Zoë Carpenter

The War on Coal Obama Isn't Fighting

Zoë Carpenter on July 11, 2013 - 12:53 PM ET

A train hauling coal from the Powder River Basin heads north out of Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

As the pending decision on the Keystone XL pipeline dominates the climate focus in the United States, an even bigger carbon bomb is ticking quietly in a remote region of the American West.

Big Coal and Republican lawmakers are pushing to expand mining operations on federal lands in the Powder River Basin, which straddles eastern Montana and Wyoming and holds the bulk of the country’s coal stocks.

If they’re successful, railways in the Pacific Northwest will soon transport an annual cargo bound for Asian markets that amounts to more than 200 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. For comparison, projections for Keystone XL see emissions increasing by about 181 million metric tons per year.

If, as President Obama said in his climate speech, it isn’t in the national interest to significantly increase carbon pollution, keeping PRB coal in the ground should be a priority. But his administration has continued to give Big Coal access to the PRB, and has not addressed the proposal to radically expand mining from a climate perspective.

In Congress, scrutiny of the project has focused on the leasing program, which has been corrupt for decades and cheats taxpayers out of tens of millions. Senators Ron Wyden and Lisa Murkowski called for an investigation earlier this year, and the Bureau of Land Management says a task force is reviewing how the agency values PRB land. Ensuring that taxpayers are duly paid for a massive increase in dirty energy production is a small start, however.

On Tuesday, Republicans in the House held a hearing that Representative Jared Huffman called “a pep rally for coal,” painting the PRB expansion as the savior of the industry and depressed rural economies. “It makes sense to look at ways to increase coal production from our public lands,” subcommittee chair Doug Lamborn testified. “Workers in the Powder River Basin have a tremendous opportunity to benefit from the expansion of the export market for domestically produced coal.”

Also on Tuesday, hundreds in Portland, Oregon, turned up at a permit hearing for one critical part of the export project, a rail terminal proposed by Ambre Energy at the Port of Morrow in Boardman. Six of these export terminals have been put forward in Oregon and Washington; three were shelved after public outcry, and now coal companies are desperate to win approval for the final three.

If they do, US coal exports would double, crippling efforts to get both the US and developing countries off dirty energy by lowering the price of coal and discouraging investment in renewable technology. Hundreds of coal-laden trains would rumble alongside the Columbia River and through western towns each year, spreading up to a ton of coal dust per rail car.

This push to make the Northwest the nation’s top coal-producing region is the last gasp of Big Coal. With domestic and European consumption falling, the industry’s future hinges on consumers across the Pacific, namely China and India. More than 40 percent of US coal lies in the PRB, but with ports lying mainly on the East Coast and the Gulf there is no fast track to get it to market.

The Crow Nation in Montana, which relies on coal for most of its private sector jobs and nearly half of whose citizens are unemployed, eagerly finalized an agreement with Cloud Peak Energy (CPE) last month to develop an estimate 1.4 billion tons of coal on its lands in the PRB. As Crow chairman Darrin Old Coyote said at yesterday’s hearing, “The CPE project…is dependent on coal exports through the Northwest.”

For that and other reasons PRB isn’t the sure economic bet the industry would have you believe. “Anyone who believes there’s some great new bonanza in coal is in deep denial,” Huffman said. “Coal is not a good long-term investment for any state or any community.” Other than the Crow lands, most of the PRB is federally owned, so it’s up to the Obama administration to decide how much mining to allow. Claims about job creation are vague, while massive increases in rail traffic and pollution could damage waterways and other sectors of the economy, namely agriculture and ranching.

Still, it would be a mistake to underestimate the industry’s clout. Even without the proposed terminals US exports doubled last year, and the Energy Information Administration projects that coal, which has the highest greenhouse gas content of any fuel, could come close to surpassing oil as the world’s top energy source by 2017. “If it’s been a war on coal, it’s been a pretty ineffective one,” said Huffman, noting that the Obama administration approved more leases in the PRB in the first term than Bush did in his.

One of the most significant oversights in the case of the PRB is the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision not to undertake a comprehensive environmental review of the export pathway. “Many of the activities of concern to the public, such as rail traffic, coal mining, shipping coal outside of U.S. territory and the ultimate burning of coal overseas, are outside the corps’ control and responsibility for the permit applications related to the proposed projects,” acting regulatory chief Jennifer Moyer said last month before another House committee.

