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AUSTIN – Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Kathleen Hartnett White, Distinguished Senior Fellow-in-Residence and the Director for the Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment, authored A Gathering Storm in today’s National Review Online. White writes: ” ‘The debate is settled,’ said the president in his State of the Union address. ‘Climate change is a fact.’ But of course there is no debate about whether climate change is a fact: The debate is now about whether human emissions of greenhouse gases cause weather events of unprecedented intensity. President Obama argued that stringent new limits on coal-fired power plants are urgently needed ‘because a changing climate is already harming western communities struggling with drought, and coastal cities dealing with floods.’ So less coal-fired electrical generation will help us avoid droughts and floods? Heedless of the absurd stretch in his own argument, the president presses on. “While the climate-science community acknowledges increasing uncertainty about the human influence on climate, the president doubles down on what he calls the ‘unequivocal’ dictates of science. Inconvenient facts and crushing costs have led Australia, Britain, Germany, and other countries to pull back on carbon sanctions, and yet our president’s initiatives expand. And although the reach of the president’s dictates may be limited by law in most of the federal domain, broad executive action without a congressionally legislated foundation is no problem with today’s Environmental Protection Agency’s aggressive application of the broad terms of the 40-year-old Clean Air Act.” Kathleen Hartnett White is available to further analyze and discuss today’s federal climate policy. To schedule an interview please contact Kristen Indriago at [email protected] or 512.472.2700. The article can be read in its entirety here: http://bit.ly/1dOi1EG.
Kathleen Hartnett White is a Distinguished Senior Fellow-in-Residence and the Director for the Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment. Former Chairman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (2001-2007). The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.
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