President Barack Obama has chosen global warming as the ground on which to make his first tough political stand.
And to win the battle, he must convince Congress and the voting public that he is willing to utterly wreck the U.S. economy in the name of climate protection.
By allowing the Environmental Protection Agency to classify carbon dioxide as a danger to human health, the president hopes to force moderate Democrats to back his plan to charge companies $646 billion over the next decade for the right to emit greenhouse gases.
The president’s message to lawmakers: Either back the White House plan, or he will let Climate Czarina Carol Browner and the carbon crusaders at the EPA start scouring companies with tough new regulations.
Obama depicts himself as the victim of a court decision that mandates carbon dioxide limits, but the president could have fought the ruling or looked for a less destructive way to comply. Instead, he is allowing his aggressive environmental team to go all out in hopes of scaring Congress into supporting his plan.
The EPA doomsday scenario would mean many power plants shutting down, some within the next year, increasing electricity costs by 50 percent.
But as America learned with $4 gasoline, consumers will still pay for necessities like electricity. But brownouts would roll across the central parts of the country during the summers of 2010 and 2011 as use spikes and the government diverts the remaining electrical capacity to the coasts.
If you think you saw outrage over the AIG bonuses, wait until the folks in places that make lots of electricity — like Jasper, Ind. — sit swatting mosquitoes in the dark while their megawatts hum down the line to run air conditioners in Manhattan.
Manufacturers would also be hit with higher energy prices in addition to the huge costs associated with controlling their own carbon output.
Century Aluminum’s plant in Ravenswood, W.Va., for example, has struggled to make a profit while spending $400 million a year on electricity. Bumping that price to $600 million would mean the end of the operation and 660 jobs.
Meanwhile, Detroit would have to start making more hybrid and electric cars, which are both more expensive and less appealing to consumers. Families, ravaged by the deepening job losses and recession brought on by the EPA crackdown, would keep the trusty old Taurus running, not buy a new, taxpayer-subsidized Chevy Volt for $40,000.
Obama is already saying that he won’t let the EPA loose unless has to. Lawmakers, he says, can avoid this fate if they support his plan.
And compared with the EPA’s total war on carbon, Obama’s $646 billion in new energy fees — which would amount to a total consumer price increase of perhaps only 25 percent — may seem more palatable. Half a catastrophe is better than a whole one.
Moderate Republicans have made some overtures about a compromise plan that would go into effect only after two consecutive quarters of economic growth. Centrist Democrats, like Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, may also join the movement.
But the Californians who run the congressional environmental committees, Henry Waxman in the House and Barbara Boxer in the Senate, aren’t in a compromising mood now that Obama has put the EPA cudgel on the table.
Obama has been lucky to persuade Waxman and Boxer to stick with his plan and not come up with something more punitive.
Lawmakers from the 16 major coal-producing states, like Pennsylvania and Ohio, and the dozen more that have high per-capita carbon emissions, like Missouri and Iowa, will be hard pressed to go home and explain why they voted for a plan that will put anybody out of work.
Most Republicans and many Democrats will refuse to support anything that kills jobs, even if it’s half as many as the EPA threatened.
That would leave Obama to choose between wreaking havoc on an already contracting economy to save the world’s climate or admitting that he was bluffing.
On the Hill, many heartland Democrats think Obama is too politically smart to take the rap for imposing massive job-killing regulations during a deep recession.
They’re betting that before Obama allows Browner to have her way with the country, the president will call off the climate attack.
If Obama were to admit a political bluff for what he believes to be a good cause, it would soon be forgotten.
Voters would be less forgiving about him causing a longer, deeper recession.