If Obama is serious about his climate plan and the national interest, he should order up that review. Oregon and Washington’s governors have both called on the Feds for a comprehensive assessment. In April, 21 environmental organizations sent a letter to newly appointed Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell asking for both a review and a moratorium on new leases. Activists are doing their part, with community groups, environmental organizations, ranchers and local politicians organizing to block the terminals.

In some ways this fight is less daunting than Keystone, since most PRB coal is owned by taxpayers and it’s clear that there aren’t options for getting massive quantities of it to Asia without new terminals. State officials can drag out the permitting process, as they have already done. The debate could stimulate a serious conversation about how to reinvigorate traditionally extraction-dependent communities in the West, an issue far greater than the PRB. But first, Washington will have to step up.

Disaster in Quebec Reveals Regulatory Lapse

Zoë Carpenter on July 9, 2013 - 3:45 PM ET

Burnt train cars are seen after a train derailment and explosion in Lac-Megantic, Quebec July 8, 2013. (Reuters/Transportation Safety Board of Canada)

A debate about the relative merits of transporting crude oil by pipeline or by rail reignited over the weekend, after a runaway freight train carrying seventy-two cars of oil exploded and leveled Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.

The disaster exposed a significant lack of regulation governing the shipment of crude oil via rail, and raised questions about the continued use of old tanker cars known to be unsafe.

The volume of crude carried via trains has grown exponentially in recent years, as the amount of oil flowing from the Bakken formation in North Dakota and the oil sands in western Canada outstripped existing pipeline capacity. With new pipelines like Keystone XL caught up in the permitting process, freight rail infrastructure expanded to accommodate the glut of new oil with little oversight.

“A couple of years ago there was hardly any crude being railed around,” said Lorne Stockman of Oil Change International. “The increase in crude by rail has come up very quickly and certainly there have been no new regulations since the boom.”

The volume of crude transported by train in North America jumped by about 250,000 barrels per day last year. BNSF Railway, which controls many of the rails in the northern US from Chicago westward, increased its haul of crude from the Bakken by nearly 7,000 percent between 2008 and 2012. Manufacturers are churning out tank cars, oil companies are building loading facilities, and refineries and ports, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, are upgrading to accommodate the surge in rail shipments.

In Washington State, crude-carrying locomotors arrived in the fall of 2012, after refineries in Anacortes and Takoma built new rail yards. While the state has a regulatory and safety framework for the millions of barrels of liquid petroleum shipped via tanker or pipeline to ports on the coast, the system is not designed to prevent or handle oil spills around railways further inland, according to Curt Hart, a spokesman for Washington’s Department of Ecology.

“We have very limited regulatory authority over rail, and this is true for all of the states. We can’t tell railroads where they can take freight, [and] we can’t tell railroads what they can bring in as freight,” Hart said.

With three other refineries and a handful of oil-handling facilities working to complete their own rail yards in Washington, Hart expects train shipments to rise. He noted that while rail has a “pretty good” safety record overall, the sheer increase in traffic presents challenges that the state does not have the authority to oversee. Because the railways are governed exclusively at the federal level, Hart said, “We’re pre-empted…and that does concern us.”

It doesn’t appear that federal regulators are doing a particularly good job. One clear safety oversight is the continued use of DOT-111 tanker cars despite repeated warnings from inspectors. Canada’s Transportation Safety Board put it bluntly in a 2009 report: “The susceptibility of 111A tank cars to release product at derailment and impact is well documented. The transport of a variety of the most hazardous products in such cars continues.” These tankers make up about 70 percent of the US and Canadian fleet.

Federal rules governing rail-born crude are written by the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and enforced by the Federal Railroad Administration. However, rail companies designate their own personnel to inspect freight cars and track lines, and while PHMSA said it would adopt stricter standards for new DOT-111 tankers, the agency has not stopped the use of existing cars. Citing costs, industry has resisted recommendations to retrofit existing models.

Pipeline advocates have been quick to capitalize on the exposure of these serious safety lapses in their efforts to distinguish between pipeline and rail options for transporting crude. “The incident underscores the need for vital pipeline infrastructure, like the Keystone XL, to move more product to market in both the U.S. and Canada,” North Dakota Senator John Hoeven said Monday.

