Unspoken risks link Iranian nuke deal, Clean Power Plan

Aug. 17, 2015
Political gyrations over financial and energy reform camouflage a wicked hypocrisy.

Political gyrations over financial and energy reform camouflage a wicked hypocrisy.

The Iranian nuclear deal and Clean Power Plan (CPP) have more in common than proximity of the oil and gas industry to their central intentions.

Both presidential initiatives create heavy risks. And President Barack Obama wants no discussion about the potential for harm.

Much might go seriously wrong with the controversial agreement between Iran and six United Nations members over the Islamic Republic's work on nuclear weapons.

The theocracy might use $100-150 billion in assets unfrozen when sanctions cease to fund terrorism. Between now and when the agreement's end makes weapons development possible, it might expand its territorial ambitions and harden its antagonism toward Israel and Sunni Muslim neighbors. It might use verification loopholes to press the nuclear program clandestinely.

These are ominous hazards, against which the agreement provides safeguards that are, at best, questionable.

Yet Obama insists that debate be confined to the presumptive delay in Iranian nuclear development. He insists, in other words, that risks be ignored.

An analogous effort to limit contrary debate undergirds the politics of climate change, which the CPP is supposed to mitigate.

The program's risks begin with, but certainly aren't confined to, the costs it will generate.

It won't affect global average temperature unless China, India, and other rapidly industrializing countries feel led by American magnanimity to make proportionate sacrifice. Even then, the temperature average simply might go its own way.

Risk that the program will fail thus is quite high.

Dominated by environmental activism, however, the politics of climate change will accommodate no such challenge. Science on the matter, ludicrously and erroneously, is said to be "settled." Doubters are morally deficient "deniers." The only costs that matter, notwithstanding the unspeakable risk of failure, are those of doing nothing.

So honest debate over a serious, complicated subject never occurs.

The nuclear deal and CPP thus share the huge risk that politics might continue in this direction, eventually becoming no longer a competition of ideas but merely a race to commandeer discourse.

(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted on May 30, 2014; author's e-mail: [email protected])