Lighting a Fire

Brutal heat waves. Devastating floods. Rising seas. Raging wildfires. Those are just a few effects of global warming identified in the new National Climate Assessment, an 839-page report released by the White House on May 6. And the disasters aren’t just projections for the future. “The single most important bottom line is that climate change is not a distant threat,” said White House science adviser John Holdren. “It is happening now.”

So is the political fight over what to do about it. The White House put President Obama front and center for the rollout of the report, making him available for TV interviews with meteorologists in an effort to reach an American public that remains largely disengaged on climate change. The report’s regional focus was part of that effort. Among its warnings: The Southwest will become increasingly parched, while the number of destructive heavy storms in the Northeast will continue to grow. Extreme precipitation–like the historic deluges in the Southeast at the end of April–will become more common. Wildfires, which have raged this year in California and Oklahoma, will occur earlier and more often. And what feels like a heat wave today could become the norm by the end of the century.

Strong stuff. But Washington hasn’t stalled on addressing climate change for lack of scientific reports. The challenge for the White House, as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Kathryn Sullivan put it, is to fight public apathy and political opposition in order to “turn these words into action.” Obama has done more on climate change than he’s often given credit for, including establishing ambitious fuel-efficiency standards and channeling billions of dollars to clean energy through the 2009 stimulus. But national legislation that would have capped U.S. carbon emissions failed on his watch.

Obama will soon have one more chance to make his mark–and not because of the battle over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which won’t affect climate change much. Instead, it will come in the next few weeks, when the Environmental Protection Agency issues rules to curb carbon emissions from existing power plants. By establishing a national standard on carbon pollution, Obama could fundamentally change how the U.S. produces electricity. The coming rules have already sparked a political battle, with opponents claiming that the White House is waging a war on coal that will cost jobs, particularly in Southern and Midwestern states. To win that fight, Obama will need more than the support of your local meteorologist.