Barack Obamas Legacy Is More Secure Than You, or the GOP, Think

By Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/obama-legacy-more-secure-than-you-think.html

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Ever since the Reagan administration, Republicans have spent every ounce of their political capital on shifting the tax burden off the rich and onto everybody else, and Trump is very likely to sign into law a big tax cut for the rich. But Republicans will have a harder time undoing Obama’s tax cuts for struggling Americans, and the harder they work to reward the rich at the expense of the poor, the more they will scuff up Trump’s self-styled image as the enemy of the elite. The energy they exert on erasing Obama’s tax policy will come at substantial political cost.


Obama had hoped his successor would accelerate the clean-energy revolution he began, a plan obviously foiled by the election of a president who has deemed climate science a Chinese-authored hoax and has pledged to eliminate all federal regulation of greenhouse-gas pollution. Unlike other extreme positions Trump has taken, most of which would inflict immediate harm on many Americans, his opposition to any policy to slow climate change stands a good chance of remaining in place because its effects will sink in long after he departs. Containing climate change ultimately requires not just continuing Obama’s policies but expanding and deepening them, ultimately weaning the economy off carbon altogether. The most hopeful scenario, which had finally come into view at the end of Obama’s term, was rendered moot by Trump’s election. And the damage wrought will likely be irreversible: A glacier cannot easily be unmelted.

This does not mean the task of sparing the planet from the worst effects of runaway global warming is hopeless, though — or that Trump can nullify what Obama accomplished. Trump’s promise to bring back coal-mining jobs by eliminating regulations is a fantasy. Natural-gas power plants have replaced coal at a rapid clip in part because they are now dramatically less expensive. And thanks to $90 billion in investments from the stimulus, and incentives that were extended during the 2015 tax deal, green technology has grown dramatically more effective and affordable. Since Obama took office, wind-energy prices have fallen by 66 percent, utility-scale solar-energy prices by 75 percent, and electric-car-battery costs by 65 percent. In much of the country, zero-emission electricity is cost-competitive even with natural gas. Conservatives will not want to pay higher electricity bills just for the privilege of emitting more carbon dioxide.

Nor will Obama’s diplomatic achievements disappear. In 2014, he agreed to a sweeping bilateral climate pact with China, setting the stage for the breakthrough Paris climate agreement the following year. Trump has promised to withdraw from the agreement, but it is possible that even if he does, it will be too late for him to scuttle its progress. American states and cities — most notably California — have already begun efforts to reduce their emissions beyond what Washington has required. And since American power plants have already met their 2024 emissions-reduction targets under the Paris agreement, a case could be made to the world that America has upheld its end of the bargain and the agreement could remain in place. Many developing countries can now build a new solar plant at lower cost than one using fossil fuels. Trump may slow the pace of diplomatic and technological change that Obama’s green-energy revolution began, and that slowing will have horrendous consequences, but he will not reverse it.

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