Obama can’t have it both ways. POLITICO says the president is hoping for the “broadest, farthest-reaching deal in history, reworking environmental regulations for governments and corporations around the world and creating a framework for global green policy for decades,” which sounds like a huge deal. The sort of consequential long-term international agreement that no one person should be able to agree to without the consent of the American people.
The deal itself is one that will be expensive for developed nations, and potentially disastrous for developing ones. In content, it sounds preposterous. While the United States will almost certainly try to hold up its end, the idea that China—which will not have to do anything until year 2030 when that nation’s carbon emissions are expected to peak—would follow through is more far-fetched as your average fearmongery climate-change prediction.
Some liberal pundits have suggested that Obama’s deal might force Republican candidates to take unpopular positions on climate change in the 2016 cycle. It might. But Republicans have a far more powerful case to make about the Democrats’ disregard for the norms of American lawmaking. It’s too bad that the GOP has done so little to stop him. We live in a political environment where progressive goals are treated as moral endeavors and Constitutional constraints are treated as procedural inconveniences that can be bypassed for the good of the nation—nay, the world. No president has been as openly contemptuous of checks and balances as this one. If there are no repercussions, he might only be the first in a long line of presidents we say that about.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member