President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are taking bows today for the approval of a new climate change accord in Paris that will, though not necessarily legally binding, have a long-term impact on the U.S. economy. But as the New York Times notes today, unlike other presidential legacy items, Republican presidential candidates aren’t paying a great deal of attention to the agreement. But rather than either dismiss it as merely one more liberal project they pledge to dismantle or another illustration of the stark cultural and ideological divide between the parties, the climate pact needs to be understood as a symptom of the constitutional rot that any potential Republican president needs to address. If the GOP leadership lets this go without a fight of some sort, they will be confirming their base’s worst fears about their judgment.
The Times is right about the most important reason why Democratic candidates yammer endlessly about the climate and Republicans have to be reminded about the issue. Liberals not only tend to believe in the most extreme science fiction-style scenarios that are floated about global warming. Conservatives are split between those who think the entire topic is something of a liberal hoax and those who acknowledge the climate change is a reality but doubt the notion that it is primarily the result of human activity.
This divide is partly the result of the familiar pattern of most political debates. Liberals who are uncomfortable with capitalism naturally tend to buy into theories that place the blame for society’s ills or perils to the planet on the excesses of capitalism. Conservatives are less inclined to believe scientific theories or models about the climate for the same reasons since they believe the left’s obsession with global warming is, as Ted Cruz likes to say, “the perfect pseudoscientific theory for a big-government politician who wants more power.”
Climate change is also a key dividing line in terms of priorities. President Obama and Bernie Sanders are telling their party’s base exactly what they want to hear when they say that terrorism is caused by climate change. That satisfies their desire to avoid directly confronting the challenge of Islamist beliefs that actually do motivate terrorists and as well as speaking to their instinctual faith that human greed is the original sin for which mankind must pay a dear price. For the left, the right’s lack of interest in the subject is a sign of their foes’ stupidity. For the right, the left’s belief that driving an SUV is a greater threat to their security than ISIS is proof that modern liberalism is insane.
Moreover, both sides assume that they are on the winning side of the argument in terms of a general election. Liberals have good reason to think conservatives are out of touch on the issue because the left controls the mainstream media and especially popular culture, where even the most reasoned skepticism about the subject is treated as the sole preserve of morons. Yet conservatives are aware of the fact that poll after poll consistently shows that Americans view terrorism as their number one concern. The American public has never placed climate change anywhere near the top of their priority list and don’t want their government doing anything to sabotage the already anemic economic recovery.
But understanding why the two sides talk past each other is not really the point. Like the Iran nuclear deal, the climate change pact is an example not only of the vast gap between the two parties on the issue but also of the way this president has sought to circumvent the constitution.
There has been a lot of coverage about the way, as the Washington Post reports, the administration’s ability to persuade its negotiating partners to avoid wording that would change it from a suggestion to an obligation. But whether it says “should” rather than “shall” doesn’t mean that this treaty that isn’t being called a treaty won’t have the power to wreck havoc with the U.S. or the global economy. The lack of enforcement mechanisms means the non-Western signatories will almost certainly flout its term but the West will abide by it to their great economic cost. As the Times’s business section notes, at the very least, it is a signal to businesses around the world that they will be penalized if they don’t conform to the arbitrary standards that were set by those attending international bureaucrats convention that convened in Paris. The benefits of these changes are, at best, undefined, except for those who stand to profit greatly from such transactions (see, Gore, Al). But the costs will be borne by all of us in terms of higher energy prices and the potential devastation of important American industries.
Nor should Republicans forbear from pointing out that the promises of a vast transfer of wealth from developed countries to the elites that govern certain Third World nations that will qualify for the subsidies outlined in the deal will create a vast unfunded mandate for which Congress will sooner or later be expected to provide funding.
Just as important is the ability of President Obama to commit the U.S. to international treaties without submitting these documents to the constitutional test of Senate approval. He tried to do that with Iran, but Congress was sufficiently alarmed by this that it voted to give itself the right to a vote on the nuclear deal. That vote was an upside down version of the normal approval process that virtually guaranteed a victory for the president since it allowed him to pass a treaty with just one-third plus one vote in either the House and the Senate. And in the end, Senate Democrats denied themselves a vote on the most important foreign policy agreement since the end of the Cold War by filibustering the very vote they had given themselves earlier in the year.
But what happened this time is that Congress hasn’t even bothered to give itself even a fig leaf of an approval process on climate change. That’s not only a disgrace but also a dangerous precedent that should alarm citizens on both sides of the political aisle.
What this sets up is a situation where any Republican elected president will be bound to disavow Obama’s deals. Such vows may satisfy GOP primary voters but, in some ways, the damage will already be done by January 2017. That’s less true of the climate deal than it will be of Iran (which has already begun violating the deal without so much as a threat of retaliation from the administration). But undoing Obama’s handiwork will take more than a presidential statement.
In the end, the climate deal shows us that the ability of presidents to circumvent the constitution in this manner is a reminder that there really is a tangible difference between the two parties. Republicans must wait until they elect a president to get their way. That’s a point that should re-emphasize their need to nominate a presidential candidate that can win next November. But in the meantime, they need to start thinking about whether they are prepared to dig in and prevent this deal from being funded if that is part of the next budget they’ll be asked to approve. As much as they may be loath to play on what some feel is Obama’s ideological turf, they can’t afford to let themselves get hoodwinked by the president again. If they do, it will give a further spur to populist forces that they are right to worry about.
