Daniel Howes

Obama uses fear to rush climate goals

Fear mongering apparently is in the eye of the beholder.

Back in the dark ol' days of the Bush administration, critics routinely accused the neo-cons, the radical right, Dick Cheney and his crew of using fear -- of Islamic terrorism, of Saddam Hussein, of al-Qaida, of another 9/11 -- to shove their preferred policy choices down the collective throats of gullible Americans and some of the country's unsuspecting allies.

I bring this up now not because President Barack Obama last week promulgated his policy on Afghanistan and dispatched his people over the weekend to defend it. But because this week's United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen gives the president's people a peg to declare that greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health and welfare.

"The threat is real," Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson told Politico.com on Monday. "Climate change has now become a household issue. Greenhouse gases from human activity are increasing at an unprecedented rate and are affecting our environment. The science has been thoroughly evaluated."

Depends on your definition of "thoroughly." Because the EPA public danger ruling, opposed by such industry groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, follows the unauthorized disclosure of e-mails at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit in Britain showing scientists conspired to overstate the extent to which man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change.

And just like the accused fear mongers in the last administration, Team Obama prefers to ignore the destabilizing implications of the East Anglia flap because they pose inconvenient truths that could complicate the global politics of climate change.

Instead, hurry because fear works. Hurry while the president's party holds a commanding majority in Congress. Hurry as representatives from foreign governments and the U.N. converge on Copenhagen, ready to adopt standards justified by doctored science.

Hurry to act before the economic impacts of any decision, and the likely political consequences, make paltry job creation even paltrier.

Hurry before the alleged incontrovertibility of the global warming "consensus" -- and what it augurs for economic growth and business investment -- might prove to be well short of the widely promised slam dunk.

Yes, hurry. But recognize that the demand for speed and consensus, urged Monday by U.N. officials at the climate conference in Denmark, are clear signs the protagonists fear they may be losing an argument they desperately want to win and will overlook almost any dissenting voices to make sure they do.

The paradox here is revealing: On one hand, a new administration in Washington chooses the opening day of a UN climate conference to issue a major, if not at all surprising, environmental decision with far-reaching economic consequences for business and industry in Detroit and around the country.

On the other, a new administration in Washington pushes an overhaul of one-sixth of the U.S. economy, backs an energy bill likely to raise costs for businesses and individuals, ratchets deficit spending higher, accedes to policy that undermines confidence in the U.S. dollar and then frets about weak job creation in what's looking like the mother of all jobless recoveries.

Policy, like elections, has consequences. Which is why it's mystifying, if not amusing in a queasy sort of way, that official Washington worries about the dearth of new jobs in this recovery even as it touts policy on health care, energy, infrastructure and the financing of government that make hiring and expansion less likely, not more.

Instead, hurry. Don't question the consensus. Don't ask whether there's a more job-friendly way to balance environmental responsibility with economic sense, as most smart business people would. Don't acknowledge climate-change skeptics, bolstered by the revelations from East Anglia. Don't doubt the wisdom of those in charge.

We've seen that movie before, and we know how it usually ends: Hurry, be afraid and, most of all, capitulate.

dchowes@detnews.com (313) 222-2106 Daniel Howes' column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.