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(This article originally appeared at Warming Law)
If anything is certain following this week's intense coverage of proposed bailouts and economic catastrophe, it is that our national priorities for the upcoming administration have been altered. Whereas a few short months ago the war in Iraq, healthcare, and the energy crisis occupied prime real estate in the electorate's attention, the country's recent devolution into financial crisis may have significantly altered the political climate for tackling global warming. In yesterday's LA Times Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger sounded the disquieting alarm:
Republicans stole the energy issue from Democrats by proposing expanded drilling -- particularly lifting bans on offshore oil drilling -- to bring down gasoline prices. Whereas Barack Obama told Americans to properly inflate their tires, Republicans at their convention gleefully chanted "Drill, baby, drill!" Obama's point on conservation and efficiency was lost on an electorate eager for a solution to what they perceive as a supply crisis...
The train wreck happened in the Senate and went by the name of the Climate Security Act. That bill to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would have, by all accounts (even the authors'), increased gasoline and energy prices. Despite clear evidence that energy-price anxiety was rising, Democrats brought the bill to the Senate floor in June when gas prices were well over $4 a gallon in most of the country. Republicans were all too happy to join that fight...
Within days, Senate Democrats started jumping ship. Democratic leaders finally killed the debate to avert an embarrassing defeat, but by then they had handed Republicans a powerful political club...Seeing the writing on the wall, Obama reversed his opposition to drilling in August, and congressional Democrats quickly followed suit.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger are being characteristically hyperbolic here, but they are right to question whether there will be the political will in Washington in 2009 for strong, cap-and-trade climate change legislation. Despite the fact that both leading presidential candidates initially talked about such legislation as central to their energy plans, neither campaigns are seriously talking much about cap-and-trade today. While most progressives weren't happy with the Climate Security Act, the resolution this summer was to regroup after its failure and resolve to pass a stronger, better version in the upcoming term. Today, the political energy for that seems missing, and the most strongly-voiced alternative is replacing a cap-and-trade scheme with a massive, job-creating investment in renewable energy. As Joseph Romm reminds us, regardless of whether you support this switch, such an investment would still require broad Congressional support.
Certainly the changed political climate should not dim our enthusiasm or weaken our push for a cap-and-trade bill, a carbon tax, an investment package for renewable energy, or any other impactful legislation that addresses greenhouse gas emissions. However, it does guarantee that actually winning any of these victories will be difficult, and should make us all think hard about the ways in which the next administration can tackle climate change without sweeping Congressional support. Certainly Congress will be necessary for any policies that require funding or impose taxes. However, existing environmental statutes, bolstered by the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), in which the Court ordered the EPA to evaluate and regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, gives the next administration broad powers to tackle global warming without accompanying legislation. In a few strokes of a pencil the next president could improve CAFÉ standards, crack down on New Source Review, and strengthen acceptance requirements for programs like Energy Star.
Perhaps most crucially, the next EPA could institute a dramatic improvement in auto emission standards almost immediately, simply by overturning the waiver denial that is blocking California from adopting its Clean Cars program. This program, first adopted by California in 2004 and since adopted by 12 other states, would compel automakers to start designing and building cars that will emit 30% less greenhouse gases by 2016. However, it cannot be enforced until the EPA grants a waiver allowing the states to go above and beyond the national, default auto emissions standards. As Warming Law has extensively documented, the Agency's own scientists and officials have stated there is absolutely no reason to deny this waiver - other than the reality that the Bush Administration doesn't want to.
Whether Democrat or Republican the next administration will thus have a powerful means of addressing global warming starting on Day One, which could in itself set the tone and the bar for Congress to match its environmental efforts. Through the powers already invested in the EPA, as well as (crucially) through local and state regulations and court decisions, we can keep fighting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while weathering the storm of political discontent, and perhaps in so doing set the stage for a truly powerful climate security act in the not-so-distant future.
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