BUSINESSES WANT CLIMATE PACT: President Obama is touting support from dozens of major corporations for a strong international climate pact in December in Paris.
Companies including Intel, Levi Strauss and Walmart signed into the White House’s American Business Act on Climate Pledge, supporting the Paris talks while setting out their own commitments to reduce greenhouse gases.
Obama’s hoping that showing strong business support could ward off tough opposition from Republicans and others to the United States participating in the United Nations-led talks.
{mosads}”We have to do something about climate change, because not only is it going to have an impact on our children and our grandchildren and we have a moral obligation to leave them a planet that is as wonderful as the one that we inherited from our forebears, but it’s really important for America’s bottom line and economic growth that we do something about climate change,” Obama said after meeting with five CEOs whose companies signed onto the pledge.
Vice President Biden later thanked the business leaders in his own speech about climate change.
Biden, a potential candidate for president, also used his speech to tout his own accomplishments on climate change, dating back to a 1986 Senate bill to fight greenhouse gases.
ON TAP TUESDAY I: Todd Stern, the U.S.’s special envoy for climate change, will testify before a Senate Foreign Affairs Committee panel about the Paris climate conference. Stern is the Obama administration’s top climate negotiator at the United Nations, which will host the high-stakes climate conference in Paris later this year, and he’s expected to face a committee whose Republican majority is skeptical about the prospects for success at that conference.
ON TAP TUESDAY II: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hear from nominees for positions in the Interior and Energy Departments.
Rest of Tuesday’s agenda …
Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell will speak at a National Press Club event on “urban sustainability, rural prosperity.”
AROUND THE WEB:
The Harrisburg Patriot-News Monday launched a multi-part series investigating how Pennsylvania regulators have treated the Marcellus Shale gas industry. The paper’s conclusion is that environmental regulators “ignored citizens’ constitutional right to clean air and water.”
Oklahoma officials are mandating a new set of actions to stop some oil and gas drilling underground amid concerns wastewater injections cause earthquakes, the Oklahoman reports.
Saudi Arabia is delaying payments to government contractors for the first time in years as oil royalty payments are squeezed, Bloomberg Business reports.
NEWS BITE: Canadians go to the polls on Monday to elect a new Parliament and, ultimately, a new Prime Minister, a decision that will have a big impact on energy policy and the Keystone XL pipeline.
Canada’s Prime Minister, conservative Stephen Harper, supports the pipeline project and expanded energy development in the country.
His leading opponents, however, aren’t so sold. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, who stands to succeed Harper if polling is to be believed, supports Keystone but has said he’s opposed to two other controversial pipeline projects there.
Tom Mulcair, the leader of the New Democratic Party, opposes the pipeline and has called for more taxes and harder regulations on the energy industry.
Alberta voters issued a surprising mandate to a new liberal government in the spring, a move that has already had an impact on energy policy there. Canadian voters at large have the chance to do the same Monday night.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Check out Monday’s stories …
– Biden touts climate accomplishments
– Supreme Court to hear case on power plant subsidies
– Hydropower backers push faster permitting
– Former BLM chiefs push Obama on methane rules
– Coal company to pay $5,000 fine for ‘fire Obama’ signs
– Kerry calls for ‘ambitious’ Paris climate deal
– Obama courts big business for support in climate talks
– Week ahead: House GOP targets climate, ozone rules
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