President Barack Obama surprised everyone when he talked strongly about climate change in his second inaugural address, and he will likely continue to push action on climate change in his State of the Union address next week.
According to the Wall Street Journal, President Obama will discuss new efforts made through his authority to curb emissions from power plants. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a set of rules that will be finalized this spring, including a limit of 1,000 pounds of CO2 emissions per megawatt hour of electricity. This would make it practically impossible to develop new coal plants, which is why Obama wants to enact some new rules that would be tailored more toward existing plants.
There are apparently still no final decisions on what he will be saying, but ThinkProgress makes some good suggestions, including smog reduction projects, promoting clean energy projects on public land, establishing strict renewable energy standards for utilities, and scrapping the Keystone XL pipeline. At this point, hearing him get that specific with what he wants done would be very encouraging.
Tune in on Tuesday, February 12th to hear his speech. Do you have any predictions for what will be discussed?
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