Obama’s agreement on global pollution deserving of support

President Barack Obama’s agree- ment with China last week to add taut muscle to the long-limping global battle against climate pollution represents an important breakthrough in diplomacy and environmental protection.

In the agreement announced last Wednesday in Beijing, the U.S. would agree to cut climate pollutants by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. In return, President Xi Jinping of China agreed to end allowable increases in his nation’s carbon dioxide pollution no later than 2030 and then begin a downward spiral.

The pact represents a breakthrough because China, the second-largest global polluter, has finally moved off Square One in its lethargy toward seriously addressing climate change. It also represents an impressive template on which other players on the world stage can model.

“This is a major milestone in the U.S.-China relationship,” Obama told a news conference in Beijing. “It shows what’s possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge.”

But as Xi and Obama pledged cooperation toward taming the threat, the president faces a much tougher battle at home in winning congressional approval for the agreement.

Already members of the ascendant Republican majority have labeled the agreement dead on arrival. Consider the comments from incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mc-Connell, R-Ky.: “This unrealistic plan, that the president would dump on his successor, would ensure higher utility rates and far fewer jobs.”

McConnell and others, however, have now lost a key plank to their rickety platform of dissent. He and others have long whined that it is useless for the United States to take aggressive action so long as China and other major developing nations fail to do likewise. The China agreement, enhanced by similar recent initiatives by the European Union and India, takes much of the wind out of those sails.

Public health

Environmental advocates should now work in overdrive to ensure such opposition is trampled and that the agreement gains traction. After all, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reversing climate change boils down to protection of the public health.

In widely respected research released last fall, environmental scientist Jason West and his team of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill put a human face on the necessity to lessen global pollution. The researchers found that aggressively reducing greenhouse gas emissions could help prevent 300,000 to 700,000 premature deaths annually by the year 2030, two-thirds of which would be in China. By 2050, such reductions would prevent 800,000 to 1.8 million premature deaths annually.

“We found reducing greenhouse gases could lead to a pretty striking reduction in air pollutants, and thus a pretty significant impact on lives saved,” West said.

McConnell and others who also attempt to play the job-loss card to generate opposition to the agreement would be wise to review a study released two months ago by researchers at the University of Massachusetts. That study concluded that clean energy strategies can create nearly 3 million new American jobs, cut unemployment by 1.5 percent, while reducing carbon pollution by 40 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.

As evidence continues to mount on the fundamental need to aggressively reduce global pollution, knee-jerk opponents to fighting climate change should use reason to reassess their views. A strong first step in that attitude adjustment would be support for the president’s promising agreement with China.