Obama's Climate Change Plans Includes a War on Coal

 

IBDEditorials.com

Leadership: As expected, Barack Obama on Tuesday laid out his plans to fight global warming. And as is often the case with him, they include bypassing Congress. Checks and balances? Not for this president.

Arguably the centerpiece of Obama's renewed push to mitigate the climate change that exists only in the minds of believers is a government assault on existing power plants.

His intent is to establish by executive order, rather than duly passed law, the first federal regulations on carbon dioxide emissions. And which part of the government is going to enforce these emissions limits? The ever-abusive Environmental Protection Agency, of course.

A president does not have the authority to unilaterally establish law as a monarch would. In our constitutional republic, laws are intended to be an agreement between the White House and Congress. One stands in the way of the other becoming a lone force of government without restraint.

Obama doesn't see it that way. Our government's chief executive, who has many times lamented that our system has made Congress an obstacle to presidents who desire to rule, would rather not be encumbered by constitutional protection of the people.

Now well into his second term, Obama has made a habit of using the EPA as his rule maker and enforcer.

The American Legislative Exchange Council will release a report this week outlining just how the agency "is replacing cooperative federalism with command and control." The report will also confirm that Obama's EPA has released, as one ALEC staffer put it, "an unprecedented regulatory assault on the American public."

Assault is a fitting term because the White House has declared war on coal with climate adviser Daniel Schrag, who is also director or Harvard's Center for the Environment, telling the New York Times that "a war on coal is exactly what's needed."

We grant that coal is a significant contributor to man-made carbon dioxide emissions. Its share is estimated to range from 28% to 40% of the total, depending on which group is making the analysis.

But carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, no matter what political labels might be affixed to it.

As anyone who has finished grade school knows, CO2 is exhaled by humans and is necessary to support plant life. It is not dirty, nor is it a contaminant. Without carbon, there is none of the greenery on Earth that the environmental groups claim to be defending.

Carbon is, however, a convenient target for the environmentalist lobby that perpetually needs a bogeyman to stir up public confusion and sow seeds of alarm.

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Jay Carney has become involved, excusing Obama's presidential excesses and arguing that his climate change executive orders and avoidance of Congress "reflect reality."

Carney merely proves that this administration lives in a fantasyland. The reality is that the global warming scare has been fabricated for politics not related to the environment. It also provides a ready excuse for a president who routinely evades constitutional limits to put forth another set of damaging rules.