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But similar oversight problems plague pipelines, which are governed by rules largely written by the oil and gas industry itself and enforced by the understaffed PHMSA. “We’ve seen dozens of pipeline spills in last few years. Regulation to prevent them from spilling is not good,” said Stockman, who noted that while spills from pipelines are usually less dramatic than the explosion in Quebec, consisting of slow underground leaks that can go unnoticed, recent spills in Arkansas and the Kalamazoo River illustrates how devastating they can be.

The bottom line? Whether rail or pipeline brings the oil to market, crude is unsafe in all states but underground. “We need to look at what’s happening with the North American oil boom and the impacts on our environment more widely,” Stockman said. “Namely, climate change.”

After DOMA, Agency Rules Still a Hurdle

Zoë Carpenter on July 1, 2013 - 12:33 PM ET

Sarah Beth Alcabes (L) kisses girlfriend Meghan Cleary, both of California, after the US Supreme Court’s ruling on cases against the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s gay marriage ban known as Prop 8, outside the court in Washington, June 26, 2013. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

There are 1,110 federal benefits, rights and obligations that, until last week, could only be claimed by heterosexual couples. That was clear until the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act in Windsor v. United States.

What’s not as clear is how many of those benefits can be quickly extended to same-sex couples. In particular, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs have some thorny rules that may leave elderly couples and gay veterans in a legal no-man’s land for years to come.

“These two areas are of quite a bit of significance,” said Susan Sommer, the director of constitutional litigation at Lambda Legal, the country’s oldest gay-rights firm. Sommer noted that it’s too early to say exactly what options the executive branch has for extending VA and Social Security benefits to all same-sex spouses in spite of the statutes. “It may well be a different process and higher hurdles.”

The key problem is that gay marriages are legal in only thirteen states, and complicated residency rules vary from federal agency to federal agency.

For some agencies, the transition to post-DOMA benefits will be fairly straightforward: at the Defense Department, for example, there is a “place of celebration” rule, meaning that if a couple has a legal marriage license from any state, their union is valid regardless of the law where they live. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel already announced that the Pentagon “intends to make the same benefits available to all military spouses—regardless of sexual orientation—as soon as possible.”

Other federal agencies have a “place of residence” rule, which considers a marriage valid—and thus, spousal benefits valid—only if the union is recognized in the state where a couple lives.

For most agencies with a “place of residence” rule, same-sex benefits might take a little longer—but not by much. The administration has the authority to simply update or change agency rules independently, and President Obama has already directed the Justice Department to “ensure this decision, including its implications for Federal benefits and obligations, is implemented swiftly and smoothly.”

But the two exceptions are the VA and the Social Security Administration. Both use “place of residence” categorization—but both also have defined that in a statute. That means it will require an act of Congress to amend, and with the House of Representatives controlled by Republicans, that’s unlikely to materialize. (House Speaker John Boehner spent millions of federal dollars fighting to keep DOMA in place.)

Veterans’ spouses—those that are recognized—can access health care, take out a loan on favorable terms in order to buy, build or repair a home and be buried with their partner.

From the Social Security Administration, a retired spouse can collect disability and retirement benefits, a one-time sum after the death of a partner, and, if they were the lower earner, exchange their payment for the deceased’s higher allotment.

So, say two couples get legally married at the same courthouse in Washington, DC. One pair return to their home in the district, where they grow old and are ultimately eligible for the Social Security benefits millions of other American spouses depend on for support.

The second couple, meanwhile, drives across the Potomac to their home in Virginia, where they are not recognized as one another’s spouse and so are denied the very same privileges. It’s a nonsensical discrepancy. As Sommers put it, “Marriage should stick.”

“It’s quite possible that in order to get spousal benefits under these two programs to people who have valid marriage licenses but live in a state that doesn’t recognize them, we may have to see action by Congress,” said Brian Moulton, legal director at Human Rights Campaign. Beyond amending the individual statutes, legislation instituting a uniform law across agencies that recognizes all marriages in all states would solve the problem.

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The Respect for Marriage Act, reintroduced in both the House and the Senate last week, does just that, but again the House is likely to remain a roadblock for passage.

In that case, Justice Department’s ability to find a way around the statutes is crucial. Advocates say it would be difficult to stop the agencies from extending benefits to same-sex spouses if they chose to do so.

