When Donald Trump announced plans to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord this June, liberals cried doom. Venture capitalist and Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally resigned from Trump’s economic advisory council. Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein took to Twitter for the first time to express his disappointment, while former ambassador to the UN Samantha Power tweeted that it was “the end of the American Century.” Spotting an opportunity, French president Emmanuel Macron, vying with Justin Trudeau for global leader of The Resistance, vowed to “make our planet great again.”

From their perspective, the decision appeared a radical shift in climate policy undertaken by the mercurial and proudly ignorant Trump — the opposite of the cool-headed wonkery espoused by Barack Obama, who had declared climate change a “genuine existential threat” (at a private fundraiser on Martha’s Vineyard). But the decision marked the outgrowth of Obama’s efforts to address climate change while avoiding politics.

In true technocratic fashion, Obama sought a fix through executive orders, administrative measures, and elite international negotiations. His Clean Power Plan relied on the power of the presidency to reduce emissions by further regulating power plants and raising fuel standards using the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency. In his final year in office, he made much of brokering an international agreement at the COP 21 in Paris — the first global climate agreement since Kyoto in 1997.