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As recently as 2008, presidential candidates openly sparred over their own plans for dealing with climate change. This year it's such a touchy topic that both sides prefer instead to talk about energy policy ? a kind of proxy for climate threat.

Here are four ways the candidates differ on climate change: Is climate change a problem caused by humans? Should the US adopt market-based approaches to curbing greenhouse gases? Has the Environmental Protection Agency gone too far? Is the Obama administration waging a "war on coal"?

1. Is climate change a real problem ? and is it manmade?

Although they were once close at least in recognizing climate change as a problem ? and in seeking a market-based approach to curbing plant emissions ? President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney now come at the issue from sharply different perspectives.

In his 2010 book, "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness," former Massachusetts Governor Romney said that he believed that climate change is occurring, and that humans have a role in causing it. "The reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore." At a June 3, 2011, town meeting in Manchester, N.H., he said: "I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer.... and that humans contribute to that."

But responding to a question in Pittsburgh just four months later, Romney said: "My view is that we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us."

In contrast, Mr. Obama told world leaders at a UN summit on climate change in 2009 that "the security and stability of each nation and all peoples ? our prosperity, our health, and our safety ? are in jeopardy." He added: "And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out.?

Obama has held the position that climate change is caused by humans, especially by fossil energy burning, since at least his time in the US Senate, when he and 39 other senators in 2006 wrote President Bush calling for government-imposed limits on heat-trapping gas emissions. Obama in January 2007 joined Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona in co-sponsoring a major climate change bill. He also pledged to mobilize an international coalition to help curb carbon emissions.

2. Cap and trade to regulate greenhouse gas emissions

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney backed a market-based plan to put a cap on carbon dioxide emissions and trade emission permits or credits. "This is a great thing for the commonwealth," Romney said in 2005 of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. "We can effectively create incentives to help stimulate a sector of the economy and at the same time not kill jobs."

But news reports soon began to appear saying Romney was cooling on the new regional pact. On Dec. 14, just prior to the pact's public unveiling, Romney rejected it, because other states refused to include his proposed "safety valve" pricing mechanism that he said would prevent costs to utilities from spiraling out of control.

"He believes we should not spend trillions of dollars on job-killing measures like cap and trade," a spokesman for his presidential campaign, speaking on background, wrote in an e-mail.

Since becoming president, Obama has unambiguously backed federal cap-and-trade legislation that would use a market-style mechanism to ratchet down US emissions of greenhouse gases, especially on power plants.

?As we move forward over the next several years, my hope is, is that the United States, as one of several countries with a big carbon footprint, can find further ways to reduce our carbon emissions,? Obama in said Canberra, Australia, in November 2011.

3. Has the EPA gone too far?

Since failing to pass cap-and-trade legislation in 2009, Obama has sought to stem greenhouse gas emissions through renewable energy investments, regulating power-plant emissions, boosting automobile fuel-efficiency standards, and permitting federal agencies to proceed with limits on emissions.

Despite strong GOP opposition in Congress, the White House allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to declare carbon-dioxide emissions a pollutant and to gradually regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants under the Clean Air Act.

?I think that?s good for the world," Obama said of efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. "I actually think, over the long term, it?s good for our economies as well, because it?s my strong belief that industries, utilities, individual consumers ? we?re all going to have to adapt how we use energy and how we think about carbon."

Today, Romney's website says little about climate change. But it does note that a President Romney would seek to change the Clean Air Act to "exclude carbon dioxide from its purview" rolling back the EPA's 2009 finding that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare.

"I exhale carbon dioxide," Romney said last year, citing the EPA's efforts to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. "I don't want those guys following me around with a meter to see if I'm breathing too hard."

Many Republicans in the 2012 campaign cycle are running on the theme that climate warming is a hoax and EPA regulations are job killers.

In a December 2009 opinion article that appeared during international climate talks, Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin, cited heavy snowfalls as evidence that global warming was exaggerated. "Unilateral economic restraint in the name of fighting global warming has been a tough sell in our communities, where much of the state is buried under snow," he wrote.

Congressman Ryan voted for a 2011 bill that would have prevented the EPA from regulating greenhouse-gas pollution. The same year, he voted to block the Department of Agriculture from implementing its climate-protection program, to eliminate White House climate advisers, and to oppose light-bulb efficiency standards that curb carbon emissions.

The Obama Administration in March proposed the nation?s first-ever restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from US power plants. If approved, the restrictions are expected to sharply curb construction of new coal-fired power plants nationwide, limiting them to no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per megawatt generated.

Those EPA rules follow a December 2009 finding by the agency that greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to public health and safety. A 2007 US Supreme Court decision paved the way for that EPA finding by ruling that greenhouse gases may indeed be regulated under the Clear Air Act?s definition of a pollutant ? if they met the standard.

In a recent major win on that point, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously in June that the EPA had indeed lawfully determined that greenhouse-gas emissions pose a danger to public health and welfare.

4. War on coal?

GOP critics charge that the Obama administration's new regulations on carbon emissions amounts to a "war on coal" ? an especially sensitive issue in Midwestern battleground states in the runup to November elections. Weeks of advertising by the Republican National Committee and Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp. blamed Obama for electricity cost increases in the state and for mining industry layoffs.

?If you don't believe in coal, if you don't believe in energy independence for America, just say it,? Romney said, according to The Columbus Dispatch newspaper. "If you believe the whole answer for our energy needs is wind and solar, then say that."

In response, the Obama campaign cites gains in coal production under this administration. In ads in coal-producing parts of Ohio, Obama's campaign touted rising coal production there during his presidency, Energy & Environment Daily reported.

"Here in Ohio, coal production has increased 7 percent since Obama took office," the ad says, according to E&E Daily. "Ohio coal jobs are up 10 percent. Obama has also made one of America's largest investments ever in clean-coal technology."

"It's been easy for the other side to pour millions of dollars into a campaign to debunk climate-change science," Obama told Rolling Stone magazine in April. "I suspect that over the next six months, [climate change] is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we?re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way."

Obama's efforts not to be painted as an ?ber-regulator killing jobs has drawn uncharacteristic criticism from greens. First, the Obama campaign added a clean coal section to its website in the spring. Last month, an Obama ad that criticized Romney for flip flopping on greenhouse-gas emissions when he said as governor that a particular coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts "kills people."

"So when it comes to coal, ask yourself, who's being honest and who's playing politics?" the Obama ad said, according to Energy and Environment Daily.

But that won a brickbat from environment-booster Mother Jones magazine, which called the Obama ad "a new low, dinging Mitt Romney for remarking that coal 'kills people.' "

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Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Obama vs. Romney 101: 4 ways they differ on climate change

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