In order to establish standing in any legal objection, “someone would need to be concretely injured by that action happening, and I’m not sure who that would be,” said Moulton. “But I do think some of our opponents are paying attention to how this moves.”

“The federal government has had to navigate all kinds of determinations of peoples’ status, including marital status, over the years and it has worked it out,” said Sommers. “People who do not qualify under the statutes…would face a tough choice between forgoing benefits or, if they could, moving. And I think it puts that much more pressure on states that continue to deny the freedom to marry to get into step with these principles of liberty and equality.”

Now that the Supreme Court has voted on DOMA, what’s next for the LGBT movement?

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It’s Not Just the Interest Rate: How Congress Can Help Students

Zoë Carpenter on June 28, 2013 - 12:22 PM ET

Gan Golan, of Los Angeles, dressed as the “Master of Degree,” holds a ball and chain representing his college loan debt at “occupy” Freedom Plaza in Washington.(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The Senate has officially left town for the upcoming holiday without passing a student loan fix, meaning that the interest rate on federal loans available to low-income students will double on Monday.

Judging from the proposals being discussed, it looks like the best Congress can do is to retroactively extend current rates for a year, and take up the thornier question of a long-term fix when the Higher Education Act comes up for reauthorization in 2014.

That’s an important issue, but student advocates point out that lowering interest rates are only a piece of the comprehensive reform needed to alleviate the debt burden crushing students and holding back the economy. “The interest rate issue has gotten so much attention it’s crowded out the debate about, first of all, how to help existing borrowers with their debt,” said Deanne Loonin, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. “The debate really has gotten distorted.”

The scheduled increase from 3.4 to 6.8 percent applies only to new subsidized Stafford loans, which represent about 35 percent of the education loan market. It wouldn’t affect the 37 million Americans already shouldering nearly $1.2 trillion in debt. The July 1 deadlines does not affect unsubsidized Stafford loans available to “wealthier” students (about two-thirds of subsidized Stafford Loans are awarded to students with family income of less than $50,000) nor PLUS loans for parents and graduate students, which together make up the bulk of federal lending and already have high interest rates.

It’s not that the rate increase is not important—it’s just a small piece of the debate. “A rate increase will have a large impact on many borrowers, in how much they pay over the life of their loans,” said Loonin, an expert on the student loan industry. “But even for perspective borrowers there are a lot of other options to look at beyond the interest rates.”

The best way to puncture the student debt balloon would be to limit the use of student loans in the first place—in other words, to increase grants and scholarships, ensure they’re targeted at needy families, and boost their buying power, ultimately by controlling the cost of higher education.

Here are three straightforward ways to help current and future borrowers:

Strengthen income-based repayment programs. There are several federal programs that allow borrowers with government debt who meet certain standards to cap their payments as a percentage of their earnings—but too few sign up for them. More than 5 million people are behind on their student loan payments to the government, but just over 1 million are enrolled in one of these programs. It’s simply a matter of students not being aware of the help they can receive.

Another needed reform is making forgiven debt non-taxable: while the government forgives the balance of a loan after twenty-five years for those enrolled in IBR, the IRS treats forgiven principle as income and taxes borrowers for it. That means a borrower who couldn’t pay off a loan in twenty-five years may still end up owing tens of thousands of dollars to the IRS that they’re required to pay in full.

Letting all federal student loan borrowers cap their payments at 10 percent of their income would be the simplest way of protecting student borrowers in uncertain economy. That’s what Obama proposed in his 2014 budget through an expansion of the government’s Pay As You Earn program.

Lower barriers to refinancing. While helping homeowners refinance into lower-interest loans was key to turning around the housing market, so far student debt holders don’t have many options to modify their loans besides consolidation, usually only a one-time option.

Last month Senator Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a bill directing the Department of Education to refinance consolidated federal student loans with interest rates above 4 percent to a rate fixed at that threshold. According to the Center for American Progress, the proposal would save borrowers $14.5 billion.

Senator Sherrod Brown introduced a bill this week to help students with high-interest private loans to refinance their debt. About 15 percent of the nearly $1.2 trillion debt burden is held by private companies, which often don’t offer the same repayment options as the government. Brown’s bill directs the Treasury to find sources of capital to fund refinancing. The approach is similar to what the Federal Reserve did to prop up markets during the financial collapse, and it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime.

