by Jacob Weisberg*
In America’s coal country – centred in Appalachia and stretches of the Mountain West – Barack Obama has come to represent federal tyranny.
With this week’s announcement of new regulations intended to close eventually many or most of the nation’s 600 coal-burning power plants, those regions are sure to resent him even more.
Democrats campaigning in West Virginia and Kentucky were quickest to denounce the president’s carbon emissions plan, but this is unlikely to do many of them much good in the midterm elections later this year. The new rules increase the odds that the Republicans will win control of the Senate in November, that Congressional deadlock will get worse, and that the president’s final quarter will be marred by subpoenas and investigations.
Why then did Mr Obama choose this moment, five months before elections that will be the final referendum on his presidency, to take the strongest action within his power to address climate change?
The first answer is that his decision was not a politically expedient one. In choosing a path contrary to his own near-term interests, the president has finally taken on the gravity of the planetary threat. Environmentalists have largely felt abandoned by Mr Obama after his cap-and-trade proposal failed to pass the Senate in 2010. He is once again their hero.
In the longer term, however, the politics of climate may not be bad for Democrats. Past polls have indicated that most Americans believe that warming is happening, but they attach little priority to the issue and do not want to pay to do anything about it. A run of weather-related catastrophes combined with constant hammering by scientists and the media have highlighted the illogic of this position.
In addressing power-plant emissions, Mr Obama is betting that demographic and social change now favours action. As with immigration reform, his stance claims a growing constituency for the Democrats and leaves Republicans with a diminishing one. It is not foolish for him to bet that concern for the future, clean air and renewable energy technology will soon trump climate-change denial, pollution and mining interests – if they do not already. Mr Obama may also be reckoning that in places where coal predominates, Democrats cannot win anyway.
In this sense, the politics of climate change bears some resemblance to the issue of gay marriage. Before 2012, conventional wisdom held that a Democrat could not support gay marriage and win a presidential election. Sensing that this rule no longer applied, Mr Obama reversed his formulaic opposition. This display of moral courage animated his liberal base without doing the same for his core opponents. Even in highly conservative states, few Republican candidates tried to exploit the issue for fear of being tagged as bigots. Two years later, the political risks have flipped. Gay marriage is legal in 19 states; Republican opposition to it has become a liability.
The politics surrounding energy and climate may not be changing quite so quickly, but they are very much in flux. The shale gas boom creates a dynamic that was not present when Mr Obama was first elected. To meet the goals the US signed up to at the UN Copenhagen summit in 2009, the country no longer has to leapfrog from heavy reliance on coal to alternatives such as solar and wind, which are not yet affordable or fully practicable. Natural gas provides a bridge. This cheaper, cleaner-burning and abundant fuel powers Mr Obama’s belated leadership on climate. It makes credible his administration’s claim that reducing emissions will produce a net gain in jobs – with those created superior to those lost.
With no more elections to run, Mr Obama’s thoughts turn inevitably to the verdict of history. On the issue of climate change, he knew that he was at risk of a significant negative judgment of the kind visited on Ronald Reagan for ignoring Aids in the 1980s. Until this week, environmentalists viewed Mr Obama as spineless on the defining issue of his era. Whatever his legacy, shirking that responsibility can no longer be part of it.
*The writer is chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate group
(Financial Times, June 3,
2014)
