But as Mr. Obama prepares to leave office, his own aggressive actions on climate change have thrust the issue into the 2016 campaign. Strategists now say that this battle for the White House could feature more substantive debate over global warming policy than any previous presidential race.
On Monday, Mr. Obama is expected to unveil his signature climate change policy, a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations designed to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s power plants. If the plan survives legal challenges, it could lead to the closing of hundreds of polluting coal-fired power plants, freeze future construction of such plants and lead to an explosion in production of wind and solar energy.
Most of those changes, however, would unfold under the next president: states would not submit final plans detailing how they would comply with the rules until 2018. And the plan would not be fully implemented until 2022.
That means that the 2016 field faces a much more specific question on climate change policy than any of their predecessors have: What would they do to Mr. Obama’s climate change legacy?
“There’s no question that the decision of a sitting president on something like this insinuates these issues into the middle of a campaign,” said David Axelrod, the political strategist who advised both of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaigns. “The president is taking a significant step, and now it’s a natural question to ask candidates: would they embrace those steps and carry them forward, or would they not?”
The answer to that question is already a litmus test for the deep-pocketed political donors who will play a major role in the 2016 outcome.
On the left, the billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, the largest single donor in the 2014 midterm elections, has made clear that forceful support of climate policies — including implementation of Mr. Obama’s plan — is essential to win his financial backing. On the right, the conservative billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch have made clear that their support will require a candidate’s full-throated opposition to Mr. Obama’s climate policies.
Over the weekend, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, was quick to respond to a preview of the announcement.
“The Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan is a significant step forward in meeting the urgent threat of climate change,” she said in a written statement. “It’s a good plan, and as president, I’d defend it. It will need defending. Because Republican doubters and defeatists — including every Republican candidate for president — won’t offer any credible solution.”
Mrs. Clinton has pledged to strengthen and expand on the plan, and to elevate the issue of climate change throughout her campaign, hammering Republicans for their opposition. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman is John Podesta, a former senior White House official who was the architect of Mr. Obama’s climate policy.
Read more at Obama Policy Could Force Robust Climate Discussion from 2016 Candidates
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