The new pressure from both sides could have an impact on critical permitting decisions on issues ranging from the Keystone XL pipeline to natural gas exports and federal coal leases. (Nati Harnik/AP) 
 
 A group of the nation’s leading environmental organizations is breaking with the administration over its energy policy, arguing that the White House needs to apply a strict climate test to all of its energy decisions or risk undermining one of the president’s top ­second-term priorities. 
 
 The rift — reflected in a letter sent to President Obama by 18 groups, including the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund and Earthjustice — signals that the administration is under pressure to confront the fossil-fuel industry or risk losing support from a critical part of its political base during an already difficult election year. 
 
 For years, the administration has pushed aggressively to limit pollution from coal-fired power plants and improve fuel efficiency in transportation while also embracing domestic production of natural gas, oil and coal under an “all of the above” energy strategy. This has angered environmental groups, which reluctantly went along until Thursday’s break. 
 
 “You can’t have it both ways,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in an interview. 
 
 The criticism came on the same day that the fossil-fuel industry and its congressional allies began separate efforts to challenge the administration’s environmental policies. That suggests that the White House will have to marshal additional resources to defend the work it is already doing to address climate change. 
 
 In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama promised to tackle climate change. How is he doing? Nia-Malika Henderson talks to Jeff Goodell of Rolling Stone about Obama's environmental policy. (The Washington Post) 
 
 The American Petroleum Institute announced a new advertising and electoral campaign that will promote domestic oil and gas production.At the same time, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) asked the Government Accountability Office to determine whether the Senate can use the Congressional Review Act to reverse a proposed rule to limit carbon emissions from new power plants. 
 
 The new pressure from both sides — one demanding that President Obama reconcile his commitment to fight climate change with his other energy policies, the other pushing him to scale back environmental regulation — could have an impact on critical permitting decisions on issues ranging from the Keystone XL pipeline to natural gas exports and federal coal leases. 
 
 The environmental groups’ initiative was perhaps more surprising, given their long support of Obama’s efforts to combat climate change. 
 
 “We believe that continued reliance on an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy would be fundamentally at odds with your goal of cutting carbon pollution and would undermine our nation’s capacity to respond to the threat of climate disruption,” the environmentalists wrote in a letter obtained by The Washington Post. “With record-high atmospheric carbon concentrations and the rising threat of extreme heat, drought, wildfires and super storms, America’s energy policies must reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, not simply reduce our dependence on foreign oil.” 
 
 The groups suggested that Obama should apply a strict climate test “to all decisions regarding new fossil fuel development,” including hydraulic fracturing and coal mining on public lands, as well as drilling in the Arctic Ocean. 
 
 Dan Utech, special assistant to the president for energy and climate change, said in an interview that the administration is “taking a number of steps under the climate action plan to drive down emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases.” 
 
 “At the same time, obviously we’re going to keep using oil and gas for some period of time,” Utech said. “It’s better to produce these things here than import them. They go together, and they’re not really at odds.” 
 
 David Victor, a professor of international relations at the University of California at San Diego and an energy expert, wrote in an ­e-mail that several factors explain why the administration’s energy policy is plagued by internal conflicts. Since most of it is done through executive authority rather than “with clean new legislation . . . policy gets advanced on a thousand fronts, each with their own constraints.” 
 
 “Some are easy, such as some administrative standards on energy efficiency. Others are much harder, like federal lands policy,” he wrote. 
 
 Decisions about whether the administration should allow the Keystone XL pipeline to cross the Canadian border or permit new liquefied natural gas terminals to be built “are emerging as hot-button issues,” Victor added, because there is more oil and gas to be extracted “than people thought even a few years ago.” 
 
 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), co-chairman of the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, said in an interview that while environmentalists are right to push for a rapid transition to clean energy, senior administration officials have made it clear in recent weeks that they’re committed to pursuing that goal. 
 
 “There’s a real warming trend at the White House toward listening to ideas on how to build a bridge to a fully sustainable energy strategy,” he said. 
 