Reign in abusive collection practices. Once a student borrower is in default, “it’s very, very difficult to get back in current repayment status again,” Loonin said. A recent investigation found that borrowers are being preyed on by a growing debt relief industry, and the government itself can go as far as garnishing the Social Security checks of octogenarians who can’t pay back their loans.

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Eliminating the use of the third-party collection agencies that often oversee government repayment programs would be a big win for distressed borrowers. “They can hammer people to try to collect, because that’s what their business is, but they’re actually being asked to help people resolve their debt problems as well and that’s not working,” said Loonin.

Want to learn more about what’s happening in Congress that the mainstream media refuses to cover? George Zornick writes about an administration nominee you probably haven’t hear of and what is at stake for struggling homeowners.

Jubilant Crowd Greets Supreme Court Rulings

Zoë Carpenter on June 26, 2013 - 2:17 PM ET

The scene outside the US Supreme Court on June 26, 2013. Photo by Zoë Carpenter.

By 10 this morning the crowd around the Supreme Court flooded across the street towards the Capitol. There were men in seersucker suits and rainbow bowties, teenagers draped in Mardi Gras beads, a woman in a wheelchair, mothers with babies hitched to their chests. Many held umbrellas to ward off the sun.

A softly sung “We Shall Not Be Moved” and chants of “What do we want? Equality! When do we want it? Now!” faded to quiet as people scanned Twitter for news of the two rulings on same-sex marriage. The crowd cheered on the reporters who dashed across the white stone of the plaza, decisions in their hands.

“I got ninety-nine problems, but DOMA ain’t one!” someone shouted as news spread that Justice Kennedy, reading from the bench, had declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstutional. Still, most of the crowd waited to celebrate until after Chief Justice John Roberts announced that the court had ruled that individuals have no standing to defend California’s Proposition 8, clearing the way for same-sex marriage in the state.

The loudest noise greeted the plaintiffs in the initial case against Proposition 8 as they emerged from the courtroom, holding hands and wiping away tears. The crowd rushed up the steps towards the couples before the guards shooed them back again. People held out copies of the Court’s decision for the lawyers to sign and shyly thanked the plaintiffs as they walked towards the waiting cameras.

“I don’t even know what to say. I’m almost speechless,” said Karen Cerio, a DC resident. “It’s surreal,” agreed Ann Strengman, her partner of twelve years.

“I’m over the moon. I think it really represents history moving in the right direction,” said Hava Dennenberg, who was inside the court as the justices read the decisions. “It took a while to understand the weight of what was actually being said.”

“I’m proud of my country,” said David Baker, a Utah native who waited at the court each decision day for a verdict. Baker said he was moved by the presence of so many people of faith. “I am an active and current member of the Mormon Church, and I am openly gay,“ he said. “We are Americans. We are Republicans and Democrats. We are African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Whites, Pacific Islanders. We are humans. We are Christians, we are Baptists, we are Mormon, we are Muslim, we are Jewish. We are Americans.”

David Ensign, a minister who works with People of Faith for Equality in Virginia, said that today’s decision speaks to a cultural change that has been both profound and a long time coming. “It has been a long, slow wave that suddenly gained a huge amount of momentum in the last five or six years,” he said. “It’s not the end. Clearly marriage equality is not the law of the land in Virginia. But it’s clear that the future belongs to those who stand for equality.”

A woman named Candace said she was particularly heartened that the fall of DOMA will give same sex partners access to federal benefits and other rights formerly afforded only to heterosexual couples. “These are things that affect people every day, and you usually don’t find out about them until they affect you,” she said.

It remains to be seen how various federal agencies will determine which marriages are legal, and the court’s limited action in Proposition 8 leaves couples in thirty-five states without the right to marry or form civil unions. Still, the rulings will allow many people who have put their lives on hold to move forward.

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“We have our wedding bands and everything,” said Ian Holloway, an LA resident who sent a text to his partner with the news. “The ideal would have been if they legalized marriage everywhere, but I didn’t think that that was going to happen. This is the expected outcome, but a good one.”

After their marriage and some traveling, Holloway and his partner plan to start the adoption or surrogacy process. They have been saving for a down payment on a house. “We’re just going to live our lives,” Holloway said. “Normal married life, as boring as that is.”

While crowds cheered the Supreme Court’s decision on DOMA, the court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act was not met with similar joy.

