Obama and Dems Rebuked by Electorate on Climate and Energy Policy

President Barack Obama had hoped to make
addressing climate change and the transformation of the U.S. energy
generation system one of the chief legacies of his administration.
The Republican takeover in the Senate and the increased Republican
majority in the House of Representatives will likely stymie the
president’s efforts to impose various forms of energy
rationing.

Keystone Pipeline: No less than three
environmental reviews have found that this pipeline that would
transport nearly 1 million barrels per day of Canadian oilsands
crude to the Gulf Coast for refining is adequately safe. In a
perfect example of cowardly political calculation, the president
has been afraid to nix the project because it would alienate the
crucial union voting bloc. Now both the House and the Senate will
pass legislation approving the pipeline which the president may
well veto. Who’s causing gridlock now?

U.N. Climate Change negotiations: The nations
of the world are supposed to adopt a binding treaty limiting the
emissions of greenhouse gases at the 2015 U.N. climate change
conference in Paris. The president has long recognized that there
was no way that such a treaty would obtain the required two-thirds
vote of the Senate for ratification. Instead, the president has
devised a plan in which a U.S. pledge to cut its greenhouse gas
emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and 83 percent by
2050 would be tacked onto the existing U.N. Framework Convention on
Climate Change. The president argues that such pledges do not need
further ratification by the U.S. Senate. The new Republican
majority will beg to differ.

EPA’s Plan to Cut Electric Power Carbon Dioxide
emissions: In June, the Obama administration proposed
regulations that aim to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the
nation’s power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The
Republicans denounced this as Obama’s War on Coal. The election of
Shelley Moore Capito as the first Republican senator from West
Virginia in nearly 55 years suggests that the war is not going so
well for the president; not to mention the re-election of Mitch
McConnell from Kentucky.

Environmentalist PAC Spending: Billionaire Tom
Steyer’s NextGen Climate PAC reportedly spent $74 million attacking
Republicans he regards as climate change “deniers.” The
National Journal succinctly notes, “He
Didn’t Get Much to Show For It.” The New Republic
grouses that the voters have made “climate change denier” Sen.
James Inhofe “the
most powerful senator on the environment.”

The day before the mid-term elections, The Hill

reported:

Nearly half of voters in the midterm election want the federal
government to adopt more policies to fight climate change,
according to a new poll.

The Huffington Post/YouGov
survey concluded that 49 percent of people likely to vote in
Tuesday’s election want stricter climate policies. Thirty-five
percent opposed climate rules.

Well, maybe. But it’s pretty clear that as worried as Americans
might be about future climate change, they regard other issues as
more pressing.