The Obama administration is keeping quiet about climate policy leading up to the election, refusing to answer whether it will pursue a cap and trade policy if re-elected and remaining startlingly silent about global climate change. The Romney campaign believes that actions by President Obama have slowed economic growth, is not certain “what the nature of the threat of climate change is” and claims that energy efficiency is a clever ploy by the Democrats to enact expensive policy. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide, but I think it’s worth talking about what climate policy we do have and how the standards for both stationary and mobile sources came about in Washington.
To take a step back and put the recent rulings and debate in the context of the United States climate policy, I am going to provide a bit of history, a brief lesson in congressional legislation, and some personal commentary about what it all means. I welcome your opinions, feedback, and questions about this discussion in the comments section of this post.