Obama to Use Presidential Powers to Take On Climate Change

WASHINGTON (February 12, 2013) – Extending his campaign against the central environmental challenge of our time, President Obama vowed tonight to use the powers of the presidency  to respond to the threat of climate change.
            
Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, made the following statement:
            
“The president has a full box of tools to strike back at climate chaos. The best tool he has is the Clean Air Act. It gives him the authority to reduce the carbon pollution from our dirtiest power plants, the single greatest threat to our climate future. That will take presidential leadership. Americans are counting on it —and that’s what the president delivered tonight.
            
“The president also laid out an assertive agenda for reducing dangerous carbon pollution more broadly, promising to lead a national effort to cut energy waste in half by 2030 and advance our use of renewable power.
            
“This is a vision for needed change. We can’t power a 21st-Century economy with the fossil fuels of the past. We must invest, as a nation, in the next generation of clean power plants. We must develop energy-efficient cars, workplaces and homes. And we must expand our use of renewable energy.”