As the United States prepares to announce new limits on carbon emissions, the White House has been working to transform the debate from distant threats to more immediate issues.
President Barack Obama wants to shift the conversation from polar bears and melting glaciers to droughts in Iowa and more childhood asthma across the nation.
Bloomberg newsagency reports that opponents are also making the issue personal.
They are homing in on the planned rules’ potential kitchen-table impact, raising the prospect of higher utility bills and job losses.
They expect those arguments to resonate with voters as the country is still recovering from the worst recession in seven decades.
The struggle to set the terms of the climate change discussion will largely determine the durability of a key part of President Obama’s second-term legacy and whether the US takes aggressive action to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.
Industry groups say the threat to jobs is real.
Lower energy costs are “an extraordinary advantage” that American industry has over foreign competitors, said Ross Eisenberg, a vice president at the National Association of Manufacturers.
“Manufacturers are on the verge of a comeback here,” he said.
President Obama will highlight the stakes for Americans in a conference call on global warming with public health groups hosted by the American Lung Association today, said a White House official who declined to be identified.
It will coincide with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy making a scheduled announcement of the new regulations.
The argument that inaction would imperil public health was one of the most effective messages in the successful campaign to defeat a 2010 California referendum that would have rolled back a state law limiting greenhouse-gas emissions, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale University’s Project on Climate Change Communications.
A television commercial, featuring the head of the state chapter of the American Lung Association making that case, was crucial to the campaign, he said.
“Many Americans still think of this as distant in time and space, that this is about polar bears and small island countries but not the United States or at least not my state or my community,” Mr Leiserowitz said.
“As Americans begin to connect the dots on climate change and health, we expect them to become much more concerned.”
At the heart of the debate is a plan being considered by the president that would cut power-plant emissions by as much as 30 per cent, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The war over the new rules involves some of the nation’s most deep-pocketed political players.
The National Association of Manufacturers considers the power plant rule a precedent-setting measure that would open the way to curbs on such carbon-intensive industries as cement making, iron and steel, pulp and paper, natural gas and petroleum refining, Mr Eisenberg said.
The draft regulations would require deep cuts in greenhouse-gas pollution from existing power plants while allowing leeway to offset smokestack emissions with changes elsewhere in the electrical system, said the people familiar with the plan.
These would include improvements in the grid’s efficiency or incentives for customers to use less power.
The political battle over the regulations will be “a huge multilevel chess game across three years,” said Edwin Chen, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defence Council.
Bloomberg reports the fight will likely encompass a year-long public comment period before the draft rules become final, attempts to roll back the regulations in Congress, challenges in court, and state-by-state battles as each adopts its own plan to comply.
The White House in news events and cabinet officials’ speeches appears to have been laying the groundwork for a public campaign to bolster the climate rules, said Pete Altman, climate campaign director for the Defence Council.
It goes back at least to the announcement in February of seven US Department of Agriculture “climate hubs” to help farmers and rural state residents respond to global warming.
Ms McCarthy, the EPA administrator, has been traversing the country, addressing connections between local problems and climate change.
On May 15 in Florida, she spoke about the link to asthma, a condition especially prevalent among Hispanics, who comprise a quarter of the city’s population.
Bloomberg reports two days after the regulations are announced, she will be in Virginia, discussing the threat that area faces from greater coastal flooding.
