President of the United States, Barack Obama, has unveiled the US’s first ever Climate Action Plan, saying that we have a “moral obligation to leave our children a planet that’s not polluted or damaged”.

Unveiling ‘The President’s Climate Action Plan’ in a speech at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C, yesterday (25 June), President Obama pointed to several domestic events that had been compounded by climate change. He cited the fact that due to climate change, the sea level in New York Harbour has risen by more than a foot in the past 100 years, which ‘contributed to the destruction that left large parts of [the] mightiest city dark and underwater’ after Hurricane Sandy, and accounted for the fact that 2012 saw both the warmest year in US history but also wettest spring on record.

He said: “Americans across the country are ‘already paying the price of inaction in insurance premiums, state and local taxes, and the costs of rebuilding and disaster relief… So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. And how we answer will have a profound impact on the world that we leave behind not just to you, but to your children and to your grandchildren. As a President, as a father, and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act.

“I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing. And that’s why, today, I'm announcing a new national climate action plan, and I'm here to enlist your generation's help in keeping the United States of America a leader -- a global leader -- in the fight against climate change.”

Climate Plan Details

As well as a general commitment to ‘lead international efforts to address global climate change’, the plan includes several specific actions, including:

• reinforcing and extending flood defences;
• providing $8 billion (£5 billion) in federal loan guarantees to spur investment in green technologies;
• introducing new federal carbon pollution standards for both new and existing power plants;
• developing post-2018 fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles;
• setting a goal to double wind and solar electricity generation ‘once again’ by 2020;
• directing the Department of Interior to permit enough renewable electricity generation to power ‘more than six million homes’;
• seeing federal government consume 20 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 (up from current goal of 7.5 per cent);
• providing up to $250 million (£162 million) for rural utilities to finance efficiency investments.

Obama added that the plan, especially the areas relating to ‘complete new pollution standards for both new and existing power plants’, will not be met with unanimous welcome, indeed, the House Speaker in the House of Representatives John Boehner, has called the plans "absolutely crazy".

Obama said: “What you’ll hear from the special interests and their allies in Congress is that this [plan] will kill jobs and crush the economy, and basically end American free enterprise as we know it. And the reason I know you'll hear those things is because that's what they said every time America sets clear rules and better standards for our air and our water and our children’s health. And every time, they've been wrong… It’s not an either/or; it’s a both/and. We’ve got to look after our children; we have to look after our future; and we have to grow the economy and create jobs.”

Adding that the plan “does not mean that we’re going to suddenly stop producing fossil fuels”, Obama conceded, “transitioning to a clean energy economy takes time… What is true is that we can’t just drill our way out of the energy and climate challenge that we face. That’s not possible.”

President Obama concluded: “Someday, our children, and our children’s children, will look at us in the eye and they'll ask us, did we do all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safer, more stable world? And I want to be able to say, yes, we did.”

Reaction

The plan has been welcomed by many political leaders and green groups, with European Climate Action Commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, saying: ''I am of course glad to see that the United States is finally moving on climate. After a number of important speeches from President Obama and Secretary Kerry, Europe has been eagerly waiting for the US to set out concrete steps. So this plan is a most welcomed step forward and, if implemented, it can put the US on a path towards a low carbon future.

"Internationally, the White House plan contains a number of good intentions which have now to be translated into more concrete action. The first opportunity will be for the US to support an ambitious deal this September in ICAO on a global solution to limit international aviation emissions. And by 2015, a robust US commitment to reduce its domestic emissions over the longer term as part of a binding climate treaty.

"Europe will continue working to get all our partners on board for the ambitious action our planet demands. But we need all the world's major economies to play ball. And this announcement from Washington, and growing signs of domestic action in China and elsewhere, are positive signals that the world is finally moving on climate. Slowly, but moving. This is of course encouraging news as Europe embarks in the design of our climate and energy policies for 2030''.

However, some of groups have voiced concern at the lack of exclusion of gas and shale gas exploration from the future of the US’s energy scene, a move condemned by several environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth.

Damon Moglen, Climate and Energy Program Director of Friends of the Earth, said: "This is not a climate plan but a selection of actions - some very welcome actions like those proposed for cutting emissions from power plants -- but not the broad, ambitious plan that is needed to combat climate change and extreme weather.

“Coming just days after the International Energy Agency announced that global carbon emissions reached a new and terrifying high in 2012, President Obama’s proposed actions do not go nearly far enough or fast enough. We need ambitious leadership and actions from the president. A sensible climate plan would include a renunciation of the president’s “all of the above” energy strategy, which promotes biofuels, so-called clean coal, natural gas and dirty and dangerous nuclear power.

“In order to address climate change, the president needs to focus on the ambitious development of renewable energy, energy storage and efficiency technologies while setting us on a path which clearly leaves behind the fossil fuel-based energy economy of the 20th century.”

Others, including Saleemul Huq, Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development, told the BBC that the plan was "too little too late".

He said: "While it is good to see a leader of the world's richest country and biggest cumulative polluter finally promise to take actions," he said, "after over a decade of refusal to do so, the problem has become much bigger while the US was ignoring it."

And, as, Obama outlined, several US politicians have stepped out against the plan, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, saying that imposing carbon rules on power plants amounted to a "war on coal". He added: "This is a huge step in the wrong direction, particularly in the middle of the most tepid recovery after a deep recession in anyone's memory.”

Read ‘The President’s Climate Action Plan’, watch President Obama’s full speech at Georgetown University or view the infographic on the Climate Action Plan.