President Obama’s senior climate adviser said Tuesday that the politics surrounding climate change are too difficult to move a nationwide policy through Congress, even under the next president.
Brian Deese said Congress is far behind on the issue, making the politics “very challenging” in the near term. That means any major action will have to come through executive action, he said. So if Democrat Hillary Clinton is elected next month, that likely would be her course of action.
President Obama has stoked the ire of Republicans by seeking to go around Congress by using his authority as president to execute regulations to combat climate change across a number of agencies.
Deese, speaking at a conference at Columbia University, also said it was highly unlikely that a tax on carbon dioxide emissions could be passed anytime soon given the intransigence on Capitol Hill.
“I don’t think that that type of approach is on the near-term horizon,” Deese said Tuesday. “We do still have a disconnect, where the congressional politics of this issue have not caught up with either the substance of the issue, the urgency of the issue or what’s actually happening in terms of the speed at which you’re seeing transformations in the economy.”
Deese’s comments come two days after the second presidential debate, in which clean energy and fossil fuel policies were discussed briefly without much conversation about climate change specifically.
Afterward, reporters pointed out that Republican nominee Donald Trump’s positions on saving the fossil fuel industry from harmful regulations did not account for the shifting market realities that have much to do with low natural gas prices and less with Environmental Protection Agency rules.
Deese’s comments appear to dovetail with that criticism of Trump’s energy agenda, in which the Obama adviser noted Tuesday that the “politics of this issue have not caught up with … what’s actually happening in terms of the speed at which you’re seeing transformations in the economy.”
Deese and others have noted the rise of solar energy in the last year, which shows that renewables have become economical and competitive with fossil fuels in powering the grid. He also noted that will continue thanks to last year’s passage of a renewable energy tax credit that will extend tax subsidies for five years.
He told the crowd at Columbia on Tuesday that any future climate approach would have to examine how to best help the market cut the emissions that many scientists say are driving man-made global warming.
Trump, who in the past has downplayed renewables as too costly, said Sunday night that he supports wind and solar while making the case that the Obama administration’s regulations are “absolutely killing our energy business.”
“Now, I am all for alternative forms of energy, including wind and including solar, etc.,” Trump said. “But we need much more than wind and solar.”
