Ezra Klein partially defends Obama's energy policy:
What is the right thing for the president to do on an issue that’s 1) morally urgent and 2) absolutely dead on arrival in Congress?
There’s no argument, after all, that cap-and-trade has even a shadow of a hope of a glimmer of a chance right now. The most important question in climate change for the next year or two is a defensive one: Can the administration protect the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate carbon from congressional assault? A “yes” answer to that question requires remaining in office, and so you can argue that a politically smart “energy independence” plan that doesn’t do nearly enough to address climate change is better for climate-change policy than a politically dumb climate change proposal that sets the hearts of climate hawks aflutter.