Slow Start on Environment in Second Obama Term

News
April 24, 2013
 
John M. Broder
 
WASHINGTON
 
SHORTLY after winning re-election in November, President Obama promised assertive leadership on climate change and energy. In his State of the Union address in February, he vowed that if the assembled lawmakers failed to pass broad climate legislation, he would act unilaterally.
 
And yet in the ensuing months, little more has been heard from the president or his cabinet on the matter.
...
“Based on his budget and the narrative coming out of the White House, there is really nothing new, only a doubling down on the agenda articulated in the first term,” said Karen A. Harbert, a former top Energy Department official and now president of the Institute for 21st Century Energy, an arm of the United States Chamber of Commerce.
 
She said Mr. Obama could not win passage in Congress of a cap-and-trade program for emissions in his first term, so he would now try to accomplish similar goals through E.P.A. regulation.
 
Rather than shutting coal-burning plants, she said, a better policy would be financing research on capturing and storing carbon emissions from all fossil fuel power plants.
 
Read the full article at the New York Times.