— John
Martin
The Obama
doctrine: govern by decree. As you exhale while reading this article, you are
contributing to the coming world catastrophe caused by global warming. So says the Environmental
Protection Agency in its recent decree that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant, among those gases that
"endanger" public health. In response to this sense of crisis stirred by the likes of Al Gore,
President Obama pushes for mandates that significantly reduce carbon usage, and which, by all accounts,
will cripple the U.S. economy.
This Land Is EPA's Land.
The Clean Water Act is being rewritten to give a government bureaucracy the power to regulate every body of water
from the Mississippi River to a rain-flooded field. The first casualty may be American coal. ... The 1972
Clean Water Act was originally intended to protect the "navigable waters of the United States" — you
know, the kind boats travel down. It was broadly and quickly interpreted to any pool of water in America
capable of supporting a bathtub variety boat.
The EPA's Power
Grab. [Scroll down] The Clean Air Act (CAA), enacted in 1970 and last updated in 1990, is
an abysmal policy mechanism for controlling greenhouse gases, and was never intended for this kind of problem.
But the EPA's gambit is not about policy — it is all about politics. ... In a nutshell,
environmental statutes and case law have evolved so as to make federal judges into the sock puppets of
environmentalists, and greens have become highly skilled in bringing lawsuits to compel federal agencies
to do their bidding.
Big
Brother, can you spare a dime? [Scroll down slowly] No, it was scary then for the same
reason it is scary now... Not because it is "health care" but because it is "nationalized." [M. Stanton]
Evans demonstrated in his 1976 lecture that government spending on social problems does not make them go
away; it just institutionalizes them. In fact, it ensures that the problems will never go away because
the problems become a magnet for federal dollars, and thus there is an incentive for the problems to grow
rather than shrink.
EPA Scientist Silenced in Coverup.
Monday's declaration by the Environmental Protection Administration that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases endanger public health is apparently a regulatory fraud. It was made after EPA regulators refused
to consider a report from a leading EPA scientist rejecting the theory that emission of greenhouse gases
causes global warming.
Total control is apparently the goal:
The EPA's Goldilocks Rule.
As thoroughly discussed in the media, the issues associated with regulating such a ubiquitous compound as carbon
dioxide pose many problems. Carbon dioxide's overwhelming contribution is by natural sources, it is well
mixed in the atmosphere, it permeates the entire globe, and it is inherently linked to our modern world.
There is literally no human activity that cannot be controlled by regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
Global warming
alarmism is an all-purpose tyranny. If government can assume authority over emissions of CO2
generated by everything from factories to vehicles to people exhaling, then government can control
everything.
The statist goal of overseeing all aspects of life advanced grotesquely with the quasiscience of global warming
alarmism. It proved the all-encompassing excuse to regulate, to tax and to license greenhouse gas emissions
under the pretense of saving the planet from rising temperatures.
EPA Proposes Stricter Smog
Standard. The United States Environmental Protection Agency proposed today [1/7/2010] new health standards
for smog, or ground-level ozone. Smog ... is not emitted directly into the air, but rather is created
through a process of chemicals, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that combine in
the air and are heated by the sun to form ozone.
US
to Set Stricter Limits on Smog. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed the
strictest health standards to date for smog in the United States. The proposed range of 60-70 parts per
billion during an eight-hour period is what scientists recommended during the former Bush administration.
However, after industries protested, then-President George W. Bush intervened to set the standard above
what was advised.
The Editor says...
So what? Maybe Bush was given bad advice. This latest move by the EPA is obviously more about
grabbing and holding onto power than about cleaning the air. Dallas supposedly has some of the most
polluted air in the country, according to the EPA, but as a person who lives and works in Dallas County,
I can report that on the worst summer day, the air is not bad at all. Any improvements resulting from
the EPA's proposed new rules (or the EPA's continued existence!) will go unnoticed by the general public.
New EPA proposal
would lower limit to 60-70 parts per billion. The proposed rules announced by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency promise cleaner air that could help prevent thousands of asthma attacks,
emergency room visits and early deaths, and cut back on health costs. Consumers could end up paying
slightly more for gasoline and electricity as industry passes along the expense of refining cleaner gas and
retrofitting power plants to emit less pollution.
The Editor says...
The article immediately above is replete with liberal bias, starting with a jab at former president Bush, and
continuing throughout the remainder. In the excerpt above, at least two canards are apparent:
First of all, nobody dies from excess ozone in the atmosphere; at least, nobody who was not already in
dire health. Secondly, consumers will probably pay
a lot more for gasoline and electricity
as a result of the EPA's hair-splitting perfectionism.
EPA
proposes nation's strictest smog limits ever. The Environmental Protection Agency proposed the
nation's strictest-ever smog limits Thursday [1/7/2010], a move that could put large parts of California and
other states in violation of federal air quality regulations. The EPA proposed allowing a ground-level
ozone concentration of between 60 and 70 parts per billion, down from the 75-ppb standard adopted
under President George W. Bush in 2008. That means cracking down further on the emissions from
cars, trucks, power plants, factories and landfills.
You
Have to Watch Both of Obama's Hands. The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing
tighter regulation of smog-causing pollutants. There is a debate over the likely effect of the
new rules on health, but no question that they will prove costly. The EPA puts the cost to manufacturers
and local governments at between $19 billion and $90 billion per year by 2020. Because the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says "the causes of asthma remain unclear," the EPA is on uncertain
ground in claiming the new standards will reduce smog-related ailments and deaths.
EPA's plan to set water-quality standards in
Florida, a national first. In a move cheered by environmental groups, the federal government on Friday
[1/15/2010] proposed stringent limits on "nutrient" pollution allowed to foul Florida's waterways. The
ruling — which will cost industries and governments more than a billion dollars to comply — marks
the first time the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has intervened to set a state's water-quality standards.
Grassley:
Murkowski measure to block EPA rules unlikely to pass. An amendment to block the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions is unlikely to succeed, a supporter conceded
Tuesday [1/19/2010]. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said that not even all 40 Republicans may be on board
with a proposed measure from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to forestall the EPA from regulating emissions.
Senators Want to Bar E.P.A. Greenhouse
Gas Limits. In a direct challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency's authority, Senator Lisa
Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, introduced a resolution on Thursday [1/21/2010] to prevent the agency from
taking any action to regulate carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases.
The Editor says...
Bias alert: How does the New York Times writer know with any certainty that carbon dioxide
is a climate-altering gas? Carbon dioxide is a natural part of the atmosphere, and it isn't
necessarily altering anything.
Three
Dems Back Effort to Halt Global Warming Regulation. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
is leading the charge to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gasses, and
today [1/21/2010] she got some support from across the aisle: Three Democratic senators signed onto
Murkowski resolution to bar such regulation.
EPA Sets Stricter
Air-Quality Standards Near Roads. The Obama administration set stricter limits on the amount of
nitrogen dioxide in the air for short periods of time along busy roads and is requiring states to install
monitoring equipment in big urban areas in an effort to crack down on pollution during periods of high
traffic. Vehicles are a major source of nitrogen dioxide, which can cause respiratory problems.
The Editor says...
It is interesting that the EPA is now seeking to monitor air quality at "worst case" locations.
Unmanned monitors can only measure a problem; enforcement or mitigation is sure to be completely infeasible.
But consider for a moment the pointlessness of all this. Short term exposure to automobile fumes has
never been considered a problem until now. Nobody lives by the side of the road, and if there are such
people, air quality is not the greatest of their worries. The EPA is desperately looking for
something to do.
EPA
should put carbon regs on hold. Evidence is steadily mounting that the United Nation's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is fundamentally flawed because of political and ideological
bias and manipulation of data. Concerns about those problems are among the reasons the campaign to pass
a cap-and-trade bill in Congress has slowed. Meanwhile, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
Lisa Jackson continues hell-bent to regulate every nook and cranny of the U.S. economy that depends on
carbon-based energy, which is to say pretty much all of it.
Obama's climate change
police. The Senate's attempt to pass a global warming bill appears stuck. But that's
doesn't mean greenhouse gas laws aren't coming. The Environmental Protection Agency, spurred by a
Supreme Court ruling, is racing to fill the void. As early as March, the EPA is planning to cap
greenhouse gases from things like power plants and large factories, essentially doing what Senate Democrats
want, without a messy vote.
States
struggling with EPA rules. States are slashing funds for environmental programs, threatening
their ability to meet federal standards for clean air and water. All but two states, Montana and North
Dakota, have made significant cuts to initiatives ranging from toxic waste cleanup to sewage treatment, says
Steve Brown, executive director for Environmental Council of the States, which unites state agencies.
Senior
Democrats floating bill to block EPA. House committee chairmen from Minnesota and Missouri are
floating legislation to block planned EPA greenhouse gas rules. The effort underscores unease among
senior Democrats from conservative-leaning states about Obama administration emissions policy.
The Environmentalism
Fraud: [Scroll down] At this moment, the EPA is hopelessly politicized. In the wake
of Carol Browner, it is probably better to shut it down and start over. What we need is a new organization
much closer to the FDA. We need an organization that will be ruthless about acquiring verifiable results,
that will fund identical research projects to more than one group, and that will make everybody in this field
get honest fast.
The War on Coal. The United
States Environmental Protection Agency is soon expected to make a decision that could have an enormous impact
on coal-fired power plants across the nation and, by extension, on the cost of energy and building materials.
No, we're not talking about greenhouse gas regulations here. The question that USEPA Administrator Lisa
Jackson must answer is this: Should the ash generated from the burning of coal be classified as a hazardous
waste or not? It's a decision that has the potential to pile more costs onto the price of energy at a
time we can least afford it.
Virginia
challenges EPA's stance on global warming. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli turned up the
heat on global warming yesterday [2/16/2010]. On behalf of the state, Cuccinelli filed a petition asking
the federal Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its December finding that global warming poses a
threat to people.
VA
AG challenges EPA on CO2. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has officially petitioned the
Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its December 15 endangerment finding that links carbon
dioxide emissions with man-made global warming. The regulatory finding is widely seen as an end-run
around stalled cap-and-trade legislation in the U.S. Senate.
Texas sues to escape carbon dioxide limits.
Texas Republican leaders Tuesday ramped up their fight against federal environmental efforts by filing suit to
avoid facing limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Gov. Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott and
Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples started a legal battle against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
It's a
Good Thing Rick Perry Is Suing... Because Texas would get hammered by an Obama Energy Tax, a new
report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation concludes.
A Green Tea Party:
A revolt against economic hardship imposed by unelected bureaucrats based on junk science is brewing.
This Tea Party movement wants the faulty finding on carbon dioxide to be reviewed and dumped.
EPA,
Countering Critics of Greenhouse Gas Findings, Says 'Science Is Settled'. The EPA says it is
going forward with "common sense measures that are helping to protect Americans from this threat" and said
its critics are trying to "stall progress." The Environmental Protection Agency, responding [to]
complaints about its December findings about the threat of greenhouse gases, issued a statement Friday [2/19/2010]
saying that the "science is settled" and "greenhouse gases pose a real threat to the American people."
The EPA's Carbon Footprint:
The immediate consequence of the sweeping new EPA authority will be more stringent regulation of automobiles.
Section 202 of the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to adopt emission controls once an "endangerment" finding is
made. In September, anticipating that finding, the EPA and the National Highway Transportation Safety
Administration proposed new regulations that would effectively require automakers to produce cars and light
trucks with an average fuel efficiency rating of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.
Did
someone mention CAFE standards?
Cuccinelli fights the EPA.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took a gutsy and intelligent step Feb. 17 when he petitioned the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its ill-advised "finding" that carbon dioxide creates an
endangerment for human health. The endangerment finding would let the EPA battle alleged global warming
by regulating emissions of CO2, which of course is the gas that every animal and person exhales with every
breath. The finding was ludicrous from the start, and now Mr. Cuccinelli makes a reasonable case that
it also was unlawful.
EPA's global-warming
power grab. To avoid a potentially messy vote, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency
has turned to the administrative rule-making process to impose climate-control regulations. In December,
the agency made an "endangerment finding" that declared that six gases — including the carbon dioxide
you are exhaling as you read this — are putting the planet's well-being in peril. The first
major rule based on this finding will be finalized next month. President George W. Bush's EPA
administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, warned that such a finding would result in a major government
power grab.
Alabama one of three states
suing the EPA. Alabama is one of three states suing the Environmental Protection Agency for its
December ruling that greenhouse gases are a danger to the public health. Attorney General Troy King has
filed a petition with the federal appeals court in the District of Columbia asking the court to review the
EPA's decision.
Fuel
Taxes Must Rise, Harvard Researchers Say. To meet the Obama administration's targets for cutting
greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas
at $7 a gallon. To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005
levels by 2020, the cost of driving would simply have to increase, according to a forthcoming report by
researchers at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The 14 percent
target was set in the Environmental Protection Agency's budget for fiscal 2010.
$7-A-Gallon
Gas Needed to Meet Government's CO2 Cuts. As the national average of gasoline creeps to three dollars
a gallon, economists are warning that high gas prices in the United States could slow the economic recovery.
Other countries' economies are recovering more quickly and increased production and activity is putting upward
pressure on oil prices. That coupled with a relatively weak US dollar spells trouble for American drivers.
Throw in carbon dioxide cuts and gasoline prices could reach unprecedented levels.
EPA Blames 'The
Simpsons' for Bad PR. Amid a pitched battle over her agency's planned climate regulations,
U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said environmental regulators are losing a public relations war to
industry lobbyists.
California's Toxic Air
Scare Machine: James Enstrom, southern California native, earned a Ph.D. in elementary particle
nuclear physics at Stanford, then received postdoctoral training in epidemiology and a Masters in Public Health
from UCLA. ... In 2005, Enstrom published his results of a robust and current (50,000 people, 1973-2002) study
on the effects of small particle air pollution in California. He found no premature death effect in California
from small particle air pollution. California's air pollution of the '50s and '60s has declined for
thirty years, and Enstrom was also familiar with the improvement in air quality and the conundrum of
increasing rates of asthma that was being misrepresented by CARB.
We, The People EPA.
It's been a pattern of this administration that if the American people are adamantly opposed to it, ram it
through anyway. So it's been with the health care overhaul, offshore drilling restrictions and now the
Environmental Protection Agency threatening to become the uber-regulator of the air we breathe. The New
York Times says in a Saturday [3/13/2010] editorial regarding that last item that if Congress fails to enact
cap-and-trade legislation such as Waxman-Markey or Kerry-Boxer, the EPA should jam it down our throats.
EPA
Studying Own Carbon-Trading System, Official Says. The Obama administration is considering a
carbon-trading system under existing law if Congress doesn't pass cap-and-trade legislation that allows
companies to buy and sell the right to pollute, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official said today
[3/15/2010].
Obama's
EPA stifles new energy gains. [Scroll down] Last week, it was Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
announcing that no new permits will be issued for outer continental shelf development until 2014 at the earliest.
Salazar has also used bureaucratic obfuscation to delay new energy development on Western lands. There are
billions of recoverable barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas in those areas, enough to put
the United States well on the way to complete energy independence. Obama is instead spending billions of
tax dollars on renewable energy resources that can't possibly supply even a fourth of this nation's critical
energy needs for many decades to come.
EPA flak refuses to say if EPA will act on its own study.
Today's Examiner editorial — "Obama's EPA stifles new energy gains" — focuses on
yesterday's [3/18/2010] announcement by the agency that it has decided to spend millions of dollars on a
new multi-year study of a topic it has already studied numerous times in the past and found no dangers
to public health.
What Happens If
Congress Blocks EPA? The game EPA is playing is a classic case of bureaucratic self-dealing.
First, EPA endangers the U.S. auto industry by authorizing states to flout federal law and the Constitution.
Then, EPA proposes to avert disaster via a rulemaking that just happens to put EPA in the driver's seat
in regulating fuel economy — a power Congress never delegated to EPA when it enacted and amended
the Clean Air Act.
EPA Turns Against Utah Clean Air Plan.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to deny several Utah urban areas certification under the Clean
Air Act, claiming, among other things, that the state has failed to deal adequately with natural dust storms.
The Editor says...
The people who run the EPA must be utterly insane to believe that if they outlaw dust storms, the
desert will comply.
EPA
Prepares to Regulate Oceans. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced it will
address so-called ocean acidification, making a deal with the Center for Biological Diversity to produce
guidance on the topic by November 15. Global warming alarmists claim marine life is being
threatened by carbon dioxide absorbed by oceans. They assert more carbon dioxide leads to increasingly
acidic water, which in turn makes it more difficult for shellfish and invertebrates to calcify their shells.
The Editor says...
The people who run the EPA must be utterly insane to believe that they can maintain the "ideal" pH for
sea water.
Mainstream Media Ignores Climategate.
[Scroll down] The Environmental Protection Agency has already threatened to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2)
and other minor atmospheric gases, none of which have anything to do with the non-existent "global warming." ... The
EPA is clinging to the lie that humans are causing climate change and continues to engage in practices that propagate
the fraud and thwart economic growth. There is no threat to public health from CO2, a gas that is vital to all
life on Earth because it is to plants what oxygen is to humans. You are not likely to read about any of this
in the MSM.
U.S. Issues Limits on Greenhouse Gas
Emissions From Cars. The federal government took its first formal step to regulate global
warming pollution on Thursday [4/1/2010] by issuing final rules for greenhouse gas emissions for automobiles and
light trucks. The move ends a 30-year battle between regulators and automakers but sets the stage for what
may be a bigger fight over climate-altering emissions from stationary sources like power plants, steel mills
and refineries.
EPA Toughens Mining
Permits. The Environmental Protection Agency tightened water-quality standards that could severely
limit future surface coal-mining operations throughout Appalachia, while mining-industry officials said the
change was unfair and endangers jobs in the region. The action is a significant step in the EPA's push
under the Obama administration to limit the practice of mountaintop coal mining and its environmental effects.
For the first time, the agency is setting limits on the electrical conductivity, or salinity, of streams,
which can be impacted by such mining.
The Editor says...
Fretting about the conductivity of rivers is nothing more than quixotic busywork for the EPA. Distilled
water is the only pure, non-conductive water. All the water in all the rivers in the world is
electrically conductive because it has various minerals and contaminants dissolved and suspended in it.
And who decides what is a "stream"? Can a puddle be a "stream"?
EPA Chief Says New Pollution Rules for Cars are
Only the Beginning. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said her
agency's inaugural regulations on greenhouse gas emissions on cars were only "the first" of such
regulations, promising that her agency would move "deliberately" to institute regulations in other
areas of the economy as well.
