“The President’s Climate Action Plan, including today’s final Clean Power Plan, is already working to comprehensively drive down US emissions, and lead the way for our worldwide partners”, Kerry said.
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Under the plan, each US state will have to comply with an emission-cutting target set by the EPA, but they will have flexibility in how best to achieve that goal.
States will have considerable freedom in how they go about curbing emissions from power plants, with the rules expected to unleash a wave of renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, energy efficiency and carbon trading programmes.
McConnaha notes the plan is 1,500 pages, and it will take some time to determine details of how Oregon will act.
“Climate change is no longer just about the future we’re predicting for our children or our grandchildren, it’s about the reality that we’re living with every day – right now”, said Obama pointing to stronger storms, deeper droughts and more frequent floods.
Obama was joined in the East Room by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy and by parents of asthma patients.
A fellow republican hopeful for the White House in 2016, Rick Perry, told Fox News that the economy would suffer under the carbon cuts.
Sixteen states will have more stringent carbon dioxide reduction targets than those that were in the original proposal a year ago.
Obama, however, said he is not declaring “war” against the coal industry.
As the nation’s top utility for providing wind energy, Fowke said the company already is poised to meet some of the plan’s requirements. Environmental advocates say without dramatic change, certain aspects of climate change may be irreversible.
He says bioenergy has the potential to add revenue of $6 billion per year to the country’s economy and there are many economically viable niche bioenergy opportunities.
These new standards targeting fossil fuel-fired power plants are in accordance with the Obama administration’s plan to slash the country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions by 17% against a 2005 baseline by 2020, and then again by 26-28% below 2005 levels by the year 2025. “If we don’t do it, nobody will. The only reason that China is now looking at getting serious about its emissions is because they saw that we were going to do it, too”.
“The plan is an example of the visionary leadership necessary to reduce emissions and to tackle climate change“, he said.
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“My administration will release the final version of America’s Clean Power Plan, the biggest, most important step we have ever taken to combat climate change“.
