Obama’s emissions policy shines a spotlight on a growing division within the Democratic Party: the disconnect between donors who live in big cities on the coasts and elected officials who have to balance budgets and create jobs in energy-producing states. --Reid Wilson,
The Washington Post, 2 June 2014
President Barack Obama's plan to reduce carbon emissions is escalating environmental policy fights in energy-rich states, home to many of the marquee races that could determine which party controls the Senate after November's elections. Democrats running in conservative-leaning states in Appalachia and other energy-producing areas quickly distanced themselves from the draft rule released Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency. Other Democrats in conservative-leaning states proposed taking legislative action to block the EPA from implementing the rule. --Reid J. Epstein and Kristina Peterson,
The Wall Street Journal, 3 June 2014
The war on coal is exactly the ticket to fire up the president’s coastal elite base as well as very much what the international community wants. But it could be the death knell for Grimes’s Senate hopes. If that race makes the difference in deciding control of the Senate, it could be that global warming will be the issue that pushes Obama from a weak-second term incumbent to dead-in-the-water lame duck. –Jonathan S Tobin,
Commentary Magazine, 27 May 2014
In 2008, Barack Obama said his energy plan would cause electricity prices to “necessarily skyrocket.” The Environmental Protection Agency’s latest power plant regulations seem designed to do just that. The EPA’s own regulatory analysis of its rule to cut carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants says it will hike retail electricity by as much as 6.5 percent by 2020 — all while forcing 19 percent of the U.S. coal-fired capacity to shutdown and decreasing coal production by up to 28 percent. --Michael Bastasch,
The Daily Caller, 2 June 2014
You’d think the Obama administration would see not just how futile these policies are in addressing climate change but also how costly they are politically. Some compelling analysis of polls shows that the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election because, under Democratic leadership, it passed cap-and-trade, which the Senate wisely stopped short of. In Australia, similar policies favoring cap-and-trade cost the Liberal party its leader in 2009 and subsequently sacked two Labour prime ministers, Keven Rudd and Julia Gillard. --Patrick Michaels,
National Review Online, 30 May 2014
As President Barack Obama prepares to announce tougher new air quality standards, lawmakers in several states already are trying to blunt the impact on aging coal-fired power plants that feed electricity to millions of consumers. Without waiting to see what Obama proposes, governors in Kansas, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia have signed laws directing their environmental agencies to develop their own carbon emission plans that consider the costs of compliance at individual power plants. Similar measures recently passed in Missouri and are pending in the Louisiana and Ohio legislatures. --David Lieb,
Associated Press, 1 June 2014
Closer to home, the EPA's new rule will face fierce opposition. Some of the biggest foes of the new rule, though, come from within Mr Obama's own party. Several Democrats in tight competition for seats in November's midterm elections hail from coal states, like Kentucky, West Virginia and Montana, or states where other energy considerations loom large, such as Louisiana. They will feel that Mr Obama has handed their opponents a strong political argument at the worst possible time. Several have already attacked the new rule. With control of the Senate at stake, Mr Obama's timing seems curious. But as his presidency enters its twilight, his horizons may now be extending beyond the turf battles of the next two years. –-The Economist, 3 June 2014
