerequisite.
The Obama administration’s commitment represents a more realistic approach to climate diplomacy than past efforts. Instead of attempting to impose emissions cuts via a legally binding treaty, the United Nations is asking governments to submit voluntary commitments based on assessments of their own circumstances. Climate negotiators will collect and certify these national submissions at a conference in Paris this year.
Such commitments aren’t as certain as treaty obligations. In the United States, for example, a Republican president could all too easily curb or cancel the U.S. commitment. But Obama is taking achievable steps, and we can hope that continuing progress, along with the urgency of the problem, will create a logic of its own.
There is plenty of room for responsible criticism of the president’s plan. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., for example, said Tuesday that it puts too much emphasis on wind power and too little on nuclear. But Alexander properly did not counter with inaction as a viable plan. His fellow Republicans could learn something from his example.