In a few weeks, nearly 200 countries will meet in Paris to try, once more, to figure out how to cut global greenhouse gas emissions and save human life on Earth. So in advance, every country is setting up its chess pieces. For the negotiations to work, the rest of the world has to believe that the US takes climate change seriously.

In that context, President Obama’s series of executive actions on the environment—new regulations of coal power plants, canceling Arctic drilling leases, and killing the Keystone XL pipeline—all start to look like a plan. Make a decision at home; get more leverage in Paris when negotiators in other countries base their arguments on “we don’t wanna because you don’t wanna.”

But those decisions also suggest more to come. And more needs to come. Even with India, Brazil, and even China making emissions pledges, the Paris meeting still won’t meet its goal of keeping global average temperatures from rising an average of 2˚C. That leaves the door open for even wilder, fantasy-scale stuff. It’s Obama’s last year in office—he’s not running again. Perhaps this really is a president who, as he himself has suggested, gives no fucks.

So what could the president do? What would move the needle in Paris?

The best way to stop climate change is by leaving fossil fuels in the ground. It is also the most radical. Before Keystone XL, nobody had so boldly blocked an energy company's desires. Now it seems like anything is possible. "Half of all fossil fuel sources in the US are on public lands," says Jason Kowalski, US policy director for 350.org. "With a stroke of the pen, President Obama could completely end the process of issuing coal, oil, and natural gas leases."

With a stroke of the pen, President Obama could completely end the process of issuing coal, oil, and natural gas leases. Jason Kowalski, 350.org

OK, maybe that’s too extreme. But what about smaller fixes? Last month on The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer floated the idea of getting rich environmentalists or nonprofits to buy coal leases from the Bureau of Land Management and sit on them. That’d lock the stuff away in the ground. Currently, the BLM's rules require that anybody buying a coal lease has to have a plan for developing the stuff into energy. Obama could just nudge the agency away from that regulation, and the progressive money would do the rest.

Or he could look to the seas. The Bureau of Oceans Management decides how to lease offshore oil and gas developments. The agency is currently developing its five year plan. "Right now it's an open question whether Obama will include future Arctic drilling in that plan," says Kowalski. The president could also use the plan to shut down proposed drill sites off the coast of Virginia. Any changes made in the plan would stay in place through November 2022—no matter who gets elected next November.

But there might be hidden costs to locking away fossil fuels. "If setting some of them aside just drives up the value of other fossil fuel reserves, that could end up undermining some of the climate benefit," says Jason Funk, senior climate scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Without competitively-priced alternatives, extractable fossil fuels would become more valuable, and the rest of the fossil fuel industry would rake in greater profits. “That’s why it’s so important to double down on the breakthroughs we’ve made in wind and solar,” he said, “reinvesting the gains from a strengthening economy into long-term energy solutions.”

Not every solution requires fiddling with the delicate levers of energy policy. "One of the most important things we could do would be fixing the way we approach wildfires," says Funk. "Right now the Forest Service and other land management agencies have to spend resources on fire suppression, and that takes away from budget aimed at fire prevention." In 2015, over 9 million acres burned in this country, releasing as-yet uncalculated volumes of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases. (Also, those trees are no longer breathing in, and removing, carbon from the atmosphere.) In recent years, Congress has come close to reforming the system by making emergency funds available for extreme fires.

This notion isn’t just tree-hugging. That wood is a resource with the potential to be a carbon-neutral fuel. After all, a tree can only emit as much carbon as it removes from the atmosphere over its lifespan. Currently, the southeastern US exports tons of wood pellets to the European Union, to be burned in biomass energy facilities. "Done right, it's a closed loop," says Funk.

Done wrong, it's an open loophole. "You have something being managed in the forestry sector of one country, but being sold and burned in another country, and managed under their energy sector," says Funk. Somewhere, the accounting falls apart because nobody is responsible for tracking how much wood is being cut down and how much is being burned. "This seems like something the administration could look into and use the EPA to help clarify these issues, and put the incentives in the right direction," says Funk.

Another thing Obama could do is go after the people responsible for the crummy atmosphere—the oil companies. Conspiracy theory? Unfortunately not. A recent Inside Climate News exposé showed that ExxonMobil had scientifically confirmed the links between human CO 2 emissions and climate change as early as 1977. The report goes further, showing that the company then spent decades lobbying against climate change regulations, and funding climate change denialism.

Since then, there have been calls for everything from a federal investigation to a congressional hearing. "Much like we saw with the tobacco lawsuits, a lot of information can come out of these kinds of hearings," says Funk. "If there was any deliberate deceit of the public, that needs to be put out there and reckoned with." So far, the strongest legal action was taken by the New York State Attorney General, who announced on November 5 an investigation into the company.

Anything further is, at this point, speculation.

Like: Will the president’s new coal power plant rules survive a flurry of legal challenges? Will the US even abide by whatever promises it makes in Paris, when a fossil fuel-friendly congress is threatening to tank everything the administration promises? After all, if the Paris meeting begets treaties, congress has to ratify those. And will even the hint of these questions give other countries pause?

Last week was the 50th anniversary of the first scientist’s warning to US president—it was Lyndon Johnson—about the dangers of climate change. Last week was also when scientists said that 2015 could be the first year on record when the global mean temperature averaged 1 ˚C higher than the historical norm, a long-feared bellwether. That’s why the COP talks are so important. They’re an opportunity to find out whether 2015 will be when the nations of the world are going to actually do anything about climate or—to paraphrase President Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan—merely hope for change to happen somehow without them. But in climate change and at the negotiating table, as in all things, hope is not a strategy.