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The science fiction canon is full of stories about a dystopian future in which computers and robots, motivated by their prime directive not to harm or allow to be harmed any person and disconcerted by humans’ propensity to drink , smoke, drive too fast, build nuclear weapons, fight wars, and eat trans fats, take over the world. These things never turn out well, and often the only solution is to send Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to sort things out.
Yesterday’s announcement by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), acting under direction from President Obama, announced that it had classified carbon dioxide and several other greenhouse gases as hazardous substances, which gives it the power to regulate them without the need for enabling legislation. By most estimates 70% of our economy involves emission of CO2, although if you count breathing by human beings and other animals, the ruling could, theoretically, cover something close to 100% of all human activity. You need not be a global warming denier or believe that President Obama is a crypto-communist to find this troubling.
The climate change orthodoxy becomes more rigid by the day. It is no longer enough to believe that the Earth is warming and that the trend is linked to human activity; now, unless you accept the consensus view on the pace and magnitude of climate change and endorse Al Gore’s or Nicholas Stern’s radical views of the solution, you become socially unacceptable.
With his climate change bill stalled in Congress, the President decided to do an end run around the legislative process and impose an administrative or bureaucratic solution. It is profoundly undemocratic to enact a policy that will profoundly affect the lives of all Americans without consulting the people and their elected representatives.
The notion of an unstoppable crisis or a grave emergency requiring immediate and forceful action often gives rise to the worst kind of political abuse. Those who hold power adopt a “by any means necessary” view, which allows the niceties of democratic process and rule of law to be brushed aside. Whether it is climate change or the War on Terror, the responses to such crises can weaken democratic institutions and erode civil liberties. At least in the War on Terror, President Bush pushed the Patriot Act through Congress to provide a legal basis for the restrictions on civil liberties he thought necessary and went to Congress again for permission to invade Iraq. President Obama sees no need to seek Congressional approval even as a legal fig leaf for his naked expansion of executive power.
With Arnold Schwarzenegger facing political woes of his own and unable to charge to the rescue, and with the New York Times and, more surprisingly, the Financial Times both endorsing Mr. Obama’s move, there is little prospect of an immediate reversal of the policy, though many corporations and their lobbyists appear determined to tie the EPA up in litigation for years to come. That, too, will be bad for the country, since judicial attempts to circumvent democracy are just as bad as executive ones.
In the absence of any obvious solution I think I’ll get Netflix to send me Terminator II.
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