In Our View: Obama’s Coal Plan Needed

As President Obama announced a bold initiative Monday to reduce the nation’s carbon emissions, the closest parallel could be found in action undertaken by the Reagan administration.

During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan took decisive steps toward solving an environmental issue of the time: Depletion of the ozone layer. He committed the United States to reducing and phasing out ozone-damaging substances, setting a standard that not only improved the situation domestically, but triggered worldwide action.

While it is rare that parallels can be drawn between Obama and Reagan, the connection is an important one as Reagan acolytes fire up their rhetoric against the current initiative. Obama’s Clean Power Plan, delivered through the Environmental Protection Agency, calls for U.S. power plants to reduce their carbon emissions to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, and for utilities to produce at least 28 percent of their electric power from renewable sources in that time frame.

In Washington, the direct impact will be negligible. Blessed with abundant hydroelectric power, the state never has been particularly reliant upon the coal-fired power plants that produce the highest levels of carbon emissions. In 2006, voters approved a renewable-energy initiative (although, inexplicably, hydroelectric power is not included among the renewables), and the state is in the process of phasing out its only coal-fired plant — a TransAlta facility in Centralia.

Yet while coal-burning facilities are largely an afterthought in Washington, the issue points out the nation’s shared interest when it comes to the environment. The fact is that fossil fuel emissions in Wyoming and Missouri and Kentucky have an impact on this region. Emissions sent into the air are not constrained by state borders, and the health care costs related to air quality are shared by all.

It is these costs that provide one of the arguments in support of Obama’s initiative. As Cass Sunstein wrote for Bloomberg View, “In strictly monetary terms, that’s expected to save $12 billion to $32 billion a year by preventing more than 2,000 premature deaths and significantly reducing nonfatal heart attacks, acute bronchitis in children, emergency hospital visits for asthma, and missed work and school days.” The numbers always can be quibbled with, but it is difficult to argue that failing to reduce carbon emissions would be beneficial for Americans’ health.

Yet the arguments have been launched. Some states have vowed to battle the regulations in court, apparently unaware that in 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court found in Massachusetts v. EPA that the agency has the legal right to regulate carbon emissions. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has sent letters to all 50 governors urging them to ignore the emission guidelines.

The argument, particularly in states in which the economy is reliant upon coal, is that the industry provides jobs. The “war on coal,” critics say, will harm the economy and raise energy prices, and that calls for a cautious balance between environmental and economic concerns. But, as Obama noted Monday, it is time for the United States to get serious about moving beyond an outdated energy source: “We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.”

By reducing the nation’s reliance upon coal and other fossil fuels for energy production, Obama’s plan is pushing the United States toward the future.