There is a tug of war between industry and government on the matter of global warming. Barons of the private sector require virtually immediate results, or profits, whereas federal bureaucracies do have the luxury of acting for the longer term, as long as the next pivotal election is not compromised.
Five years ago, my Huffington Post article on:
pretty much explained it all in the United States. Europe is not that much different, although they appear to be, in general, a tad more environmentally responsible. China and India are driven by the need to economically catch up, so scientific logic is almost meaningless, something also essentially true in the USA, for disinformation campaigns bankrolled by the fossil industry actually work.
A year after my contentious HuffPo, I penned:
Suggesting that a CARBON TAX was politically suicidal, so why not play the semantics game and call the whole thing a CREDIT program for the benefit of taxpayers. Of course, it's the same thing!
So the years went by and nothing happened in the U.S. Why? The voters did not care, as underscored by the following Washington Post poll earlier this year:
Global warming is at the bottom of the priority list. Note also, in tune with my above HuffPo, the difference between Democrats (26%) and Republicans (7%).
So, it's no great wonder that President Barack Obama yesterday, realizing that there is no hope in Congress, and with the freedom to take action, for he doesn't have to run for office again, played the only card he had to preserve a shred of a possible environmental legacy: he announced a curb on electrical power plant emissions to reduce global warming.
What's behind this all is that the Clean Air Act a half century ago gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to control air pollution. So last year the EPA promulgated rules, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down. But the Supreme Court, which earlier already upheld the right of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, agreed to consider reversing this lower court decision, which holds up capping emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in 28 states whose pollution blows into neighboring jurisdictions. According to the White House, this program would prevent 34,000 premature deaths and provide $280 billion in economic benefits. These court cases are oh so confusing, but Obama is using his bully pulpit to incite the masses to also influence this upcoming Supreme Court decision.
Those Supreme Court decisions of late have been like a roller coaster ride. First, they shocked the Nation last year by preserving Obamacare, then yesterday they turned back the clock on voting rights, and today bolstered gay marriage rights. So what will they do about global climate change? Remember, this is a conservative, or Republican, court.
A typical sunset tonight;
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