Note: before proceeding with this post, let me state a couple of things about the science and politics of climate change. My basic position is very similar to the one James Joyner noted in a post last month: “Climate change, while an important topic, is one that I follow only at the periphery. Frankly, it’s an incredibly specialized field and I lack the time to keep up with the literature, the training to understand it, and the motivation to change either of those facts”
Further, I concur with the following from James’ post:
- I tend to believe the vast preponderance of scientists who say the climate is changing and that human technology is a significant variable in said change
- I tend to be skeptical of radical government-mandated fixes
Having said all of that, on to what I really wanted to talk about in this post:
Sometimes I read something in my daily perusal of the news that strikes me as so factually and/or logically incorrect that I feel the need to comment. Today’s example comes from Charles Krauthammer’s WaPo column, The new socialism, which is fundamentally concerned with the issue of climate change being used as the basis of significant, if not radical, policy decisions.
Two things really struck me about this column.
The first was the foundational illustration that starts the column:
In the 1970s and early ’80s, having seized control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history. Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and conferences, they began calling for a "New International Economic Order." The NIEO’s essential demand was simple: to transfer fantastic chunks of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third World.
[…]
The idea of essentially taxing hardworking citizens of the democracies to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early ’80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.
Yes, the NIEO had some pretty radical elements in it, however there are a couple of really significant problems with the way Krauthammer presents the issue. The main problem is that the first several paragraphs are written as if the UN actually had the power to impose such a plan on the world. Krauthammer knows full well that it didn’t and it wasn’t Reagan and Thatcher driving a stake through anything (even as a matter of debate in the UN, the issue was mostly dead by the mid-70s, before either took office), but rather the result of the simple fact that the UN General Assembly has no power to implement global economic policy. In general this presentation of Third World countries rising up to seize power and wealth from the developed world sounds dramatic and all, but the truth of the matter is that if they had that kind of power, we wouldn’t be classifying them as “Third World” countries, now would we?1
In short: there was no ability of the developing world to force the developed into anything that they didn’t want to do (and that remains true, by the way—such is the nature of basic power politics).
As such, Krauthammer utterly undercuts himself by starting his column with such ahistorical hyperbole, especially since he wants to connect 70s politics to the present: “One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown…” However, since his description of the NIEO is inaccurate and left wanting, it makes his overall argument rather difficult to take seriously.
The second thing that struck me in the column was this:
On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by declaring them an "endangerment" to human health.
Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means more than a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.
Now, I will concur with Krauthammer that bureaucratic entities claiming new regulatory powers outside of Congressional mandate is problematic.
However, it is not clear that it is quite as dire as Krauthammer is making it out to be (or is as new as he makes it seem, and so like his NEIO example, reeks more of hyperbole than argument). As the story linked from his column notes:
The EPA’s "endangerment finding" — a key bureaucratic step in the regulatory process — was seen as a message to Congress and Copenhagen, but it was also a belated response to an order from the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in April 2007 that carbon dioxide should be considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. As a result, the court said, the EPA had not only the power but the obligation to regulate the gas.
As such, there is less new here than Krauthammer makes it out to be and nor is it the power seizure that he indicates that it is. One may not like it, or think that it is an incorrect policy, but it is not a raw power-grab. Rather it is based in existing legislation (The Clean Air Act) and the judicial interpretation thereof (by a Court, by the way, dominated by conservative Justices).
Beyond that, I am confused by the bolded portion above. Krauthammer asserts that the EPA is seeking to regulate institutions that emit 250 tons or more, but parenthetically states that EPA proposed regulating 100xs that amount, but couldn’t—that doesn’t make sense. How could the EPA not have the power to regulate 25,000 tons but have the power to regulate 250 tons? I am not even sure where he gets the numbers from, as the article linked above notes:
the EPA said it would impose new rules only on large factories, refineries, power plants and other facilities emitting more than 25,000 tons a year of carbon dioxide.
[…]
In October, the EPA said there were 13,661 facilities that size; it estimated that every year 128 new facilities and 273 existing facilities seeking modifications would require new permits.
That’s a bit less than “more than a million” and “every aspect of economic life.”
It is possible that he has another source, and one will allow that it is difficult to properly cite an 800-word column. However, since the whole piece drips with exaggeration and misrepresentation, it is become impossible to give the benefit of the doubt.
- As an aside, it always amuses/vexes me when people who typically criticize the worthlessness of the UN will occasionally turn around and turn it into a big boogeyman. [↩]
December 11th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
The EPA finding, and the Supreme Court case upon which it is based, make for such a fascinating case in policy-making that I really must incorporate it into my course on policy-making some day.
Remember, the case was based on a lawsuit by several states (including California, I proudly note!) claiming that regulating greenhouse gases was within the EPA mandate. Bush’s EPA was claiming it had no such mandate.
It is not often under federalism that states petition the courts to demand that the central government do more, rather than less!
And the case shows the significance not only of courts in interpreting what congressional statutes authorize agencies to do, but also the limited range of discretion really available to the executive branch. And now we will get to see how the EPA action (which, again and as noted in the post above, was not unilateral) spurs congress and interest groups to view this entire policy area differently. It has shifted the status quo, and thus presumably the preferences of many actors.
What a fascinating case!!