The Republican Party’s love of war and tax cuts has earned itself a reputation of being the party of manly men, as their passions get the testosterone flowing in ways the Democrats’ pet causes of universal health care and social security could only dream of. Manly men everywhere have long questioned President Barack Obama’s legitimacy as a real man of political genius because of his status as a train-loving Democrat. While they were once wary, those same men should now be downright scared, as Obama and his tree-hugger friends are about to declare war on manly men everywhere.

The Obama Administration had a big week in its coming War on Manly Men. Early last week, news was leaked that the Environmental Protection Agency was preparing to begin regulating greenhouse gases as an environmental pollutant. President Obama then proceeded to reveal his man-crush on Al Gore by including a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions in his new budget. The proposed cap-and-trade program would require greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. to be reduced 83 percent by 2050 through the selling of carbon emission credits.

In American culture, nothing reeks of testosterone like emitting carbon, so the future of American pastimes such as tailgating, boating, NASCAR and driving giant trucks are under attack from the nation’s new tree-hugger-in-chief.

Even during dark times, American men are an optimistic cohort — see Chicago Cubs fans — so it is a shame to see Obama give into the pessimism of the global warming doom-and-gloom crowd. True men such as James Imhofe and George Will have done yeoman’s work in proving global warming is a hoax, while all the scientists and their “scientific evidence” have tried to prove the link between greenhouse gases and increased global temperatures.

Tough guys everywhere know instituting a cap-and-trade program is a direct acknowledgment that reducing carbon emissions is an ideal that sacrifices should be made for. If greenhouse gas emissions were completely innocuous, then there would be no reason to reduce them. There is still much skepticism toward the future impacts of global warming, so proposing a cap-and-trade program that seeks to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 is a fairly gutsy move for the new president.

More important than simply giving credence to the “myth” of global warming is the impact a cap-and-trade program will have on the American economy. Rough and tumble American manufacturing industries have flourished during the past decades of free trade and deregulation, so taxing the emissions these industries produce has the potential to leave millions of hard-working Americans out of a job. Implementing a policy that could reverse the economic success that cities such as Detroit have had would be a direct attack on blue-collar folks across the country — right?

As the nation learned from our previous president, only real cowboys stick to their guns and do not change over time. Implicit in Obama’s cap-and-trade plan is the idea that the traditional carbon-based American economy must innovate and transform to a “green” economy. Americans have always been a nation to shrink from a national challenge, but such an undertaking would definitely require some Bush-esque leadership from Obama.

Wind power and solar power do not have the same masculine appeal as the thick black smoke of coal plants, but such a shift in energy production provides the opportunity to create new jobs and generate economic activity. Of course, a healthy dose of research and development money would go to those same scientists who have helped propagate the myth of global warming, but every man knows that for every Friday bender there is a Saturday hangover.

While people expect the wimpy tree-huggers to be big fans of a cap-and-trade program, support from some of the giants of American industry is a little more surprising. American business leaders are becoming more hip to the idea that the future of the American economy will be green, and some are even supporting Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal.

This support is not based on an ideological-kinship with Barack Gore-bama but rather a desire to make green off the green. Immediate investments in green technology will help companies prepare for the 2012 implementation of the cap-and-trade program, and knowing that green is the way of the future will allow them to prepare for a future where the Prius is the new muscle car.

Obama’s proposal for a cap-and-trade program to be implemented by 2012 is a signal that in his America, real men wear green. Although being environmentally-conscious may defy the stereotypes of what it means to be manly in America, Obama’s proposal for a cap-and-trade program for emissions is arguably the boldest environmental step taken by an American president.

Zachary Schuster ([email protected]) is a graduate student studying water resources engineering and water resources management.