EPA may try to use
Clean Water Act to regulate carbon dioxide. The Environmental Protection Agency is exploring
whether to use the Clean Water Act to control greenhouse gas emissions, which are turning the oceans acidic
at a rate that's alarmed some scientists. With climate change legislation stalled in Congress, the Clean
Water Act would serve as a second front, as the Obama administration has sought to use the Clean Air Act to
rein in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases administratively.
Environmental Extremists Making Regulatory Policies?
Although they were released on April Fools Day, new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations covering
vehicle efficiency and water quality standards near mines are no joke. Instead, they are the inevitable
outcome when government puts environmental radicals in charge of writing regulations. These unelected
bureaucrats, headed by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, have no regard for or understanding of property rights,
free markets, or our economy. It's all about worshiping at the altar of "climate change" and offering
penance for America's high standard of living by attacking industry in the name of "justice".
EPA Issues Strict New Auto Standards.
The Obama Administration on Thursday issued strict new environmental standards for motor vehicles, prompting
a key Republican senator to respond with a call for legislation to mitigate its impact. ... Sen. James Inhofe
(R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, sharply criticized the new
policy, saying it was nothing more than a "backdoor energy tax."
Backdoor Energy Tax.
From cars to coal mines, the imposition of economy-killing restrictions is under way. Are the new EPA
regulations on auto emissions the precursor to regulating carbon dioxide by executive order?
EPA's ginormous power
grab: It's a sure sign that a government agency has become overmighty when it vastly increases
its budget, grabs power unconstitutionally and treats Congress with contempt. All of this applies to the
Environmental Protection Agency. Unless Congress acts quickly to curb the EPA's power, it will become a
huge drag on the economy. Few bodies are more deserving of cutbacks now. This year, EPA's budget
(which had hovered at $7 billion to $8 billion since 1997) increased by 34 percent, to more than
$10 billion for the first time ever.
Obama's new tax on... Rainwater!?
Would President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency really force Americans to pay a tax on "rainwater
runoff" from homes and small businesses? You bet they would. In fact, the EPA, under radical
environmentalist Lisa Jackson, is proposing regulations to do just that.
The Government Greenpeace.
National unemployment rates may be high, but there's no shortage of work if you happen to be an academic type
willing to conduct Environmental Protection Agency-funded research and undertake EPA directed studies.
Last October, the EPA formally began the process of creating new stormwater management rules. We've
actually got quite the pile of stormwater management rules already...
Comcast Decision May
Thwart EPA CO2 Finding. The matters which the EPA are currently trying to resolve are potatoes
currently too hot for the Congress to handle. Accordingly, the EPA apparently plans to rely on the Clean
Water Act and ocean acidification data — as to the applicability of which there are serious
questions. ... If I read the Comcast case correctly, the rationale relied upon by the D.C. Circuit may prove
very inconvenient for the EPA and may put a damper on its attempt to circumvent Congress.
EPA
headquarters contaminated with lead. Days before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalizes
strict new regulations for dealing with toxic lead in residential homes, the agency is quietly cleaning up a dangerous
lead contamination at its own headquarters.
Destroying America, One Environmental Law at
a Time. [Scroll down] The proposed legislation would mandate that manufacturers submit
health and safety data to the Environmental Protection Agency for 84,000 chemicals in use. The EPA has
never met a chemical it has not wanted to ban, particularly if it has a use that is beneficial to human life.
This law has no purpose beyond expanding the authority and power of the EPA, an agency which is currently
threatening to regulate carbon dioxide, one of the two gases along with oxygen on which all life on Earth
depends!
Troubled Waters. Rep.
James Oberstar wants to rewrite the Clean Water Act. If the Minnesota Democrat gets his way, the federal
government will have even greater authority to take private property. This isn't Oberstar's first attempt.
In 2007 he also tried to rewrite the water bill. He and others weren't happy with Supreme Court rulings that
defined the limits Washington has over bodies of water that have no nexus to navigable waters. They want
full federal control over all waters.
EPA Suppresses
Internal Global Warming Study. The Competitive Enterprise Institute today charged that a senior
official of the U.S. Environment Protection Agency actively suppressed a scientific analysis of climate change
because of political pressure to support the Administration's policy agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.
As part of a just-ended public comment period, CEI submitted a set of four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009,
which indicate that a significant internal critique of the agency's global warming position was put under wraps
and concealed.
The EPA Monster. CO2
represents a mere 386 parts per million of the Earth's atmosphere. Humans are responsible for 3% of its
generation; Mother Nature produces the other 97%. And the EPA wants to regulate ALL of it! Actual
science is of no importance to the EPA. ... The EPA is actually seeking to limit the amount of deicing fluid used
to protect commercial and other aircraft on the grounds that it might get into nearby streams and rivers.
Never mind the lives of the passengers and crews on planes that would be brought down as the result of such ice.
This defies common sense. In truth, the EPA threatens the economy and our lives in so many ways it is
difficult to know where to point first.
EPA's New CO2 Rules: Bad News For Blacks.
The Environmental Protection Agency wants to curtail greenhouse gases. Black Americans should be
afraid. Very afraid. Five civil rights organizations recently condemned EPA's plans to regulate
carbon dioxide and other emissions as part of its war on so-called "global warming." These groups' leaders
argue that the EPA's December 7 "Endangerment Finding" and pending anti-CO2 regulations will slam Americans
hard and blacks and other minorities hardest.
Obama Abandons Climate Bill in Congress, will
have EPA Regulate CO2 Instead. The recent announcement of the Democrat's switch of focus from
Cap and Trade energy legislation to immigration reform is simply an administrative slight of hand. Barack
Obama and the rest of his co-conspirators in Washington including Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid
know full well that a hard fought political battle in Congress over an energy bill was unnecessary.
Instead they have given the EPA their blessing to unilaterally determine CO2 limits for the nation.
Can the EPA Rely on UN Science?
When did America risk coming to be ruled by foreign scientists and apparatchiks at the United Nations? The
answer, it would seem, is ever since Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
under President Obama, chose to issue a rule determining that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger
the public health and welfare.
EPA
Offers Cash for Propaganda. The Environmental Protection Agency is offering thousands of taxpayer dollars and
free publicity to whoever produces the most compelling pro-government-regulation propaganda, it announced on its website and
in a YouTube video. "Almost every aspect of our lives is touched by federal regulations," the contest announcement
correctly points out.
EPA to limit emissions of mercury, other harmful pollutants from boilers,
incinerators. The Obama administration says 5,000 deaths could be prevented each year under new rules
announced Friday to limit the amount of mercury and other harmful pollutants released by industrial boilers and
solid waste incinerators.
EPA's
Florida Water Rules will Destroy Jobs, Cost Billions, State Study Finds. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's proposed restrictions on the application of phosphorous and nitrogen in the state of
Florida could destroy more than 14,000 Florida jobs, cost up to $3 billion dollars to implement, and cost
approximately $1 billion per year in recurring annual costs, the Florida Department of Agriculture and
Consumer Services reports.
Sensenbrenner
Report Challenges EPA Greenhouse Finding. This morning [5/6/2010], Rep. James Sensenbrenner
(R-WI), ranking member of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, will release a staff
report on the scientific issues that tend to discredit the EPA's endangerment finding for carbon dioxide as a
pollutant.
EPA
Renovation, Repair, and Painting Rule Adds Cost, Does Little. The EPA's RRP rules force contractors
to treat every home built before 1978 as a hazardous waste site.
Good Cop, Bad Cop.
If Congress can't pass climate-change legislation, the EPA will force it on the country anyway.
Preserve an Ecosystem,
or Preserve an EPA Rule? Prescribed fires are necessary to preserve a prairie ecosystem, but the
smoke causes regulatory problems for cities downwind. It's the EPA versus nature.
EPA's New Unconstitutional Power Grab.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday [5/13/2010] announced a new "tailoring rule" to attempt to postpone the
disastrous consequences of their earlier "endangerment finding" that declared carbon dioxide, the substance humans
exhale, a danger to life as we know it on the planet. The endangerment finding issued last December was
designed to side-step authorization from Congress for the administration's draconian greenhouse gas permitting
regulation scheme using the Clean Air Act (CAA) as a means to regulate carbon.
States divide
over new EPA rules. While Congress wrestles yet again with climate change legislation promoted
as an energy bill, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charging forward with draconian regulations
designed to punish key sectors of our struggling economy while yielding little or nothing in the way of actual
environmental improvement. ... Neither the EPA nor the Obama administration ever thought it would come to
this. The stringent EPA regulations proposed — and now being enacted — were supposed
to drive lawmakers to choose a cap-and-trade or tax legislation alternative to preempt the regulations.
Legislation has stalled. The EPA regulations have not.
The
Atrazine Scare Is Just the Beginning. Recently, I reported here on the environmentalists'
trumped-up scare campaign targeting atrazine, a valuable, widely used agricultural herbicide. I quoted a
Wall Street Journal editorial that observed, "The environmental lobby also figures that if it can take down
atrazine with its long record of clean health, it can get the EPA to prohibit anything." In fact, the
attack on atrazine is just part of the total war against man-made chemicals that is waged today by
environmentalists inside and outside of government.
A
Legislative Trojan Horse. The basis of the EPA's regulatory efforts is the agency's
finding that carbon dioxide is a "pollutant" that supposedly "endangers" us by causing global warming.
Once the EPA made this unprecedented and unsupported endangerment finding under the Clean Air Act, it put the
enormous regulatory machinery of the federal government in gear to generate rules regulating CO2, rules that
will damage every aspect of the U.S. economy. Thankfully, substantive legal challenges to the
endangerment finding and the rules the EPA is generating have been filed.
Avoiding the slick spots. The
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is a perplexing beast. While the agency remains hellbent on
regulating colorless, odorless and likely harmless greenhouse gas emissions, it has been utterly incapable of
living up to its name with respect to the Gulf oil spill. Not only was the EPA caught entirely
unprepared for the oil spill, but also last week it actually tried to interfere with BP's efforts to use a
chemical called Corexit to speed up dispersal of the oil. When the EPA told BP that it should use a less
toxic chemical, BP rightly ignored the order because it's the oil, not the dispersant (stupid) that is the
real threat to the environment, and there is no better option than the detergentlike Corexit.
The Editor says...
How does the EPA presume to have the authority to tell BP what to do in international waters?
The
EPA's Blueprint for Disaster. Opponents of massive new energy taxes and regulations breathed
a small sigh of relief [in June 2008] when the Lieberman-Warner climate-tax bill went down in flames on the
Senate floor. Even 10 Democrats broke from the party line and voted against it, writing that they would
have opposed the bill on final passage. Unfortunately, power-mad bureaucrats at the Environmental
Protection Agency remain undaunted. The EPA is expected today to release a document that blueprints
a dizzying array of greenhouse-gas regulatory programs under dozens of different provisions of the 1970
Clean Air Act.
Time
to Fight Back Against the EPA's Power Grab. President Obama has been very made clear
that his top domestic priorities are health care and global warming. We all know what happened on
health care. Now the date is set for the key Senate showdown on global warming: June 10.
That's when the Senate will vote on a resolution introduced by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski
(S.J. Res. 26) that would overturn the EPA's global warming regulations. It's not
subject to filibuster. There is no place for weak-kneed senators to hide. In just two
weeks we'll know where every member of the Senate stands.
Senate to vote on Obama's
power grab. You may recall "ClimateGate" from last year and the series of "-gates" befalling
the UN's big-government project, the IPCC. EPA outsourced its scientific assessment responsibilities in this
matter, to principally rely instead on the work of the two disgraced bodies caught sexing up their claims of
unfolding climate catastrophe. When caught out, EPA silenced their internal whistleblower. The
Senate is not voting on science, however. The Murkowski resolution merely overturns the legal force and
effect of EPA's claim that carbon dioxide endangers human health and the environment (really). Congress
has serially rejected that proposition.
Stopping
The EPA's Power Grab. When cap-and-tax legislation was introduced in Congress, the Obama
administration threatened that if Congress failed to act, the EPA would, using its authority under the
Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court has said the EPA has the power, even the obligation, to impose
draconian restrictions on so-called greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. Then last week, the
Senate took up Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's EPA Resolution of Disapproval. It would block the EPA's plan
to impose a national cap-and-trade scheme through regulation and not legislation.
The EPA Runs Amuck. The current
administrator of the EPA is Lisa Jackson who learned her trade working under [Carol] Browner until she was
picked to head the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. A Browner acolyte, Jackson has
presided over an EPA run amuck. Jackson will be remembered for leading the EPA fight to get carbon
dioxide declared a "pollutant" that can then be regulated under the Clean Air Act. This is the same
reasoning put forth by the constantly renamed Cap-and-Trade Act that is was a "climate" bill and has now
become something else.
Obama's
greenhouse gas rules survive Senate vote. In a boost for the president on global warming, the
Senate on Thursday rejected a challenge to Obama administration rules aimed at cutting greenhouse gas
emissions from power plants and other big polluters.
Bias alert:
In the opening sentence, this Associated Press writer makes the rash pronouncement that power plants are
big polluters.
Carbon dioxide is not a
pollutant.
Senate
turns back plan to block EPA rules. The Senate on Thursday [6/10/2010] turned back a largely
GOP plan to block EPA greenhouse gas rules, voting 47-53 to stave off what would have been a major blow to
the White House and Democratic climate agenda. Fifty-one votes would have been needed in favor of the
plan to advance it toward a final vote.
Senate rejects move to block
greenhouse gas regs. The Senate has rejected a bid to stop the Obama administration from
imposing regulations on greenhouse gases, giving a boost to President Barack Obama as he pursues broader
clean energy legislation.
Bias alert:
It's the Associated Press again, and this time the implication is that carbon dioxide
is somehow unclean, as in, energy that doesn't produce CO2 is "clean energy".
Is
the EPA In Charge of Our Economic Future? A crucial vote to block the EPA's global warming power
grab scheme is coming up in the Senate this afternoon. It's called "Senate Joint Resolution 26"
("SJ Res 26," is also called the Murkowski Resolution for its lead sponsor) and it would block and
overturn the EPA's global warming regulations. Despite the Democratic majority in the Senate, the White
House and Majority Leader Harry Reid have been in a desperate scramble to stop the resolution.
Dems
defeat effort to rein in EPA on global warming. Senate Democrats blocked a bipartisan resolution
to block the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing new global warming regulations. The 47-53 vote
clears the way for the EPA to proceed with its plan to reduce the nation's carbon dioxide emissions. Six
Democrats voted in favor of the resolution, most of them from states dependent on coal for jobs and electricity.
Cap-And-Traitors.
The Senate just claimed the title of the world's most delusional body by refusing to strip unelected EPA
bureaucrats of the power to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. This was the day freedom died.
EPA
classifies milk as oil, forcing costly rules on farmers. Having watched the oil gushing in the
Gulf of Mexico, dairy farmer Frank Konkel has a hard time seeing how spilled milk can be labeled the same
kind of environmental hazard. But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is classifying milk as oil
because it contains a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil.
'What Would
Saul Alinsky Do?' Defying court orders is just one of many ways Obama abuses his authority.
When Congress failed with its initial efforts to impose cap-and-tax legislation designed to suppress traditional
energy production and consumption in the United States for the ostensible purpose of reducing global temperature
an imperceptible amount over the next century, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency just issued
ultra vires
regulations to accomplish similar results. It didn't matter that every literate and intellectually honest
person had to concede that the EPA had no statutory (or any other) authority to issue such sweeping
regulations. What mattered were the administration's radical environmental goals.
EPA
and Texas Clash Over Air Quality Permits. The simmering conflict between the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) and Texas officials over air quality requirements has reached the boiling point with
EPA seizing control of a key permit governing the Lone Star State's fifth-largest refinery. In what
could lead to further escalation of the row, a high-level EPA official has threatened to strip Texas of its
power to issue such permits, unless the government in Austin bows to Washington's regulatory demands.
EPA
rejects Texas program that reduced emissions, increased productivity. Why is it one question
keeps recurring whenever EPA announces a decision: What is wrong with these people? The latest
such example concerns the agency's rejection of a Texas air quality program that slashed emissions in the
Lone Star state while encouraging increased workplace productivity.
A Hapless Administration.
[Scroll down] Although it cannot create jobs, government
can retard job creation. An EPA ban
on mountaintop mining will wipe out thousands of jobs in Appalachia, according to the National Mining Association.
The ban on deepwater drilling — which promises to extend beyond six months since the advisory committee
to evaluation drilling safety has not even met — will cost 20,000 jobs. Financial regulation
promises to drive tens of thousands of Wall Street jobs overseas to free-market havens like Singapore, Hong Kong,
and Switzerland. Pending cap and trade legislation will further sap growth and reduce competitiveness,
leading to further job losses.
To EPA, Milk is
'Toxic Sludge'. The EPA program in question falls under the Clean Water Act and requires owners
of large oil storage tanks to develop plans to prevent and handle any spills. Milk contains a certain
percentage of animal fat, which is considered a non-petroleum oil, and therefore bulk milk storage tanks near
waterways could be subject to the regulations.
The Editor says...
Obviously, if this is what they're concerned about, the EPA has run out of things to do.
EPA Goes Ape Over Power Plant Emissions.
[Scroll down] What do Americans really die from? Genetic dispositions to illness. Accidents.
Poor diets. And bad lifestyle choices that include smoking, drinking, and taking illegal drugs. With the
exception of asthma that affects about seven percent of the population none of this has anything to do with air
quality. Indeed, the causes of asthma remain somewhat shrouded in mystery even if the symptoms do not.
None of this empirical knowledge and data has the slightest effect, however, on the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) and the American Lung Association that profits greatly from any claims about air quality. Both are
inclined to making wild claims.
EPA's Environmental Justice
Tour. The Environmental Protection Agency has had a busy year. The agency's regulatory
shop seems to crack down on a new greenhouse gas every week in the name of fighting climate change. But
despite its full plate, the EPA has still found time to link up with the Congressional Black Caucus for something
called an "Environmental Justice Tour." The tour has whisked EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and
several black legislators around the country to impoverished and predominantly minority communities.
EPA rejects challenge to climate rules.
The Environmental Protection Agency Thursday rejected an effort to keep it from regulating greenhouse gas emissions,
saying that e-mails released in last fall's "Climategate" scandal gave it no reason to reconsider the
science of global warming.
EPA control of CO2: Obama's Vehicle
To Destroy The US Economy is Launched. John Topping, who served as editor of portions of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) First Assessment Report (FAR) concerning impacts of climate
change, wrote an article titled, "Massachusetts v. EPA: A Turning Point for the US on Climate Change?"