 Jack Gerard, the API president and chief executive who introduced his group’s “America’s Energy, America’s Choice” campaign at the National Press Club on Thursday, said in an interview that the president faces “a test of leadership” on whether he will seize “the chance of a generation to make the United States the energy superpower it can become.” 
 
 Lawmakers are trying to block some of the president’s climate initiatives through the omnibus spending bill that passed the Senate on Thursday night. That measure would require the administration to submit a report on its spending on global warming initiatives within 120 days of submitting its next budget request and prohibit it from trying to limit funding for overseas coal plants. 
 
 Heather Zichal, who served as Obama’s top energy and climate adviser until leaving the White House late last year, said the administration has pursued policies that target major sources of greenhouse gas emissions at a time when it faces considerable congressional opposition. 
 
 “As a whole, what this administration has done is gone after the biggest and most meaningful emissions, and they have an agenda that fits the political environment in which they operate,” she said. ||||| A coalition of environmental groups is calling on President Barack Obama to put greater emphasis on combating climate change in his energy policy, pressing the administration as it weighs approving the Keystone XL pipeline. 
 
 The administration’s pursuit of increased domestic oil and gas production jeopardizes progress made toward lowering carbon pollution linked to climate change, according to a letter signed by leaders of 18 U.S. environmental organizations including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. 
 
 “An ‘all of the above’ strategy is a compromise that future generations can’t afford,” the groups wrote in the letter released last night. “It fails to prioritize clean energy and solutions that have already begun to replace fossil fuels, revitalize American industry, and save Americans money.” 
 
 The letter emerged as the U.S. State Department completes work on a final environmental assessment of TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s proposed $5.4 billion pipeline that would carry oil sands crude from Canada to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico coast. The project has galvanized environmental groups, which are pushing Obama to reject the project because they say it will increase greenhouse-gas emissions tied to climate change. 
 
 A draft environmental impact review by the State Department concluded the pipeline wouldn’t worsen climate change because the carbon-heavy oil would find its way to market by other means. The agency held a hearing and accepted comments for the environmental impact study, a final version of which hasn’t yet been released. Once it is complete, federal agencies will have 90 days to submit comments on the project’s national interest. 
 
 ‘Climate-Impact Lens’ 
 
 Obama has said he won’t approve Calgary-based TransCanada’s application to build Keystone if it were found to substantially boost carbon-dioxide emissions, which scientists say are raising the Earth’s temperature. 
 
 In their letter, the environmental organizations cited the Keystone project and said that “a climate-impact lens should be applied to all decisions regarding new fossil fuel development.” 
 
 The president rejected the company’s initial application to build Keystone after officials in Nebraska said the pipeline would imperil ecologically sensitive lands. TransCanada then split the project in two and applied for the rerouted northern leg in May 2012. 
 
 The letter was reported earlier by The Washington Post. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Snyder in Washington at jsnyder24@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net ||||| With President Barack Obama's reelection victory unfolding against the backdrop of an East Coast brought to its knees by last week's historically violent storm -- an event that in many minds is linked, directly or indirectly, to a rapidly warming planet -- environmental groups expressed guarded hope late Tuesday that a new opportunity was at hand to address climate change and a diverse menu of other green issues that they say the president proved either unwilling, or unable, to fully shoulder during his first four years. 
 
 "With his reelection, President Obama has the opportunity to fulfill the promise of his campaign and tackle the greatest challenges of our generation," said Andrew Steer, the president of the World Resources Institute, in an emailed statement late Tuesday night. "At the top of the list should be climate change -- which is already taking a serious toll on people, property, resources and the economy." 
 
 Just what the president might do on this and other environmental fronts is unclear. Congressional races across the country appear to have left Capitol Hill as divided as ever, and with a fiscal crisis looming, the president could conceivably face even stiffer winds as he enters his second term. That is unlikely, however, to stop the nation's environmental advocates -- newly energized by a storm that has put climate change at the forefront of many people's minds -- from pressing the president for bold action. 
 
