The White House on Wednesday vowed that the US would still meet international commitments to cut carbon emissions, seeking to allay concerns that the US Supreme Court might take away one of its main weapons against climate change.
The court on Tuesday dealt a blow to the US administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would steer electricity plants away from burning coal to cleaner fuel sources, delaying its implementation until all legal challenges are decided.
However, the White House said it remained confident it would ultimately win the lawsuits brought by industry groups and 29 states opposed to the plan.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said the administration has an array of tools available to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to rising global temperatures.
He cited the long-term extension of tax credits for renewable energy that were enacted in last year’s budget deal as an example of other policy measures driving the power sector’s shift to cleaner energy.
“The inclusion of those tax credits is going to have more impact over the short term than the Clean Power Plan,” Schultz said.
Still, the court-ordered pause that could push a final legal ruling back a year or more and onto the desk of the next president raised questions about the US ability to deliver on pledges made at the Paris climate talks in December last year.
The Paris accord requires countries to set and meet their own national targets to reduce carbon emissions, and the US presented the Clean Power Plan as a major step to shrink power plant emissions to 32 percent below 2005 levels over the next 15 years.
The prospect of a legal delay and possible rejection of the plan rattled some environmental groups and foreign governments that have embraced the Paris formula.
Outgoing French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius, who was praised for his smooth chairmanship that brought about a deal in Paris, was quoted by French government officials saying the Supreme Court’s move was “not good news.”
However, other observers, noting the endemic gyrations of global climate politics over the past two decades, said there was no reason to panic over the court’s move.
“No country naively made an agreement with the United States on the basis of one or two of its policies,” said Robert Orr, special adviser on climate change to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
“The Paris agreement wasn’t about what commitments were extracted from one country and whether they can be lived up to,” Orr said.
“It was a recognition by all the major countries that it is in their own best interest to solve this problem,” he said.
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