If you love a good political drama, you've got to understand who Carol Browner is. She’s the woman who has been a thorn in the sides of conservatives since she was appointed as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by none other than Bill Clinton in 1993. Browner helmed the EPA until 2001, where she set the stage for environmental policies that seemed more like political chess moves than anything environmentally saving. She wasn’t done. In 2009, she became Obama’s Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, flaunting her so-called environmentalist savior title once again. Talk about someone who knows how to catch the ear of every Democratic president.
Browner first became notorious for her steadfast push for stringent environmental regulations at the EPA. She painted herself as a champion of the people while enforcing draconian measures on businesses and industries, also known as job creators to those who understand economics. Move over common sense; make way for the EPA's yearly regulatory tsunami. Take mercury emissions from coal plants, for example. Browner pushed for new limits, ignoring how this could shake the industry to its foundations. Did she care about the costs others bore? Not so much.
Let's talk about her time under Obama and that Svengali-esque influence she wielded. During her tenure as the climate czar, the U.S. auto industry felt her wrath. There were new fuel economy standards and greenhouse gas regulations, hailed as groundbreaking by those on the left. Never mind the massive expenses for manufacturers that trickled down to the consumers owning the streets. Driving a family car shouldn’t feel the same as flying a private jet regarding regulatory costs.
The fun doesn't end with automobile policies. Browner was a primary advocate for cap-and-trade, a concept as convoluted and ineffective as its name suggests. By essentially placing a tax on carbon emissions, she managed to irk the real job creators: small business owners. How many small businesses can thrive under cap-and-trade when they’re trying to keep the lights on and pay their employees? In a world where economic growth should take precedence, these policies are nothing short of wealth redistribution bandaids masked as green initiatives. They'll once again scream ‘climate change’, but who pays? That’s right—in the end, we all do through our wallets.
One of her lasting legacies is the Regulatory Right-to-Know Act, which pushed to give us a better look at the cost impacts of major regulations. Don’t think this one slipped by us, Carol. Acknowledging that people deserved to know how deeply digging into their pockets these regulations went was an unexpected move. Yet, it’s a tiny blip on an otherwise draconian radar.
A solid representation of her polarizing effect is Browner’s approach towards mountaintop removal mining. Not content with just regulating mercury, she hammered down on this coal mining practice as if she were the environmental sheriff in town. With advancements in cleaner coal technologies making strides, needless interference sent tremors through the coal industry.
Need we mention the American Clean Energy and Security Act, also heavily influenced by her? It wasn’t enough to set caps on emissions; businesses had to purchase the rights to emit carbon. From Wall Street to Main Street, it was a gigantic tax in disguise. The trickle-down effect on production costs and consumer prices was inevitable.
During Browner’s tenure, the energy independence conversation saw a new twist. Rather than harnessing domestic energy sources, she seemed to enjoy the irony of making the U.S. dependent on foreign renewables. Opting for policies riddled with fines and mandates rather than incentives wasn’t the conservative way of progress.
She may have left her role as climate czar in 2011, but her policies are still rolling down the tracks at full speed, driven by a liberal agenda that places environmental concerns way above pragmatic economics. Is there room for both? Surely. But with tugging and pulling as if life's a never-ending tug-of-war, one wonders why she didn’t champion balancing economic realities with environmental considerations. That's what true sustainable development means.
In this game of policy chess, even Browner's fans must see that her moves are often more complex than simply about the environment; it's about power. As good conservatives, we'll tip our hats to her ability to wield influence. But we'd prefer to see policies that balance freedom, economic strength, and environmental responsibility, rather than having someone dictate top-down ideologies.
Carol Browner might convince her disciples that she's painting the world a cleaner shade of green. Still, any sound-minded individual must recognize the art of putting constraints on the economy without considering the bigger picture is a short-sighted masterpiece at best.