He sees the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) loss as a victory because they can now control CO2, fossil
fuels, and the US economy. Frighteningly, it's based on completely falsified science and is totally
unnecessary.
The Prophet of the Ruling
Class. So now the EPA has been petitioned to ban the use of lead in bullets and fishing weights.
For hundreds of years, human beings have used lead for those purposes, and life on earth has not exactly come to
an end. Now we are told that the lead used in hunting and fishing is harming animals and fish, and it
must stop. The scary thing is that one individual, EPA Director Lisa Jackson, has the power to impose
such a ban.
Shouldn't the EPA be working on actual problems... like this?
Governing against the
People. While it is not yet known whether "the rise of the oceans began to slow" since the
nomination/election of Barack Obama, it is clear that Lake Michigan hasn't, thanks to the recent infusion of
more than two billion gallons of raw sewage, courtesy of the City of Milwaukee. This is a not-uncommon
occurrence due to the fact that the city's storm and sanitary sewers are one and the same and, despite a massively
expensive "Deep Tunnel" reservoir, a heavy deluge not only impacts the lake, but causes a backflow into
thousands of local homes.
I
pledge allegiance — to the EPA? Once again, the Obama Administration has shown its
propensity for heavy-handed regulation rather than bipartisan, or even congressional, support. And once
again — just like with health care reform — states are rebelling and lawsuits are
looming. This time, the issue is greenhouse gases.
9th
Circuit: Mud from logging roads is pollution. A federal appeals court has decided that
mud washing off logging roads is pollution and ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to write regulations
to reduce the amount that reaches salmon streams.
Texas
fights global-warming power grab. President Obama's EPA is already well down the path to
regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, something the act was not designed to do.
It has a problem, however, because shoehorning greenhouse gases into that 40-year-old law would force
churches, schools, warehouses, commercial kitchens and other sources to obtain costly and time-consuming
permits. It would grind the economy to a halt, and the likely backlash would doom the whole scheme.
Environmental
Protection Agency considering a ban on lead ammunition. After health care and immigration,
apparently the White House doesn't feel it has sufficiently irked voters enough. Bringing the NRA and
upset gun owners into the mix should really do wonders for Democrats at the ballot box.
EPA's
Gun Control. The U.S. Supreme Court says Americans have an individual right to keep and bear
arms. The EPA says the bullets for those guns may be banned as an environmental hazard.
Environmental Protection
Agency Reviewing Petition to Ban Lead Bullets. Will Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
Lisa Jackson make a back door move to ban lead bullets the day before the November 2 elections?
Several environmentalist groups led by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) are petitioning the EPA to
ban lead bullets and shot (as well as lead sinkers for fishing) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
EPA Now Accepting Public Comment on Petition to Ban Lead
in Ammunition. Environmental activists are pressing the Obama administration to ban the manufacture,
processing and distribution lead shot, bullets, and fishing sinkers under the Toxic Substances Control Act of
1976, but hunting and Second Amendment groups say the EPA lacks the authority to do so, for starters.
Gun owners dodge
the bullet ban. On Aug. 3, the American Bird Conservancy and groups like Public Employees
for Environmental Responsibility petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to ban traditional lead
ammunition as a "health risk." Obviously, the argument was not that recipients of a 45-caliber slug
might suffer from lead poisoning. Instead, these activists asserted that bullets weighing less than
half an ounce might hit the ground and somehow poison the planet. It just isn't true. The Clinton
administration's EPA looked into the issue and found no cause for concern. The claim that "lead based
ammunition is hazardous is in error," EPA senior science adviser William Marcus wrote in a Dec. 25, 1999,
letter.
Go Away, EPA: Superfund Cleanup in Idaho Draws
Local Opposition. People who live around a toxic former silver mining complex in Idaho have a
message for federal environmental officials who want to expand a lengthy cleanup effort: Go home, your
help is no longer wanted.
EPA Puts 'Environmental Justice' Front and Center in
Its Rulemaking Process. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a 55-page
"guidance" to help its employees "advance environmental justice" for low-income and minority communities.
"Achieving environmental justice is an Agency priority and should be factored into every decision," the
document says.
Is
the EPA to blame for the bed bug 'epidemic'? Eradication [of bed bugs] can take months and cost
thousands of dollars. There's also the stigma -- many high-end New York residences, for instance, keep
their bed bug infestations secret to avoid embarrassment. But why are bed bugs back? Though they've
been sucking humans' blood since at least ancient Greece, bed bugs became virtually extinct in America
following the invention of pesticide DDT. There were almost no bed bugs in the United States
between World War II and the mid-1990s.
US Grapples With
Bedbugs as EPA Limits Options. A resurgence of bedbugs across the U.S. has homeowners and
apartment dwellers taking desperate measures to eradicate the tenacious bloodsuckers, with some relying on
dangerous outdoor pesticides and fly-by-night exterminators.
America Goes Buggy Over Bed Bugs.
[Scroll down] So let me say that I have the ANSWER to the nation's plague of bed bugs. It's called
PESTICIDES. Not just any pesticides, but specifically the ones that the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency has successfully banned or forced pesticide manufacturers to stop registering or manufacturing because
of the cost involved. The truth you will never read elsewhere is that there are pesticides that will rid
the nation of this massive bed bug population explosion and they will do so rapidly. Can you imagine an
end to the current bed bug infestations just about everywhere in say, a month?
Obama
Urges Court to Vacate AGW Decision. Just as the administration used the endangerment rule to try
and spook Congress and industry into supporting cap and trade, it is now using CO2 tort litigation to try and
spook them into supporting — or at least not aggressively attacking — EPA regulation of
greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act.
The environmental
movement in retreat. [Scroll down] The essence of progressivism, of which environmentalism
has become an appendage, is the faith that all will be well once we have concentrated enough power in Washington
and have concentrated enough Washington power in the executive branch and have concentrated enough "experts"
in that branch. Hence the Environmental Protection Agency proposes to do what the elected representatives
of the rubes refuse to do in limiting greenhouse gases.
Appalachian
Coal Miners Say EPA Rules Are Killing Their Jobs. Since last year, The Environmental Protection Agency
has stepped up regulation on mountaintop coal mining across six Appalachian states because the explosives that are
used to remove mountain surfaces send debris into rivers and streams, endangering the environment. But
with the stricter rules in place, the industry, which is considered the lifeblood of Appalachian towns, argues
it's under attack. Workers and advocacy groups that represent them say the rules unfairly target their
region and require mining firms to meet unrealistic standards.
Texas
Sues to Block Bizarre "Global Warming" EPA Rules. The state of Texas today [9/16/2010] sued the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency in a federal appeals court in Washington DC, claiming four new regulations imposed by the EPA
are based on the 'thoroughly discredited' findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and
are 'factually flawed,' [WOAI] reports.
Inhofe
Says EPA's New Boiler Rule Could Kill Nearly 800,000 Manufacturing Jobs. The top Republican on a
Senate environmental panel released a scathing report Tuesday [9/28/2010] that he contends shows that the
Environmental Protection Agency's new proposed rule on cleaning up boilers nationwide could devastate America's
manufacturing base and imperil hundreds of thousands of jobs without providing any real public health or
environmental benefits.
Proposed EPA Rules
on Lead Paint. The EPA has new rules on lead paint abatement when renovating, repairing, or
repainting residential rental property. As a quick look will reveal, it is lengthy and complicated, with
many links. It is obvious that it is a bureaucratic nightmare for an elderly person with one rental unit.
The contractors who are certified will have to charge outrageous prices in order to comply with these rules.
A
human balance needed for the environment. Everybody wants clean air and water. Everybody
wants to conserve America's abundant natural resources. ... But who wants to turn one of the world's most
fertile farming regions, an area that long fed millions of Americans and provided jobs for countless workers,
into an arid wasteland, all on behalf of a small fish?
Obamachine
pulls the plug on appliances. Regulation-weary Americans had better brace themselves for another
load of government-knows-best activism as President Obama's green czarina claims she has a mandate to pick what
household appliances we can use in the future. Cathy Zoi, assistant energy secretary for energy efficiency
and renewable energy, recently outlined the administration's so-called clean-energy strategy, under which new
government standards will force market transformation for products such as small electric motors, water heaters,
pool heaters, space heaters and commercial clothes washers.
Where EPA Is Public Enemy #1.
[Scroll down] Farmers, ranchers, and foresters "are increasingly frustrated and bewildered by vague,
overreaching, and unnecessarily burdensome EPA regulations," a U.S. senator charged last week. They "are
facing at least a dozen new regulatory requirements, each of which will add to their costs, making it harder
for them to compete. ... [M]ost if not all of these regulations rely on dubious rationales."
Environmental Protection Agency rules could
hurt Barack Obama in 2012. Political battlegrounds like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia that
Obama won in 2008 will be watching how the EPA moves on climate change. Coal-reliant states such as
Indiana and Missouri — which Obama lost by less than 1 percentage point — will be
monitoring clean air rules and coal ash standards. And farm states that Obama carried, including Iowa,
Minnesota and Wisconsin, are waiting on a proposal to tighten air quality limits for microscopic soot.
The
Green Agenda. In keeping with President Obama's promise to slow the rise of the oceans and heal
the planet, the Energy Department has set new efficiency standards for 26 appliances and household products.
The list ranges from microwaves, to washing machines and dryers, to residential water heaters and dishwashers.
The department reportedly claims the new standards will save consumers from $250 billion to $300 billion
on their energy costs through 2030. But that's what Democrats always say about their green schemes:
"We're doing this to clean up the Earth, and we're going to save you money while we do it." Don't
believe it.
The EPA's Long War on Chemicals.
All manner of things we use to enhance our lives start out as raw materials and the process of manufacture is
a miracle of transformation. Virtually all forms of manufacturing require some chemical element, often
several. Given the indispensability of chemicals in society and commerce, does it strike anyone as odd
that, if you were born after 1960, there's a high likelihood that you grew up being told that "chemicals" are
bad?
Hey EPA: Don't Mess with Texas.
After declaring greenhouse gases hazardous earlier this year, the EPA plans to use the Clean Air Act to begin
regulating greenhouse gas emissions from emitters of all sizes beginning January 2011. The EPA's plan has
been widely criticized for being too burdensome and expensive, so the EPA attempted to downsize the plan with a
"Tailoring Rule," targeting only the largest emitters. In August, Texas filed a lawsuit against the EPA,
declaring the proposed "Tailoring Rule" illegal. The state rightly claims the EPA's plan is unlawful
because the Clean Air Act does not address greenhouse gases, even after its last revision by Congress in 1990.
Restrictions Would
Reduce Global Temperature by No More Than 0.006° in 90 Years. Tough new rules proposed by
the Environmental Protection Agency restricting greenhouse gas emissions would reduce the global mean temperature
by only 0.006 to 0.0015 of a degree Celsius by the year 2100, according to the EPA's analysis. As a side
effect, these rules would "slow construction nationwide for years," the EPA said in a June 3 statement.
How
Obama is invading your home. The Obama administration isn't satisfied giving the American public
vast things we don't want — from stimulus packages to bailouts to ObamaCare: It's a small-scale
nuisance, too — witness its attempt to redesign home appliances. In the pipeline are dumb
regulations for almost everything that plugs in or fires up in your home.
Obama's
Job-Killing Regulations. [Scroll down] In another move that compounds the regulatory burdens,
the EPA recently issued a strategic plan for the next five years (Fiscal Year 2011-2015 EPA Strategic Plan) that
will cost over a trillion dollars to implement. The plan advances retaliatory mandates that allow President
Obama to punish organizations that oppose his flawed policies and donate heavily to Republicans. For example,
on page 44, the EPA unveils its new plan to criminalize violations of the agency's mandates and has targeted
four industries — cement plants, coal-fired utilities, glass plants and animal feeding operations — all
industries that have, traditionally, donated heavily to Republicans.
More Ethanol to Be
Allowed in Cars. The Obama administration plans to allow higher levels of ethanol for gasoline
used by newer cars, a step that would benefit corn growers but which has been strongly opposed by auto makers,
livestock ranchers, oil refiners and some public-health advocates. As early as Wednesday [10/13/2010],
the Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce it will allow ethanol levels in gasoline blends to be
as high as 15% for vehicles made since 2007, up from 10% currently, according to two people familiar with
the matter.
Exxon
attacks EPA ethanol decision. ExxonMobil Corp. isn't happy with the Environmental Protection
Agency over its decision this week to allow increased levels of ethanol in gasoline for newer cars.
Refiners have long opposed policies that mandate or encourage increased blending of ethanol into gasoline.
Did
someone mention ethanol?
Mr. Obama,
tell the EPA to change the Tailoring Rule. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is preparing
to implement greenhouse gas emissions regulations in January 2011, which will hit many sectors of our economy.
After receiving widespread (and correct) criticism that they would burden far too many aspects of the economy with
expensive and cumbersome regulations, the EPA "tailored" its rule in an effort to target only the biggest emitters.
However, the Tailoring Rule is just as burdensome as the original regulations and will not only impact jobs
and the economy, but will also impact an important source of renewable energy that our country needs.
The Slow Death of the Environmental Movement.
Today there are so many environmental organizations and groups that you need a directory to sort them out.
These groups, however, are now far more political than their original intent. They are ministries of
misinformation, disinformation, and outright scare mongering. The movement as we know it today got a
boost with the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson's book, "Silent Spring." It was an anti-pesticide
diatribe whose claims have long since been disproved, but it set in motion a tsunami of fears regarding all
chemicals and, beyond that, concerns about all kinds of manufacturing and technology; indeed anything involving
energy resources. Within eight years of the book's publication President Nixon initiated the Environmental
Protection Agency that has since metatisized into a rogue government agency intent on controlling all aspects
of life in America.
The
EPA's Anti-Prosperity Agenda. On Labor Day, President Obama pledged to "keep fighting every single
day, every single hour, every single minute to turn this economy around and put people back to work." If job
creation is such an overarching priority, the president might take a closer look at the recent barrage of job-suffocating
actions from his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The president might also look at Texas, where job creation
and environmental improvement have occurred simultaneously and at a pace far above the national average.
EPA
now funding propaganda videos telling kids juiceboxes are destroying the planet. [Scroll
down] According to the [New York]
Times, Young Rafael's class had just watched
The Story of
Stuff, an animated anti-capitalist diatribe by former Greenpeace employee Annie Leonard. The program,
which was financed in part by left-wing Tides Foundation, is big hit among among school teachers looking to
beef up their schools' environmental curricula. Leonard claims her video has been viewed by over
three million people online, and some 7,000 copies of the DVD have been sold. Another environmental
group, Facing the Future, is working developing curricula designed around the program for schools in
all 50 states.
Wind power mirages. We
Americans are often told we must end our "addiction" to oil and coal, because they harm the environment and
Earth's climate. "Ecologically friendly" wind energy, some say, will generate 20% of America's energy
in another decade, greatly reducing carbon dioxide emissions and land use impacts from mining and drilling.
These claims are a driving force behind the cap-tax-and-trade and renewable energy bills that Congress may try
to ram through during a "lame duck" session — as well as the Environmental Protection Agency's
economy-threatening regulations under its ruling that carbon dioxide "endangers human health and welfare."
EPA Looking to Hire
'Environmental Justice' Coordinator. The Environmental Protection Agency is looking to hire an
environmental protection specialist who will help the agency accomplish its "environmental justice goals."
The job, in New York City, pays up to $84,146 a year, and according to the job listing on the government Web
site, "You do not need a degree to qualify for this position."
Is
Green Socialism EPA's Real Goal? The EPA is looking for someone with "knowledge of the theories and
principles of environmental protection, especially as they relate to issues of environmental justice and the impacts
of environmental laws, policies, legislation and regulation on minority and/or low-income groups and communities."
The job, located in New York City, pays up to $84,000. No college degree is required — just a
hatred of industry, development and fossil fuels, and a belief that minorities are the deliberate victims of
capitalist exploitation.
Texas
ignoring new greenhouse gas rules. Houston Texas has refused to meet new federal greenhouse gas
emission rules that go into effect in January, the latest anti-Washington move in an ongoing battle that could
halt new construction at the nation's largest refineries and other industry in Texas.
EPA
Proposes More Regulations. In yet another economically destructive ploy to "go green," the
Environmental Protection Agency has recommended an unprecedented barrage of harsh federal regulations on fuel
efficiency standards for semi-trucks, buses, delivery vans, garbage trucks, and heavy-duty pickup tricks.
According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), "The Environmental Protection Agency and National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration are proposing mandatory reductions in fuel use of between 10 and
20 percent from the largest vehicles. And in January, the EPA will begin regulating large stationary
sources such as power plants and factories."
What
EPA really stands for: "Employment Prevention Agency". Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels just might be
the Calvin Coolidge of the 21st Century. Check out this CNBC interview in which he explains why the
country needs an emergency economic growth package now, and why that should start with President Obama
instructing executive branch agencies to cool it with the new regulations.
The
EPA's Odd View of 'Consumer Choice'. Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed
in a "Notice of Intent" that passenger vehicle fuel economy average as much as 62 miles per gallon 14 years
from now. The agency was able to arrive at this lofty mark by conveniently ignoring everything we know about
the state of automotive art and the marketplace today. ... To bolster its 62-mpg proposal, EPA produced a numbing
245-page analysis of prospective automotive technologies — many of which don't exist, the rest of
which have been rejected by consumers.
President Lies in Press Conference.
"The EPA is under a court order that identifies greenhouse gases as a pollutant." (paraphrase) The truth
is, the court said EPA must make a determination whether they are a pollutant. Big difference.
Re: President Lies in Press
Conference. This is unavoidably true,
unless he does not know what he is talking about.
Neither is good news given the staggering consequences to flow from EPA's discretionary action of regulating
carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, using provisions never intended for such purpose. Which is to
say, he is flat and tragically wrong, no matter how forcefully he insists it is so.
It isn't.
Skinning
The Carbon Cat With EPA. It's been said that a socialist thrown out the window will come back through
the front door as an environmentalist. This reminds us of something we noticed in the president's day-after
concession speech. Though acknowledging the cap-and-trade law is no longer a legislative priority, Obama
also said he's not giving up on the idea of restricting Americans' output of carbon dioxide.
Obama Doesn't Rule Out
Using EPA Regulations to Cap Carbon Emissions. In a White House press conference Wednesday, President
Barack Obama did not rule out using regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency to cap carbon emissions
in the United States without an act of Congress. Meanwhile, on October 25, the EPA announced new regulations
to limit "greenhouse gas" emissions by heavy-duty trucks and buses.