 "The administration has been too fearful of taking on vested interests," said Wenona Hautner, the executive director of the group Food & Water Watch, who ticked off a list of agenda items that, in addition to climate change, she said she'd like to see Obama take up in a second term. These included clear labeling rules for genetically modified foods, improved water infrastructure, reform of confined livestock feeding operations and an end to horizontal hydraulic fracturing -- the controversial method for extracting oil and gas from deep underground layers of shale. 
 
 "My takeaway," Hautner said, "is that if we're going to get anything done, we're going to have to make him do it." 
 
 To be sure, over the last four years the president has received high marks from environmental campaigners for a variety of measures -- particularly a handful that would directly impact U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases. These include historic investments in clean energy, establishing pollution restrictions on new power plants and issuing tough new standards for fuel efficiency in cars and trucks -- all measures that would help to curb planet warming pollutants. 
 
 But the Obama administration has also endured withering criticism from some environmentalists for failing to develop or push aggressively for a comprehensive plan to address global warming, and for avoiding frank discussion of the issue with the American people -- particularly over the course of his 2012 reelection campaign. The president has also assiduously pursued an "all of the above" energy strategy that includes not just investments in renewable sources like solar and wind power, but a fulsome embrace of domestic oil and gas drilling, and continued support of so-called clean coal technology, which remains an oxymoron to most environmental groups. 
 
 "'All of the above' is guaranteed climate change," said Jacqueline Savitz, deputy vice president for U.S. campaigns with the group Oceana. "So if you're comfortable with that, then you'll have to just accept the fact that we're going to have more severe storms, more frequent storms, and weird weather, as well as shifts in agricultural production, shifts in species, complete turmoil in ecosystems. 'All of the above' means more climate change, and there's no way out of that." 
 
 Savitz added that the nation was in danger of "missing the boat" in addressing the global warming problem before it's too late. "The number one item on the agenda now has to be developing and initiating a plan for weaning us off of fossil fuels," she said. 
 
 Brad Johnson, campaign director for the group Forecast the Facts, which co-sponsored a website documenting the candidates' silence on climate change, also criticized Obama's "rhetoric supporting increased oil and gas and coal production." The president, Johnson said, "needs to follow through with his 2007 promise to 'phase out a carbon-based economy' and his 2009 pledge to 'confront climate change by ending the world's dependence on fossil fuels.'" 
 
 Phil Radford, the executive director of Greenpeace USA, agreed -- though he added that an even more fundamental requirement for Obama in a second term would be seeking out Supreme Court candidates who favor ending corporate personhood, the legal concept that bestows businesses with a variety of person-like rights, including the right to influence elections by spending large amounts of money. Short of this, Radford argued, any environmental and climate policies implemented by Obama will prove very short-lived. "That needs to be number one," Radford said. "Otherwise he'll just watch everything he cares about erode over time." 
 
 Given the inability to move legislation through a gridlocked Congress, much of what the president has cared about environmentally over the last four years has been pursued, as a matter of necessity, through regulation -- typically through the Environmental Protection Agency. The odds are this trend will continue, said David Goldston, senior adviser for the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. "If things work out as they appear, the chances for things moving legislatively over the next two years are quite limited," Goldston said, adding that under existing statutes, the administration still retains a good deal of authority. 
 
 The EPA has, after all, established historic new standards for cars and trucks that will effectively double fuel efficiency by 2024, and introduced measures that would curb greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants. But the regulatory route, some critics say, is too piecemeal and uncertain to tackle some of the nation's most pressing environmental issues -- including climate change. 
 
 In August, for example, a federal court struck down an EPA rule that would have governed pollution drifting across state lines -- known as the cross-state air pollution rule. In what was seen as a concession to major polluters, the Obama administration also abruptly dropped plans last year to vastly curb smog-generating emissions, angering environmentalists. And the EPA's proposed rule for curbing emissions by new power plants is seen by many critics as an empty gesture, given that new coal-burning plants -- the only facilities that would likely be affected by the rule -- are unlikely to be built anyway, given the cost advantage of natural gas. 
 
