CA M PA I G N U P DAT E
AS END OF OBAMA ERA NEARS, NRDC CAMPAIGNS FOR A STRONG FINISH industry and climate deniers at home elevated President Obama to a position of credible environmental leadership on the world stage, allowing him to negotiate with nations like China and India on carbonreduction targets and then achieve a strong international climate accord in Paris late last year. “NRDC has been a powerful advocate for ambitious action on the climate and clean energy fronts, paving the way for the president’s breakthrough policies,” Suh says. “Meanwhile, our Members kept the pressure on the White House when it came to Keystone XL and other flashpoint battles over fossil fuels. Now we have an extraordinary opportunity to call on this president — who has demonstrated that he shares our concerns — to expand his environmental legacy before he leaves office.” That includes prevailing on President Obama to permanently protect America’s Atlantic and Arctic coasts from future oil and gas leasing. “It would absolutely run counter to the president’s stated goals on climate to open these essentially untouched ocean environments to fossil fuel extraction,” says Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, NRDC’s chief Top: Harp seal in the Arctic. Bottom: Bears Ears Buttes, Utah program officer. In a similar fuel efficiency standards for cars in 2012, vein, NRDC is pressing the White House to put forth a sweeping plan to slash carbon extend the landmark moratorium the president emissions from power plants — America’s imposed earlier this year on new leases for coal largest source of climate pollution — in 2014, mining on our public lands to cover new leases and vetoed the climate-wrecking Keystone for oil and gas development as well. No less XL tar sands pipeline in 2015. There’s little imperative is blocking Big Oil’s plan to send a doubt that standing up to the fossil fuel fleet of supertankers hauling tar sands crude
from new Canadian pipelines to refineries up and down America’s coasts, a blatant attempt to circumvent the president’s veto of Keystone XL and double down on one of the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet. When it comes to protecting our last remaining wildlands and ocean wilderness, President Obama has designated more national monuments than any other president in history. They span important ecosystems from the Great North Woods of Maine and the waters off the New England coast to the San Gabriel Mountains outside Los Angeles and the wildlife-filled waters of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. But among the spectacular areas still in need of permanent protection, the 1.9 million acres surrounding the Bears Ears Buttes in southern Utah stand out. “Designating these lands a national monument not only
We have an extraordinary opportunity to call on this president to expand his environmental legacy before he leaves office. would preserve an extraordinary expanse of redrock wilderness,” says Sharon Buccino, director of NRDC’s Land and Wildlife program, “but would also safeguard cliff dwellings, rock art and sacred tribal lands that go back 10,000 years.” One area where the Obama Administration has fallen short is protecting America’s vital pollinators from disastrous decline. Both bees and monarch butterflies have suffered [Continued on next page.]
SEAL © AGEFOTOSTOCK; BEARS EARS © TIM PETERSON
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ight years later, it’s easy to forget that when a freshman senator from Illinois captured the White House following a groundbreaking and historic campaign, there was little to suggest that Barack Obama might go down as one of the most important environmental presidents in history. “Climate change, clean energy, preserving our wilderness heritage for future generations — these are issues that candidate Obama certainly talked about on the campaign trail in 2008,” says NRDC President Rhea Suh. “But they often took a backseat to other concerns. It has been an extraordinary transformation. We’ve watched this president emerge as a true environmental leader, one who has put the future of our planet front and center.” While NRDC and other environmental advocates were pushing hard to change course after the polluter-friendly agenda that had marked the Bush Administration, a rapidly escalating financial crisis followed by a bruising political fight over health care would largely consume the new president’s first term. Environmental protection was often sacrificed to other priorities, as when the Obama Administration opened up millions of acres of public lands to oil and gas drilling as part of its “all of the above” energy policy. Meanwhile, comprehensive climate and energy legislation died in the Senate after passing in the House, in part because the White House appeared unwilling to throw its full weight behind the cause. Yet President Obama was steadily coming to see environmental action as central to his legacy, fueled by a growing concern — now shared by a substantial majority of Americans — about the dire threat of climate change and the scientific consensus that time is running out to fend off the worst of its impacts. To address that threat, the Obama Administration raised the federal