ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on various aspects of President Barack Obama's climate change agenda. It analyses a number of key policy initiatives. These include the Clean Power Plan (CPP) and the contribution of the Obama administration to the 2015 UN Paris COP21 climate change conference. In the first two years of his Presidency, Obama did push for legislative action in Congress to tackle climate change, in particular action to reduce greenhouse gases. Originally proposed in 2008, the Keystone XL pipeline was to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta Canada to Texas. It was to prove a major challenge for the Obama administration and was seen very much as a litmus test of his environmental credentials. The overarching aim of COP21 was for the first to come to a substantive global agreement to tackle climate change involving all the nations of world. The treaty came into force when 55 countries covering 55 per cent of global emissions have signed it.
