Source: BBC News (BBC1 10 PM)
URL: N/A
Date: 03/08/2015
Event: David Shukman: "President Obama has taken the gloves off..."
Credit: BBC News
People:
Sophie Raworth: President Obama has unveiled what he's called the biggest, most important step America has ever taken to tackle climate change. His plans involve cutting US greenhouse gas emissions by a third within 15 years, and relying more heavily on wind and solar power. He told Americans that this is the last generation able to do something about global warming. Our Science Editor David Shukman reports.
[Footage from White House video on climate change. Graphics include a projection of the globe, showing temperatures rising over time - the Arctic turning red in 2010-2014 - and a Hockey Stick-like graphic of CO2 emissions rising steeply.]
Barack Obama: ... climate is changing...
David Shukman: President Obama has taken the gloves off, in the fight over global warming.
Barack Obama: This isn't opinion - it's fact.
David Shukman: In a video that's unusually blunt, he says temperatures are rising and greenhouse gases are to blame. For America, accused for decades of dragging its feet over climate change, this marks a major shift. The White House is bypassing Congress, and after curbing other forms of pollution, carbon is next.
[Graphic shows coloured squares labelled with elements: "Mercury", "Sulfur", "Arsenic" and then "Carbon".]
Barack Obama: ... but existing power plants can still dump unlimited amounts of harmful carbon pollution into the air we breathe.
David Shukman: And tonight he framed this as a moral argument.
Barack Obama [speaking to an audience]: I don't want millions of people's lives disrupted and this world more dangerous because we didn't do something about it. That'd be shameful of us. This is our moment to get this right, and leave something better for our kids.
[Footage of open-cast coal mining, with explosions and big trucks, followed by footage of water vapour rising from power stations and backlit by the sun, so that it appears black.]
David Shukman: His target is coal, the tops of mountains blasted off to get it. [Massive explosion.] Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel, and when power stations burn it, huge amounts of carbon dioxide are released. The energy companies now have 15 years to cut that pollution by a third. But they're fighting back.
[Footage from video produced by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.]
Male voice: Electricity from coal has been the rock of our economic progress.
David Shukman: They're warning about the costs of the Obama plan.
Luke Popovich: The biggest losers of this plan is [sic] not going to be the coal industry, that we represent, or the fossil energy producers - it's going to be the American consumers, because they're going to have to pay more.
David Shukman: So this plan for clean power may face a rocky ride at home, but will go down well internationally, because at the moment America pumps out so much carbon dioxide. Although China is the world's largest emitter, releasing nearly 10 billion tonnes in 2013, America is second, with more than 5 billion tonnes. [Bar graph in the background shows "CO2 Emissions in 2013", with China at 9.98bn tonnes and US at 5.23bn tonnes.] But as the biggest economy, the US has long been under pressure to take the lead in cutting those greenhouse gases. So this should help the summit on climate change coming up in Paris at the end of the year. The UN wants a global deal there, and all eyes will be on President Obama, to see if he can deliver what he's promising today.
Tom Burke: What Obama's decision has done is to make the mood music much stronger, in relation to Paris, make people feel that the world is pulling together, and therefore nobody will really want to be left out.
David Shukman: Everything hinges on whether renewable power can fill the gap that'll be left if coal is phased out. It's a political risk. But clearly the President feels it's the right time to take it. David Shukman, BBC News.
Sophie Raworth: Our correspondent Aleem Maqbool is at the White House for us now. These are ambitious plans - the President's proposing dramatic cuts - will they actually happen, though?
Aleem Maqbool: Well, there is already a lot of political opposition, including from people who deny that climate change is happening at all - some have called his announcement "dangerous", others have called it "a war on American coal". And it is going to cost jobs in the coal industry here - you can't reduce carbon emissions to that extent unless you burn less coal. But what Barack Obama is saying is that there will be the creation of jobs in the renewable industry, but that's not to say that there aren't going to be an awful lot of legal challenges to what he's announced, in the courts, in the coming weeks and months.
But it was very clear, in the way that Barack Obama spoke about this so passionately, that it was important to him, not only so he could say to other countries, like China, "This is what I'm doing at home, on the environment - you need to come along as well" - and that's not something he's been able to do, before - but also because it feels right now that this is a man in a phase of his Presidency where he's really trying to power forward in forging a legacy on some of the issues that are really important to him. And it feels today that on the environment, with this announcement, he thinks he's done that.
Sophie Raworth: Aleem Maqbool, thank you.
* * *
[Following the BBC News at 10, The Papers, with Nicholas Owen - review of tomorrow's newspapers.]
Nicholas Owen: Okay, let's stick with the Guardian, and you, Joel, would you lead us through this one - major story this evening out of Washington: "Campaigners hail Obama's sweeping carbon curbs". This is quite a big development.
Joel Taylor: It is, it's, um, it's huge. So, er, what Obama wants to do is - obviously, he's trying to create a legacy now, as he's nearing the end of his time in office - is, he wants to see emissions cut by 32% by 2030, compared to figures in 2005. He's going to face an enormous amount of opposition from various vested interests, in the United States, and from the States which have big coal industries. Um, but it's a huge, huge project. There's also hints of the sort of person he might be, after he leaves office, that he might be quite a campaigning figure when he finally does leave the White House.
Nicholas Owen: But, Rachel, the point - I mean, for the President, I thought he spoke in very personal terms, this evening, unusual for him, er, about his experiences in Los Angeles in the '70s, in the smog there, and so on. But he made it clear he knew there was going to be a heck of a lot of opposition to this.
Rachel Shabi: Yeah... But he's used to a lot of opposition on all sorts of things, I mean, the Iran deal is a recent example of that, and of course he is going to come up against, um, climate change sceptics or deniers - whatever we're calling them, these days - and the coal industry is going to, um, take it personally. But, I mean, he must know what he's facing, um, and must be prepared for that.
Nicholas Owen: Indeed. Okay, let's go on...