Republicans Go Green?

New Haven

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, once the proud owner of a fleet of gas-guzzling Humvees, got religion on global warming pretty quickly after taking office. And in one of the great political reversals of the decade, he has emerged as a major figure in the environmental movement.

Last week Yale University hosted the signing by Schwarzenegger and a handful of other governors of a "Declaration on Climate Change" (no substance, just lofty principles). He delivered the keynote address to a large crowd of overachieving tree-huggers. If it had been a different audience, you might say he threw them some red meat. But given the venue, let's just say Schwarzenegger was dishing prime tofu.

But he also railed against the "enviro-wimps" who prevent him from taking tougher action on climate change. Environmentalists want renewable energy, he said, "but they don't want you to put it anywhere. .  .  . It's not just businesses that slows things down, it's not just Republicans that have slowed things down, it's also Democrats and sometimes those environmental activists that slow things down." Schwarzenegger also blamed Washington, and while he was careful not to name names, everybody understood that the man really slowing things down keeps office hours in an oval room.

Yet just two days before, President Bush had made an Arnold-like U-turn of his own, delivering a major speech on global warming in which he set a target date for capping greenhouse emissions (delightfully distant 2025), and spoke of "working toward a climate agreement that includes the meaningful participation of every major economy." Right on cue, conservatives began to worry that "the last line of defense has been breached" in the battle to prevent costly, and perhaps unnecessary, regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

In truth, the defense had long ago been breached. Blowing off the threat from global warming, or more specifically the political support for addressing that threat, is no longer a serious option for this administration or its successor. All three remaining presidential candidates have offered concrete proposals for reining in greenhouse gas emissions, Congress is agitating for federal legislation, and the states, led by California, are getting antsy to act on their own. Put simply, the days of resolute federal inaction will soon be over regardless of what Bush does or doesn't say.

The president's speech was an acknowledgment of this reality and perhaps also a tactical retreat to better lines of defense against the socialist, antigrowth ambitions of climate activists. For instance, insisting as Bush did that "every major economy" sign onto any international climate agreement makes international action on climate change quite unlikely. China, now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has no intention of reducing its emissions at the expense of economic growth. Likewise India, the world's fifth largest emitter, has rejected any binding reduction in emissions and recently announced plans to move forward with the construction of an "ultra mega" coal-fired power plant despite protests from environmental campaigners. Bush rightly points out that without their participation, no agreement can be meaningful. This is the first new line of defense.

But the inability to achieve international consensus is no impediment to Washington deciding to cripple the U.S. economy all by itself. The Supreme Court ruled last April that greenhouse gas emissions count as pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and that the Environmental Protection Agency must accordingly start regulating carbon emissions--the most ubiquitous byproduct of an industrial economy. This means the EPA could regulate huge chunks of the economy with a much heavier hand than Congress has ever dared to. It could shut down coal-fired power plants, regulate SUVs out of existence, abolish incandescent light bulbs (oops, that's already happening). Of course, Congress could rewrite the Clean Air Act to rein in this judicial mischief-making, but unless John Dingell has some blackmail photos of Nancy Pelosi, don't hold your breath.

The EPA, for now, is dragging its heels, and has moved into a phase of seeking public comment--no consequential regulatory decisions will be made until after Bush leaves office. But as the president stated in his speech, "decisions with such far-reaching impact should not be left to unelected regulators and judges." This principle is a second line of defense. If an Obama administration directs the EPA to impose costly and burdensome regulations, the political counter-attack will follow Bush's script.