Apparently tomorrow, President Obama will “showcase” his climate change agenda.  According to the Washington Post:

After years of putting other policy priorities first — and dismaying many liberal allies in the process — Obama is now getting into the weeds on climate change and considers it one of the key components of his legacy, according to aides and advisers.

He is regularly briefed on scientific reports on the issue, including a national climate assessment that he will help showcase Tuesday. He is using his executive authority to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other sources, and is moving ahead with stricter fuel-efficiency standards for the heaviest trucks.

And while he routinely brings up climate change in closed-door meetings with world leaders, according to his aides, he also discusses it in his private life, talking about global warming’s implications with his teenage daughters.

As usual, he intends to proceed by using executive power, whether or not the people or their representatives agree and without any consideration of the cost to the consumer.  All in the face of mounting evidence that the supposed crisis of CO2 is a non-crisis.

According to the WaPo, this intention to address “climate change” was spurred by Obama viewing satellite pictures of the California mountain snow pack:

The satellite images viewed by President Obama before a meeting with eight Western governors were stark, showing how snowpack in California’s mountains had shrunk by 86 percent in a single year.

Of course, most of us know that’s likely a local weather phenomenon, not a result of “global warming” or we’d be unlikely to be seeing things like this:

Antarctic sea ice continues to set new records, with extent in April at the highest since measurements began in 1979.

Remember, Antarctic and Arctic sea ice melts were to be the harbingers of doom.  In fact, the Arctic was supposed to be ice free last year according to the perpetually wrong alarmists.  Instead we saw record sea ice there as well.  Factor in the fact that there has been no global warming for over 17 years and one has to ask why this, in the face of a badly performing economy and over 92 million Americans being out of work, is suddenly to become a priority for the White House?  As one editorialist puts it:

The problem is, it’s just so hard to be an alarmist these days. Temperatures aren’t rising, U.S. CO2 emissions are down, and now it turns out that peak oil won’t peak. What’s a scare-monger to do?

The answer is keep on trying to gin up the alarm to satisfy the true-believers who are an important political constituency of the Democrats.  And it is becoming clearer every day that the Democrats are going to need all of their constituencies to even have a ghost of a chance in the November mid-terms.  To this point, the leftist environmental movement hasn’t been too happy with the Obama administration and it certainly wants more drastic action to be taken to curb the use of fossil fuel. So it’s time to shore up their support:

 Environmentalists such as Democratic donor and billionaire Tom Steyer want him to veto the Keystone pipeline and wean the nation from natural gas.

Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke said of the administration: “We have to increasingly get them to acknowledge that there has to be a major transformation away from fossil fuels.”

That desire the Natural Resources Defense Council voices has resulted in such things as the “war on coal” and the reduction in production of oil on federal lands and off our coasts.   It has also meant slow walking the permit process as well as holding the Keystone Pipeline hostage to presidential politics.

So why now? Why is this the time to do this?  Because he can:

 A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the plans are not final, said Obama has made it clear that he considers climate change a priority and is less politically constrained now that he no longer faces reelection.

Meanwhile the public views the issue as a low priority if a priority at all, given jobs and economic problems.  Yet Obama persists.  Elections are in the offing, and if there is one thing he has at least a semblance of competence in, it’s getting elected (or helping others do so).  So all the high flying rhetoric aside, this is about votes, this is about elections and this is about trying to preserve at least one Democratic chamber in Congress for the last two years of his presidency.  It is one of many such moves he’ll be attempting in the coming months.  But make no mistake — this isn’t about the environment or his legacy, it’s about politics.

~McQ