With everything else burning down around his ears, he’ll try a different route
(The Hill) President Obama has a chance to craft a second-term legacy on climate change even as the rest of his agenda runs aground in Congress.
Gun control legislation is dead; immigration reform is on life support; and reaching a fiscal deal with Republicans appears to be a long shot.
To make matters worse, what was supposed to be his signature first-term achievement — ObamaCare — is suffering from a disastrous rollout.
How will Obama be remembered? That’s for historians and Americans to determine in years to come, but it will be about pushing a law that Americans hate and has damaged our economy, all while tens of millions lose their health insurance plans. And economy that sputtered throughout at least his first 5 years. Benghazi. Fast and Furious. Vastly expanding the NSA spying on Americans. IRS targeting political opponents. The most partisan and nasty president ever.
But there’s one thing that’s going right for Obama: Executive action on climate change is moving full-speed ahead at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“He may be able to do more through climate change [rules] because the EPA has the authority,†Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told The Hill on Thursday.
The thing about rules and regulations crafted by executive action is that they can be reversed at the drop of a hat by future administrations. They can be challenged in court. And some end as soon as the president leaves office. For instance, the executive order Obama issued regarding illegal immigrants not being deported ends the minute he is out of office.
“There are limits to what it will mean to his presidency,†said Zelizer, who teaches history and public affairs.
One problem facing Obama is that some of the new EPA regulations might not be settled by the time he leaves office.
Companies will file lawsuit after lawsuit against these intrusive and harmful rules, hoping that someone with a better grasp of reality will be elected in 2016.
Pew Research Center polling conducted in mid-October showed that 67 percent of adult U.S. residents say there’s solid evidence of global warming, a figure that Pew notes has “changed little in the past few years.â€
Just 44 percent say it’s mostly caused by human activity. That’s in sharp contrast to the scientific consensus that the earth is warming and that burning oil and coal and other human actions are the major driver of it.
The problem with the poll is it doesn’t take into account how much of the warming has been caused by Mankind. I maintain that Man does have a small effect on warming, mostly through agriculture, landfills, land use, and the Urban Heat Island Effect. Those last two are not global, but localized, though they give the appearance of global. And since Warmists refuse to make drastic changes within their own lives, it would seem they do not believe much, either. Obama has the largest “carbon footprint” in the world, at a calculated 41,000 metric tons. The average American’s CF is around 19mts. “Climate Change” is about instituting more and more Big Government authoritarian controls. Period.
