Symbols in Sect. 526

April 27, 2015
Reintroduction of a bill to repeal Sect. 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act comes at a fateful time.

Reintroduction of a bill to repeal Sect. 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act comes at a fateful time. Sect. 526 prohibits the US government from buying alternative transportation fuel without contractually stipulating that use of the fuel would emit no more greenhouse gas than would use of a comparable amount of conventional petroleum. One effect of the measure has been to preclude the purchase by federal agencies, including military forces, of transport fuel made from bitumen produced in the Canadian oil sands.

Whether Congress actually intended to target the oil sands when it enacted the provision in 2007 remains unclear. Because climate zealots embraced Sect. 526 in their campaign against Canadian bitumen, which they call "dirty oil," however, past efforts to repeal the measure have failed. With Republicans now in control of both houses of Congress, the new initiative, which has bipartisan support, might succeed.

What, then, would President Barack Obama do?

Aggressive program

In the final years of his presidency, Obama is pushing an aggressive program of climate-change mitigation. He obviously wants to leave office to environmentalist cheers. The president thus wants the US to be seen, at an international meeting in December, to be leading the fight against what his administration calls carbon pollution. Yet in surveys and votes by the lawmakers they elect, Americans show little enthusiasm for his agenda. They express healthy worry about climate change but grade it very low when ranking issues of concern. They clearly care more about the economy and security.

To kindle support for its costly climate-change goals, Obama has begun a campaign of terror. With polar bears said to be in less jeopardy than once asserted by climate propagandists, his administration promotes rising incidence of asthma as a compulsion to replace hydrocarbon energy with costlier substitutes. It increasingly blames human activity for distressful weather. It points to record-high temperature averages of the past 15 years while ignoring the near absence of predicted additional warming over that period. In general, according to Obama in his Apr. 18 weekly address, "Today, there's no greater threat to our planet than climate change."

To say the least, this statement is disputable, although anyone disputing it will be scorned as a climate "denier." It is, in fact, hyperbole, issued to elicit fear on behalf of a narrow, radical agenda. And it shows an alarming absence of perspective. When sectarian barbarism is gutting whole countries in the Middle East and Africa, when affiliated terrorists are caught with troubling frequency plotting mass murder elsewhere, and when nuclear proliferation appears on the verge of a new and dangerous phase, to call climate change a superlative threat is absurd.

The alarmist exaggeration in Obama's statement is more strategic than polemic. Activists use information that way. When their unyielding arguments and proffered evidence come under attack, they disparage attackers instead of defending their cases. Obama migrated to government from this world and governs in the manner to which he's accustomed.

The symbol

In that world, symbols exert extraordinary influence. Sect. 526 is important more as a symbol than as anything else. It doesn't affect production or consumption of bitumen meaningfully and certainly doesn't influence climate change. But it represents an early move toward the stigmatization of oil sands, sustained in defiance of relations with Canada and intellectually linked with grander mistakes like delay of the Keystone XL pipeline and low-carbon fuel standards, proposed and in place. Although repealing such a symbol would have trivial environmental consequence, doing so would incite protests from environmentalist activists. Obama's natural inclination would be to resist it.

Outside the activist realm, Sect. 526 might resonate symbolically in a much different way. With global peril intensifying and the US military shrinking, impairing fuel procurement by the Defense Department for any reason signifies misaligned priorities. The president should have to address symbolic compromise of security interests, too, while deciding whether to coddle political supporters by vetoing Sect. 526 repeal.