By Jeff Goodell
April 23, 2014 1:45 PM ET
EDITOR'S NOTE: On Friday April 18th, after the print version of this story had closed, the State Department announced that the decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline would be delayed due to legal challenges to the pipeline's route, effectively putting off resolution of this controversial issue until after the election. The text has been updated to reflect these latest developments.
President Obama is not even halfway through his second term yet, but you can almost feel the cement hardening around his feet. The glory days of hope and change have faded, his approval rating has flat-lined below 50 percent, and jockeying for 2016 has begun in earnest. But for Obama, the game ain't over yet. In the next few months, he will take one of the biggest gambles of his presidency by testing the radical proposition that even SUV-loving Americans believe that global warming is real and are ready to do something about it.
Obama and Climate Change: The Real Story
It's a gamble that could have a profound impact on energy politics, our economy and our ability to stabilize the climate. But if the president is wrong, it could not only cost his party control of the Senate this fall but also blow the last opportunity we have to save ourselves from life on a superheated planet. "It's a transformative moment," says Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island in what may be the understatement of the century.
The springboard of Obama's big leap is to use his presidential powers to effectively hasten the phase-out of dirty coal from America's energy system. Right now, coal-fired power plants generate about 40 percent of the electricity in the U.S. and are by far the largest single source of heat-trapping gases. Last year, he directed the Environmental Protection Agency to develop new rules to limit carbon pollution from power plants. These rules, which the EPA will make public in early June, are fraught with political peril, not least because they will stoke up talk of a War on Coal, which Republicans will argue is code for a War on the American Way of Life.
At the same time, the president is likely to announce his decision on the northern leg of the Keystone XL, the hugely controversial 1,179-mile-long pipeline that would bring tar-sands oil down from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries. Although no final decision has been made, two high-level sources in the Obama administration told me recently that the president has all but decided to deny the permit for the pipeline – a dramatic move that would light up Democratic voters and donors while further provoking the wrath of Big Oil. Finally, Obama is positioning the U.S. to play a key role in negotiations on a new global-climate treaty that will begin next year, establishing American leadership on climate issues and giving him one last chance to lead the world to a cooler future before he leaves the Oval Office.
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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... y-20131217
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