The U.S. Supreme Court made a terrible mistake this week, by stopping the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Because the global climate accord reached in Paris this past December is fragile, the Supreme Court ruling is akin to placing the planet's climate on death row. To be sure, the court did not block the EPA's strategy permanently. However, it stopped it dead in its tracks, in order to await the outcomes of legal challenges. That process will most likely take at least a year, thereby preventing the Obama Administration from putting an infrastructure in place that would move the U.S. towards complying with its commitments to the Paris accord.
What makes the delay dangerous for the Paris Accord is that it is fragile to begin with. The Accord is built on the principle of mutual reciprocity, known as "we will if you will." The US and China are the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, and if either one moves from "we will" to "we won't," the game is over for the Paris Accord.
The Supreme Court decision has changed the message from the U.S. from "we will" to "maybe we will, it depends."
Besides the possible legal complications, a major item in the list of "depends" is the outcome of the elections this coming November, both for the Presidency and for Congress. Virtually all Republican candidates for President oppose measures to reduce GHG emissions. Both Democratic candidates support measures to reduce GHG emissions.
Coalition formation and relative power will either save us or doom us in how we deal with global warming. At one point, the Supreme Court appeared to have been more supportive. In 2014, the Court established broad conditions under which it would accept the Obama Administration's strategy to rely on the Clean Air Act of 1970 and use the EPA as the enforcing agency. So something changed in respect to the voting coalition within the Supreme Court, and it is not clear what that something is.
Coalition formation was also at the heart of why the global community was able to address with success the threat of fluorocarbons in the twentieth century, but has failed to address the threat from greenhouse gases. The coalitions in the fluorocarbon issue were essentially twofold - the developed world and the developing world. However, the developing world coalition that was stable in the case of fluorocarbons is unstable in the case of GHGs. This is because of an important divide: Some developing countries are energy producers with a large interest in continued GHG emissions, while others are energy consumers with a large interest in reduced GHG emissions.
The divide is also apparent within countries, and is especially so in the US. In my new book Behavioral Risk Management, I pointed out that the U.S. population is sharply divided about global warming, and that this divide is reflected in partisan politics. Just over 60 percent of Americans believe that global warming is taking place. However, only a slight majority believes that global warming is anthropomorphic, meaning that it is caused by human activity.
The U.S. is politically polarized and becoming more so. Just look at the outcome of the New Hampshire primary this past week. The Republican winner is catering to the extreme right of his party, and the Democratic winner is catering to the extreme left of his party. This kind of polarization makes compromise unlikely, and political struggle highly likely. The struggle that results might doom us in the long run.
The economist John Maynard Keynes once quipped that in the long run, we are all dead. Because of global warming, the long run may not be all that long, as we wait on death row.