Candidate D: Topic: Regulating carbon

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Imagine you’re in Philips Arena, waiting for Bruce Springsteen to come on stage. Thousands of bodies fill the rafters and press against one another down on the floor. In the darkness, a rumbling ripples through the dome. Broooce! Brooooooce! Finally he runs out and everyone springs to their feet —- singing and dancing —- thousands of lungs heaving heavy air.

Here’s the question: If the top were taken off Philips after Bruce’s last song, how much carbon dioxide would come whooshing out? And how much of your ticket price would go to pay for it?

The Environmental Protection Agency will soon reconsider whether carbon dioxide is a dangerous, planet-warming pollutant, and whether it should therefore be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

That’s carbon dioxide —- a ubiquitous substance. That’s the EPA —- not the executive branch. Get ready for a regulatory nightmare.

If the EPA rules accordingly —- as is expected —- any source emitting over 250 tons would be subject to regulation. That amount is small enough to include schools, malls, restaurants and … concert centers? What about cars and houses?

Regulating carbon is like trying to keep a head-count of the earth’s bacteria. Though the EPA insists the slippery slope is secure, in reality the footholds are hard to find. The agency, backed by the Obama administration, is poised to alter a spectrum of U.S. operations, to fight an enemy —- global warming —- about which our knowledge is at best incomplete.

Nobody wants the planet to combust. (Not even Republicans.) But radical regulation often comes with radical consequences. Despite Washington’s pretense of global awareness, leaders have been astoundingly short-sighted concerning climate legislation.

Policies are based on “predictive” models and incomplete pictures. They’re pushed through to combat vague, impossibly complex phenomena. And they have more potential for global repercussions than global repair.

For some recent examples of climate change counter-measures gone wrong, consider the unintended consequences of biofuel mandates. Last year, World Bank named food-to-fuel mandates as a major cause of world hunger. Converting peat bogs to palm oil plantations releases 500 to 900 tons of carbon per hectare while saving only six, said the New Scientist. Two studies in Science concluded that land clearing and the use of U.S. croplands for biofuels also emit more carbon than they save.

Such myopia is inexcusable and yet chronic. Even when faced with these failures, leaders refuse to look through the looking glass at carbon regulation. Meanwhile, the biofuels backlash itself foreshadows an unintended —- and self-defeating —- consequence of carbon control. Biofuelers would butt heads with the anti-carbon camp.

As unsettling as the EPA’s regulations seem, they’re somewhat irrelevant. A congressional cap-and-trade plan will likely supplant them —- but brings the same toxic slurry of problems.

Will carbon regulation help? Will it hurt? Nobody knows.

What is clear is that regulating the air will be a big part of President Barack Obama’s era of regulation. Will we see his era of responsibility (read: prescience) any time soon? Don’t hold your breath.