Coal and the Clean Power Plan | War on the EPA 
Video 2 Transcript: Obama Signs the Clean Power Plan  

ON-SCREEN TEXT: President Barack Obama's Second Inauguration, January 20, 2013   

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms. 

BRIAN DEESE: If you go back and you look at that speech, you see a president speaking about climate change with a degree of precision and passion and power. 

OBAMA: We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. 

DEESE: The sense of frustration around not being able to put enough priority on this in the first term was palpable. He was sending a signal that this was going to be the moment where he was going to put additional priority on that. 

NARRATOR: But the Republican-controlled Congress still wouldn't work with him on climate change. 

KEVIN CRAMER: Barack Obama taking climate change and making it-- you know, calling it, you know, the greatest challenge or greatest crisis that faces the country or the world, I think people saw that as alarmism. That kind of extreme rhetoric I think only, only fuels, if you will-- if you excuse the expression-- fuels the opposition that causes us to go to our, to our pole-- to our poles a little bit. 

NARRATOR: With the opposition digging in in Washington and around the country, Obama turned to Gina McCarthy to lead the EPA.

GINA MCCARTHY: The first thing he said to me was, Gina, are you prepared to move forward on climate change?" And I said, "Mr. President, I don't want the job "unless we're both committed to move forward. And absolutely." And it was the shortest conversation in human history. 

OBAMA: As I've said before, this is going to be a year of action... 

NARRATOR: The president's team decided to make an end run around Congress. 

OBAMA: We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we're providing Americans the kind of help that they need. I've got a pen and I've got a phone, and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward. 

CRAMER: When President Obama said that he'll take matters into his own hand with his pen and his, and his phone, it was such a shot across the bow to the other side that, "I don't need you." Today... 

NARRATOR: And just as the energy industry had feared, it was Obama's first target. 

OBAMA: I'm directing the Environmental Protection Agency to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants and complete new pollution standards for both new and existing power plants. 

NARRATOR: By executive authority, the EPA would begin developing the Clean Power Plan. 

AL ARMENDARIZ: It was the first time that this country was going to regulate carbon emissions from the power industry. And the power industry is the largest source of carbon emissions in this country. 

OBAMA: Can we imagine a more worthy goal? 

ANDREW MILLER: He just went ahead through executive order and instructions to the agency, "Go ahead and do what I want to have done without congressional endorsement."