Obama begins climate victory lap at Lake Tahoe

President Obama used a Wednesday speech at the 20th Lake Tahoe Summit to boast about his accomplishments on fighting climate change and on conservation.

Speaking at the Nevada event led by retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Obama proudly listed off what he’s done to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, promote low-carbon energy sources and protect land and water from development, among other actions.

{mosads}The speech comes at the beginning of a trip that will eventually take him to Asia, where a top focus with leaders of the Group of 20 nations will be implementing the Paris climate deal that Obama helped negotiate last year.

The White House has not confirmed reports that he’s hoping to announce there that he will formally sign onto the Paris agreement.

But Obama is nonetheless taking numerous opportunities on the trip to take a victory lap on the environment.

“We’ve been working on climate change on every front,” Obama said at the event near the shore of Lake Tahoe. “We’ve worked to generate more clean energy, use less dirty energy, waste less energy overall.”

Obama said that major investments in clean energy like those in the Recovery Act, along with carbon rules for cars, trucks and power plants, have reduced the costs of clean energy, created jobs and reduced energy bills.

“It’s been the smart and right thing to do,” he said.

Congressional Republicans and the energy industry have resisted Obama’s climate plans at every step, including through numerous lawsuits and legislation that he has vetoed.

The main pillar of his climate agenda, the Clean Power Plan, has an uncertain fate, thanks to a Supreme Court hold on its implementation this year.

But Obama was not deterred, crediting his climate agenda with a decrease in energy-related carbon emissions.

“And by the way, during the same, we’ve had the longest streak of job creation on record, the auto industry is booming,” he said. “There is no contradiction between being smart on the environment and having a strong economy, and we’ve got to keep it going.”

Obama also boasted about his conservation agenda, in which he’s used his unilateral authority under the Antiquities Act to protect more public land and water than any previous president. He created the most recent national monuments last week in Maine and Hawaii.

“Conservation is more than just putting up a plaque and calling something a park,” Obama said. “We embrace conservation because health and diverse lands and waters help us build resilience to climate change. We do it to free more of our communities, and plants and animals, and species from wildfires and droughts and displacement.”

Obama used the speech to roll out a series of climate and conservation measures for the American West, focused on reducing wildfires, getting the private sector to help with conservation and restoring California’s troubled Salton Sea.