"The Greening of Barack Obama"

"For Barack Obama, it wasn’t easy being green — until, suddenly, it was.

During his earlier years in office, Obama never pushed the environment to the forefront of the national agenda. The economy took precedence. Then health care. At one point, toward the end of Obama’s first term, environmentalists counted the months between presidential uses of the term 'climate change.'

But now, Obama is aiming to make global reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions one of the signature achievements of his presidency — with his 'historic agreement' with China last week just the start of a series of administrative actions aimed at combating climate change.

What changed, according to political and environmental sources close to the president, was Obama’s awareness that the environment is one of the few areas where a president can act unilaterally and to broad effect. Rallying nations and individuals alike to curb greenhouse-gas pollution is one mountaintop that Obama can climb, with or without Congress."

Darren Samuelsohn reports for Politico November 18, 2018.