Will EPA
Regulators Leave America In The Dark? There's no doubt that federal regulations lead to economic
harm, but could the wave of Obama regulations affecting electric power plants lead to electricity shortages as
well? A new study from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) finds reason for
concern.
Report: EPA
draws up strict new smog regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency has asked the U.S. government
to enact strict new smog regulations for ground-level ozone that the agency says negatively effects the health of millions
of Americans. The request to cut ground-level ozone levels to .006 to .007 parts per million comes less than two
years after the Bush administration set standards of .0075 particles of pollutants per one million. That doesn't
sound like a very big change, but the New York Times reports that the agency quotes the price tag of such a change at
between $19 billion and $100 billion per year by 2020.
Job-Killing Environmentalists.
What's happened is that Obama has given the environmental extremists the power to make some of their wish list come true.
Modern measurement techniques allow scientists to measure tiny parts per million; much of the technology did not exist when the
Clean Air Act was first legislated in 1990. Using these new techniques environmentalists are able to impose their
fantasies upon American business and labor. For industry, removing the last parts per million is prohibitively costly.
For instance, technology which could have removed the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was prohibited by the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) because the discharged ocean water would still contain more than 15 parts per million of oil.
Oil,
grocery groups sue EPA over ethanol decision. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the American
Petroleum Institute and other groups filed a lawsuit challenging the EPA's decision to allow more corn-based
ethanol in gasoline. Lobbying organizations representing companies that include Tyson Foods Inc. and
Coca-Cola Co. are part of the lawsuit filed today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit.
The Rise of Unchecked
Presidential Power. [Scroll down] The legislative branch, for example, has ceded vast
parts of its authority voluntarily. According the to the Constitution, only the legislature can make
laws. Although not the first example of such an agency, the creation of the Environmental Protection
Agency in 1970 is a good example. The EPA was founded by an act of the legislature and charged to
protect the environment. Since then, the EPA has been writing "regulations" which are, in fact, laws.
You can be prosecuted and deprived of freedom or assets for disobeying the regulations of the EPA.
Instead of going through all the trouble itself, Congress has delegated the passing of environmental
laws to an agency not beholden to the will of the voting public.
How EPA
Could Destroy 7.3 Million Jobs. Here we are, with 15 million Americans unemployed and
millions more underemployed, and the EPA is moving blindly ahead with new regulations that will increase
dramatically the energy costs of U.S. industries, reducing their competitiveness and profitability, and
making it less likely they will hire. EPA's action amounts to rewriting the Clean Air Act to suit its
own bureaucratic and ideological objectives. At a time when the Obama administration should be focused
on job creation and the nation's economic recovery, promulgating stringent new environmental rules should
be its last priority.
EPA at 40 — An Agency Out of
Control. Today [12/2/2010] is the Environmental Protection Agency's 40th birthday. Thank
you Richard Nixon: you left us a heck of a legacy on this one. The media is sure to tout the remarkable
environmental progress in the United States over the past 40 years, and indeed we have never had cleaner air,
cleaner water, or more plentiful wildlife. By any objective measure, environmental progress has been remarkable
over the past 40 years, but it was also remarkable for decades before the creation of the EPA, and indeed every
advanced economy has seen dramatic environmental improvement, regardless of its regulatory model.
EPA Shifting Its Emphasis
to 'Sustainability'. The Environmental Protection Agency, marking its 40th anniversary this week,
announced that "sustainability concepts" will govern its programs from now on. EPA Administrator Lisa P.
Jackson said her agency has commissioned a "groundbreaking" National Research Council study that will help the
agency "incorporate sustainability into the way the agency approaches environmental protection."
Memo to House GOP: Get a grip on the EPA.
Getting a grip on the Environmental Protection Agency must be at the top of the upcoming Republican-controlled
House's "To Do" list. Of immediate concern are the EPA rules for regulating greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions. Unless stopped by a federal court, the Obama EPA will implement on Jan. 2 a flagrantly
illegal scheme to regulate emissions from power plants and other large emitters. This enactment will
kill jobs and raise the prices of energy, and thus of all good and services.
The EPA Versus the USA. It seems almost
beyond reason that a single U.S. agency could so hate America that it was prepared to ignore the Constitution, distort
a Supreme Court decision, and impose its will on the nation in the name of totally discredited science. That, however,
is what the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to do... The use of fossil fuels — coal, oil, and
natural gas — accounts for 85% of America's energy sources. The EPA proposes to limit or end their use.
As such it is an enemy of the people and Congress must act to stop this insane agency before it destroys the nation.
The EPA: 40 and
past its prime. EPA and the "environmentalists" to whom it continually panders regularly muddle
the public with specious warnings about impending risk. One such alarm concerns the presence of trace
amounts of certain chemicals that are present in our bodies. Activists perform "studies" that search
for trace amounts of a variety of chemicals in blood or tissues — and find them. But given
the sophistication and sensitivity of our modern analytical techniques, we can find infinitesimal amounts of
almost anything we look for. The mere presence of a synthetic chemical — even one known to
be toxic at high levels — does not make it a health concern.
EPA's Smoke-and-Mirrors on Smog and Soot.
This article begins a series examining the science behind the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's proposed
proposed tighten air quality standards for ground-level ozone (O3 or smog) and fine particulate matter
(PM2.5 or soot).
EPA Again Delays
Tighter Ozone Restrictions. The Obama administration is delaying a decision on whether to
tighten limits on ground-level ozone, the third time in less than a year that it has put off the potentially
costly environmental rule in the face of congressional and industry pressure. The Environmental
Protection Agency announced Wednesday [12/8/2010] that it won't be prepared to decide until next July
whether to tighten a national air-quality standard for ozone.
The EPA Versus the USA.
First, there was no "global warming"; only the normal and natural warming that had been in effect since around
1850 when a 500-year "little ice age" ended in the northern hemisphere. Second, the Earth is now in a
normal and natural cooling cycle, though with the added concern that it is also at the end of an 11,500 year
interglacial cycle between the last major ice age and the next. Third, the data put forth by the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been almost entirely discredited, based as it was on rigged
research by corrupted university centers and governmental agencies.
Can a State
Bypass the EPA? In 2010, the EPA granted exactly two new coal mining permits in West Virginia.
There are fifty outstanding permits, because according to the EPA, bugs are more important than jobs.
Mayfly populations are disrupted when coal companies dig beneath the surface of the earth, which the EPA says
affects the amount of food and thus the populations of indigenous fish. Other research has indicated that
as soon as those bugs leave, other ones take their place, and fish populations are unaffected. As the
result of this standoff, coal cannot expand in Appalachia, and some of the highest paying jobs in the state
remain unfilled.
The Epa Risk-Inverter. It has often been noted
that in searching for "safety," the EPA magnifies risks to individuals. Its so-called conservative
assumption is the One Molecule Hypothesis. This states that a single molecule of a carcinogen is capable
of inducing a cancer and that there is no "threshold," no concentration of a carcinogen that can be considered
safe. The dose-response curve for compounds that are carcinogenic to rats in near-lethal doses, or
carcinogenic to humans in industrial exposures, are extrapolated to the (0,0) origin. (This assumption
is not made for compounds that are merely poisonous rather than carcinogenic; for toxic effects, its falsity
is obvious.)
Fight
Back Against Obama's Lawless EPA. On November 15, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency
issued a 100-page, highly technical "guidance" document proposing that as of January 2, 2011, large
sources of greenhouse gas emissions — such as power plants, steel operations, and petroleum
refineries — be required to obtain preconstruction and operating permits limiting their greenhouse
gas emissions and to install the "best available" technology to do so. ... Previously, no such permits
were needed, and no greenhouse gas limits existed. It is widely agreed such new rules will drive up the
costs of electricity, iron and steel, gasoline, and anything else produced by large operations, with these
costs passed along to consumers already staggered by a jobless "recovery" from the recession.
EPA
Not Serving Health, the Public. During the week of Nov. 15, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency proposed new air quality regulations intended to reduce carbon emissions among many of
America's industries and activities. We can argue about the need to better our air quality beyond the
amazing improvements we have witnessed the past 30 years. We can argue about the need to reduce
carbon emissions when carbon dioxide is the life blood of our planet supporting the plant life that makes
life for mankind viable.
EPA sets the
stage for expanded climate rules. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled a schedule Thursday
for setting greenhouse gas standards for power plants and oil refineries. While EPA is pledging a "common-sense"
approach, the move is likely to escalate a battle between the Obama administration and Republicans, who argue climate
regulations will hurt the economy.
EPA to issue
greenhouse gas permits in Texas. The Environmental Protection Agency will announce today that it will seize
authority from Texas to award permits to plants that emit large amounts of greenhouse gas, because Gov. Rick Perry and
state officials have refused to implement federal regulations.
EPA
announces it won't wait for Congress on carbon regulation. Stymied in Congress, the Obama administration
is moving unilaterally to clamp down on power plant and oil refinery greenhouse emissions, announcing plans for
developing new standards over the next year. In a statement posted on the agency's website late Thursday,
Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson said the aim was to better cope with pollution
contributing to climate change.
EPA takes over Texas pollution permits.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday [12/23/2010] effectively declared Texas unfit to regulate its own greenhouse
gas emissions and took over carbon dioxide permitting of any new or expanding industrial facilities starting Jan. 2.
EPA: For 'When Congress Resists
Action'. Surely you remember this dynamic from civics class, or even some more advanced inquiry
into our system: Congress only decides major domestic policy issues until unelected bureaucrats and
political appointees decide they can no longer wait for our elected representatives. Like (as the article
also notes) the Department of Interior is for locking up land when Congress resists doing so, the FCC is for
when Congress resists action on the Progressives' view of the internet, and so on through the alphabet soup of
government.
Automakers
Sue EPA Over E15 Fuel Blend. A coalition of automakers is suing President Obama's Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), hoping to overturn that agency's decision to allow the sale of E15, a blend of
15 percent ethanol added to gasoline, for cars and light trucks manufactured since 2007. The
Engine Products Group (EPG) filed suit on Monday [12/20/2010] with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit.
Messing With Texas:
The federal agency declares Texas unfit to regulate its own greenhouse gas emissions and seizes control of the
permitting process. Jobs, states' rights and the 2012 presidential election are all involved.
Nullification in 2011!
[Scroll down] The Department of Energy, created by executive order, should be abolished. States
should have the right to determine how their natural resources should be either protected or utilized.
Requiring states to use so-called alternative (wind and solar) energy is seriously wrong. Likewise, the
Environmental Protection Agency, also created by executive order, has so exceeded its original mandate that it
has become a lethal threat to the economy and the welfare of all Americans. Nullification should be
utilized to rid us of these and other federal entities that overstep their mission, threatening the Bill of
Rights and other constitutional limitations and freedoms.
Texas, EPA
Fight Over Regulations Grows Fierce. A longstanding tit-for-tat between Texas and the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency over how to regulate pollution has grown fierce in recent months, leaving
industry frustrated and allowing some plants and refineries to spew more toxic waste into the air, streams
and lakes than what is federally acceptable.
E.P.A. Limit on Gases to Pose Risk to Obama and
Congress. With the federal government set to regulate climate-altering gases from factories and power plants
for the first time, the Obama administration and the new Congress are headed for a clash that carries substantial risks for
both sides. While only the first phase of regulation takes effect on Sunday [1/2/2011], the administration is on notice
that if it moves too far and too fast in trying to curtail the ubiquitous gases that are heating the planet it risks a
Congressional backlash that could set back the effort for years.
Bias alert!
Atmospheric gases are not "heating the planet." Carbon Dioxide does not generate heat.
The heat comes from the Sun. The greenhouse effect keeps the average temperature high enough
for us to live above ground. For that, we should all be thankful.
EPA Rules
Will Trump Your Rights. Ignoring both Congress and the voters, the Environmental Protection Agency starts the new year
governing by decree with job-killing regulations. Take a deep breath, but if you exhale you're a polluter.
The
EPA's End-Run Around Democracy. In a recent issue of the Daily Caller, reporter Jonathan Strong
asserts that EPA's global warming regulations are "no end-run around Congress," because "This time Congress
is being held hostage by its own laws." That's exactly what EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and just
about every environmental advocacy group in America says. They are mistaken. Interestingly, much
of Strong's argument leads to conclusion that EPA
is engaged in an end-run. His column leaves
little doubt that the Clean Air Act (CAA) is a stunningly inappropriate framework for regulating greenhouse
gases. That should make him wary of environmentalist claims that EPA is just carrying out the will of
Congress.
Arizona's
greenhouse-gas rules to be enforced by the EPA. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will
directly enforce new greenhouse-gas rules in parts of Arizona after the state refused to submit its own
program for controlling the pollutants. The new rules, which take effect today, add greenhouse gases
to the list of pollutants covered under air-quality permits and will eventually require the largest
polluters, mainly industrial operations, to reduce emissions.
Court blocks EPA plan to take over Texas
pollution permits. A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked the EPA's plan to seize control
of greenhouse gas permits from Texas. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must wait until at least
Friday [1/7/2011] so the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia can make a decision on Texas'
bid to prevent the federal takeover.
Nearly
50 House Republicans offer bill to block EPA climate rules. Dozens of Republicans used the opening
day of the new Congress on Wednesday [1/5/2010] to introduce legislation that would bar the Environmental Protection
Agency from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a member of the Energy and
Commerce Committee, sponsored the bill. The measure's 46 co-sponsors are all Republicans except for Rep. Dan
Boren (D-Okla.).
Media Excuse Obama's Power Grab.
Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post reported on Friday [12/31/2010] that "the Obama administration is
prepared to push its environmental agenda through regulation where it has failed on Capitol Hill..."
There was no hint that this approach is illegal or unconstitutional. The account simply assumes that the
Obama Administration can do what it wants, no matter what Congress or the law says. This kind of
matter-of-fact reporting about lawlessness by the federal government is typical of the decline, if not
death, of adversary journalism in the nation's capital.
A
nation choking on endless laws. First, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, under Lisa Jackson,
has decided that its mandate now includes the very air we exhale — carbon dioxide — and is
introducing stringent standards to help fight such "pollutants" and so-called greenhouse gases. Never
mind that the "science" is far from settled, that the Climategate e-mails showed active collusion among
researchers to misrepresent the facts about alleged "global warming," that some of the 1,700 British scientists
who signed a declaration defending the researchers' professional integrity have said they felt pressured into
doing it (or didn't work on "climate change" at all) and that Al Gore is a...
GOP All Set To Wimp Out On EPA? Now
that we face the prospect of flagrantly illegal, arbitrary, expensive and pointless regulation of greenhouse
gases by the EPA, I was eager to read how the new Congress was going to, say, slash the EPA's budget to prevent
it from implementing the climate rules or perhaps shut down the federal government if the Obama administration
proceeded with its plan to dictate energy policy in order to control the economy. Instead, [Rep. Fred]
Upton offered a mere two sentences of action that are better described as displaying pusillanimity rather
than pugnacity.
The EPA is gradually and systematically choking off all sources of domestic energy.
Chairman
Issa Slams EPA Decision To Close Mine. In a preview of the type of confrontations likely this year
as the new Republican-led House gets down to business, the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform committee,
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said an action by the Environmental Protection Agency to effectively close down a West
Virginia coal mine was part of the "climate of uncertainty" facing businesses that was holding back the economic
recovery.
EPA Blasted as It
Revokes Mine's Permit. The Environmental Protection Agency, in an unusual move, revoked a key
permit for one of the largest proposed mountaintop-removal coal-mining projects in Appalachia, drawing cheers from
environmentalists and protests from business groups worried their projects could be next. The decision to
revoke the permit for Arch Coal Inc.'s Spruce Mine No. 1 in West Virginia's rural Logan County marks the first
time the EPA has withdrawn a water permit for a mining project that had previously been issued.
EPA Grants Itself More Powers,
Revokes Permit. Not ones to rest on their laurels, the federal appointees at the Environmental
Protection Agency have jumped into 2011 reaffirming their status as the most dangerous regulators in Washington.
In a bewildering reversal on Thursday [1/13/2011], the EPA revoked a permit it issued more than three years ago
for the Spruce No. 1 Mine, set for operation in Logan County, West Virginia. Mingo Logan, a
subsidiary of Arch Coal, originally obtained a mining permit from the EPA in 2007 in accordance with the
Clean Water Act (CWA). The Section 404 permit was issued after a decade of review and costly
analyses, whereby the project was deemed unobjectionable. Until now, that is.
Obama
Coal Crackdown Sends Message to Industry. A move by the Environmental Protection Agency to
revoke the long-standing permits for a mammoth coal mine in West Virginia sends a strong signal that
President Obama plans to implement key parts of his agenda even though newly empowered Republicans can block
his plans in Congress. In the aftermath of the November elections, many political pundits predicted
that the once-unchecked Obama legislative machine would turn it's [sic] energies to federal rulemaking as a
way to circumvent Republicans on Capitol Hill. And the EPA's decision last week suggests that those
forecasts were spot-on.
Obama's
EPA devotes another $7 million to 'environmental justice' campaign. Judicial Watch reports that
[the EPA] announced late last week that the $7 million will be awarded "to study how pollution, combined
with stress and other social factors, affects people in 'poor and under-served communities.' The agency
refers to it as cumulative human health risk assessment research and the goal is to rid under-served communities
of extensive pollution-based problems." Environmental Justice is a left-wing activist concept in which
poor communities are assumed to be more heavily affected by pollution because they are politically defenseless
against polluters, and therefore it is up to the government to step in and provide assistance to redress the
alleged imbalance.
Another $7 Mil
For Environmental Justice. Here's how it works; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gives
money to leftwing groups — including some dedicated to helping illegal immigrants — that
teach black, Latino and indigenous folks how to recycle, reduce carbon emissions through "weatherization" and
participate in "green jobs" training. To carry out that phase of the environmental justice crusade, some
80 community organizations have received about $2 million.
The EPA just
can't help itself. Not content with backdooring the unequivocally unpopular cap-and-trade
legislation through regulating carbon emissions, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has looked to
further cripple American energy producers, manufacturers, and businesses by blanketing the industries in
bureaucratic uncertainty. Last Thursday [1/13/2011], the EPA revoked a permit it issued more than
three years ago for the Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan Country, West Virginia citing the Clean Water Act.
The Editor says...
That's a new one.
Backdooring. "Back door" is two words, and neither one is a verb.
