Relative silence on energy so far in the US presidential campaign provides a blank tablet for speculation.
Positions of the leading candidates are clear but unsophisticated.
Democrat Hillary Clinton thinks the world is warming dangerously from a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and would crush the coal business (she said so) and oil and gas industry (she hasn’t said so yet) in response.
Republican Donald Trump doesn’t worry about CO2elevation and promises to reemploy coal workers.
The complex realities of climate change and sensible precaution lie somewhere between these extremes but receive little attention.
Because climate politics has degenerated into a clash of uncompromising belief systems, the Clinton-Trump impasse accurately reflects polarization of the issue.
Adjustment, however, is possible. The candidates even might find it necessary.
Presidential aspirants court political fringes to win nomination then veer toward moderation to get elected.
Clinton has strayed far leftward to stay ahead of rival Bernie Sanders in the primaries but finessed the socialist’s lunatic call for a nationwide ban on hydraulic fracturing. Trump will win the Republican nomination with slogans appealing to angry conservatives comfortable with unarticulated policy.
Clinton must wonder whether she can win important states like Ohio and Pennsylvania without retreating from her anticoal blather and supporting oil and gas innovation.
Extremists would whine if turned serious about energy. But who cares?
An interesting question is how Trump might respond if Clinton refined her energy prescriptions. Even he probably wouldn’t know until he did.
Clinton has another reason to shun liberal orthodoxy on energy. In her first presidential term, she’d become increasingly preoccupied with the economic damage inflicted by her predecessor’s spasm of regulation—and the political backlash certain to result.
Clinton, of course, will take whatever energy stance she thinks draws most votes.
Meanwhile, experimentation with forethought might guide Trump toward energy policy more judicious than anything now under discussion about a priority on which his general-election opponent is vulnerable. But no one should count on it.