Obama Lays Out His Plan to Slow Global Warming

Zoë Carpenter on June 26, 2013 - 12:25 PM ET

Waves wash over a rollercoaster from a Seaside Heights, New Jersey, amusement park that fell in the Atlantic Ocean during Hurricane Sandy. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

With sweat pooling in the lines on his face, President Obama delivered a plan of action yesterday that activists hailed as a significant commitment to fight climate change.

Obama outlined a three-tiered proposal: to cut greenhouse gas emissions, prepare for the effects of rising temperatures that are already underway and lead international climate efforts.

The heart of the plan is a highly anticipated directive to the EPA to “expeditiously” issue rules limiting the amount of carbon that new and existing coal plants may to emit. If the EPA meets its new deadlines—something the agency has consistently failed to do— it would deliver draft rules on existing plants in June 2014, and final rules a year later.

“We limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury and sulfur and arsenic in our air or our water, but power plants can still dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into the air for free,” Obama said, noting that 40 percent of the country’s carbon pollution comes from the power sector. “That’s not right, that’s not safe, and it needs to stop.”

Obama wants the nation’s greatest energy consumer to draw 20 percent of its power from renewables by 2020—and higher efficiency standards are key elements of the carbon-reduction effort. The plan includes ramping up renewable energy production on public lands and clean energy use in public housing and defense facilities. Higher mileage standards on heavy-duty trucks, buses and vans and reductions in pollution from methane and hydrofluorocarbon are also included in Obama’s proposal.

Also, Obama surprised climate activists by saying that he would approve the Keystone pipeline only if it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” That is already the position of the State Department’s environmental impact statement from earlier this year, and whether Obama is endorsing that logic or inviting a pushback remains to be seen.

While Obama focused on “the responsibility for keeping the planet habitable” and the economic potential of a green-energy transition in his speech, he also acknowledged that “the planet will slowly keep warming for some time to come.”

Obama’s plans for shepherding the country through the unavoidable effects of climate change include working with the healthcare industry to ready the medical system for anticipated health issues; resources to help communities and farmers cope with drought; updating flood-risk reduction standards for federally funded projects to reflect anticipated sea level rises; and helping communities strengthen their infrastructure and manage wildfires, floods and other natural disasters.

On the global scale, Obama affirmed his commitment to a concrete international plan to reduce emissions and called for an end to public financing of coal projects overseas, for “free trade” in clean energy technology and other environmental services and for bilateral negotiations with countries like Brazil and China, whose carbon footprints are steadily growing.

The stated goal for the plan is to reduce carbon emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels within seven years, a target the president set out at the beginning of his administration. Does Obama’s plan go far enough? Much of that rests on how high the EPA sets the energy sector standards. “The specific regulations that EPA will issue on power plants are the heart of the plan, and the EPA still has to go through the rule-making process,” said Daniel Lashof, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Rachel Cleetus, a climate economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, “If all these plans are implemented, we could live up to our commitment of a 17 percent reduction.”

Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said that the plan could spell the end of the coal era. “When you force coal-burning utilities onto a level playing field, they can’t survive,” said Brune. “Seeking to end financing for coal plants internationally is also very important.”

However, Brune expressed concern about the emphasis on natural gas as a transitional energy source. “We feel it isn’t justified by the science, and doesn’t reflect the risk born by communities who are in these fracking zones.”

It’s important to note that many of the regulations are required by law, as they have been since the Bush administration—the question has always been how hard Obama would push.

“Today was not a day to hear novelty,” said Cleetus. “It was to hear a commitment to deliver. These power plant standards have been coming for a while now. We thought they would be done by July 2012 and here we are a year later with a draft for new plants and no plan for existing plants.”

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Perhaps more striking than any feature of the plan was Obama’s embrace of climate activists, whom he noted are essential to push a climate agenda beyond the limits of his executive power. “Understand this is not just a job for politicians,” Obama said. He urged citizens to “speak up at town halls, church groups, PTA meetings…. Broaden the circle of those who are willing to stand up for our future.”

Obama seemed to endorse the student divestment movement near the end of his speech, telling listeners to “invest, and divest.”

“When the president was elected we had a pretty small climate movement. When you fast-forward five years later, we have a growing movement that’s getting stronger every day,” said Daniel Kessler, a spokesperson for 350.org. “Essentially the biggest piece of the puzzle is getting a movement strong enough to force Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation that will put a price on carbon.”

