President Obama's declaration of war on climate change will be ignored by emerging nations and amounts to economic suicide, according to conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer.

In an opinion piece for The Washington Post headlined “Obama’s Global Warming Folly,"
Krauthammer said climate change ranks at the very bottom of a list of 21 issues that concern U.S. citizens, according to a Pew Research poll.

Krauthammer said global temperatures actually have been flat for the past 16 years, which makes it an odd time to unveil a costly new federal program to combat climate change.

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He cited data from the International Energy Agency that the U.S. has already curtailed carbon dioxide emissions back down to 1992 levels, reducing them more than any other nation since 2006.

“And yet, at the same time, global emissions have gone up. That’s because – surprise! – we don’t control the energy use of the other 96 percent of humankind,” Krauthammer wrote.

The Obama effort will produce EPA regulations to stop any new coal plants, ultimately close existing ones, and kill tens of thousands of U.S. jobs, he predicted.

“This massive self-sacrifice might be worthwhile if it did actually stop global warming and save the planet. What makes the whole idea nuts is that it won’t. This massive self-inflicted economic wound will have no effect on climate change.”

Krauthammer noted China and India alone are opening an estimated one new coal plant every week, and said the Obama plan will simply shut down the U.S. coal industry and ship it abroad.

“Obama imagines he’s going to cajole China into a greenhouse-gas emissions reduction that will slow its economy, increase energy costs, derail industrialization and risk enormous social unrest. This from a president who couldn’t even get China to turn over one Edward Snowden to U.S. custody.”

The Associated Press reported the Obama plan, which bypasses Congress by putting regulatory limits for the first time on carbon pollution from new and existing power plants, will produce both plant closures and electricity rate spikes, according to energy industry officials it interviewed across the country.

‘‘In New Hampshire, we've been waiting for this,’’ said Catherine Corkery, chapter director for the New Hampshire Sierra Club.

She said industry fears and objections are ‘‘shortsighted,’’ and predicted thousands of new jobs focused on green energy development would replace those lost if fossil fuel plants are forced to close.

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