OPINION:
With the EPA’s long-expected rollout of its so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP) on Monday, we saw the much-expected justification of the regulations on grounds that the sky might fall if the government doesn’t act. President Obama called the CPP a necessary step to fight climate change, warning, “We cannot condemn our kids and grandkids to a planet that’s beyond fixing.”
Does this scaremongering sound familiar? We’ve been hearing claims of doom for nearly 50 years from environmentalists. And they’ve been consistently wrong.
In 1970, Harvard biologist George Wald predicted, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
The same year, LIFE magazine asserted, “In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution.”
Jimmy Carter claimed during his presidency, “The oil and natural gas that we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are simply running out.”
Bill McKibben, who runs the 350.org campaign, warned in 1989, “a few more decades of ungoverned fossil-fuel use and we burn up, to put it bluntly.”
And yet Mr. Obama and environmentalists expect everyone to believe them now.
Since 1970, the environment has improved remarkably — all while we’ve grown the economy, increased job opportunities and increased our reliance on fossil fuels. Ironically, the EPA puts it best on their website: “From 1970 to 2012, aggregate national emissions of the six common pollutants alone dropped an average of 72 percent while gross domestic product grew by 219 percent.” The carbon intensity of the economy is about one-third what it was in the 1940s and CO2 levels are at their lowest in 20 years.
As the data shows, we can grow the economy and become more prosperous by using fossil fuels while reducing pollution. Yet the Obama EPA can’t get out of the way of its own findings.
Why? No doubt that’s because of the undue influence and collusion between the Obama EPA and groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which has a religious fervor for shutting down all use of coal and natural gas. The New York Times reported last year that three staffers with NRDC got together in 2010 to build carbon emissions policy for the EPA, producing a 110-page document by 2012 that they pitched to the EPA and Obama administration. Former NRDC employees at the EPA and Hill offices are known as the “NRDC Mafia.”
Even if one accepts the premise of the Sierra Club, NRDC, and other radical environmentalists that the sky is about to fall, the Clean Power Plan won’t accomplish much in the way of averting doomsday. The EPA itself calculates that the CPP will only reduce global temperatures by 0.02 degrees Celsius over the next 85 years. Meanwhile, the CPP is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars annually. This translates to American households paying 20% more on their electricity bills. This is the kind of cost-benefit tradeoff that only makes sense to radical environmentalists.
Even the hyped health benefits don’t hold water. In his speech announcing the rule, Mr. Obama praised its triggering a reduction in childhood asthma. But while air pollution has declined significantly, asthma rates have skyrocketed, making it difficult to argue this rule will have any of its promised benefit.
This is one more regulation by Mr. Obama’s EPA that will burden American families without much in the way of environmental or health upside. However, the administration’s position isn’t surprising given the collusion between the EPA and NRDC. These are the people who kneel every day at the altar of the sun and wind which provide the inefficient and expensive sources of energy.
Radical environmentalists rival weather forecasters for how often they can be wrong and still be employed. But the weather forecasts have percentage chances in the predictions. And, if they’re wrong, the consequences might be that it rains when you are short an umbrella. Or it’s a better day than you expected. When the greens with their absolute predictions are wrong, the consequences are bad policies that bankrupt businesses, ruin the jobs of employees and drive up costs for American households.
• Rick Berman is president of Berman and Co., a Washington public affairs firm.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.