The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will unveil as soon as Monday the final version of a sweeping – and controversial – regulation to cut carbon emissions from the electricity sector. In its initial version, the Clean Power Plan called for cutting the country’s power plant emissions 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, setting different targets for each state. The proposal is the signature piece of President Barack Obama’s climate change policy. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said this week that the final rule will be “stronger in many ways than the proposed rule.” But the Clean Power Plan has been sharply criticized by the energy and manufacturing industries and some energy-producing states, and opponents have already vowed to challenge the regulation in court.But considering the Obama administration’s penchant for achieving the seemingly impossible – Obamacare, the Iran deal, preventing a second great depression- just to name a few, we might just witness a clean energy technological revolution. Climate change is no longer an avoidable issue, weather systems are more extreme, glaciers are melting at a faster rate than ever before and floods are devastating the most vulnerable of nations like Pakistan and Myanmar. Provided that poor governance is to be blamed for the dismal level of preparedness for the floods in Pakistan and the subsequent losses we have concurred. But the bigger picture cannot be ignored that Pakistan has seen widespread and devastating floods for five years in a row, and climate change has a huge role to play in changing the normal weather patterns of the region.The US and China have been the biggest contributors of greenhouse emissions, successfully warming the world to new levels. Many laws, bills and UN resolutions have been passed in the last two decades, but what has been missing is the initiative by the superpowers of the world to take responsibility and limit their dependency on fossil fuels. For them, cutting their emissions has been synonymous with limiting the economy. The Obama administration has shown that initiative, climate change being one of their central policies.
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