An economy teetering despite interest rates barely above zero soon will have a new load to bear. The White House will blame Congress, especially the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. But Americans should know otherwise.
Chiding the legislature for not passing a cap-and-trade scheme to control emissions of greenhouse gases, Obama declared in his state-of-the-union speech, "If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will." Yet Congress had excellent reason to reject cap-and-trade. Americans saw how much the system would cost and how little it would influence climate. They wisely persuaded elected officials not to follow Europe into costly futility. But Obama claims to know better. He'll act.
Consequences will be dire. And fault will reside not on Capitol Hill but in the White House.
Broadening NEPA review
Press reports indicate the White House soon will instruct federal agencies to consider the effects on climate of activities they review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). That's the law requiring preparation of environmental impact statements for major federal actions.
In principle, there's nothing objectionable about considering the environmental ramifications of projects subject to federal oversight and taking appropriate precautions—including, sometimes, not letting activities proceed. In practice, however, NEPA too often functions merely as a weapon of environmental obstructionism. Adding the postulated effects on climate change to all NEPA deliberations will help pressure groups block projects they dislike—a category that includes nearly anything related to oil.
An indication of what's in store comes from troubles faced by developers of three coal-export terminals in the US Northwest. Environmental groups, with support from Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, pushed to broaden NEPA review to account not only for local effects but also for the climatological consequences of burning coal in Asia.
That expansionist argument is painfully familiar to the North American oil industry. The case against construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has come down to the global warming supposedly due from producing bitumen in Alberta and burning the associated oil products. It's thin camouflage for an antipetroleum agenda most North Americans wouldn't support when aware of the costs. So far, however, it has stymied an important project from which the Canadian and US economies would greatly benefit.
More fierce interference looms as all federal agencies incorporate GHG analysis into NEPA reviews. The idea has been under consideration since early in Obama's first presidential term. "If a proposed action would be reasonably anticipated to cause direct emissions of 25,000 metric tons or more of CO2-equivalent GHG emissions on an annual basis," said draft guidance issued by the White House Council on Environmental Quality in February 2010, "agencies should consider this an indicator that a quantitative and qualitative assessment may be meaningful to decision-makers and the public." That threshold, according to factors from the Environmental Protection Agency, represents the CO2 emissions associated with the electricity used in a year by 3,743 homes.
This grand regulatory initiative not only will impose a major drag on a national economy already dragging. It also will require the impossible. Agencies can't know how activities will affect the climate. They can only apply suppositions that have turned a theory about warming causation into an unassailable political movement. Those suppositions increasingly look wrong.
Temperatures stagnant
According to prevailing theory, global average temperature rises along with GHGs in the atmosphere. Yet while the GHG concentration has climbed steadily, average measured surface temperatures have been stagnant since about 2001. Observation thus isn't supporting the theoretical sensitivity of temperature to GHG build-up. Attentive policy-makers would ask whether costly efforts to curb GHG emissions can meaningfully influence warming. But most won't. Stigmatization awaits anyone expressing doubt about the received wisdom on this issue.
So, barring a last-minute flash of prudence, the administration will press strongly forward with a weakening agenda no one dares to challenge. Professional environmentalists will enjoy new political power. And, a few years from now, no one should wonder what happened to economic recovery.