We need more from Obama to fight climate change

This month marks the one-year countdown for President Obama’s time in office. Just a year, a blink of an eye in political terms, exists between the man and the environmental legacy he leaves for generations to come. 

As the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “There is such a thing as being too late.”

{mosads}The president recently made a bold move to halt new coal leases on public lands, but the clock is ticking down faster — both on Obama’s presidency and on our ability to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. One month ago, I watched the president and other heads of state in Paris do what was unthinkable only a year ago: they signed an agreement to stem the rise in global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It was a moment 21 years in the making, and it was remarkable.

The fact remains, though, that the national commitments offered up in Paris will result in a whopping 3 degree-plus Celsius rise in global temperature — and that’s assuming nations actually follow through on their voluntary pledges. That type of increase gets us to a world where climate change will be irreversible. Paris created the container, left it empty and with a huge hole in it. 

The president is making strides toward the long game, getting us to a voluntary climate change agreement and halting new coal leases. But time necessitates the big pass. Who better to show the world that audacious action can be taken than the United States? Historically the highest emitter of CO2, and one of the wealthiest nations in the world, the U.S. is positioned to do more, to embolden other countries to follow suit. Obama, in his sunset year, is uniquely poised to lead the path forward. 

Throughout the Paris talks, the U.S. negotiating team made it painfully clear that any agreement requiring the approval of Congress, including those beholden to powerful fossil fuel interests, would be untenable. The vitriolic response from fossil fuel senators to Obama’s recent moratorium on new coal leases, which will not impact existing coal production for at least 20 years, is proof of politicians aligned directly with corporate interests. But there is a clear action that Obama can take now to better the world and the lives of countless Americans who are waiting for respite from dirty energy: end leasing of public lands for all fossil fuels. 

Corporations are plundering our shared resources at huge expense to taxpayers, with irreversible consequences. Companies such as Cloud Peak Energy, Peabody Coal, BP and Exxon have caused major environmental disasters, the most infamous being the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion and rupture on April 20, 2010, which killed 11 workers and was the largest offshore environmental disaster in U.S. history. These companies are ransacking lands that are part of America’s heritage for our children — our wild places, our rivers and our aquifers. With a simple signature, Obama can end this outdated leasing program, prevent environmental destruction and end one-fourth of all U.S. climate emissions.

When Obama rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline, he affirmed a tidal wave of hundreds of thousands of people who protested the pipeline and its climate impacts. That wave has only grown in size and force to demand that we keep fossil fuels in the ground. The president has one year in which he can listen to the will of the American people, be bold and be remembered for changing the course of history. In Paris, he noted, “When it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us.” 

Mr. President, your hour has arrived. 

Allen is the executive director of Rainforest Action Network.