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Barack Obama speaking on climate change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Barack Obama speaking on climate change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
Barack Obama speaking on climate change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Obama urged to emphasise climate threat in state of the union address

This article is more than 11 years old
Environmental groups say Obama should build on his inaugural speech and edify the climate crisis as threat to Americans

Environmental groups in the US expect that Barack Obama will use his state of the union address to re-set the politics of climate change.

In a soaring inaugural speech, Obama defined the climate crisis as a moral issue for the generations. For his follow-up act, the president must persuade Americans that climate change is a clear and present threat to their daily lives and their livelihoods, requiring action now, said Paul Bledsoe, who directed the White House climate change taskforce under Bill Clinton.

"I think he has to frame climate change as an issue here, now, and as a threat. I think he has to frame it as a domestic issue – not a global issue," he said. "The challenge is to frame climate change as an issue with large costs that are only going to grow. That is his biggest opportunity. That is what he has to do."

Then, after making that broad argument, Obama should sketch out one or two specific responses.

"The inauguration address was poetry, and now people are looking for some prose," said Alden Meyer, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "They are looking for how he will build on that stirring call to action, and what he will do over the next couple of years."

The bigger task for Obama on Tuesday night will be to reframe climate change as a crisis in the present day and not decades away, environmental groups said.

He needs to remind Americans that drought, which affected 65% of the country last summer, and extreme weather events such as Hurricane Sandy, cost Americans billions last year. Dealing with the climate crisis will be costly and may require sacrifices, Obama is expected to say, but there is no other choice.

The connection to the economy is crucial, campaigners said. Obama must provide a rationale for elevating climate change in the national discourse – and insulate the White House from Republican charges he is neglecting the economy.

"He started with the inauguration address. Now this is an opportunity to extend the conversation and help connect the issue to the lives of everyday Americans," said Eliot Diringer, vice-president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

"He can say climate change is already affecting farmers and others experiencing extreme drought, and coastal communities experiencing extreme storms."

Obama will need to go on making the case, however, to get traction during his second-term, Diringer said. "This is a single moment. We need a sustained conversation."

In terms of specific measures on Tuesday night, Obama is expected to make a pro-forma appeal to Congress to set a national clean energy standard.

Most states already require electricity companies to source a share of their power from renewable sources like wind and solar. Obama asked Congress to pass a clean energy standard in his 2011 state of the union address.

But it is far more likely – given Republicans' resistance to any environmental regulations – that Obama will resort to using his existing authority to begin cutting the emissions that cause climate change.

Campaigners and industry groups expect Obama to announce that he will direct the Environmental Protection Agency to set out new regulations requiring coal-fired power plants and other polluters to cut their carbon emissions.

The EPA proposed emissions standards for new power plants last year that would make it effectively impossible to build any new coal-fired facilities.

But regulating existing power plants would go further than the actions Obama took in his first term. Power plants alone account for about a third of America's greenhouse gas emissions.

Obama may also ask Congress to end tax subsidies to fossil fuel companies, worth billions every year.

He is also likely to push the signature issues of his first term: the economic potential in the transition to a clean energy economy. Obama has consistently talked up green jobs as the jobs of the future.

In the wake of last year's extreme weather events, there is expectation he will begin factoring in the need to make towns and cities more resilient to climate threats – building up sea walls and wet lands in coastal towns, or securing power stations and other infrastructure in areas prone to flooding.

What is clear, however, is that in defining climate change as a threat in his inaugural address, Obama has committed himself to a course of action that will only begin to take shape on Tuesday night.

That marks a distinct change from Obama's first four years, when advisers decided the very mention of the words "climate change" was too politically risky at a time of economic recession.

Now, it seems evident, Obama has decided to take on the climate crisis head-on.

It would be going too far though to say Obama has adopted climate change as his legacy issue, said Robert Fri, editor of a special edition on energy and climate change produced by Daedalus, the journal of the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

"There is a very different thing in getting the administration to work on it, and deciding: 'This will be my legacy'," he said. "The most he can do in the next four years is get the ball rolling in the right direction. That's a great thing, but it's not the end of the cold war."

Even so, Fri said Tuesday night's speech could be the beginning of a new level of commitment from Obama to dealing with climate change. "If he puts his backing behind what the agencies can do with the existing tools, and provides them with political cover to get the ball rolling, that would certainly be a good thing," he said. "And that much I think is very likely to happen."

More on this story

More on this story

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  • State of the union 2013: Obama pledges new deal for US middle class

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  • Marco Rubio's reply speech to state of the union

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