New power plant rules spark fight over climate change

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama’s sweeping new power-plant regulations are thrusting the divisive debate over climate change into the race for the White House, with candidates in both parties seeing an opportunity to capitalize.

To Democrats, rallying around global climate change is a way to energize liberal supporters and paint Republicans as out of touch with the majority of Americans. To the GOP, Obama’s executive actions to curb greenhouse gas emissions are burdensome to business and block job creation, an argument targeting Americans’ worries about the economy.

The president unveiled the plan at the White House Monday, calling it the “single most important step” the U.S. has taken to combat a major global threat.

Broad support for the rules by Democratic candidates and universal opposition from Republicans puts the parties’ eventual nominees on a general-election collision course. Most of the changes Obama outlined would have to be implemented by the next president, if the rules survive court challenges.

Republicans gave little indication of what they would do differently to curb emissions from U.S. power plants, if anything at all. They cast the measure requiring states to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent by 2030 as unnecessary and costly White House overreach that will raise energy costs for Americans.

The Obama administration itself estimated the emissions limits will cost $8.4 billion annually by 2030, though the actual price won’t be clear until states decide how they would reach their targets.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, said the regulations would be an economic “buzz saw” that would “cost hard-working Americans jobs and raise their energy rates.” Jeb Bush, the former GOP governor of Florida, said the rules “run over state governments, will throw countless people out of work and increases everyone’s energy prices.”