In The Arena Climate Change Progress Is Possible On his final day in the White House, President Obama’s counselor explains how the administration is proving environmental goals are achievable.

John Podesta is counselor to President Barack Obama. Today marks his final day at the White House.

Fifty years ago this week, Lyndon Johnson, in pushing America to clean up its air and water, made a prescient prediction: “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale,” Johnson wrote as part of a message to Congress on environmental protection, “through…a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”

Five decades later, we are living with the effects of the carbon dioxide pollution Johnson observed: more frequent and extreme storms, longer and fiercer wildfire seasons, the slow creep of sea level rise and the steady upward trajectory of temperatures. Last year, 2014 was the hottest year on record; 14 of the 15 hottest years have come in this century. Atmospheric greenhouse gases at their highest levels in at least 800,000 years.


In Johnson’s day, Congress responded expediently. The laws they passed laid the groundwork for the Environmental Protection Agency, which for more than 40 years has shown that protecting the environment and growing the economy are not at odds, reducing pollution by more than 70 percent while the economy has tripled.

Unfortunately, many in today’s Congress are responding to the urgency of the climate threat not with action, but with obstruction, skepticism, and outright denial. This week, the Senate held a hearing on the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan rule, which would set the first-ever limits on how much carbon pollution power plants can put in our air and vastly improve public health as a result, averting up to 150,000 asthma attacks in children per year. Republicans criticized the proposal from every angle—including by claiming it doesn’t do enough.

Since we in the United States cannot solve the complex, global challenge of climate change solely through actions taken within our own borders, their argument goes, we should do nothing.

This is a fallacy. Failing to take steps today to curb carbon pollution and other greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. would endanger our economy, our national security, and our children’s future. And as we have seen time and again, if the U.S. steps up and takes action—if we lead with conviction and demonstrate our commitment—other leaders will stand alongside us. It’s how we have tackled pandemics and natural disasters and wars—and it is how we will protect the planet for future generations.

Climate change has already impacted our country’s fiscal health. Over the last decade, the federal government has incurred over $300 billion in direct costs due to extreme weather and fire alone. The Pentagon has warned that climate change endangers our national security—because climate change-related pressures like deep droughts, crop failures and extreme weather act as a “threat multiplier,” helping fuel instability and violence in already troubled parts of the world. And failing to act on climate change would make ours the first generation in American history to fail at that most basic principle—to endeavor to leave our children a better world than the one we inherited.

Under President Obama, we’re making unprecedented progress to curb carbon pollution at home, to build resilience to climate impacts in our communities, and to lead on the international stage. The measures we’ve taken in the U.S.—from historic fuel economy standards to the Clean Power Plan to groundbreaking partnerships with industry to deploy more clean energy, boost energy efficiency, and dramatically cut emissions of potent greenhouse gases known as HFCs—have helped spur other countries to action, including the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

President Obama’s leadership at home made possible November’s historic joint announcement with Chinese President Xi Jinping of our two countries’ post-2020 targets to curb carbon pollution. For the first time, China set a date for peaking their carbon emissions—and demonstrated that they will begin right away by pledging to build as much energy generation from zero-carbon renewable and nuclear sources as they currently have in coal-fired power.

The joint announcement galvanized the world in a critical year for international negotiations. And as we saw this week, it forced Congressional Republicans to update their talking points, if not their thinking—because they can no longer say that China will never act.

President Obama will continue to push forward to protect our public health by curbing carbon pollution, to protect our communities from climate impacts by building resilience, and to lead the international conversation by making progress at home. Taking action on climate change today is our best hope for ensuring our children a prosperous future. Those in Congress who question the need and efficacy of the President’s actions on climate change will find themselves on the wrong side of science, on the wrong side of history—and on the wrong side of the American people, as bipartisan majorities strongly favor controlling carbon pollution.

Despite today’s obstructionists on Capitol Hill, we’ve come a long way since President Johnson’s message to Congress. On Wednesday, a new satellite lifted off from Cape Canaveral, the start of a million-mile journey. The DSCOVR satellite will monitor the sun for solar flares, and send early warning to protect the grid from rare but costly damages from these electric storms. But DSCOVR will also turn its gaze homeward.

Most of the images we have of the Earth from space are composites, assembled piecemeal. But in a few months, DSCOVR will start sending us the first new images of the planet in more than four decades, along with critical new data about our atmosphere.

For the first time since Apollo 17, we’ll be able to see the whole, sunlit face of the Earth—beautiful and austere and dazzlingly bright.

And ours to protect.