US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy delivered a perplexing morsel in her victory speech at the National Press Club Nov. 21, less than 2 weeks after American voters expressed contrary judgment.
The EPA's Clean Power Plan, she declared, represented "a turning point in American climate leadership-a point where our country stepped up to the plate and delivered, and the world followed."
Brings tears, doesn't it?
Of course, the CPP might not survive legal challenges awaiting a Supreme Court decision. And President-elect Donald Trump might scupper it.
Leadership is not glowingly on display in a program confronted by an existential test of authority and an election result indicating less than wholehearted support of the citizenry.
But the administration of President Barack Obama plays by its own rules. Sometimes, it seems simply to make things up.
The US, for example, arrives late to the international contest of hardship imposed so national leaders can feel good about themselves.
Other countries, under calls for leadership, acted long before the US on climate. Most regret it.
Among the first was the UK, which set aggressive targets for greenhouse-gas emissions and generously subsidized renewable energy. Whitehall now is in barely controlled retreat from policies that made electricity punishingly expensive and energy investments devilish to plan.
Part of the UK's problem was coordination with energy policies of the European Union, from which it now withdraws. The EU showed its climate leadership with, among other things, an emissions-trading scheme notable for the many official interventions required to keep it working.
Australia, too, claimed climate leadership when, in 2012, the government imposed a carbon tax so unpopular that it swayed an election in 2013 and was repealed in 2014.
The record is clear: Climate leadership inevitably becomes energy authoritarianism, which always comes to grief.
McCarthy is laughably late claiming climate leadership for the US. And Americans on Sept. 8 showed they're happy leaving climate leadership to others and eager for national leadership less given to hubris.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Nov. 23, 2016; author's e-mail: [email protected])