Obama’s “Climate Change” Speech - More Contempt for Consent of the Governed

I could rake Obama’s “Climate Change” speech over the coals (No pun intended.) for its questionable science and destructive economics.  If Obama gets his way, he’ll be hurting our economy while China cheerfully keeps polluting at full tilt.  A lot of good that would do.

But what may be even worse about the speech is his utter disregard for the consent of the governed.  If Obama wants all these so-called green policies, which will be red for the economy, then let him campaign on them before an election and work with Congress to pass them.

Instead, he threatens to go close to full tyrant, using executive orders and his pet EPA to slow down and even shut down much of the economy (e. g. power plants and the coal industry) for the sake of somehow stopping climate change.  The Wall Street Journal puts it well:

Most striking about this Obama legacy project is its contempt for democratic consent. Congress has consistently rejected an Obama-style "comprehensive" anticarbon energy plan. That was true even when Democrats ran the Senate with a filibuster-proof majority in 2009-2010 and killed his cap-and-trade energy bill. The only legislative justification for Mr. Obama's new plan is an abusive interpretation of the Clean Air Act, which was last revised in 1990 and never mentions carbon as a pollutant.

So instead Mr. Obama will impose these inherently political policy choices via unaccountable bureaucracies, with little or no debate. Mr. Obama might have at least announced his war on carbon before the election and let voters have a say. Instead he posed as the John the Baptist of fossil fuels in locales such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia—taking credit for the shale fracking boom he had nothing to do with and running ads attacking Mitt Romney as anticoal.

Now safely re-elected, Mr. Obama figures he can do what he pleases. The Americans who will be harmed will have to console themselves with 99 weeks of jobless benefits, food stamps and ObamaCare.