![\"imgres-2\"](\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2016\/12\/imgres-2-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Obama took advantage of the\u00a0Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act<\/a>, a law passed in 1953 which gives the Secratary of the Interior authority over leasing the waters adjacent to federal land to oil companies for exploration. In theory, or at least according to the President\u00a0and his legal team, the ban will be permanent\u00a0and the Trump administration will not be able to rescind it<\/p>\nThe usual suspects have of course come out strongly against the ban even though drilling in Arctic waters does not appear to be profitable given the current and projected oil price. Regardless of the final outcome,\u00a0the New York Times<\/a> believes the move will create an important legal precedent\u00a0and it will take the Republicans years in the courts to overturn it.<\/p>\n Barack the Green<\/strong><\/p>\n This last piece\u00a0of administrative legislation\u00a0caps the last few years in which Barack Obama has shown himself to be not only have a deep commitment to the environment\u00a0but also be willing to go very close to the line on his constitutional powers in order to everything possible to enshrine its protection in U.S. law.<\/p>\n Besides protecting natural habitats, the administration \u00a0has helped broker and then adhered to the climate agreement in Paris, reached an historic\u00a0agreement with China, promoted alternative energy and energy conservation in the U.S. and also used the EPA to\u00a0oblige the States to phase out coal fired power plants in the next 10-20 years.<\/p>\n Trump the Chump<\/strong><\/p>\n In a post a few weeks ago, I explained how Al Gore is convinced that we are already in the middle of an energy revolution and that the value of traditional energy companies\u00a0are grossly over valued. By betting their money on Trump they hope to save their balance sheets and their own jobs and situations.<\/p>\n Beyond Politics ?<\/strong><\/p>\n I understand that enough people are upset about the changing world to\u00a0have voted in the UK and the US for demagogic and populist politicians who have told them what they want to believe. I can even see, but not condone,\u00a0the twisted logic of these politicians who will say or do almost anything to get elected\u00a0including targeting\u00a0entire groups of people based on race, ethnicity or their religious\u00a0views.<\/p>\n What I do not understand is why they throw the future of the planet under the bus of their \u00a0blind ambition. Looking far ahead we, as a society, will be able to heal the wounds that people like Donald Trump, Marie Le Pen, and Geert Wilders and their followers will inflict on Civil Society.<\/p>\n The longer we wait to take action on climate change, however, the hard it will be to heal the planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the last weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama continues do what he can to protect the natural environment attempting to protect it from the new administration and assuring his legacy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":788,"featured_media":3329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419,82402],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-change","category-environmental-regulations"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3319"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3331,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319\/revisions\/3331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"images\"](\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2016\/12\/images-3-300x168.jpg\")
<\/a>While Obama clearly became convinced during his presidency\u00a0that not only was climate change real but it was actually possible\u00a0to take steps to address\u00a0it and that american leadership on this issue was good for the country and would\u00a0provide\u00a0hundreds of thousands of jobs, the President Elect\u00a0still doesn’t\u00a0get it. Trump \u00a0has allowed himself to be surrounded by lobbyists and politicians\u00a0who are loyal to o\u00a1the oil and gas and coal\u00a0industries who do understand that they are fighting for economic\u00a0survival.<\/p>\n![\"imgres-1\"](\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2016\/12\/imgres-1-2.jpg\")
<\/a>Back in 2003, two United States senators, Republican John McCain\u00a0and Democrat, Joe Lieberman sponsored\u00a0the\u00a0Climate Stewardship Act<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>showing the start\u00a0of a bi-partisan consensus on\u00a0fixing the root causes of climate change.<\/p>\n