The Guardian view on climate change: Obama’s plan is overdue but welcome all the same | Editorial
President Obama on Monday set out a plan to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions. His proposals are neither new nor radical, but deserve to be strongly supported, both in America and across the globe. Explicitly, the statement was a challenge to state governors, to Republican senators and congressmen, to fossil-fuel barons, to entrepreneurs who want to invest in renewable sources of energy, and to citizens who want to hang on to their homes and their jobs.
Implicitly, it was assurance to the rest of the world that there could be real agreement at the next United Nations climate conference in Paris in December. And if there is real agreement, based on binding promises and targets that can be measured, then it might after all be possible to contain global warming to a maximum of 2C and to limit catastrophic climate change. To cut greenhouse gas emissions by 32% from levels surpassed 10 years ago and to do it all by 2030 sounds pretty radical: hundreds of coal-fired power stations could close, mines could shut down. There will be legal and administrative challenges, from at least a dozen states, maybe two dozen. Americans who do not believe that climate change is a real hazard, and those who accept the science but not the solutions, are hardly likely to change their minds because of yet another fiat from the White House.
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