Sometimes it amazes me that (apparently) professional writers have such feeble vocabularies that they find it
necessary to verbize nouns. Eroding our language is almost as destructive as eroding our liberty.
EPA Approves More Ethanol in
Fuel for Cars. The Environmental Protection Agency has approved higher levels of corn-based ethanol
to fuel all cars manufactured in the last decade.
Obama 2.O: The
First Big Lie. Industry groups have been criticizing Obama's Environmental Protection
Agency for many actions that have suppressed growth, including growth in the number of jobs. Most
recently, for the first time ever, the EPA pulled a permit for a new mine — after the company
developing the mine had already spent 200 million dollars on it. This just followed one action
after another by the EPA that has discouraged businesses from expanding their operations; they fear
running afoul of the latest EPA pronouncements on carbon dioxide or any other element that the EPA
wants to regulate to death. Even some Democrats (mostly from coal mining states) have had the
temerity to oppose the EPA.
When
Agencies Rule Our Lives. [Scroll down] The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that
carbon dioxide could be considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. So the EPA claims it must
act, but it also claims it will only target the largest companies — 13,661 of them — that
are responsible for most of the emissions. So a gas, carbon dioxide, which every living thing on
earth must have, is considered a pollutant and the EPA will eagerly embrace the very expensive effort
to reduce that gas, even as Congress refuses to pass enabling legislation. Apparently, these
agencies don't just rule citizens, they rule Congress as well.
Spilled Milk.
Despite the old saying, "Don't cry over spilled milk," the Environmental Protection Agency is doing just
that. ... The EPA has decided that, since milk contains oil, it has the authority to force farmers to comply
with new regulations to file "emergency management" plans to show how they will cope with spilled milk, how
farmers will train "first responders" and build "containment facilities" if there is a flood of spilled milk.
GOP All Set To Wimp Out On EPA?
Since the new Congress will not rubber-stamp Obama's socialist legislative agenda, the President will seek to
socialize us via regulation — regardless of legality. The EPA's climate regulation plan is
unconstitutional on its face (only Congress, not federal agencies, can change laws). Another example of
the coming socialization-by-regulation is the Federal Communications Commission's recent party-line vote to
implement net neutrality rules despite the a federal appellate court ruling that it lacks the statutory
authority to do so.
Obama administration threatens climate veto.
The Obama administration Wednesday [2/2/2011] repeated its threat to veto legislation that would curb its
ability to regulate greenhouse gases. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said
that the White House continues to oppose any efforts from Capitol Hill to hamstring her agency on climate
change.
EPA
chief slams bills to block climate rules, affirms Obama's veto threat. Environmental Protection
Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson on Wednesday attacked bills piling up in Congress that would block the
agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and reiterated the White House veto threat.
Jackson, speaking to reporters, initially declined to address whether President Obama would veto bills that
stop climate rules, but later said that past threats still stand.
EPA to set limits on
chemicals in drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency will set a limit on the amount
of the chemical perchlorate, as well as other "toxic contaminants," in drinking water, it announced Wednesday
[2/2/2011]. ... Perchlorate is both a naturally occurring and man-made chemical, according to the EPA.
It is used in fireworks, road flares, rocket fuel and may be present in bleach and some fertilizers, the
agency said.
The Editor asks...
Contaminants in what quantity? Even rain water has "contaminants" if you look closely enough.
That's the thing about the EPA: They find "contaminants" and "pollutants" everywhere because they are looking for
insignificant quantities and meaninglessly small percentages. Our environment will never be clean enough
to satisfy the EPA.
EPA's desperate new smog scare:
A new study reports that people can suffer lung damage from ground-level ozone (smog) even at the strict new
standards proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But this is yet another example of how
science can be manufactured by EPA to fit its regulatory agenda. ... Although the Bush administration EPA had
tightened the ozone standard to 75 parts per billion (ppb) in 2008, the Obama EPA proposed in January 2010
to further tighten the standard to between 60 to 70 ppb. But this proposal is quite controversial
as its underlying science is questionable, and it would be very expensive and inconvenient to implement and
comply with.
Do
carbon emissions actually pose a health risk? When Republican lawmakers introduced legislation
this week to block efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon, environmental
groups pushed back hard. And this time, the groups stepped up their efforts by attempting to shift the
argument from being about climate change science and green jobs to public health safety. In a press
release sent out Thursday, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) attacked the proposal as a "serious
health setback."
The Editor asks...
Was no one healthy before the EPA was created?
EPA-GE waiver story not over yet.
Kudos to Tim Carney for exposing the EPA's greenhouse gas emissions waiver for the proposed Avenal (CA) power
plant which intends to buy gas and steam turbines from General Electric. But there's possibly much more
to the story. First, the EPA has not yet granted the waiver to GE. According to a Jan. 31, 2011
court declaration by EPA air chief Gina McCarthy, the EPA is planning to seek public comment on a proposal to
grant the waiver.
EPA's Mercurial Hypocrisy.
How cynical is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about the potential mercury hazard of compact
fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs)? Last week the EPA issued new guidance for the clean-up of mercury-containing
CFLs.
Note
To Republicans: Don't Just Rein in the EPA, Abolish It. It's clear that President Richard Nixon's
goal in creating the EPA was to put an agency in place that would fill a research and advisory role for both
himself and future presidents. There was no indication that he intended an ideologically driven
juggernaut that not only researched but actually took unto itself the power to mandate the most stringent
of eco-centered, blatantly anti-capitalist environmental guidelines and regulations imaginable.
Defund the EPA.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has hit the ground running with its greenhouse-gas regulations.
But congressional Republicans are just getting around to introducing well-intended, but futile legislation
to stop the agency. There is another way. The GOP could rescue us from the EPA as soon as March,
but it won't. Does the GOP have a secret strategy? Has it forgotten the election? Or is it
afraid of the EPA?
Don't Mess With Texas. The
federal government is once again overstepping its authority by messing with Texas. Last month, the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) leadership continued their game of hardball by stripping Texas of its
authority to issue greenhouse gas permits. It is painfully obvious that the EPA is making an example out
of Texas. Out of the 13 states that initially objected to the EPA's efforts to regulate, Texas is
the only one who has not surrendered to the intrusion of the federal government. As a result, the EPA
is punishing Texas for not giving in to their demands.
EPA,
Oklahoma Clash Over Regional Haze Plan. Oklahoma environmental officials, consumer
advocates, and environmental groups are clashing with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
over regional haze standards that could cause electricity prices to rise by more than 15 percent
in the state. EPA's Regional Haze Rule requires states to implement EPA-approved plans to reduce
haze at national parks and wilderness areas. EPA has authority to implement its own plan in states
without plans approved by EPA.
The Editor says...
HAZE? If that's the worst problem they can find, the air is in pretty good shape
and the EPA can be eliminated.
Every state has
an environmental agency of its own, so who needs the EPA anyway?
EPA Goes After Perchlorate and
Chromium: The Media Follow Along Without Questioning. Perchlorate and chromium
are on EPA's bucket list of 'toxic chemicals' on which it proposes to set new limits. Neither
has been given fair coverage by the main-stream media. Quotes can be found from environmental
groups supporting the action, but nothing from scientists and others with an opposing view, typical
of the unbalanced reporting that has covered the perchlorate and chromium issues.
EPA Will Destroy Jobs, Not Create
Them. One of the hot political debates raging in Washington is the effect the EPA — and
specifically, its plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions — is having on businesses. According
to the WSJ, trade associations and businesses single out the EPA as the #1 target when they complain
about stifling federal burdens.
Stop
EPA's Energy Tax. At a contentious hearing on legislation to keep the EPA from regulating
carbon dioxide as a pollutant, Republicans rightly called global warming a power-grabbing hoax that is
all pain for no gain. The assertion came at a Wednesday hearing before the House subcommittee on
energy and power on the "Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011." The measure is designed to reassert
the authority of Congress to levy taxes on the American people and direct public policy — powers that
are being usurped by the unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Congress
Must Derail President Obama's Backdoor EPA Power Grab. In last year's budget, President Obama
called for Congress to enact cap-and-trade legislation, using a slush fund to disguise the cost of the program.
But cap-and-trade was decisively rejected in the 2010 election, so this year President Obama's budget simply
funds the EPA to move forward with regulating greenhouse gases on its own — against the clear
wishes of voters and without any legitimate legislative basis. Congress must take responsibility,
step in, and stop this power grab.
House
votes to block funding for EPA's greenhouse gas regulations. The House approved a GOP amendment to
federal spending legislation Friday [2/18/2011] that would block fiscal year 2011 funding for EPA's
implementation of greenhouse gas regulations. The vote was 249-177.
The EPA's
Latest Unscientific Power Grab. Why would the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overturn its own
scientists and decide to regulate trace levels of perchlorate in drinking water after it recently decided it didn't
need to be regulated? ... When the EPA reviewed the chemical's safety profile in 2008, it found that the low level
of perchlorate in water supplies did not present a health concern that could be reduced by regulation.
And there haven't been groundbreaking studies to change that. Nor does it cite any major change in our
exposure to the chemical.
Put the REINS on EPA. The
"Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny" Act could put the kibosh on the EPA's greenhouse
regulatory surge.
The
Airhead At EPA. The head of the Environmental Protection Agency's office of air and radiation
admits she doesn't know how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. How can someone so ignorant have
such an important job?
Fearing EPA's Carbon Tax. The EPA
is moving to impose tough limits on carbon emissions from the big power plants across the country —
and then plans to screw the new carbon limits down tighter and tighter. Farmers' fuel and electricity costs
would go through the roof, along with everybody else's. The goal, after all, is to make the coal, oil, and
natural gas that power most of our power plants too expensive to use. They need to make all our electricity
at least slightly more expensive than the ultra-costly solar panels and wind turbines that have failed to produce
"Green power" in Europe and, thus far, fail to provide much energy here at home.
Close the EPA. As
Congress looks for ways to trim the budget, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) represents an opportunity
for up to $9 billion in savings. This outfit has become little more than an advocacy group for trendy
leftist causes operating on the public's dime. Many liberal policies being promoted are so unpopular that
congressional Democrats can't muster the votes to get them through the proper legislative process. So
they go to the EPA instead.
Beware the Wrath of the EPA. Just when you
think you have heard it all, bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., come up with some hair-brained idea that leaves you
scratching your head in wonderment. The Environmental Protection Agency has apparently run out of things to
regulate and tax, so it has come up with new guidelines for regulating "particulate matter emissions" — more
commonly known to you and me as "dust."
The Powers of This
President. Not all the powers President Obama has wielded or claimed seem clearly identifiable
in the U.S. Constitution. ... [For example, the] Federal Communications Commission (FCC) assumed regulatory
authority over the internet and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assumed regulatory authority over
greenhouse gases though Congress had not empowered either to do so.
House
panel votes to bar EPA tailpipe emission regulations. A House panel approved a bill to block
the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating tailpipe emissions — but the measure's future
is uncertain. The bill sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, chairman of the House Energy and
Commerce Committee, and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., would overturn a 2007 Supreme Court decision that said the EPA
has the legal right to regulate tailpipe emissions as a danger to public health under the Clean Air Act.
EPA will raise gas prices.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson asserted today that the Energy Tax Prevention Act "would increase our oil
dependence by hundreds of millions of gallons" because it would remove EPA's authority to regulate carbon
dioxide from automobiles under the Clean Air Act — and thereby forgo "hundreds of millions of barrels of
oil savings." This is false. Congress gave explicit authority to the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration (NHTSA) to establish fuel economy in automobiles, otherwise known as Corporate Average
Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. The Energy Tax Prevention Act in no way restricts or impedes NHTSA's
authority over CAFE.
The
EPA's dim bulbs. After weathering a winter of intimidation, Mayor Bloomberg has apparently
capitulated to an Environmental Protection Agency scare campaign. The issue: PCBs —
three little letters that are about to sock New York schools with another $700 million funding
drain. The supposedly toxic chemicals are found in old light fixtures in classrooms all over.
The feds want them replaced — no matter the cost.
Hooray
for the U.S. House For Standing Up to Regulatory Tyranny. The EPA is
actively pursuing a bizarre legal theory that the 1970 Clean Air Act was designed as a
global warming law, and that pursuant to it they can regulate just about everything
that moves, as well as most industrial facilities. When it's fully phased in,
their plans include over 18,000 pages of appendices that would regulate every
industry in the U.S., cause electricity prices to skyrocket, and greatly diminish
our freedom and prosperity.
Shipwrecked by the EPA.
Radical greens are using the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan as an excuse to peddle their wacko, pet
theories and push for more stringent environmental regulation. Such efforts literally ship U.S. jobs
overseas. On Thursday [3/10/2011], Carnival Cruise Lines announced it will move Elation from Mobile, Ala.,
to Port Canaveral, Fla., so the ship can spend more time in international waters. The culprit is higher
fuel costs, which will be exacerbated when the Environmental Protection Agency begins enforcing tough new
emissions standards next year.
EPA
proposes first-ever mercury standards for coal plants. The Environmental Protection Agency on
Wednesday [3/16/2011] proposed the first-ever national standards for mercury and other air pollutants emitted from
coal-fired power plants. The proposed standards would dramatically improve public health, EPA said.
Obama greens
turn yellow. Environmentalists are backpedaling in their long march toward
deindustrialization. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has offered to delay some of
its plans to regulate so-called greenhouse gases. Republicans in Congress shouldn't hesitate to
press their advantage. The agency's advance faltered last week with the announcement that it
was willing to put off for three years new rules requiring biomass-fired boilers to obtain permits
to emit carbon dioxide.
Full-Throttle
Drill, Drill, Drill. In the fact sheet that accompanied the speech, there's a lot of talk
about "responsible development" for natural gas fracking chemicals, state regulators, tapping experts, the
environmental community, and protecting public health and the environment. In other words, the standards
for new drilling could be so high that there won't be that much new drilling. The president doesn't
discuss the role of the EPA, which is going after coal, natural gas, and oil.
EPA's War on American
Industry. The regulation of greenhouses under the Clean Air Act was triggered by EPA's determination
that such gases pose a danger to human health. This is not because they actually pose any danger to human
health, like real pollutants, but rather because their accumulation in the upper atmosphere could contribute to
"dangerous warming" by 2050. Carbon dioxide is a ubiquitous product of all economic activity and of everything
that breathes. Giving EPA the power to regulate it is tantamount to letting it control virtually the whole
economy.
Having Solved All The World's Other Problems...
The
EPA Takes On The Deadly Scourge Of ... Hand Soap. The environmentalists pushing this
issue want the EPA and/or the FDA to ban Triclosan, but there seems to be little evidence that the
substance is problematic. It's been used in anti-bacterial soap since the 1920's, and the last
time I checked there haven't been any health epidemics kicked off by the use of Triclosan. What's
more, the FDA reports that "Triclosan is not currently known to be hazardous to humans," though they
couch that statement in a bit of uncertainty. Scientists, after all, never like making absolute
statements. They'll never admit that something
couldn't be true. Only that they
don't know something to be true.
They're coming for
your hand soap. Antimicrobial hand soaps and body washes are very popular, especially
in cold and flu season. They've been found to be effective in limiting the spread of bacteria,
which is why they're so popular. But, like anything people like, there are people who don't
like it, and the people who don't like something are rarely content until their will is imposed upon
everyone else. In this case, the people who don't like it are the left-wing environmentalists
who don't seem to like much of anything humans concoct to improve people's quality of life. Their
usual modus operandi is being followed in this case. Rather than trying to make a case for or
against something, these groups have taken to the courts.
Now
Obama's EPA is going after your soap. Under the Obama administration, the EPA has been transformed
into a job-killing machine. ... While many are aware of the fight against cap and trade and the EPA's regulation
of greenhouse gas emissions, the totality of their smaller actions, which often go unnoticed, is starting to
add up. They already tell us what kinds of light bulbs we can use and how much water we are allowed
to have in our toilets. Now, they have their sights set on our soap.
EPA owns the
American Lung Association. At today's House Energy and Commerce Committee mark-up of
the Upton-Inhofe bill to strip EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases, Rep. Lois Capps
(D-Calif.) tried to defend the EPA by offering a recent American Lung Association poll that purports
to show public opinion favoring the EPA. What Congress needs to know, however, is that the
American Lung Association is bought-and-paid-for by the EPA. In the last 10 years, the
EPA has given the ALA $20,405,655, according to EPA records.
And the
Beat-Down Goes On. EPA needs to start basing its policies and rules on science, reality,
common sense, and comprehensive public health considerations. Congress needs to reassert its authority
over EPA. Both need to focus on responsible, science-based air and water quality standards that address
real health and economic needs — and recognize that "human health and welfare" means more than
eliminating every vestige of US manmade emissions, especially when we can do absolutely nothing about the
vast majority of natural and manmade global emissions.
Key
Vote At Hand On EPA Authority. Nearly two years after the Great Recession officially ended, unemployment
still stands at a troubling 8.9 percent, economic growth remains sluggish, gas prices are high and rising,
consumer sentiment is falling. And none of it is expected to get much better any time soon. You'd
think that in this context politicians — particularly those hoping to keep their jobs after 2012 —
would be doing everything they can to kick away burdensome rules and regulations that would threaten growth and
jobs. A good place to start would be blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating
greenhouse gas emissions.
Democrats
Attempt to Enable EPA Power Grab. With the House poised to pass the Upton-Whitfield-Inhofe Energy
Tax Prevention Act, all eyes are on the Senate to see if Republicans can muster up the 60 votes necessary
to prevent the EPA's backdoor implementation of cap-and-trade.
Numerous EPA justifications questioned if not debunked:
Nitwit defends EPA.
Former Republican EPA administrators William Ruckelshaus and Christine Todd Whitman authored [an opinion
article] that appeared in today's [3/25/2011] Washington Post. Ruckelshaus' unjustified ban of DDT in
1972 has led to the deaths of tens of millions of Africans. Whitman is an airhead — at the
time she was appointed as EPA administrator, she actually didn't know the difference between global warming
and ozone depletion.
Energy Tax Prevention Act: The Only End to Cap
and Trade. The Obama Environmental Protection Agency's cap-and-trade agenda is destroying jobs
and decreasing domestic energy supplies. That agenda is slowing our economic recovery. It will
mean higher gas and electricity bills for consumers.
Pushing Back
against a Decree. Since taking office, Pres. Barack Obama has shown a remarkable penchant for
changing the law by fiat. From Citizenship and Immigration Services' debating how best to let the
maximum number of illegal aliens off the hook to the EPA's declaring it would treat carbon-dioxide emissions
as a pollutant, the administration has taken the stance that votes in Congress aren't really necessary, even
for dramatically contentious subjects. Who needs a debate and a vote when you can rule by regulatory
decree?
