By John M. Broder, The New York Times, October 25, 2012
WASHINGTON — For
all their disputes, President Obama and Mitt Romney agree that the world is warming and that
humans are at least partly to blame. It remains wholly unclear what either of
them plans to do about it.
Even after a year
of record-smashing temperatures, drought and Arctic ice melt, none of the
moderators of the four general-election debates asked about climate change, nor did any of the candidates
broach the topic.
Throughout the campaign, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have seemed most
intent on trying to outdo each other as lovers of coal, oil and natural gas — the very fuels most
responsible for rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Mr. Obama has supported broad climate change legislation, financed extensive
clean energy projects and pushed new regulations to reduce global warming
emissions from cars and power plants. But neither he nor Mr. Romney has laid
out during the campaign a legislative or regulatory program to address the
fundamental questions arising from one of the most vexing economic,
environmental, political and humanitarian issues to face the planet. Should the
United States cut its greenhouse gas emissions, and, if so, how far and how
fast? Should fossil fuels be more heavily taxed? Should any form of clean
energy be subsidized, and for how long? Should the United States lead
international mitigation efforts? Should the nation pour billions of new
dollars into basic energy research? Is the climate system so fraught with
uncertainty that the rational response is to do nothing?
Many scientists and policy experts say the lack of a serious
discussion of climate change in the presidential contest represents a lost
opportunity to engage the public and to signal to the rest of the world
American intentions for dealing with what is, by definition, a global problem
that requires global cooperation.
“On climate change, the political discourse here is massively out of
step with the rest of the world, but also with the citizens of this country,”
said Andrew
Steer, the president of the World Resources Institute and a former special
envoy for climate change at the World Bank. “Polls show very clearly that two-thirds of
Americans think this is a real problem and needs to be addressed.”
Mr. Steer noted that climate change was no longer a partisan issue in
Europe and that China, Japan, Australia and South Korea had recently taken
significant steps to reduce emissions and invest heavily in clean energy
technology.
“The real question in this country,” said Mr. Steer, a British
citizen, “is why politicians don’t see it as in their interest to discuss it.”
The list of reasons is long.
Any serious effort to address climate change will require a
transformation of the nation’s system for producing and consuming energy and
will, at least in the medium term, mean higher prices for fuel and electricity.
Powerful incumbent industries — coal, oil, utilities — are threatened by such
changes and have mounted a well-financed long-term campaign to sow doubt about
climate change. The Koch brothers and others in the oil industry have
underwritten advertising campaigns and grass-roots efforts to support
like-minded candidates. And the Republican Party has essentially declared
climate change a nonproblem.
The two most effective ways of reducing global warming pollution — taxing it or regulating it — are politically
toxic in a year when economic problems are paramount. After a bill died in the
Senate in 2010, Mr. Obama abandoned his support for cap and trade, a market-based method to limit
greenhouse gas emissions, and he has given little hint of what regulatory
policies he intends to pursue if he wins a second term. Aides said that he
would not propose a carbon tax or other energy tax, but that he would consider
supporting one as part of a larger budget and spending deal.
As governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney considered joining a regional cap-and-trade system, then abandoned
it because of uncertainty over costs. He has opposed Mr. Obama’s steps to
regulate emissions from power plants and vehicles. He has said he would reverse
Mr. Obama’s air quality regulations and would renegotiate the auto efficiency
standard of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 that automakers agreed to this year.
The struggling economy has made it difficult for emerging clean energy
companies to get the capital they need to reach commercial scale and compete
with producers of traditional energy sources. Government programs to provide
that seed money are highly controversial, as the fight over tax breaks for wind
power companies and the recent failures of the solar panel maker Solyndra and the advanced battery manufacturer
A123 Systems showed.
The Obama administration provided $90 billion in new financing from the 2009 stimulus package for clean energy projects,
but most of that money is gone.
Though there is little doubt that the burning of fossil fuels and
deforestation have altered the earth’s climate, some uncertainty remains about
whether and when such changes will become unmanageable. Huge technological
challenges persist in transforming the energy generation system. Both Mr. Obama
and Mr. Romney refer to “clean coal,” shorthand for capturing the
carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants, but the technology is
still in its infancy.
International efforts to address climate change, which showed great
promise when Mr. Obama took office, have sputtered in recent years because of
fears that limiting carbon emissions means limiting economic growth. There is
also considerable resistance to any plan that would require the United States
and other wealthy countries to take stronger measures than those demanded of
China, India and other fast-growing economies that are responsible for the bulk
of the growth in global emissions.
Mr. Romney’s chief domestic policy adviser, Oren Cass, said that the
United States should not take unilateral steps. “What it is going to do is hurt
our economy very seriously, and it’s going to drive a lot of industrial
activity from the United States to countries that are, frankly, much less
efficient in their use of energy,” he said at an energy debate at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology this month.
Mr. Cass said that
Mr. Romney’s answer to the climate challenge was not to tax emissions or impose
new regulations or subsidize clean energy ventures. His answer is technological
innovation by private industry, without the thumb of government on the scale.
“Governor Romney’s view
is that the private sector can do the best job, that basic research funding is
the appropriate role for government and that more aggressive subsidization and
investment by the government can, in fact, have a counterproductive effect on
innovation in the private sector,” Mr. Cass said.
Mr. Obama occasionally mentions climate change on the campaign trail,
but he generally raises the issue to present a contrast with Mr. Romney.
Last week in Iowa, for example, Mr. Obama expressed support for wind
power projects and federal tax breaks that help build them, which Mr. Romney
opposes. He then reprised an applause line from his convention speech.
“His plan would end tax credits for wind energy producers,” Mr. Obama said. “My plan will keep these
investments, and we’ll keep reducing the carbon pollution that’s also heating
the planet, because climate change isn’t a hoax. The droughts we’ve seen, the
floods, the wildfires, those aren’t a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s
future. And we can do something about it.”
Joseph E. Aldy, a former top Obama adviser on
climate and energy who is now at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard, said that a centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s approach to climate change was
his clean energy standard, a proposal to produce as much as 80 percent of the
nation’s electricity using clean sources by 2035. About 30 states now have such
a standard — Texas under Gov. George W. Bush was among the
first to adopt one — requiring varying amounts of power to come from wind,
solar, nuclear, hydro and other nonpolluting sources.
Mr. Aldy said these plans would spur innovation and provide a
consistent market for renewable energy, which today is not competitive with
fossil fuels in most parts of the country. They also would avoid taxes and
direct regulation, he said, although they would be easy to abandon if energy
prices rose as a result and voters became disenchanted.
Christiana Figueres, the United Nations’ top
climate change diplomat, expressed dismay and frustration with the political
conversation in the United States.
“No
matter who is elected on Nov. 6, whether they agree on climate or not, it doesn’t
change the science,” she said at a forum in New York in September. “The
challenge for any administration that comes in is to take a serious look not
only at the cost of climate change for everyone else on the planet, but the
cost to this country. And they have to ask themselves, ‘What is the cost of not
doing enough?’ ”
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