Former Obama Adviser Uses Hurricane Harvey To Attack GOP On Climate Change

OMG! All of that rain is going to cause the sea level to rise!!!

The fact is that if steep reductions in America’s carbon emissions are to be achieved as fast as President Obama was advocating while he was President — an 80% reduction by 2050 — it cannot be done any other way but for the federal government to intervene directly in the energy marketplace and to force a steep increase in the price of all carbon fuels.
And even that policy won’t be enough. Direct government control over the production, distribution, and consumption of gasoline, diesel fuel, and natural gas must eventually be imposed through a mandated carbon fuel rationing scheme.
If Ben Rhodes had been truly concerned about climate change when he was working in the White House for President Obama; and if Ben Rhodes’ actions had been in alignment with his publicly professed beliefs, this is what he should have advised President Obama to do:
— Declare a carbon pollution emergency under authorities previously granted to the President by the Congress to defend the United States from immediate threats to national security.
— Instruct the EPA to write and publish a Clean Air Act Section 108 Endangerment Finding for CO2 using the previously published Section 202 finding as a model. Then use the Section 108 finding as the basis for establishing a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for CO2.
— While acknowledging that CO2 is a well-mixed gas on a worldwide scale, justify the published NAAQS using the argument that it represents America’s commitment to achieving our part of a general worldwide reduction in carbon emissions.
— The act of establishing and then enforcing a NAAQS for CO2 creates a defacto commitment which can be legally established under existing Executive Branch authorities without the need for direct concurrence from Congress.
— Recognizing that even a US Congress controlled by Democrats will never pass a direct tax on carbon, or even a carbon trading scheme, use a series of Executive Orders to establish a system of carbon pollution fines to be administered by the EPA and to be collected by the individual states.
— The EPA’s mandated system of carbon pollution fines will become the functional equivalent of a legislated tax on carbon. All revenues collected will be assigned to the individual state governments which enforce the system of fines.
— Develop a national carbon fuel rationing scheme to be phased in over a decade’s time which gradually imposes ever-more aggressive controls over the production, distribution, and consumption of all carbon fuels.
— Allocate restricted supplies of gasoline, diesel, and natural gas among those sectors of the economy judged by policy makers to be most vulnerable to an ever-shrinking supply of carbon fuel.
Sooner or later, the Democrats will be back in control of the federal government and will have another opportunity to take aggressive action in quickly reducing America’s carbon emissions. What will they do once they are back in power?
If the Democrats start doing those things which actually have to be done to reduce America’s emissions 80% by 2050, then two things will happen.
First, a number of lawsuits will be filed which challenge the federal government’s basic authority to impose carbon fuel rationing on the American people. The outcome of these lawsuits is far from certain. It could go one way or the other. Second, the ongoing public debate concerning the validity of today’s mainstream climate science will go critical mass in a way that it’s never gone before.