Do You Think Obama Has What It Takes To Save The World From Global Warming?

In an OpEd about executive action regarding immigration reform for USAToday, Bush former Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, urged Obama to act. And Gonzales makes the case that Obama has American constitutional precedent on his side.

Determining the limits of the president's inherent power to act in the absence of either an express constitutional or congressional grant of authority is one of the most difficult challenges in constitutional law. In part, this is because our courts have been inconsistent in defining the scope of the President's inherent authority.

Some constitutional scholars argue that the president has no inherent power since this would be inconsistent with the concept of a Constitution intended to create a federal government of limited power. Others believe in an expansive inherent power that allows the president to act as the public needs demand provided there are no express constitutional prohibitions. Still others believe, as I do, the scope of the president's inherent power lies somewhere along the spectrum between these two extremes.

What is clear, however, is that the courts have generally been inclined to defer to the executive's discretion in executing the law based upon competing priorities and budgetary constraints. Furthermore, often the courts refuse to even hear cases that present a political question. Thus, disputes over allocation of power between the elected branches are frequently resolved in the public arena, not the courts.

I don't want to offend anyone's sensibilities here but there's another issue, even more urgent, crying out for Obama's executive authority… and I suspect Alberto Gonzales wouldn't be as likely to write an OpEd on that one: Global Warming. It's the single most important issue facing the U.S.-- and mankind-- and Congress won't do a think.

Wait, wait. I was wrong. Congress did do a thing; on July 10, by a vote of 229-188 they officially denied the Global Warming exists. Mainstream conservative Chris Gibson was the only Republican to vote against the lunatic fringe amendment by coal industry whore David McKinley (R-WV); 5 right-wing Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party crossed the aisle in the other direction and voted with the Republicans burying their collective head in the sand… as the rising tide nips at their heals. Even Florida Republicans with the districts most likely to be uninhabitable within our lifetimes-- like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, David Jolly, Curt Clawson, Vern Buchanan, Dennis Ross and Mario Diaz-Balart-- voted against dealing with climate change reality. Something tells me none of them would change their mind even if they read the alarming piece about the rapid rise in Arctic temperatures and weather patterns. Scientists are warning about heat waves in the U.S. and flooding in Europe.

Temperatures in the Arctic have risen twice as fast as the rest of the world since 2000, and this could have triggered changes to global wind patterns, which have brought extreme weather to lower latitudes, the researchers said.

A study has found that the number of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, floods and droughts, has almost doubled over the same period and that this increase can be linked with unusual wind patterns in the upper atmosphere, influenced by warmer Arctic temperatures.

The researchers believe that the loss of sea ice in the Arctic may be contributing to the appearance of wide north-south swings in the high-altitude winds flowing globally west to east around the polar region, which can become stuck and amplified in a quasi-stationary pattern known as a "standing wave."

When this high-altitude westerly airstream swings north it sweeps warm air from the tropics over Europe, Russia or North America, and when it swings south it sucks in frigid air from the Arctic. Each weather pattern can last for several weeks, causing extreme heat, cold, drought or flood.

This week, in his defense of climate scientist Michael Mann by an array of right-wing nuts, Paul Krugman reminds his readers that "if climate change doesn’t scare you, and our failure to act doesn’t inspire despair, you’re not paying attention. And the great sin of the climate deniers is their role in delaying action, quite possibly until it’s too late." Yesterday, writing for Mother Jones Chris Mooney asserts that since "roughly 1991" Republicans have basically been hating the environment-- and not passively. There's been a lot of water under the bridge since Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

So what happened to the GOP, from the time of Nixon to the present, to turn an environmental leader into an environmental retrograde? According to a new study in the journal Social Science Research, the key change actually began around the year 1991-- when the Soviet Union fell. "The conservative movement replaced the 'Red Scare' with a new 'Green Scare' and became increasingly hostile to environmental protection at that time," argues sociologist Aaron McCright of Michigan State University and two colleagues.

…There has been a great deal of research on why American politics have become so polarized (on all issues, not just environmental ones), and theories to explain the trend abound. For instance, one major factor is clearly "party sorting"-- the idea that conservatives have moved more into the GOP over time, even as liberals have, at least to some extent, coalesced in the Democratic Party. So, the Republicans answering a General Social Survey question about the environment in 1996 or so simply were not the same bunch of people who were answering it in 1974.

One intriguing related hypothesis posits that the right wing has become more unwilling to compromise in general because it has become more psychologically authoritarian-- closed-minded, prone to black-and-white thinking. That's not a pattern that would uniquely affect environmental issues, though. If anything, it would be felt most strongly on the topics that authoritarians most care about: crime, national defense, religion in public life, and matters of that ilk.

Whatever the cause, the consequence is clear: We can't get anything done in a bipartisan way on the environment any longer. "The situation," conclude the authors, "does not bode well for our nation's ability to deal effectively with the wide range of environmental problems-- from local toxics to global climate change-- we currently face."

And that's why we need a strong president who's willing to put the nation's well-being front and center, rather than political calculations. Is Obama that kind of president? I still want to believe it but so far, I'd put my money on electing strong Climate Change activist-types like Shenna Bellows and Brain Schatz to the Senate and Paul Clements and Ted Lieu to the House in November. I would expect every candidate to expected my vote or my support to be able to say what Ted Lieu posted on his website when he launched his campaign for Congress: "Climate change is the single greatest threat to California, our nation's future and our environment. As a member of Congress, I will champion legislation to reduce carbon pollution in the U.S." Lieu wrote co-authored AB 32 which created a statewide greenhouse gas limit that would reduce emission by 25% by 2020. He also wrote AB 236 which prioritized the purchase of fuel-efficient state fleet cars and required alternative fuel capable vehicles to actually use alternative fuels.