Obama: Republicans won’t overturn climate deal

by Devin Henry - 12/18/15 3:20 PM ET

President Obama predicted Friday that Americans will elect a Democratic president next year who will protect the United States’ involvement in a new international climate agreement and that opposition to it won’t serve Republicans well.

“Do I think there’s going to be a lot of noise and campaigning next year about how we’re going stop Paris in its tracks?” he asked at his end-of-year news conference, referring to the climate agreement in Paris.

{mosads}“There will probably be a lot of noise like that. Do I actually think that two years from now, three years from now, even Republican members of Congress are going to look at it and say that’s a smart thing to do? I don’t think they will.”

The Paris agreement, reached last weekend, is nonbinding, so a Republican president in 2017 could theoretically step in and stop progress toward the goals Obama set for the U.S.

But Obama said the deal would kick off so much growth in the clean energy sector that Republicans will eventually lose interest in trying to fight against it.

“That creates a different dynamic that is independent of what Congress does but also helps to shape what Congress does,” he said.

“The more people who are getting jobs in solar installation and production, the more that you have companies who are seeing how American innovation can sell products in clean energy all across the Asia-Pacific and in Europe and in Africa, suddenly there is a big monetary incentive to getting this right.”

Obama was asked if the threat of a Republican president would inspire him to campaign harder for the Democratic nominee in next year’s presidential election, but he joked that he was planning on doing that anyway.

“I think it’s fair I was going to be campaigning for a Democratic nominee even without that danger and I am very confident we are going to have a terrific Democratic nominee,” he said.

“I think that Democratic nominee will win, I think I will have a Democratic successor and I will campaign very hard to make that happen.”

Tags Barack Obama Climate change Paris climate agreement