Dot Earth Blog: Roundup: Can New E.P.A. CO2 Rules Have a Climate Impact?

A prime challenge in trying to limit the human influence on the climate is that the atmosphere is a commons. One country's actions limiting greenhouse gas emissions can be rendered moot if others don't act, as well.

With that in mind, Fuzz Hogan, the managing editor at the New America Foundation, invited me to weigh in with others on this question about President Obama's proposed "Clean Power Plan" — the first American regulations restricting carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants:

Will the new E.P.A. standards mean that a meaningfully greater volume of hydrocarbons will stay in the Earth forever? If not, why not? If so, how? Or are we asking too much of some regulations passed in the second-term of a Presidency gummed up by sclerotic politics?

Visit the foundation's Weekly Wonk blog for answers from Sharon E. Burke, an international and energy security analyst, Steve LeVine of Quartz, Daniel Sarewitz, professor of science and society at Arizona State University, and Russell Gold, senior energy reporter at the Wall Street Journal and author of "The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World."

To prime the pump, here's my riff:

The move by the Obama administration is mostly doing what's possible, not what's needed given global emissions trends for carbon dioxide, but is still creditable given the lack of such a step under previous administrations. Will it meaningfully limit how much ancient carbon is liberated before the world transitions fully to a non-polluting energy menu? I'd say no. There's a lot of mostly wishful talk about the potential impact of the E.P.A. power plant rules on international treaty talks this year and next.

It's wishful because the real-time imperative of expanding energy access in rapidly developing countries — notably China and India but also those further down the development chain — will for many years to come trump long-term concerns about limiting the greenhouse-gas buildup. And, if anything, these countries are more insistent than ever (see China's stance discussed here) that the heavy lifting, not marginal Obama-style cuts, needs to be done (or somehow paid for) by the world's established powers, which built their prosperity on decades of unrestrained coal and oil combustion.

Please read the New America roundup. Also read Paul Krugman's latest column, "The Climate Domino." He's more bullish than I am on the idea that China can be prodded to act through American action.