Obama's Environmental Disaster

Obama's environmental policies have been an utter joke. When he came to office, he promised pretty much everything. We were going to be a nation that ran on renewable energy, i.e. wind and solar. We were going to lead the world in stopping global warming climate change. By God, he was going to stop the waves from destroying America. Yet, seven years later, his environmental policy can best be described by words once used by George Carlin in his seven words you can't say on television routine... a Mongolian c******r f***.

Things started going wrong for Obama almost right away. Actually, let's correct things. Things went wrong before he even began. The first problem was that Obama's understanding of science is wishful thinking: solar and wind energy have yet to prove that they can provide anywhere near the energy needs of the country (not to mention they kill vast numbers of birds and therefore cause another ecological disaster). So his ideas were DOA to begin with. Then the politics began.

1. Obama began his administration by handing out $90 billion to any number of environmental companies to make the science match his rhetoric: "Go make my ideas possible!" These companies, often political contributors, happily took the money and then went bankrupt. The Treasury got soaked in losses and nothing changed scientifically. Environmentalists claim this failure was the result of a lack of legislation... no doubt requiring the laws of physics to bend.

2. Obama then ran to Copenhagen where he hoped that his Messiah stature would get the world to agree to stop all the bad environmental things... details to be worked out later. But that didn't happen. Instead, Russia, Brazil, India and China ("the BRICs") plus South Africa met behind his back and agreed that they would never make any cuts to their emissions because they didn't want to hurt their economies. Obama was humiliated.

To save face, Obama secured a last minute "agreement." This agreement was essentially an agreement to negotiate an agreement someday to do some things that could solve the world's problems... details to be worked out later. Obama came home and declared that he had saved the world. The environmental community responded by screaming betrayal. But it was worse than that. As I argued at the time, and I still think this is correct, Obama killed the climate change issue at Copenhagen. With the third world opting out of any changes, it was clear that no progress would ever be made. This made the Euros essentially stop pushing the issue. Then with Obama declaring victory, he gave most people an excuse to declare the issue settled. This killed any momentum the issue had and neutered the issue. It's never recovered, as no serious attempt to change the laws has even been suggested since -- except in fringe politics.

3. At the same time, Obama issued new environmental regulations. These, however, did nothing to protect the environment. Instead, they were aimed at changing the way power plants worked by banning coal and by requiring companies to buy GE products. He finally had a victory, right? Wrong. The courts struck those down and it was back to square one.

4. Cap and trade fell apart in 2011. Al Gore stated he was very disappointed at the time... no doubt because this killed his money making scheme.

5. Nothing much else happened on the environmental front. Obama spent the next few years stiff-arming the Keystone Pipeline, but that's about it. And that didn't actually stop the oil. To the contrary, the oil came by train, which led to a couple of local disasters.

6. In 2013, Obama reissued the power plant rules, but they're back in court and I don't see how they won't get struck down again. But even leaving that aside, these rules are proving very unpopular even among Democrats. Indeed, last week, a group of 626 Democratic state and local officials from nearly three dozen states sent a letter to Obama telling him that the EPA needs to story trying to force power plants to stop using coal and instead use "renewable" energy. This group, called CoalBlue, is worried about the economic effects of the new regulations on their states as well as the devastating effects on their re-election chances.

7. Now we have crashing gas prices because of Obama's crappy economic policies. This is a disaster for the renewable energy technologies Obama wants because they need oil to cost around $100 a barrel to be competitive. But oil is around $43 a barrel right now. This means that all those wonder technologies Obama is hoping to use to replace the things we run on now are so expensive compared to oil and gas that people have stopped buying things like hybrids.

8. Lastly, he's trying to rescue his agenda by getting an international agreement in Paris to save the world. The MSM is hopeful. But of course, Obama can't do anything without Congressional approval, so put a fork in that sucker too.

All of this adds up to a big goose egg for Obama. Ironically, the only credit environmentalists can give Obama is lowering America's carbon emissions, but the reason for that is that the economy sucks so badly that there is less economic activity. It wasn't the result of any environmental change.

For a man who promised to change the world, he's actually done more harm than good to his own cause. When he came to power, alternative energy sources were on the rise because they were economically competitive, there was a strong push within a significant portion of the public to stop global warming climate change, and the Democrats had the power to literally do whatever they wanted. Seven years later, the alternative market has collapsed, climate change is a dead political issue except in Democratic fringe politics, and the Democrats not only have no power to do anything but they didn't actually do anything while they could. All they achieved were some regulations that never took effect and never will and which their own people want undone because they are hurting their chances of election.

Indeed, the only thing worse than being Obama's enemy is to be his friend.

Thoughts?