Defund EPA's enablers.
NPR is not the only partisan political organization that ought to have its public funding cut. Congress
should put the American Lung Association (ALA) on the chopping block, too. ... Although greenhouse gas emissions
have nothing to do with air quality — colorless, odorless carbon dioxide is labeled a greenhouse gas
and causes no adverse health effects — the ALA is nevertheless trying to stir up hometown opposition
to Mr. Upton with its over-the-top attack ad. This isn't ALA's only attack on Congress' effort to
rein in the out-of-control Obama EPA.
EPA Awards $550,000
to Battle Bed Bugs. The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday [4/6/2011] announced it is
awarding grants totaling $550,000 to five organizations to "implement new approaches in managing bed bug
problems." Most of the money will be used for the benefit of poor, immigrant and minority communities —
where the problem is "significant, the EPA says, but resources to address it are "limited."
The Editor says...
Bedbugs were all but completely eliminated decades ago
[
1]
[
2]
[
3]
through the use
of
DDT. If
there are any bedbugs in this country today, blame the EPA.
Top 10 Spending Cuts Thwarted by
Democrats: [#4] Environmental Protection Agency: Republicans want to cut
billions from the Environmental Protection Agency's budget. Nothing could be better for the
economy than to starve this agency, which is trying to regulate greenhouse gas emissions on its
own after Congress failed to pass the cap-and-trade energy bill.
Suppressed
EPA Hushgate climate report returns to snag CO2 regulation. Inside the National Center for
Environmental Economics, analysts scurried to finish the vital technical support document to fulfill
President Obama's most draconian campaign pledge: "Implement an economywide cap-and-trade program
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050." The NCEE was ready to cement the case
for the Environmental Protection Agency's "endangerment finding," the official declaration that carbon
dioxide from burning fossil fuels poses a threat to human health and welfare. Thousands of government
careers, academic contracts, and Big Green grants hung in the balance, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson
needed to release it within days.
EPA
Boss to Speak at Youth Climate Conference With Van Jones and International Socialists. On Saturday [4/16/2011],
the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lisa Jackson will be giving the keynote speech at the Energy
Action Coalition's Power Shift 2011 conference, a meeting of potentially 10,000 green youth activists in Washington,
D.C. ... As a final chuckle, Nobel Laureate Al Gore will also be speaking to attendees Friday evening.
Although it certainly is no surprise that he doesn't mind hanging out with socialists, this should forever end the
question about just how closely tied the global warming agenda is to this far-left political ideology.
Jobs Don't Matter To the EPA.
The EPA doesn't look at the impact on jobs
at all when they issue regulations. They don't
consider jobs to be part of a "detailed economic analysis." That goes a long way toward explaining why
President Obama keeps talking about his "economic recovery" when every week seems to bring fresh "unexpected"
news about the shrinking U.S. workforce.
EPA
official says jobs don't matter. The Obama administration has repeatedly said job
creation is a top priority, but apparently the memo seems to have missed the bureaucrats at the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This became evident when EPA Assistant Administrator
Mathy Stanislaus testified Thursday [4/14/2011] before an Environment and Energy subcommittee hearing
that his agency does not take jobs into account when it issues new regulations.
Earth Day and Environmental
Insanity: Anyone who has been paying any attention to the environmental movement has got to have
concluded it is insane. ... In America, there has been a resurgence of bed bugs, formerly controlled by DDT.
The EPA recently awarded $550,000 in grants to the University of Missouri, Texas A&M University, the Maryland
Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Rutgers University, and the Michigan Department of Community Health,
for bed bug "education, outreach, and environmental justice departments." So, instead of authorizing
the use of a pesticide to rid us all of bed bugs, it wants to "educate" us to live with them. That's
insane.
EPA's faith-based agitprop.
The Obama administration is re-embracing faith-based initiatives — with a twist. The Environmental
Protection Agency on Monday [4/18/2011] announced the formation of a Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships
Initiative that will reinvigorate the agency's outreach efforts. Instead of supporting abstinence programs
or charitable efforts, the idea is to ensure mosques are illuminated by mercury-filled light bulbs and evacuated
by low-flow toilets. It's a funny thing when the left discovers such a vocation. President George W.
Bush first came up with the idea of encouraging private alternatives to government handouts, and he was blasted
by liberal groups like Americans for Democratic Action. They insisted faith-based initiatives were an
unconstitutional violation of the separation between church and state.
Supreme
Court signals it will toss out global-warming lawsuit. Justices are skeptical about the lawsuit
brought by six states, including California and New York, against coal-fired power plants in the South and
Midwest. An Obama administration lawyer says it's a matter for the EPA to handle.
Supreme
Court signals it will dismiss major climate-change case. The U.S. Supreme Court signaled
Tuesday [4/19/2011] it will dismiss a major climate-change case, with justices indicating that the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rather than the courts should address greenhouse-gas emissions from
major power plants. "Congress set up the EPA to promulgate standards for emissions, and the relief
you're seeking seems to me to set up a district judge, who does not have the resources, the expertise, as
a kind of super EPA," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Tuesday [4/19/2011].
EPA's train wreck
could leave many in the dark. Even with 14 million Americans out of work and an economy
still searching for light at the end of the tunnel, the EPA is poised to enact a series of back-door
mandates that will stifle economic growth. And with the speed that this runaway train is traveling,
people in states like Ohio should be scared of the "train wreck" headed towards a town near you.
Unfortunately, everyday Americans may not realize the impact of the EPA's "train wreck" of new regulations
on jobs, the economy and the price of essential energy until it's too late.
EPA Regulations Strangling America.
Right now, someone is sitting at a large oak table in the EPA's marble palace in Washington, D.C., sipping a
vanilla latte and dreaming up a new rule to impose. Without fail, the EPA continues to come up with ideas
that leave you scratching your head in wonderment because of the questionable science used to justify these
regulations. Instead of protecting the environment, these rules dreamed up by the EPA in Washington are
destroying American industry and killing job creation, which is just what our economy needs right now.
This type of federal meddling is exactly what causes companies to lay off workers, move overseas, and in many
cases, fail. The purpose of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect the environment —
not to regulate American industry into nonexistence.
Death By A Thousand Rules: EPA's Drive To Kill
Coal. Coal is a vital domestic natural resource that powers the U.S. economy. More than
50% of the U.S. electric supply comes from coal-fired power plants. This obviously translates into a
lot of jobs: In 2009 there were 1,400 mines in the U.S. employing over 87,000 miners. There
were also 31,000 jobs related to the transportation of coal and 60,000 jobs in coal-fired power plants. ... But
I don't think the folks at the Environmental Protection Agency care very much about all that. I
believe that, through numerous rules and regulations, EPA is trying to kill this industry; mostly, it seems,
to appease far-left environmentalists.
The Editor says...
The EPA
exists to appease far-left environmentalists. That's why the EPA was created.
Environmentalists have a lot of friends in the
news media,
so the EPA is here to stay.
Obama's
Regulatory Tsunami More Destructive than Taxes. As Obama travels about the country, speaking
of the need for "shared sacrifice" and the need to increase taxes, he doesn't say a word about the tsunami
of new Obama regulations ranging from light bulbs to ozone pollution to painkillers to foreign travel to
vending machines that is about to hit America. Their impact will be huge and do serious damage to our
economy. Obama's regulatory tsunami began during his first month in office and has continued
relentlessly since.
Obama's
Other Hand. While we were distracted by the president's birth certificate show-and-tell, his EPA
releases its guidelines for expanding federal power under the Clean Water Act. America's economy and
freedom are at stake.
'Change'
via executive power grab. The Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that Shell Oil Co. may
not drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Circle off Alaska, where an estimated 27 billion barrels of
domestic oil are waiting to be extracted. Never mind that Shell's already spent nearly $4 billion
on the project, including $2.2 billion to Uncle Sam for the leases. No, the EPA's appeals board
said the oil giant had failed to include possible greenhouse-gas emissions from an icebreaking vessel in its
calculations and that the project might somehow threaten the health of the 245 people in an Eskimo village
70 miles away.
EPA suburban sprawl
brawl. It's no secret that what was once the Land of the Free is becoming the home of red tape
and federal control — especially under President Obama. Things are so out of hand that
bureaucrats who are paid to hector citizens into conformity find themselves caught between contradictory
enviro-principles.
Back
on EPA's enemies list: your fridge. Remember when the Environmental Protection Agency's ban on
chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, because they punched holes in the ozone layer, forced refrigerator manufacturers
to switch to more environmentally friendly refrigerants? ... It turns out that HFCs require more electricity to
produce the same amount of cooling. Who knew? Which means that ozone-saving fridges make bigger
carbon footprints than their ozone-destroying counterparts. Something Must Be Done before the fridge
destroys the polar bear! But never fear. The EPA is already on the case.
Regulating CO2 Is Based On A Lie That
Hides The Real Data. We are going to have a vote this week in the Senate on whether we should
throw billions of dollars and millions of jobs down the toilet because of some Green-Eyed liberal fantasy
about CO2 causing global warming. It is important for the American people to understand that pulling
the EPA's authority to control all energy and businesses through a mythological effort to save the planet
is actually going to save the planet — from power hungry fools. The entire argument for
regulating CO2 is based on a series of falsehoods, which when exposed make the argument for WHY the EPA
needs to be reigned in.
Interior
Department auctions off shore oil leases, EPA says you can't drill. If the Justice Department
weren't in on this scam, they'd be investigating the bait and switch tactics the Obama administration uses
on the oil industry. First you take billions of dollars from an oil company for an offshore lease,
then you come up with an absurd excuse to stop them from drilling.
The EPA's War on
Energy Producer Range Resources. Even before America slit its wrists by electing him, Barack Hussein
Obama gave us a preview of his energy policy by promising to use deliberately excessive regulation to bankrupt coal
plants. The objective in destroying the energy sector is twofold: 1) devastate our still quasi-capitalist
economy, creating enough hardship to pave the way for true socialism; and 2) pander to gullible morons in the
Democrat base who actually believe that using energy makes it be too hot out for the polar bears. For the most
part, this malignant agenda is carried out by what is emerging as the most pernicious and the most powerful agency in
the entire federal behemoth: the EPA.
Puddle Power Grab.
Barack Obama's EPA means to implement the major provisions of failed legislation by regulatory means, a massive
power grab with frightening implications. But with the American media preoccupied with a royal wedding
and the assassination of Osama bin Laden, almost nobody seems to have noticed when late last month an important
announcement was made by the Environmental Protection Agency. ... The administration would have us believe it
to be concerned about water quality, but the real issues are land, power and control. If implemented,
EPA guidelines will allow the agency to decide the extent of their jurisdiction over every body of water of
any size and eventually result in binding regulations that will affect us all.
White House opposes combining Energy Department
and EPA. The Obama administration "unequivocally opposes" a Senate GOP bill to merge the EPA and
Energy Department into one super-agency. The White House statement to POLITICO came in response to Sen.
Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the bill's sponsor, telling reporters that the administration found the proposal
"intriguing."
The Editor says...
If it were up to me, I would eliminate both of them.
Gas Prices
Are High Because the Liberals Want It that Way. [Scroll down] Last month, Shell Oil
Company announced it was forced to scrap efforts to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast
of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board to withhold
critical air permits. If there was ever a clarion call to strip the EPA of its oil drilling oversight,
this is it. Shell spent five years and nearly $4 billion on plans to explore for oil in the
Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. The closest village to
where Shell proposed to drill is Kaktovik, nearly 70 miles away with a population of 245.
EPA bullies its way to first CO2 emissions limit.
The EPA is finally getting around to setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources, like
power plants — coal industry watch out. ... if the Lake Side limit becomes a precedent or standard
for power plant emissions, coal-fired electricity production could be significantly constrained.
Sierra
Club already using EPA Clean Air regs to shut down manufacturing jobs. Since 2005, anytime a
new coal-fired power plant was proposed anywhere in the United States, a lawyer from the Sierra Club or an
allied environmental group was assigned to stop it, by any bureaucratic or legal means necessary. And
they succeeded. According to The Los Angeles Times, by 2008, the coalition claimed to have stopped
construction of 65 power plants nationwide.
U.S. Energy Crisis a Liberal Power Grab.
It is no coincidence that U.S. oil production peaked in 1970, the year after President Richard Nixon signed
the National Environmental Policy Act and the Environmental Protection Agency was established, just the beginning
of a decade of laws that have made the United States the hardest place in the world to produce energy.
When the federal government started taking over roles traditionally held by the states and expanding its
reach into every corner of every economic activity in the country, those who love more government had the
perfect proxy for justifying more power over the economy and over the way Americans live their lives.
EPA
unveils new fuel economy labels. The Department of Transportation and the Environmental
Protection Agency unveiled the three types of new labels Wednesday [5/25/2011]. One type is for cars
that use gasoline or diesel, or hybrids that use only self-generated electricity. A second is for gas
and electric hybrids that use some plug-in electricity, and the third is for vehicles running strictly on
plug-in power.
U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Gave $1.29 Million to China. The Environmental Protection Agency has given at
least $1,285,535 in grants to China to promote environmental research in the country.
EPA 'Prohibited'
From Considering Costs When Issuing Air-Quality Regulations. The Environmental Protection
Agency informed Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) in a recent letter that it considers itself "prohibited" by
law from considering costs when setting National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).
Environmental
Protection (Or Propaganda?) Agency. EPA's immediate target is older electrical generating units
(EGUs), most of which have substantially reduced emissions to safe levels but still release more pollutants
than modern plants. However, its broader agenda is to use air pollution and carbon dioxide restrictions
to impose President Obama's goals of requiring "zero" emissions, "bankrupting" coal companies, causing electricity
rates to "skyrocket" and effecting a "fundamental transformation" of the U.S. energy system and
economy — regardless of what Congress may do or the American economy may require. This
raises vital questions that thus far have received scant attention.
End the EPA
Power Grab Completely. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should not just delay but
outright end its greenhouse gas rules and other regulations designed to achieve a backdoor implementation of
cap-and-trade. The American people decisively rejected energy taxes and rationing in the 2010 election,
yet the administration has remaining committed to disregarding Congress and the American people.
EPA Bans Many Household
Rat and Mouse Poisons. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Tuesday [6/7/2011]
that it plans to ban the sale of "the most toxic rat and mouse poisons, as well as most loose bait and pellet
products" to residential customers. The goal is to better protect children, pets and wildlife.
EPA Protecting You Into An Early Grave.
The Environmental Protection Agency is always going on about the ways it "protects" everyone, but its greatest
achievement has been to protect them out of countless jobs eliminated by their regulations and restrictions.
Their latest diktat is directed at products that consumers can purchase to rid their homes, apartments, and
other facilities of mice and rats. If they keep it up, soon the only thing you will be able to purchase
is a mouse trap.
Democratic Senator:
Environmental Protection Agency Out of Control. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, the former governor
of coal-producing West Virginia, is blasting the Obama administration for using the Environmental Protection
Agency to regulate coal-fueled power plants out of business. On Thursday [6/9/2011], American Electric
Power company announced that to comply with a series of EPA regulations, it will close five coal-fired
plants — three in West Virginia and one each in Ohio and Virginia — at a net cost
of 600 jobs.
Obama's New EPA Rules Would Destroy Our Energy
Sector. Half of America's energy comes from coal-fired power plants but Obama's new EPA rules
would about destroy the coal industry driving our energy costs through the roof. That's not all they
would do, either.
Economic Study Shows
EPA Regulations Increase Prices, Kill Jobs. A study of two proposed EPA regulations seeking to
curb power plant emissions shows that the regulations will raise electricity prices and cause a four-to-one
job loss ration [sic].
Federal
Judge Rebukes EPA. At last, a federal court has sharply rebuked the EPA for exceeding its statutory
authority. On May 26, 2011, Judge Richard Leon of the federal district court for the District of
Columbia ruled that the agency's regulatory process cannot trump a clear Congressional mandate, nor override
judicial authority to compel EPA's compliance with the law. The issue at stake is the statutorily maximum
timeframe for EPA's final decision to issue a Prevention of Significant Deterioration air-quality permit, a
fundamental authorization for large industrial sources such as power plants and refineries.
If Elected. [Scroll down]
I would make shutting down the Environmental Protection Agency a priority. It is a rogue agency that
appears to think it is not accountable to Congress or the American people. It is filled with fanatics
who have no regard for real science. It is costing the nations jobs and thwarting our energy needs.
EPA 'Masquerading
Propaganda as Facts', Expert Says. The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act will save the
United States $2 trillion by 2020, says Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson -- citing
figures from an EPA report which one expert has faulted for "widely exaggerated claims." Hundreds of
thousands of lives would be saved over the next nine years, thanks to the regulation of air pollutants,
Jackson said at the unveiling of a "prevention" campaign at the Health and Human Service Department's
headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday [6/16/2011].
The Editor says...
Abolishing the
EPA would
be far more likely to "save the United States $2 trillion by 2020."
Go green,
kill jobs. [The EPA] is flogging new emission regs that will force AEP to [1] Close five
electric plants, with a loss of 6,000 megawatts of generating capacity — triple what Indian
Point sends to New Yorkers every day. [2] Kill 600 jobs, sucking $40 million a year in
wages out of the economy. [3] Retrofit its remaining plants at a cost of $6 billion to
$8 billion — every penny of which will eventually be passed on to ratepayers, further
sinking the economy.
Stop EPA from killing coal.
The Environmental Protection Agency's crusade against coal-fired power plants is on a fast track to raise
electricity bills in Michigan by as much as 20 percent and restrict the state's economic growth.
The latest attack on America's economy by the EPA is tough new requirements on mercury and other emissions
at coal plants that the agency hopes to have in place by the end of the year. Utility companies would
have just three years to comply with the new standards or shut down the offending plants.
Obama's EPA Attacks Boilers, Affecting Millions
of US Jobs. Thousands of power plants, manufacturing plants, paper mills, refineries, chemical
plants, schools and hospitals use boilers at their facilities. Literally millions of jobs rely on
affordable energy from these facilities, and those jobs are put at risk if those boilers can no longer be
installed and run in a cost effective manner.
New EPA Regulations Blamed as Power
Plants Close. American Electric Power has announced new EPA regulations will force it to close
five coal-fired power plants, pay for expensive retrofits for at least a dozen more, eliminate 600 jobs,
and substantially increase the price it charges for electricity. AEP's announcement came on the heels
of a National Economic Research Associates Inc. report finding EPA's new regulations will cause an 11.5 percent
increase in U.S. electricity prices above baseline projections and will kill 144,000 jobs by the year
2020. AEP relied entirely on government data for most of its assumptions.
'Rabid dogs' at the EPA.
