WASHINGTON — No matter who wins the 2012 election, the next president will take office as the United States faces vast new opportunities in energy production and profound challenges to environmental protection.
After decades of growing dependence on imported oil, the U.S. is moving to energy self-sufficiency, thanks to greater domestic supplies of oil and natural gas and reduced demand. Coal, which once fired most American power plants, is being edged out by natural gas, renewable energy and stricter efforts to cut pollution — a trend that has touched off bitter political fights.
At the same time, climate change has gone from distant threat to palpable reality, as ice caps shrink, winters shorten and drought spreads. Climatologists and policymakers warn that unless the United States and other industrialized nations move to rein in emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by 2020, most aspects of life — from the food chain to the oceans to communicable disease — could be altered, largely for the worse.
With the stakes so high, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney offer starkly divergent ideas on how to proceed. The split between the candidates on so many energy issues might be traced, in part, to a fundamental disagreement over the reality of climate change. Romney has said he is unsure of it. Obama has called it a "threat to our children's future."
Both tout an "all-of-the-above" energy strategy that would utilize everything from coal to wind, but the candidates emphasize different fuels. Romney embraces greater reliance on fossil fuels, including coal — the greatest contributors to climate change. Obama sees a future increasingly tied to renewable energy, like wind and solar.
The Obama administration's Environmental Protection Agency has implemented rules to reduce air pollution that will further crimp coal usage. Romney has vowed to repeal those rules.
"The rhetoric of 'all of the above' is the same," said Michael A. Levi, director of the energy security and climate change program at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But the vision is very different."
Obama's record over the past four years reveals an agenda most analysts expect him to stick to if he gets a second term.
He failed to secure passage of sweeping legislation to address climate change, disappointing many supporters. Nonetheless, he has taken steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants.
The administration also funneled federal funds to renewable energy, helping to bring more alternative sources on line and making the country the leader in clean energy investment. But it has left itself open to political fallout from failures like Solyndra, a solar equipment maker that won $535 million in federal loan guarantees and then went bankrupt.
When Romney was governor of Massachusetts, from 2003 to 2007, he articulated an agenda similar to Obama's current one. Romney's staff included prominent environmentalists who developed a state climate action plan and a regional cap-and-trade system.
In his 2010 book "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness," he wrote: "I believe that climate change is occurring — the reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor."
But none of that hints at how Romney might govern as president because he has retreated from those positions. Romney's website makes no mention of the environment or climate change, unlike Obama's. His ideas instead echo congressional Republicans whose narrative over the past four years is that environmental regulations kill jobs.
"Romney is where the Republican Party is," said Joshua Freed, head of the clean energy program at Third Way, a centrist Washington think tank.
Romney and Obama vary markedly about the fuels the country should rely on for electricity. Romney has pushed for coal, a cheap and abundant domestic fuel, and he has accused Obama of "waging a war on coal."
Obama's campaign rejects that notion, and it has run ads trumpeting the increase in recent years of coal production and jobs in swing states like Ohio. Domestic coal usage is in fact falling, driven mostly by cheaper natural gas prices.
Behind the pro-coal rhetoric, the Obama administration has passed or is considering regulations that would further cut coal use, including reductions in smokestack emissions of carbon dioxide, mercury and other pollutants and limits on mountaintop removal, a controversial mining method.
Romney has pledged to repeal or scale back many of those initiatives, particularly the reductions in carbon dioxide and mercury emissions. "If Romney's elected, it's not so much what would happen as what wouldn't happen," Freed said. "His plan seeks to cement the status quo at a time when the energy sector is in the midst of huge upheaval."
The Romney approach would also bolster oil. For instance, Obama highlights significant increases in passenger vehicle fuel economy from 2012 to 2025, almost doubling gas mileage and sharply cutting greenhouse gases. Romney has said he would undo the 2017 to 2025 standards, which he characterizes as onerous and unrealistic. Increased gasoline consumption would help oil companies, but it would undo the progress the country has made toward energy self-sufficiency, analysts say.
Romney would also open more federal lands than Obama has to oil, gas and coal development. "Under Romney, I have the full expectation that a lot more federal lands will be under production," said Jack Gerard, a Romney adviser and chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, the main oil lobby.
Obama and Romney overlap in one area: the development of natural gas reserves through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The domestic energy boom of the last several years stems from the widespread use of fracking to tap oil in North Dakota and gas in Texas, the mid-Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains.
Concerns have been raised about possible water contamination and air pollution from high-volume fracking, which involves injecting millions of gallons of water and sand laced with chemicals deep underground to crack shale formations and unlock oil and gas. So far, the Obama administration has introduced new fracking regulations that independent analysts say would not hinder production. The EPA is also conducting a study of possible environmental effects of fracking, due out after the election, whose findings might lead to new regulations if Obama wins a second term.
But industry has bridled at increased federal oversight of fracking. Romney has said he would hand greater regulatory authority over oil and gas development to the states, which could speed the permitting process but could also lead to lax oversight.
Fossil fuel interests have lined up with Romney. His top energy and economic advisers include the petroleum institute's Gerard; Oklahoma oil magnate Harold Hamm, who is also a major donor; and Jim Talent, a former Missouri senator whose lobbying firm worked for Peabody Coal. Romney would do away with federal subsidies for renewable energy, such as the production tax credit. Obama would do away with long-standing tax breaks for oil and gas companies.
If Obama is re-elected, the question is whether he would take bolder steps to address climate change, such as the introduction of a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. Conservatives who accept climate science, like former South Carolina Congressman Bob Inglis, think a "carbon tax" would be more acceptable to a wider range of people than a complex cap-and-trade system.
Now executive director of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, a Virginia think tank, Inglis sees some signs that Romney might circle back to acceptance of climate change and a willingness to act on it. Some top Romney economic advisers, like Greg Mankiw, have in the past backed a carbon tax. And Romney might have a better chance of getting such a tax passed than Obama: Democrats would probably back any sound climate initiative, while Republicans would probably thwart an Obama effort.
So far, the Romney campaign has given little indication that its approach to global warming might change after Election Day. Said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams, "Gov. Romney opposes a carbon tax on emissions of carbon dioxide."