Congress deserves support from the oil and gas industry for resisting President Barack Obama's commitment to the United Nations on emissions of greenhouse-gases (GHGs). In anticipation of a December meeting in Paris at which international negotiators will pursue an agreement for mitigating climate change, the administration promised to lower US emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels in 2025. Republican congressional leaders responded fiercely. "Our international partners should proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal," warned Senate Majority Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
At first glance, the Republican response can seem like political obstructionism, a view sure to be promoted by the administration. The UN submission contains no shocks. Brian C. Deese, Obama's senior adviser on climate change, said, "We can achieve this goal using laws that are already on the books." His assurance, of course, overlooks much.
Shaky authority
At the center of the Obama plan are programs awaiting final rules by the Environmental Protection Agency to slash emissions of carbon dioxide from new and existing power plants that burn fossil fuels. EPA is addressing GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act, claiming authority that has survived judicial review so far but that continues to face challenges and still might collapse. At some point, the Supreme Court might tire of inventing justifications for Executive Branch expansionism.
Meanwhile, Congress, newly controlled by Republicans, is reasserting itself. What some disparage as obstructionism others welcome as overdue delimitation of federal power. While laws under which Obama acts on climate may be "already on the books," what "we can achieve" through them might not be as straightforward as Deese wants it to seem. Lawmakers collectively defeated the administration's cap-and-trade proposal in 2010. They're correct to treat a UN filing based on EPA activism as the legally tenuous product of institutional workaround.
Concern for federal checks and balances alone gives the oil and gas industry reason to cheer opposition by McConnell and others to the administration's unilateral campaign to redesign energy use. But other reasons exist. One of them is explicit in the UN filing's list of remedies: an EPA initiative to control methane emissions from oil and gas equipment. Another reason is insidious but no less serious. It's use of the UN commitment to justify anything the administration wants to do-or not-about energy.
This pattern is well established. The prominent example is Executive Branch refusal to approve the international part of the Keystone XL pipeline. All early excuses have fizzled: the supposed threat to subsurface water, the possibility of spills. Tarrying now just panders to hyperbole about GHGs associated with Canadian bitumen. Pressure groups increasingly default to this strategy of exaggeration about climate degradation to oppose activities promising new supply of hydrocarbon energy. And Obama routinely obliges-and receives scorn when he fails to satisfy those who won't be satisfied.
'A massive blow'
On the day of the UN submission, the Department of the Interior affirmed legally contested oil and gas leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska, an area of interest to Shell. Greenpeace responded, "The Arctic is melting rapidly because of climate change. But instead of seeing it as a warning, Shell sees profit. It wants to drill for more of the stuff that caused the melting in the first place." There it is: the climate delete key for oil and gas. Greenpeace then turned against Obama. The president, it said, must "show leadership on climate in the run-up to Paris, but this is a massive blow to US credibility."
Climate change, a complex and poorly understood interplay of forces, might warrant economically sensible moderation of fossil energy consumption. But activists and the politicians they support will accommodate neither reasonable discussion of the issue nor fair assessment of the underlying science. In their hands, the UN adventure will become an on-button for automatic resistance to any and all development and use of hydrocarbon energy. That's the best reason to oppose it.