Today the EPA declared greenhouse gases a danger to public health. And here's the bottom line: The biggest threat to Americans, when it comes to huge new energy taxes and government controls, is not from legislation, it's from regulation.
President Obama, White House Climate Czar Carol Browner, and their Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are not waiting for Congress to pass cap-and-trade. Shrugging off the Climate-gate scandal, today EPA administration Lisa Jackson issues a so-called "endangerment finding," paving the way for onerous greenhouse gas regulations to be shoehorned into the 1970 Clean Air Act.
Obama and his radical left czars are selling us down the river again and still following their agenda against the wishes of the majority of the America people and the lies brought to the forefront of ClimateGate. Obama and Bruner have intimidated the EPA to vote against the good of the people, in favor of their agenda.
Based on a legal theory originally conceived by Climate Czar Carol Browner in the late 1990s, Obama’s EPA is moving ahead with greenhouse gases regulations under the 1970 Clean Air Act even though in 1970 global warming hadn’t even been invented yet, and the doom-saying scientists were instead warning of an impending ice age!
The enormous grassroots reaction to the outrageous Waxman-Markey energy tax bill passing the U.S. House has slowed Senate progress to a crawl. While cap-and-trade remains a major threat (especially with new “tri-partisan” negotiations betweens Senators Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman), the biggest threat of huge new energy taxes and government controls right now comes not from legislation, but regulation.
Next week President Obama will go to Copenhagen to make what he has termed a “politically binding” commitment to reduce greenhouse gases 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, the same levels in the now-stalled cap-and-trade bill. He is able to make this commitment, we can tell from today’s EPA announcement, because he intends to use EPA regulation to short-circuit the democratic process, boycott the Congress, and put us all under a sweeping regulatory regime.
A 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA opened the door to this mischief, although that ruling was about motor-vehicle regulation. The EPA decision today, judging by their proposed regulations, goes far beyond that.
Not only would motor vehicles be regulated, so would light-duty trucks, heavy-duty trucks, buses, motorcycles, planes, trains, ships, boats, tractors, mining equipment, RVs, lawn mowers, fork lifts, and just about everything that has a motor. Because there is no control technology for greenhouse gases, the EPA would require complete redesigns and operational changes.
They would also require permitting for businesses and structures that emit as little as 250 tons of greenhouse gases per year. That threshold may make sense for some air pollutants. But for carbon dioxide it’s frighteningly low, and would subject millions of never-before-regulated entities to an expensive and lengthy EPA permitting process. Any building over 100,000 square feet would be pulled in, as would numerous smaller buildings that produce carbon dioxide. Small businesses, restaurants, schools, and hospitals that have commercial kitchens with gas burners would all be affected.
Don’t take my word for it. Even the 1970 Clean Air Act’s original author, Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, who supports cap-and-trade, says the Obama administration’s latest move is a recipe for disaster. He said:
“We are looking at the possibility of a glorious mess being visited upon this country. This is not what was intended by the Congress and by those of us who wrote the Clean Air Act. We are beginning to look at a wonderfully complex world, which has the potential for shutting down or slowing down virtually all industry and all economic activity and growth.”
The 1970 Clean Air Act is such a bad vehicle to address greenhouse gases that EPA is attempting, illegally, to rewrite the law to suit its purposes. EPA wants to handpick which industries and carbon emitters it will regulate, instead of following the law as written. Not only is it illegal, but it’s also ineffective, because state regulators and courts will still be able to use these regulations to shut down the whole U.S. economy.
Fortunately, the EPA is required by law to accept public comments on its proposal. You can do that by clicking here.
With the Obama administration dead set on selling out our energy policy and economic future to U.N. bureaucrats in Copenhagen, it’s imperative that Congress step in and actively stop his backdoor efforts to implement these policies at the EPA. If they don’t, they must be held responsible for what happens.
Mr. Kerpen is director of policy for Americans for Prosperity. He can be contacted through PhilKerpen.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. His free two-minute Podcast is available daily.
The ultimate question is when did American politicians lose site of the fact that they represent and work for the American people? It is not their job or right to follow their own agenda against the will of the people. But the second question is when did the American people give up their rights and their guts? We are just about out of time to find some courage!!
EPA Moves Forward Without Cap and Trade
EPA: Air is Dangerous
In a bizarre move that didn't need to be done with any sort of urgency, the EPA declared that air is a danger to society. Is this coincidence that this comes in the lead up to the big Climate Change conference in Copenhagen? Doubtful - but Glenn talks about the bigger problem in this move: the progressive tactic of circumventing the Constitution is in full gear. Glenn explained on radio today. ( Transcript, Insider Audio)
EPA is Knee-Deep in Climategate
Yesterday, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson dismissed Climategate when announcing her agency's decision to restrict emissions of carbon dioxide, one of the chemical compounds needed to sustain life. Here is an account of her statements according tothehill:com:
There is nothing in the hacked e-mails that undermines the science upon which this decision is based,” Jackson said in announcing the finding this afternoon. She said the controversial messages dealt only with a tiny fraction of the strong evidence of global warming.
But the EPA gets its information from the UN's IPCC, whose reports were manipulated, as revealed by the Climategate e-mails. For example, one of the hacked e-mails states:
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. K and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!
Moreover, the EPA has been involved in its own suppression of inconvenient scientific truth, as CBS News reported on June 30:
The EPA did not publicly release a March report that raised questions about the validity of the agency's conclusions that carbon emissions are a cause of global warming and a danger to human health--primary assumptions behind the cap-and-trade bill that passed the House on Friday.
Critics--including eight congressmen--say the document was suppressed in spite of an Obama administration pledge to bring greater transparency to government.
The suppressed report told about the growing scientific consensus against the man-made global warming theory, especially within the community of physicists. Here is a selection:
We have become increasingly concerned that EPA and many other agencies and countries have paid too little attention to the science of global warming. EPA and others have tended to accept the findings reached by outside groups, particularly the IPCC...
There appears to be a strong association between solar sunspots/irradiance and global temperature fluctuations. It is unclear exactly how this operates, but it may be through indirect solar variability on cloud formation....
Here the report was referring to the relatively new theory being explored by physicists that cosmic rays and solar activity are the predominant factors affecting climate. (For a video about this theory, see my earlier commentary Climategate: Revolt of the Physicists.)
The EPA pretends that the scientific consensus that existed in the 1990s still exists. Science is not static. It moves on. And physicists have been at the center of the movement. Recently, 206 physicists wrote an open letter to the American Physical Society stating:
(M)easured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.
EPA is knee deep in Climategate. They are sticking to a false story that there is a scientific consensus behind their action. Both the EPA and the scientists at East Anglia, have been caught greenhanded suppressing the scientific truth.
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