With Carbon Emissions Already Dropping, Why Do We Need "Sweeping Action" On Climate Change?

“Obama to take sweeping action on climate,” reports the Washington Post. “President Obama will announce his intention to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, increase appliance efficiency standards and promote renewable energy development on public lands in a speech Tuesday outlining his plan to use executive powers to address climate change.”

In other words, President Obama wants to short-circuit the democratic process to implement major policy changes to combat global warming. In fact, one Obama administration official has said a “war on coal is exactly what’s needed” in America. But the question is, why?

The left-wing environmental movement has invested a lot of time and energy into manufacturing the perception of a global warming, climate change crisis. Yet, the facts supporting such a crisis don’t seem to be in evidence.

Most damning is the fact that global temperatures simply haven’t done what the scientists have told us they would do. Despite climbing rates of carbon emissions, temperature increases have been almost non-existent, and scientists don’t have any good explanations for why.

But even if we stipulate to the idea that rising carbon emissions are contributing to some sort of a future climate change apocalypse, the simple fact is that carbon emissions have been plummeting in America without any need for government intervention. Via the Wall Street Journal, we should remember that America is actually leading the world in terms of reduced carbon emissions:

What’s primarily driving this reduction in carbon emissions is a switch from coal-fired power plants to natural gas-fired power plants, a development made possible by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and the oceans of new energy reserves opened up by it. Carbon emissions in the United States are now down below 1992 levels, a remarkable achievement given that in those 20 years the number of Americans working, using energy, driving cars, etc. increased by more than 22%:

Obama wants to implement “sweeping” new policies to reduce carbon emissions that are already being reduced and to solve a problem that we don’t even really know to be a problem.

One is almost tempted to argue that the President has a political agenda, rather than an environmental agenda, in mind.