 "The cross-state rule was overturned, so that needs to be redone," Radford said. "The smog rule he punted on, and the carbon rules he did only for new power plants -- but there really won't be new coal plants, so it's really just a symbolic move that won't really have an effect on pollution." 
 
 Obama can use last week's superstorm -- which some scientists suggest could have been made more powerful by a climate already in flux due to humanity's burning of fossil fuels, and in any case is the sort of storm that many experts believe will become more common as the planet warms -- as a moment to press for a "more ambitious and more visionary about shift away from dirty energy," Radford said. 
 
 How such visionary leadership might stack up against infamously obstructive Republicans in Congress, who have spent the last four years diligently promoting the interests of the fossil-fuel industries, is unclear. But Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund, suggested that one way around the Congressional gridlock would be to encourage better management of the prodigious amounts of methane that experts say leaks out into the atmosphere during natural gas production and transmission. 
 
 Unlike carbon dioxide, methane is not just a potent greenhouse gas. It's also a valuable commodity. Krupp believes that bipartisan support for capturing more of it could be an important first step in partisan detente on the climate issue -- and one that the president could help to foster. "Some people would support it because we don't want to waste precious American fuel," he said. "Others would support it because it's good for the climate." 
 
 Whatever the efficacy of that strategy, there was an overriding sense among many advocates ahead of Obama's victory last night that Hurricane Sandy and the volatile storm she ultimately became could prove galvanizing all on its own -- even for a divided Congress. 
 
 "I think one big unknown is whether Sandy proves to be a game changer," said Elliot Diringer, the executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and a former senior policy advisor at the White House Council on Environmental Quality under President Bill Clinton. "We've seen many times how a high profile event can catalyze public concern and strong environmental action," Diringer said -- pointing by way of example to the 1978 toxic waste scandal at Love Canal, which led to the formation of the Superfund, and the Cuyahoga River catching fire, which led to the Clean Water Act. 
 
 "There's a pattern of Congress enacting strong environmental legislation in the wake of high-profile events," Diringer said. "And with the full impact of Sandy still mounting -- and if governors and mayors start pushing on Washington to do something, particularly if that's bipartisan -- then there may be a real opening here to deliver stronger action." 
 
 In his victory address early Wednesday morning, Obama said "We want our children to live in an America ... that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet." 
 
 A true test of that conviction, suggested Bill McKibben, the environmentalist and founder of the climate-action group 350.org, will be one other decision that Obama must soon make, and which activists will be closely watching: Whether to approve the contentious Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would deliver Canadian heavy crude oil to the Texas Gulf Coast. 
 
 "A year ago, he said they needed a year to study it," McKibben said of Obama. "That year turned out to be the warmest in American history, with a melted Arctic and a flooded Manhattan. 
 
 "We'll see if Obama has it in him," he added, "to actually keep some carbon in the ground." 
 
 Also on HuffPost:
– President Obama may be stuck between a melting icecap and a hard place. Environmental groups have grown weary of the administration's "all of the above" energy strategy—which has seen it hold tight to domestic natural gas, oil, and coal production even as it works to limit coal-fired power plant pollution—and the fossil-fuel industry is just as peeved. "You can't have it both ways," an environmentalist tells the Washington Post. In a letter sent to Obama yesterday, some 18 groups have announced their displeasure, showing the administration could "risk losing support from a critical part of its political base during an already difficult election year," the Post notes. "An 'all of the above' strategy is a compromise that future generations can't afford," the letter reads, per Bloomberg. It suggests what the Post calls a "strict climate test" be applied "to all decisions regarding new fossil fuel development," from ocean drilling to the Keystone XL pipeline. Yesterday was a sort of double whammy for Obama, with the American Petroleum Institute announcing a new ad push that will champion domestic oil and gas production, and with Mitch McConnell tasking the Government Accountability Office with figuring out whether the Senate can reverse these emissions limits. This, as a UN report finds our carbon emissions rose slightly last year (though they still fall below 2005 levels) and notes that governments worldwide are spending more money subsidizing fossil fuels than moving toward cleaner energy, the New York Times reports.