Of Cows and Carbon

Environmentalists, rejoice! Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a report classifying carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants, which, thanks to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, gives them the authority to begin regulating carbon emissions. And just in time to celebrate Earth Day.

To be sure, everyone involved would be better off if Congress could instead muster the political will to pass a climate and energy bill now (rather than in a year), for no one stands to benefit concretely from EPA regulation. Industry groups, Republicans, and coal-state Democrats would much rather have regulation of carbon emissions come as the result of congressional legislation, a process over which they can exert some influence. Environmentalists would also prefer to have federal legislation that puts in place permanent rules governing the emission of carbon rather than leaving that decision up to whoever is in the White House. (It so happens that the current occupant is sympathetic to the position that we should limit emissions, but, as evidenced by the two previous administrations, this won’t always be the case.) And, in any event, the likely outcome of an actual EPA attempt to regulate emissions would be years of contentious litigation that get us nowhere. Environmentalists, rejoice?

Yet, while the specter of EPA regulation of greenhouse gases may not be the solution to global warming, it nevertheless constitutes an important victory for the White House. Until the interests can be aligned to pass a climate bill (and there is good reason to believe that won’t happen until 2010), the White House can use EPA regulation as an implicit threat: If Congress can’t get its own act together, the EPA will simply move forward on regulating emissions. It also buys time to build popular support and a political coalition to pass the imperfect but commendable draft bill presented by Congressmen Ed Markey and Henry Waxman as well as to pick up the always elusive 60 votes in the Senate.

President Barack Obama and his administration have thus far been hands-off because they recognize that climate change doesn’t have a lot of traction in the midst of an economic downturn. Following the election, it ranked last in a survey of the American people’s top 20 policy priorities. The EPA stick that the White House now proposes to wield allows it to both distance itself from the political fallout from the legislative process while maintaining the impetus on climate change and pressure for an eventual legislative resolution.

How did the leader of the opposition respond to all this? Speaking Sunday morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had this to say about carbon emissions: “The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.”

What’s more than “almost comical” is Boehner’s conflation of pollutants and carcinogens. Even allowing for the distortion-in-the-service-of-simplification that comes naturally to politicians who spend too much time appearing on Fox News, excuse me for being mildly shocked that such an ignorant comment could encapsulate the views of one of the two major political parties in the greatest country in the world. Clearly, the purpose was misleading the more than 50 percent of Americans who aren’t sure if global warming is a manmade phenomenon.

Having the EPA regulate carbon emissions is certainly not a long-term solution, yet it comes at a critical time, not just in American politics, but in the international effort for a climate accord. The international community is looking toward climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, where it aspires to a climate accord to go into effect in 2012. If cabinet-level appointments and rhetoric are any indication, the current administration at least has a clear conception of what the problem is (which can’t be said of its predecessor). The rest of the world is, once again, prepared to follow America’s lead. Even China, whose official stance for years has been that the carbon in the atmosphere wreaking havoc today was emitted by the major powers during the Industrial Revolution, thus absolving itself of any responsibility to curb emissions, appears ready to relent somewhat. Although they remain unwilling to cut e=missions at the expense of economic growth, a growing number of top-level Chinese bureaucrats are coming to the realization that, at the very least, they could adopt targets that would peg emissions to economic growth.

After the major shortcomings of Kyoto, it would be extremely discouraging for nothing to materialize in Copenhagen. Nothing is more likely to bring such a result than the perception that the United States still cannot muster the political will to begin to seriously address climate change. Republicans and coal-state Democrats appear determined, not unjustifiably, to block domestic legislation until after Copenhagen out of fear that American business will be disadvantaged vis-a-vis foreign competitors. Hopefully, the threat of EPA regulation, and the political pressure for serious legislation that it engenders, will weigh seriously in the international balance leading up to Copenhagen.


Clay A. Dumas ’10, a former Crimson associate editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.