Presidential Leadership and the Challenge of Global Climate Change

• Date: 01 January 2009

1-2009 NEWS & A NALYSIS 39 ELR 100451-2009 NEWS & A NALYSIS 39 ELR 10045

Presidential

Leadership and the

Challenge of

Global Climate

Change

by Joel A. Mintz

Joel A. Mintz is Professor of Law, Nova Southeastern University

Law Center, and Member Scholar, Center for Progressive Reform.

Editors’ Summary:

Effective presidents can make signif‌icant progress in

moving climate policy forward. Presidential scholar-

ships suggest the next president should attract a top

team of advisers, fashion a practical, workable program

to address global warming, take the diplomatic initiative

on the issue, coordinate his efforts with those of inf‌luen-

tial members of Congress, employ effective public per-

suasion, and carefully craft unilateral actions that will

dramatize the climate change problem and take at least

modest steps to alleviate it. While these steps may help

the next president be effective at moving policy forward,

there are still practical limits to presidential power that

will limit the degree to which any president can tackle

climate issues.

The year 2008 appears likely to mark a turning point in

the politics of global climate change within the United

States. In contrast with the passivity that has character-

ized the current Administration’s posture toward the incipient

and potential future impact of climate disruption, President-

elect Barack Obama has pledged to support actively legis-

lation to cap and reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases

(GHGs) which imperil the world’s environment and the health

and welfare of its inhabitants. In view of this, it seems appro-

priate to ask what kind of leadership our next president may

reasonably be expected to provide on this critical issue, and

what approaches he may most fruitfully pursue to secure pol-

icy change in this area.1

In the next section of this A rticle, I will provide a brief

overview of recent, authoritative f‌indings by leading scientists

and groups of technical experts, with respect to the causes and

the present and projected impacts of human GHG emissions

on this planet’s environment. In Part II, I will identify those

facets of the climate change phenomenon that are unique in

a political sense and the ways in which those characteristics

of global warming present special challenges to a president’s

ability to lead, and I will brief‌ly survey the writings of a selec-

tion of presidential scholars who have examined the ways in

which American presidents can and do provide political lead-

ership and inf‌luence national public policy. Finally, I will sug-

gest the elements of what seems likely to be the most effective

strategy for the next occupant of the White House to follow an

effective new national policy in this realm.

I. Global Climate Disruption: The

Objective Basis for Concern

Scientif‌ic interest in the impacts of human-made gases on the

earth’s climate is not new.2 Nonetheless, it was not until late in

1. Throughout this Article I often refer to the president with the pronoun “he,”

since the next president will be male. In doing so, however, I do not mean to

suggest that that incumbent’s successor(s) will necessarily also be of the same

gender.

2. Scientif‌ic understanding of observed and potential changes in the earth’s climate

has its roots in the 19th century. In the 1820s, Joseph Fourier, a French physicist

and mathematician, f‌irst likened the earth’s atmosphere to a greenhouse that

absorbs some of the energy reaching the planet as sunlight and prevents it from

escaping directly back into space. Forty years later, Irish scientist John Tyndall

tested the ability of various gases to absorb light. His laboratory experiments

demonstrated that carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor were highly absorbent

of infrared energy. In the 1890s, Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, took note

of fossil evidence indicating that Asia, Europe, and North America had been

affected by a great ice age approximately 12,000 years ago. Arrhenius postu-

lated that a lengthy period of volcanic inactivity had led to a decrease in global

CO2 that had led to a substantial global cooling. Arrhenius’ work was followed

in the 1930s by that of Guy Steward Callendar, a British engineer who viewed

human-produced greenhouse gases (GHGs) as a possible cause of global warm-

ing, which had already been detected from meteorological data.

The early, isolated insights of Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius, and Callendar

were largely ignored, however, until the second half of the 20th century when

Charles Keeling began to collect data on atmospheric levels of CO2 in an obser-

vatory atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Keeling’s meticulous readings, begun in 1958,