Don’t expect a Republican-controlled Congress to halt President Obama’s steps to address climate change, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said during a news conference.
Earnest, speaking during an Election Day in which Republicans are expected to gain control of the Senate, promised that new White House executive actions to restrain greenhouse gas emissions, which most scientists say drive global warming, would come after Tuesday’s midterm elections.
“The president will use his executive action to take some additional steps,” Earnest said.
Earnest was responding to a question on what the Obama administration hopes to accomplish in the face of Republican opposition in Congress. He said many GOP lawmakers still don’t believe or are skeptical of the impact humans have on climate change, so executive authority was the last recourse for pushing the president’s climate agenda.
Republicans, though, will have Obama’s climate and environmental policies in their crosshairs if they do gain control of both chambers in Congress. Limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to police emissions, along with passing measures aimed at barring a proposed rule to slash carbon emissions from power plants, will be a high priority for Republicans.
But the Obama administration has pledged to lead on climate changeto secure buy-in from other countries heading into international climate talks next year in Paris. Nations there are seeking a deal to govern emissions reductions beyond 2020 in hopes of keeping global temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius by 2100.
As part of that United Nations negotiation process, the United States is expected by March to tender a target for cutting emissions. Nations also will look for the U.S. to offer other measures in the coming months.
Next on the docket could be the interagency strategy to reduce emissions of methane, the largest unregulated greenhouse gas in the U.S., that the Obama administration is crafting. The White House is expected to release a proposal this fall to restrain emissions of the potent, short-lived greenhouse gas that’s 25 times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