Even New York City, run by nanny-state Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is crossing swords with Obama's EPA.
New York City's Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Caswell Holloway has sent a 15 page
letter to federal EPA head Lisa Jackson criticizing the EPA for expensive mandates that "provide virtually no
health benefits," and that make a mockery of President Obama's call for eliminating unnecessary regulations.
EPA regulations — our economy's
golden goose? Every dollar spent complying with federal regulations returned anywhere from
$2.13 to $14.90 during the 2000s, according to a new report from the White House Office of Management and
Budget (OMB). EPA rules accounted for approximately 84% of this alleged regulatory largesse.
Needless to say, the OMB report is total nonsense.
EPA's Clean Air
Act: Pretending air pollution is worse than it is. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) continues to tighten air quality standards at considerable societal expense under the guise that new
standards are necessary to protect public health. Focusing on the EPA's proposed Clean Air Transport
Rule (CATR), this analysis shows that: [1] America's air is already safe to breathe and it is
much better than the EPA would have the public believe; and that [2] The EPA relies on health
studies that exaggerate harm and economic studies that understate regulatory costs in order to maintain
the fiction that its ever more stringent regulations are providing meaningful public health benefits.
EPA
approves E15 fuel label despite engine risk. The government has settled on a label for gas
stations selling a blend of gasoline and ethanol called E15, which contains more ethanol — grain
alcohol — than the E10 blend that's replaced pure gasoline at most stations. The
Environmental Protection Agency previously approved E15 — 85% gasoline and
15% ethanol — for use in vehicles back to 2001 models. The approved label is part of
the EPA's final rule spelling out about how E15 can be sold and what standards it must meet.
Republican
spending measure would block EPA climate rules. A fiscal 2012 spending bill unveiled Wednesday
by House Republican appropriators includes a policy rider that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and refineries for one year.
Not that it really matters what they think...
Car
manufacturers overwhelmingly oppose new EPA-approved E15 fuel. The automobile industry has responded to
a rule authorized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that allows E15 fuel — 85 percent
gasoline, 15 percent ethanol — to be sold at gas stations across the country. In short:
the response is anything but supportive. Car manufacturers like Ford, BMW, Toyota and Honda, expressed disapproval
of the E15 mixture intended to help ween [sic] the industry off foreign oil.
Obama's assault
on the rule of law. [Scroll down] In 2008, the Senate voted against the "cap-and-trade"
bill that would have created a carbon-tax system and vast federal power to interfere in the energy market.
So the Environmental Protection Agency declared carbon dioxide a pollutant and has embarked on a massive scheme
to impose cap-and-trade through bureaucratic power. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama's green fascists have virtually
shut down new oil exploration and drilling.
Last
chance for GOP to stop EPA train wreck. Since January, the EPA has been implementing its
greenhouse-gas regulations and has advanced an entire suite of regulations intended to make it painfully
expensive for utilities to continue burning coal for electricity generation. Known as the "EPA train
wreck," the regulations will force utilities to further reduce emissions of conventional pollutants such as
sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides and mercury even though the current emissions are not causing air-quality or
public-health problems anywhere in America.
The House Must
Stop the EPA. With unemployment unacceptably high and a new onslaught of Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) regulations about to crash into a stumbling economy, now is the time for the Republican Majority in
the House of Representatives to end the EPA's regulatory madness.
Who Controls the Price of Oil?
OPEC should not be able to burden consumers to the same extent now [as they did in the 1970's] because large
oil reserves were discovered in Alaska, North Sea, Canada, and the Gulf of Mexico. However our business-killing
EPA regulations and Obama's seven-year moratorium on drilling in the Gulf do.
The Greens Just Love Us to Death.
You may recall [the environmentalists] got off to a strong start when the Environmental Protection Agency was
established in 1970. Its first act was to ban DDT and the result of that has been the needless death of
millions who could and should have been protected against malaria. The nation these days is experiencing
a bed bug population explosion that could be stopped in six months if the EPA would only authorize a pesticide
to kill the critters. They won't.
New EPA rules to
devastate coal industry. The coal industry is crying foul over new Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) regulations which they say will be among the most be costly rules ever imposed by the agency
on coal-fueled power plants. The result, industry insiders say: substantially higher electricity
rates and massive job loss.
Targeting
Drifting Pollution with New EPA Regulations. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa
Jackson is expected to announce tough new regulations Thursday [7/14/2011] that seek to significantly reduce
emissions from many coal-fired power plants. The new measures will cover plants in as many as 28 states
whose pollution blows into other states.
The House Must
Stop the EPA. In the face of our daunting economic challenges the EPA is advancing new rules
under the Clean Air Act that will dramatically increase the compliance costs for coal burning utilities.
The costs of the EPA's actions against industry and the economy are real. In anticipation of the EPA's new
requirements, American Electric Power (AEP), an Ohio based utility, announced in June it was closing five power
plants and will be scaling back operations at six additional facilities. AEP estimated that its actions
will cost about 600 jobs that generated approximately $40 million in annual wages.
The
EPA's Ethanol Boondoggle. Congress may have finally recognized the absurdity of subsidizing the
ethanol industry, but, unfortunately for America, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has its own agenda.
In January, the EPA issued a waiver that allowed E15 (gasoline with a 15 percent ethanol blend) to be
sold for vehicles with model years 2001 and later. This decision was made at the behest of the ethanol
industry, but it will come at the expense of American drivers.
NPR
Listeners Hear EPA Touted as 'Environmental Investment Agency'. In the Obama era, the
Environmental Protection Agency and its chief Lisa Jackson have been absolutely non-controversial in the
national media. Few reporters have considered its aggressive "green" tactics a job-crusher.
EPA decision will cost Texas
jobs. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency released the Cross-State Air Pollution
Rule. This is another rule in an endless line of new federal regulations, all with the stated purpose
of improving air quality. Like so many other regulations from the EPA, this rule will cut Texas jobs,
cut Texas economic growth, increase Texas energy costs and harm Texas energy security.
Obama's coal tax.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday [7/6/2011] finalized "cross-state air pollution" regulations
designed to drive coal-plant operators out of business. This noxious rule will choke job creation and
ensure that consumers are stricken with higher utility bills every time they switch on the mercury-filled
curlicue light bulbs they also will be forced to buy.
Georgia Power says it will close
3 power-plant units. The decision to shutter the coal-fired units is based on the pending
Environmental Protection Agency rules that would require the utility to install equipment to meet stricter
environmental controls, the company has said. It would be too costly to upgrade the Plant Branch
units, which started operating in 1965 and 1967.
EPA Vs.
Fireworks. The Environmental Protection Agency is at it again — this time eyeing smog standards
so stringent it could actually force cities to choose between July 4th fireworks and hugely expensive new rules.
Politics has overtaken
science at the EPA. Science depends on rigid observation and independent replication. So what
happens when government bureaucrats — seeking to promote a political agenda while acting under the guise of
protecting the environment and public health — systematically subordinate sound scientific principles to their
own goals? To answer that question, one need look no further than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
where unelected bureaucrats, led by the chemophobic Lisa Jackson, have decided to bypass Congress and avoid the
possible change in administration in 2013 by rushing to complete an unprecedented number of major risk assessments
ahead of the 2012 election.
EPA Says
All Texas Plants Will Get New Air Permits. Nearly 140 Texas plants, including some of the nation's
largest refineries, have reached a deal with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to receive new permits even
though a long-standing battle between the Lone Star State and the federal agency is far from over.
House votes to block EPA on water pollution.
The House on Wednesday [7/13/2011] approved legislation to smack down the Obama administration's water pollution
policies, despite a looming veto threat from the White House. The chamber voted 239-184 to adopt a
bipartisan bill that seeks to limit EPA's authority over state water quality decisions after recent agency
actions have irked lawmakers, particularly in coal states and in Florida.
House
Republicans Accuse EPA, Enviros of Collusion. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) believes that
U.S. EPA has worked out a nifty way to make an end run around both Congress and the federal regulatory
process when it wants to implement a new rule that may be politically sensitive. All the agency
has to do is get some green group to sue over some aspect of the desired rule, he said. Then EPA
can roll over in the ensuing legal battle and head right to settlement proceedings, claiming it was
"forced" by the court system and consent decrees to initiate the new rulemaking. It is a path devoid
of both messy public comment periods and political accusations over whether EPA is moving unilaterally.
Top 10 Most Egregious Government Regulations.
[#2] EPA's carbon dioxide fixation: Talk about job-killing regulations. The Environmental
Protection Agency's decision to regulate carbon dioxide emissions in order to combat "climate change" will
raise the cost of energy. Forget about creating jobs. The EPA's regulations will add a new burden
on business, increase the cost of material for the construction industry, and hit consumer in the pocketbook,
dampening the outlook for economic growth.
Industry: EPA hurts Obama in 2012.
Nine top business and industry officials walked into EPA headquarters Friday afternoon [7/15/2011] to tell agency
chief Lisa Jackson exactly what they think of her plans to tighten the federal ozone standard. But they left
the meeting convinced that EPA planned to stick to its guns and are now taking their case to a higher power:
The White House. They say the stricter ozone standards would hurt both industry and President Barack Obama's
chances for reelection.
Now
even unions see Obama, EPA moving to kill coal, quarter-million jobs. President Obama's cap-and-trade
bill died in the Democrat-run 111th Congress, but that hasn't stopped the chief executive and Lisa Jackson,
his U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator, from finding regulatory paths to achieve the same
goals. Topping those goals is the abolition of coal as an electrical power-generating fuel. More
than half of the electrical power used every day by Americans is generated by power plants fueled by coal.
And 90 percent of all the coal consumed in the U.S. goes to electrical power generation. But that
doesn't matter to Obama and Big Green, they are determined to kill the coal industry because of its alleged
contribution to global warming.
Interior
asks EPA to delay power plant proposal. The Interior Department is asking the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency to delay its decision on pollution controls for a northern Arizona coal plant while it studies
the benefits of the plant and impacts of a potential shutdown.
The Tea Party,
Right About Everything. [Scroll down] The EPA now has power to regulate every use of
fossil fuels in this country, as well as every breath we take, if they so deem. What will it do with
that power? You get to guess. If you think it wouldn't do anything too stupid, know that the FDA
just outlawed common inhalers for asthma sufferers. Their reason was, get this, those inhalers are
blamed for contributing to upper-atmosphere ozone loss. Even if you think CFCs contribute to ozone
loss, how much do you think the CFCs released by asthma inhalers have to do with it?
EPA targets air pollution from gas
drilling boom. Faced with a natural gas drilling boom that has sullied the air in
some parts of the country, the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday [7/28/2011] proposed for the first
time to control air pollution at oil and gas wells, particularly those drilled using a method called
hydraulic fracturing.
Latest
job killer from the EPA. The EPA's new standards are currently under review by the
Office of Management and Budget but could end up on the president's desk in the next few days.
If implemented, they would reduce the existing 0.075 parts per million (ppm) ozone standard under
the National Ambient Air Quality Standards program to 0.070 ppm or even 0.60 ppm.
This will mean that up to 85% of the counties currently monitored by the EPA would fall into "nonattainment"
status, exceeding the air-quality ozone standards and triggering a cascade of federal and state controls.
The EPA estimates these new standards could cost business anywhere from $20 billion to $90 billion
annually.
The EPA Nation-Killing Machine.
The problem with the Environmental Protection Agency is that it has "protected" the nation into a place where
corporations flee to other nations, exporting jobs no longer available here. When not doing that, it is
destroying the ability of whole industries — particularly energy — and of our agricultural
dynamo to function.
Report:
EPA should push 'sustainability,' track 'social' policy outcomes. The National Research
Council (NRC) has released a report laying out a framework for the Environmental Protection Agency to
incorporate sustainability into its policies this week. The report advises the EPA to make policy
decisions using a three-pillar system, examining environmental, economic, and social impacts.
Republican
to Obama: Create jobs by 'putting the brakes' on EPA 'train wreck'. House Energy and Commerce
Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) urged President Obama to reel in the Environmental Protection Agency
after a new report showed job creation continues to lag. "Millions of American jobs are in jeopardy
because of the costly rules proposed or under development by the EPA, and that's just one agency," Upton
said in a statement.
Rogue
EPA Targets Ozone — And Jobs. A beleaguered American economy may soon be subject
to ozone standards so stringent that Yellowstone National Park could not meet them. Look
forward to double-digit unemployment.
EPA Regulation
Would Cost $1.2 Million Per Job Created. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been
promoting the job creation and health aspects of its impending regulations on the electric industry, but in
congressional testimony an agency official admitted the impending regulations would cost business
$10.9 billion and create only 9,000 full time jobs.
Small Business Admin report: New coal regulations will kill jobs, economy.
President Barack Obama is ignoring heated concerns from within his own administration that new Environmental
Protection Agency coal industry regulations will be economically devastating. The EPA is plowing
forward with new Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) mandates. The regulations would
force coal energy plants to install giant scrubber-like materials inside smokestacks in order to
capture and cleanse carbon particles before their release into the atmosphere.
EPA's
new ozone regulations overburden local governments, say critics. The Environmental Protection Agency
is driving a new ozone regulatory agenda that critics say will cripple local governments, small businesses and
other industries nationwide. President Barack Obama's EPA aims to reduce the acceptable level of ozone
in any given region from 75 parts per billion to between 60 and 70 parts per billion.
The EPA's Abuse of Power.
The government's startlingly aggressive and dishonest campaign against natural gas.
Obama's
EPA is Killing More Jobs than Economy Can Create. Obama says he will get focused on the jobs problem
just as soon as he returns from his August vacation in Martha's Vineyard. ... But while Obama is playing jetsetter,
back in Washington a crucial regulatory agency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has been captured by a
group of extremists who actually believe the USA would be better off with a smaller economy. ... As long as
Obama leaves these extremists in charge of the agency, the economy is unlikely to recover and will suffer.
EPA
jumps the gun with job-killing rules. Twice this year, President Obama asked federal agencies to
review regulations to ensure that they are not interfering with efforts to rebuild the U.S. economy. In
January, he signed an executive order directing agencies to use the "least burdensome tools" that take "into
account benefits and cost" and "[promote] economic growth ... and job creation." Either the Environmental
Protection Agency didn't get the memo or it was lost under the growing stack of regulations the agency is advancing
at record speed.
New EPA
rule could lead to rolling blackouts in Texas, PUC chairwoman says. The head of the Texas Public
Utility Commission expressed concern Friday [8/19/2011] that a new federal air quality rule, set to take
effect Jan. 1, will cause disruptions in electric service. If implementation of the Cross-State Air
Pollution Rule is not delayed, "I have no doubt in my mind that this rule will result in reliability issues
and rolling outages in Texas," Donna Nelson said at the start of the commission's meeting.
Getting
ready for a wave of coal-plant shutdowns. Over the next 18 months, the Environmental Protection
Agency will finalize a flurry of new rules to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants. ... Given that coal
provides 45 percent of the country's power, that means higher electric bills, more blackouts and fewer
jobs.
EPA's
Ongoing Assault on the Economy. Affordable energy is critical for a prosperous economy.
Yet, despite the fact that the U.S. is still in the middle of a pronounced economic slump, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of proposing or finalizing a number of air-quality
regulations that would limit energy choices and increase energy prices, thus seriously retarding the economic
recovery. Economists estimate that just four of these dozens of rules could alone cost the economy
trillions of dollars annually. In addition, the rules will cost millions of jobs and raise energy
prices, and all with little or no public-health benefit.
Obama's Real Energy Policy.
[Scroll down] Ezra Klein in the Washington Post reports that the EPA is moving forward with its plans to
shutter 20% of the nation's coal-fired power plants. While many are grandfathered in, the power will
still go offline starting in the next 18 months. The president has clearly stated on the record
that he wants to put the coal industry out of business.
EPA's
Looming Blackouts. It won't matter which light bulbs we use as the administration's implementation
of cross-state pollution rules shuts down coal plants across the country. Where will the jobs be when
the lights go out?
EPA About to Fulfill Obama Promise to
'Bankrupt' Coal? Over the next 18 months, the Environmental Protection Agency will
finalize a flurry of new rules to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants. Mercury, smog, ozone,
greenhouse gases, water intake, coal ash — it's all getting regulated. And, not surprisingly,
some lawmakers are grumbling.
The
EPA's giant green jobs-killer. Even as the "green jobs" promise proves to be a lie, the Obama
administration is getting set to force the shutdown of countless power plants across half the nation.
The Environmental Protection Agency's new Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, announced last month, will affect
coal-fired electric plants in at least 27 midwestern and eastern states. Set to take effect next year,
the rule could shutter up to a fifth of the nation's generating capacity.
America is Under Attack.
The EPA, wielding these laws like battle axes aimed at our heads, has been unleashed by the
Obama-Soetoro administration with orders to attack our last source of affordable power.
That the Marxist fraud who would be King is doing this should surprise no one. On
November 2, 2008, he told the nation that he intended to bankrupt the coal industry and
the coal-fired producers of electricity.
Texas
AG Sues EPA over Obama's War on Energy. In an attempt to push back the government overreach that
has been killing jobs in the country since Obama's red-tape machine arrived in DC, Texas has decided to sue the
EPA over rules that threaten to shut down coal fired plants. Texas, under Governor Rick Perry and Attorney
General Greg Abbott, has been at the forefront of the 10th Amendment movement seeking to reign in the federal
government's repeated attempts to micromanage, manhandle and mismanage almost every aspect of the citizens'
personal and professional lives.
Fallout From Day Zero: EPAgeddon Averted.
Do we still have to listen to Barack Obama complain that all these out-of-control agencies, like the EPA,
NLRB, and EEOC are "independent" and "beyond his control?" It looks as if white-knuckle panic
rather abruptly brought the EPA under his control.
Obama
Scraps Controversial EPA Smog Regulation. Bowing to the demands of House Republicans
and some business leaders, President Obama is backing off a controversial proposed regulation tightening
government smog standards. In a statement Friday [9/2/2011], Obama said he had ordered Environmental
Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the proposal, in part because of the importance
of reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an
unsteady economy.
Critics
Say Obama EPA Moves Made With 2012 in Mind. While Republican foes and many in
the business community accuse President Obama of pushing aggressive environmental agenda, the
Obama EPA has actually been holding back on many of its key initiatives. Critics say the
go-slow approach at the Environmental Protection Agency is part of a 2012 re-election strategy
for the president.
