Critics of the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate change agenda should brace themselves — the Obama administration isn’t letting up.

President Barack Obama has launched an unprecedented regulatory assault on greenhouse gas emissions, putting the White House’s executive branch power on display and enraging conservative opponents as the president works to cement his environmental legacy.


It’s the result of 24 months of heavy lifting by EPA that started when Obama unveiled a sweeping climate plan on a sweltering day at Georgetown University two years ago this week, telling students there he refused “to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing.”

Now, the administration is in full swing: The EPA on Friday proposed new fuel efficiency rules for heavy-duty trucks, the agency recently took the first step toward cutting airplane emissions, and its planning to curb methane emissions from new oil and gas operations.

That’s on top of the Interior Department’s plans to regulate hydraulic fracturing on federal lands, EPA’s proposal to veer the country’s ethanol trajectory away from Congress’ goals, and new water rules that have enraged agricultural groups.

It’s all building to August, when the EPA is expected to finalize first-ever greenhouse gas rules for the nation’s massive fleet of power plants, a plan that’s set to pummel an already-ailing coal industry.

Environmentalists, who for years have complained about the failure of the U.S. to take on climate change, are now hailing Obama’s vigor in trying to cut the emissions blamed for the warming planet.

“The president’s climate action plan identified the biggest opportunities to cut carbon pollution using the authority of existing laws. His agencies are now delivering, as promised,” said David Doniger, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and clean air program.

But Republicans are furious, deriding the strategy as executive overreach for a policy that Obama couldn’t get passed in Congress.

“EPA’s overreach comes at a significant cost to American taxpayers and energy consumers,” Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the most vocal climate change skeptic in Congress, said through a spokeswoman. “The administration’s extremist agenda on global warming will reduce grid reliability, raise the cost of energy, undermine the Clean Air Act, move jobs overseas and ignores the will of Congress.”

Obama’s climate agenda hasn’t won him many friends in the fossil fuel industry either.

“What started out as an academic speech two years ago will long be remembered for its role in leading us down a path away from the intent of Congress and the people and towards governance through executive fiat,” Laura Sheehan, a spokeswoman for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal industry group. “So far-reaching are the administration’s environmental missives that they will undermine our nation’s energy security and wreak havoc on families’ budgets; all for negligible climate impact.”

Obama jaunted into his second term with a renewed desire to take action on climate change. But, having been burned by a first-term push to pass cap-and-trade legislation, he knew Congress had no appetite for the issue. In a much-heralded speech at Georgetown University in June 2013, the president unveiled a 21-page plan that outlined his agenda.

The takeaway from the speech was clear: The administration would go it alone, abandoning its years-long push for a climate bill in favor of dozens of new regulations and initiatives that touch on most major sectors of the economy.

Two years later, scarcely a week goes by without the administration unveiling a new climate change initiative.

The EPA last week proposed a new regulation that would require makers of heavy-duty trucks to hike fuel efficiency by up to 24 percent. The rule, the agency said, would save 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide over the life of the vehicles sold during the program.

Administration officials hope the domestic climate push will help build momentum toward a new international climate change deal. Negotiators are meeting in Paris later this year with hopes of reaching an agreement that would for the first time commit every country to domestic plans to curb emissions.

The administration has made rehabilitating the United States’ image abroad a priority after almost two decades of half-hearted attempts to reach significant climate treaties.

“They really are putting the United States on the map as a global leader in tackling this problem,” said Bob Perciasepe, who served as deputy administrator of the EPA before becoming president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions last year. ”A lot of work is going to need to be done over the next decades, but the work they’re doing now is setting the stage.”

William Reilly, the EPA administrator under George H. W. Bush, said the clock ticking down on Obama’s second term was also likely driving EPA’s productivity.

“I think there might be some element of clearing the decks and setting things in motion before a new administration comes in and starts changing things,” he said.

Still, EPA has spent decades crafting rules that are designed to stand to legal challenges — which are already lining up against the upcoming rule for power plants.

“The EPA has had a lot of animosity to deal with and it’s gotten good,” he said. “You’ve got to be the best because everybody is all over you.”

In tandem with the summertime push, the Obama administration has launched a sophisticated media campaign aimed at promoting its climate agenda, touting its efforts to cut emissions everywhere from Twitter to the Coast Guard.

Reporters from major news outlets were invited to the White House on Monday for a briefing on a new EPA report outlining the long-term benefits of global crackdown on emissions. The peer-reviewed report found that limiting the global temperature increase to about 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels would prevent thousands of U.S. deaths and boost the economy by billions of dollars.

“In every part of our economy … we see major benefits to the U.S. from global action on climate change,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said.

The administration will mark the two-year anniversary of Obama’s Georgetown climate change speech with a series of events, including at a White House climate change and public health summit on Tuesday.

Meanwhile Republicans are pushing back hard, challenging the president’s climate agenda at every turn. EPA has long been a favorite punching bag of the right and Republicans in Congress haven’t missed an opportunity to warn about its climate regulations.

“The president is harming our economy with his approach to these things, which makes our energy costlier at home and allows the rest of the world to continue increasing emissions,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told POLITICO recently.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has launched a “just say no” campaign in which he encourages states to refuse to comply with EPA’s not-yet-finalized climate regulations. Congressional appropriators have also taken a hatchet to the agency’s budget.

Lawmakers are pushing a series of bills that would effectively block EPA rules. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday on legislation written by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) that would cripple EPA’s proposed power plant regulations, and the House is expected to approve legislation this week that would exempt states from EPA’s climate regulations if a governor determines they will harm the economy or threaten electric reliability.

But Obama administration officials say they aren’t worried.

“The president has made it pretty clear that he’s not going to accept efforts [by Congress] to undermine this critically important work,” Brian Deese, Obama’s senior adviser, told reporters Monday.