The Democratic presidential field’s affection for federal executive tyranny continued Wednesday night when billionaire Tom Steyer said he would use the president’s “emergency powers” to address climate change.

What Steyer proposes is an abominable subversion of our constitutional system. Presidential emergency powers are a dicey concept anyway. Even where barely allowable under constitutional precepts, though, emergency powers are meant for threats that are immediate. The president may use such powers, going around the ordinary law-making process, only when a threatened harm is serious enough, and so imminent, that the deliberative process of legislating is entirely untenable.