If it’s too early to celebrate the president for slowing the pace of climate change, it is certainly crucial to hear him, with conviction, rejoining the national conversation about how to do so.

While Obama was giving his speech on climate change, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis was a couple hours into her almost-eleven-hour filibuster to stop a draconian anti-abortion bill from passing.

Former Obama Campaign Staffers Protest Keystone XL Pipeline

Zoë Carpenter on June 18, 2013 - 3:37 PM ET

Activists in Chicago. (Photo by Kira Mardikes.)

Elijah Zarlin, who worked as a senior e-mail writer at Obama campaign headquarters in 2008, was back in Chicago yesterday—in the First Precinct jail, following a peaceful sit-in in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline.

“It felt strange,” Zarlin said, “to be getting arrested in order to send a message to the president that he needs to make good on his commitment to fight climate change.”

Twenty-two people were detained in front of the Metcalfe Federal Building, where the State Department keeps an office. Protestors ranged in age from a high school student to a grandfather. Many wore T-shirts that read, “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” a pledge on climate change that Obama made during this year’s State of the Union address.

But action has yet to materialize, and supporters are getting impatient. “The president has said over and over that he wants to do something big on climate,” said Andrew Nazdin, 24, who worked as a deputy training instructor for Organizing for Action (OFA) in Virginia in 2012 and protested yesterday. “The president has a tremendous opportunity to reject this pipeline, since the decision sits with him. But we are going to need to continue to push him.”

The administration will make a decision on the pipeline in the next few months, pending completion of a State Department environmental review. A draft released earlier this year, which the EPA criticized as “insufficient,” found no compelling reason to reject the pipeline.

Fear that the State Department findings will grease the skids for approval is creating a rift between Organizing for Action, the former campaign army now tasked with promoting the president’s agenda, and other activists and donors who are frustrated with the administration’s reticence not only on Keystone but also on a range of climate change actions.

Organizing for Action stated clearly last month that it will not support grassroots activism against Keystone right now. “Organizing for Action’s mission is to support President Obama’s agenda,” reads the first in a list of talking points for volunteers. “The Keystone XL pipeline is still under review, and OFA supports and respects the process as it is currently underway.”

The global warming campaign unveiled by OFA in May skirted the president’s timid record on climate by asking supporters to call out climate change deniers in Congress via social media.

It isn’t clear to serious activists how tweeting at John Boehner to “stop denying the science of climate change” will have an impact if the people who already acknowledge the real and immediate danger of greenhouse gas emissions, like President Obama, won’t act themselves. “Given that it’s unlikely that the majority is going to change in Congress, and certainly that no action is going to be taken by this Congress on climate, it’s really the president who needs to show leadership,” said Zarlin.

Along with rejecting Keystone XL, there are several options for addressing the causes of climate change that do not require congressional approval, particularly capping emissions from power plants, which are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. But in April the EPA announced that it was putting a decision to regulate new generating stations on hold indefinitely. According to The New York Times, EPA officials said the rule “would be rewritten to address the concerns raised by the industry.” The delay effectively rules out the possibility that a separate decision to regulate existing plants more strictly will go forward in the near future.

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While the administration dithers, the grassroots climate movement is gaining momentum, with Keystone as the touchstone. “This decision more than any other will signal your direction, your commitment, your resolve,” a group of heavy-hitting donors wrote to the president last month. “It is the biggest, most explicit statement you will make in this historic moment, the moment when America turns from denial to solutions.” More than 62,000 have committed to engaging in civil disobedience should Obama approve the pipeline. Yesterday’s sit-in, organized by CREDO, Rainforest Action Network and the Other 98%, was just one of the many demonstrations that have been planned for the summer.

Former OFA staffers don’t see their colleagues as complacent enough to stay out of the action. “We, as some of his biggest supporters, who put in countless hours—twelve-, fourteen-hour days—to get him elected, are serious about making sure he does the right thing on climate,” said Nazdin, who expects that the disconnect between the president’s slow action and the urgency that many young Americans feel will dampen OFA’s effort to mobilize young volunteers. “Unfortunately, we’re not going to sign up to volunteer and we’re not going to be donating money when we’re getting arrested,” Nazdin said. “We’re organizing to push him on something that right now he’s failing to address.”

Protesters are taking to the streets in Brazil. Read Dave Zirin’s analysis here.