What Did
Obama's EPA Stunt Cost? Obama's Friday-before-Labor-Day news-dump was a politically
panicked, long overdue if temporary walkback of a proposed $1 trillion dollar rule out of
EPA — just one of a suite of assaults on jobs known collectively, colloquially as the 'train wreck".
Cost
Of Clean Air. On the Friday before Labor Day, a moment he hoped his green constituency would be
too busy celebrating the workers of the world to hear the news, President Obama withdrew drafted rules intended
to cut smog levels. ... The green lobby pretends the environmental rules it peddles don't hurt the economy.
Yet we have an implicit admission from a president tied to that lobby that the economic benefits of scuttling
a regulation are greater than the regulation's ecological benefits.
Re-election
trumps phony green hype. According to a painstaking analysis last year by Mr. Obama's
Environmental Protection Agency based on more than 1,700 scientific studies, dramatic new air-quality
guidelines are needed to lower ground-level smog from the current 0.075 parts per million to as low
as 0.060 ppm. That, according to the EPA's study, would save the lives of as many as
12,000 Americans. ... Then, late last week, in a stunning turnabout, the president quietly announced
his decision to junk the new ozone standards — sentencing, according to the administration's
own calculus, 12,000 Americans to die.
EPA:
Fundamental Transformation through Regulation. What happens when the information
our government's "specialists" provide becomes driven by agenda rather than fact? ... The EPA,
finding organized resistance to its regulating machine, has turned to offering "guidance," which
it then enforces as if said "guidance" were the product of regulatory channels. The big
difference, of course, is that "guidance" is not subject to the same rigors of accountability and
oversight that regulations must meet. These crone-tended kettles at the EPA are really just
an end-run around the law.
Cattle
Feeder Says EPA Declared Hay a Pollutant. In a news release last week, the Environmental
Protection Agency labeled hay a pollutant, according to the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United
Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA). A non-profit organization representing thousands of U.S. cattle
producers, R-CALF USA says the EPA's outlandish affidavit could potentially require farmers and ranchers
to store hay in pollution containment zones. The issue culminated from an EPA compliance order
charging Callicrate Feeding Company with a list of environmental violations.
Big Labor Clashes
With Green Groups. Last week, Obama angered environmentalist groups by scrapping the
administration's proposed EPA clean air regulations. And now the St. Louis chapter of the
AFL-CIO has also come out against the environmental regulations, which it says will have a detrimental
impact on Missouri jobs.
EPA
regulation forces closure of Texas energy facilities, eliminates 500 jobs. Texas energy
company Luminant announced on Monday new burdensome Environmental Protection Agency regulations are
forcing it to close several facilities, which will result in about 500 job losses. The company
will be idling — stopping the usage of — two energy generating units. It
will also cease extracting lignite from three different Texas mines. The EPA regulation Luminant
cites as too burdensome is the new Cross-State Air Pollution rule, which requires Texas power generators
to make "dramatic reductions" in emissions beginning on January 1, 2012.
Farmers
Worry Over Crop of New Rules. Farmers are concerned that some new, tighter federal
regulations on agriculture are stunting the growth of their businesses and say regulatory uncertainty
makes it difficult for them to plan for the future.
Having run out of environmental problems,
the EPA turns to socialist activism:
EPA spending
millions for 'environmental justice'. Earlier this month the Environmental Protection Agency
awarded a $25,000 grant to the Louisiana Bucket Brigade for air-quality sampling, as part of an initiative
which is funneling millions annually into local organizations for environmental justice. According to
the EPA, environmental justice is "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of
race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of
environmental laws, regulations, and policies." EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson has made
environmental justice a priority at the agency...
EPA
Regulations Still Killing Jobs. A Dallas energy company closes two facilities due to a new regulation,
costing hundreds of jobs. The president talks up his jobs bill while his administration creates rising
unemployment and rolling blackouts.
The EPA's
Most-Wanted List. Everyone knows about the FBI's famous "Ten Most Wanted" list. The
current roster includes murderers, racketeers, kidnappers, drug smugglers, and armed robbers —
criminals who represent real dangers to society. But did you know that the Environmental Protection
Agency also has its own FBI-type list of 18 most-wanted environmental fugitives?
President
Obama and the EPA's War on Jobs. For some time now, I and others have been documenting the
relentless assault on economic growth by the EPA under President Barack Obama. I feel like a broken
record at times trying to beat this drum and get people to realize that while Obama doesn't keep all of his
campaign promises, destroying the coal industry is one that he has done everything he can to stay true to.
For anyone that paid attention during the 2008 presidential cycle, Obama made it clear that it was his intention
to bankrupt the coal industry through regulation and legislation.
White
House threatens veto over House attack on EPA pollution rules. President Obama's advisers will
recommend that he veto pending House legislation that would block two key Environmental Protection Agency
air-pollution rules, a White House official said. "As the President has made clear, the administration
will continue to take steps to defend the authority of the Clean Air Act, and the important progress we have
made to protect the air we breathe," the official said.
The Editor blurts out...
Yeah, but there's nothing wrong with the air we breathe.
The Case for
Ending the EPA. The one exception to the law that it's easier to destroy than create is big
government programs and bureaucracies. Once they're the status quo and people become accustomed to
their existence, folks just cannot imagine how they could live without them. But is it really true
that we'd get a visit from the Smog Monster if the EPA went extinct? And does it really advance the
good on balance?
Will TRAIN Derail the
EPA? The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the TRAIN Act, which calls for establishing a
committee to analyze the economic impact of recent regulations imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA). ... The bill includes an amendment to delay EPA's Utility MACT (maximum achievable control technology)
and new transport rules which set unprecedented emissions standards on large institutions. It forces EPA's
rules to wait six months after completion of the TRAIN Act analysis. A stronger bill, the EPA Regulatory
Relief Act of 2011 introduced in June by Rep. H. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), would pull the plug entirely on
these new regulations.
House
votes to thwart EPA power plant rules. House Republicans on Friday raised the stakes in their
battle against EPA regulations by adopting an amendment that would block two power plant pollution rules
for at least several years and force the agency to rewrite them.
Congress Needs to Put the Brakes on the EPA Train
Wreck. President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is one of the biggest job-destroying
offenders in his administration. Today, the agency has more than 300 regulatory actions under consideration
and it continues to issue new rules at an unprecedented pace. This includes the agency's Utility MACT
Rule, estimated by the agency to impose new compliance costs of $10.9 billion annually and EPA's notorious
greenhouse gas regulations, estimated to eliminate as many as 1.4 million jobs by 2014.
How did anyone survive before the EPA existed?
Dems:
Heart attacks, asthma, deformed babies if EPA reined in. House Democrats on Thursday evening [9/22/2011]
warned that Republican attempts to rein in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations would lead directly
to adverse health effects across America.
EPA
To Shut Down 20% of Coal Plants in 2012. Susan Kraemer at CleanTechnica can barely contain her
excitement at the prospect of environmental regulations. In an article titled "Obama's EPA Cues
130 Billion Race to Cut Pollution By 2015", she reports that the EPA will shut down 20 percent of
coal plants through the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. She acknowledges the cost of these regulations
($130 billion), but insists that this is actually good for the economy. How, pray tell, does
$130 billion in regulatory expenses transform into a $130 billion boon?
EPA:
Regulations would require 230,000 new employees, $21 billion. The Environmental Protection
Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be "absurd" in application and "impossible to
administer" by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder
the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion — to
attempt to implement the rules.
5
Major Ways The Obama Administration Is Killing American Jobs. [#3] The EPA: The EPA has
been waging a one bureaucracy war against American business and capitalism for a long while, but it's
stepping up its attacks to draconian levels under the Obama Administration. The EPA is pushing new
greenhouse gas rules that could cost "7.3 million jobs and add $32.2 billion annually in new
regulatory costs."
EPA Monster Sighted in Kansas.
Under the current EPA director, Lisa Jackson, the Obama administration is unleashing on the country the most
comprehensive and far-reaching environmental regulations ever seen.
Obama jobs
plan: More bureaucrats. The [EPA] is defending sweeping greenhouse-gas emissions rules that if
fully implemented would require 10,000 new state-level employees to process permits. At the federal
level, it would take 230,000 new officials and a $21 billion budget expansion — quite a boost
for an outfit that currently has 17,417 bureaucrats and $10.3 billion to spend. EPA admits it would
be "absurd or impossible to administer" the rules all at once, but "that does not mean that the agency is not
moving toward the statutory thresholds."
EPA
Inspector General calls greenhouse-gas regulatory process flawed. In response to a report that
could lead to questions about the credibility of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Oklahoma
Republican Sen. James Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is
calling for hearings to investigate. The report — from the Office of the Inspector General
of the EPA — reveals that the scientific basis, on which the administration's endangerment
finding for greenhouse gases hinged, violated the EPA's own peer review procedure.
Texas
EPA Czar Pushes 'Urgency' Drilling Regulations. Fearing President Barack Obama might not get
re-elected to the White House in 2012, Texas EPA Czar, Al Armendariz, a professor at Southern Methodist
University in Dallas, called for greater "urgency" in getting oil and gas fields in the Lone Star to be
declared as "health hazards."
'Consensus'
science, global warming, and Obama's reality-blind EPA. [Scroll down] ["]Scientists
studying sunspots for the past two decades have concluded that the magnetic field that triggers their formation
has been steadily declining. If the current trend continues, by 2016 the sun's face may become spotless and
remain that way for decades — a phenomenon that in the 17th century coincided with a prolonged
period of cooling on Earth.["] That "prolonged period of cooling?" That would be the Little Ice Age,
during which the Thames River froze over in London and New Yorkers walked from Manhattan to Staten Island —
on ice. So then, why is the EPA saddling American businesses with a plethora of new "greenhouse gas"
emission regulations aimed at stopping "global warming?"
Floridians
Fight Back Against EPA Water Nutrient Restrictions. Burdened by a 10.6 percent unemployment
rate and a collapsed housing market, Florida's shaky economy now faces a new challenge: The Sunshine State
is squarely in the bull's eye of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory artillery. EPA is
proposing tough new restrictions on levels of phosphorous and nitrogen in the state's waterways. The new
standards, known as numeric nutrient criteria, apply only to Florida and will affect every industry and
resident in the state.
EPA loses battle against W.Va. coal mines.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Barnett Walton, a Bush 43 appointee to the D.C. bench, handed the Obama
administration its hat today by ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority in
pulling Corps of Engineers permits for coal mines in Appalachia, including West Virginia. The National
Mining Association had sued the EPA. The judge said: "Congress established a permitting scheme in
which the Corps is to be the principal player, and the EPA is to play a lesser, clearly defined supporting role."
Louisiana
Man Wins $1.7 Million From EPA For Malicious Prosecution. The legal might of the U.S. government
is usually enough to roll right over someone like Opelousas, La. plant manager Hubert Vidrine Jr. But
last week the underdog had his day: a federal court awarded Vidrine $1.7 million for having been
maliciously prosecuted by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Democrat Strategies Right Out
Of V.I. Lenin Playbook. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the socialist revolution in Russia, published
multiple tutorials for like-minded revolutionaries around the world. Someone in the Obama administration
must be familiar with his writings. Socialist minds think alike. ... According to Lenin's
rule, it is strategically appropriate for President Obama to halt all policies that are
inconvenient to his election. That's why regulations like the EPA ozone plan, which would impose
tremendous regulatory burdens on manufacturing in the USA, and the full-blown implementation of
ObamaCare, will wait until after the presidential election of 2012.
EPA's
CO2 endangerment finding is endangered. In a narrow 5-4 decision in 2007, the US Supreme Court
authorized the EPA to consider the greenhouse gas CO2 as a 'pollutant' under the terms of the Clean Air
Act — provided EPA could demonstrate that CO2 posed a threat to human health and welfare.
The EPA then issued an Endangerment Finding (EF) in 2009, which was promptly challenged in the DC Circuit
Court of Appeals.
Corn-fueled politics.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to shove more ethanol into your gas tank. Obama administration
bureaucrats have signed off on a crony-capitalist scheme to boost the corn content of gasoline from 10 percent
to 15 percent. This serves absolutely no purpose beyond enriching farm-state agribusiness giants.
In fact, it may even result in the voiding of millions of new-car warranties.
With Obama's re-election more and more unlikely...
EPA
will not tighten farm dust standards. The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it will
not tighten controls on farm dust, the latest effort to quell concerns by Republicans and others that the
agency will impose new regulations on the agriculture industry. In a letter to Sen. Debbie Stabenow
(D-Mich.), EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said she will soon recommend to the White House Office of Management
and Budget that existing regulations governing coarse particulate matter from industrial and agricultural
operations — often called farm dust — remain in place.
Shovel Ready Means Never Ready. We
hear a lot these days about the need for "shovel ready jobs" and the lack of them, as well as the "do-nothing
Congress". For those who want answers, not excuses, let's visit some of the places where job preventers work.
First stop: The home of the President of the United States and his Administration's Environmental Protection
Agency. This group steals more jobs and wealth in one week than a corporate jet full of greedy bankers in a lifetime.
No coal, no gas, no wind... On
July 19, 2009, Robert Kennedy Junior assured America that it does not need that filthy, dirty coal that is
turning 1/3 of 1% of West Virginia into flatland. ... EPA regulators changed the rules and forced electric
companies to move to mothball many coal-fired power plants in favor of natural gas.
What
Congress Won't Legislate, EPA Will Regulate. Several reports of late reveal that new regulations
from the Environmental Protection Agency will cause utility providers to shut down a number of coal-fired power
plants. ... As our electricity providers continue to honor their commitments to the EPA and the DOJ to provide
electricity using renewables such as wind and solar, our electric bills will continue to increase. ... The EPA has
become a lawless agency empowered with a government mandate to force coal-fired power plants and industries
utilizing fossil fuels into strict emissions reductions agreements that are crippling our entire economy.
EPA to Regulate Dirt.
House members of the Energy and Commerce Committee bickered about the definition of dust in a hearing
about a Republican bill to stop overreaching Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations.
Democrats at the hearing on the Farm Dust Regulation Act of 2011, sponsored by Rep. Kristi Noem
(R.-S.D.), fired a number of vicious shots at the the bill, calling it merely a red herring.
They claimed that the EPA doesn't regulate dust at all, and that the wording of the bill was intended
to strip the EPA's power to regulate other destructive particulates, such as soot from urban factories.
EPA IG Finds Serious Flaws in Centerpiece of Obama Global
Warming Agenda. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment
and Public Works, today [9/28/2011] announced that a new government report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reveals that the scientific assessment underpinning the Obama EPA's
endangerment finding for greenhouse gasses was inadequate and in violation of the Agency's own peer review
procedures.
Obama's
Class Warfare: It's All He's Got Left. [Scroll down] He has substantially ramped up excessive
anti-business regulations in pursuit of the environmental crusade of the week. He tried to pass cap and tax,
which would have made things much worse, and when he couldn't get Congress to go along, he had his Environmental
Protection Agency unlawfully impose unprecedented emission regulations.
Dust in the Wind: Time for the EPA to Go!
Everywhere I had gone in Iowa, people had been complaining about the proposed dust rule. Senator Chuck
Grassley, a senior and informed leader in the Senate, had been speaking out against the rule aggressively.
In fact, he had a staff person assigned to fighting the EPA over the proposed rule. The assertion that it
was never considered was plainly dishonest. Although there was never a
formal proposal to create the
rule, the prospect of stricter dust regulations had been on the table for months after EPA panels gave conflicting
recommendations. Since the EPA makes no distinctions between urban, industrial dust and dust from agriculture
or rural roads, many rural Americans were justifiably terrified that the agency was dragging its feet. It was
not until mid-October that the EPA finally said it wouldn't tighten the rules, as its panel had recommended.
How the EPA Is Like DDT.
Asthma is a perplexing disease for which, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), there is no known
cause. According CDC statistics, the percentage of the general population with asthma increased by 265% from
1980 to 2009. According to EPA statistics, from 1980 to 2009, the emissions of sulfur dioxide when down by
about 76% and, from 1995 to 2009, emissions of nitrogen dioxide went down by about 48%. There is no statistical
relationship or known causal relationship between asthma and emissions of these compounds. Yet, when announcing
the new cross-state emissions rules in 2011 to further restrict emissions of these compounds, EPA Administrator Lisa
Jackson claimed, without evidence, the new regulations will prevent 400,000 new cases of asthma each year.
The EPA's Reliability
Cover-Up. Some 830,000 Connecticut customers are only now having their power restored after a snowstorm
knocked out the state's grid
last month — but the Environmental Protection Agency continues to claim
that its regulatory agenda won't degrade U.S. electric reliability. The reality is that the EPA's own staffers
are — or used to be — worried, and their political superiors have erased the warnings.
In recent months, concerns have been growing that the agency's torrent of new air-pollution rules will lead to
blackouts or to the rolling outages that crisscrossed California and Arizona in September.
EPA: By 2025, Pigs
Will Fly. Washington's press corps this afternoon dutifully parroted the White House announcement
that by 2025, cars must get 54.5 mpg. ... But for harder numbers, how are the automakers doing on the more
immediate EPA mandate of 35.5 mpg by 2015? They're not even close.
Fast
Trains and Slow, Puny, Expensive Cars. Because the Obama EPA has declared carbon dioxide a
'pollutant,' and because cars emit CO2, [EPA administrator Lisa] Jackson is citing the Clean Air Act in her bid
to commandeer Detroit." The Journal reports that even the EPA's own (no doubt low-ball) estimates show
that the rule will cost $157 billion and raise the price of cars by $3,100 per vehicle.
The United States of
EPA. The EPA heaved its weight against another industry this month, issuing a regulation to sharply
increase fuel economy. Under this new rule, America's fleet of passenger cars and light trucks will have to
meet an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, a doubling of today's average of about 27 mpg.
Will
The EPA Choke Oil Shale Production? The latest salvo in the administration's war on energy may be new
rules and permits to regulate a process to get oil and gas from porous rock, sacrificing jobs and economic growth
while under review.
Obama
Administration and EPA Use Clean Water Act for New Overreach. Just as the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) has used the Clean Air Act to broaden the scope of their authority way beyond its original intention
with rules like MACT and CSAPR, the Clean Water Act is becoming a tool of overreach by the out of control agency.
Barack Obama and the EPA's Lisa Jackson have made it clear through their actions that they will circumvent the
legislature by using regulatory enforcement to enact Obama's green dreams, and now it seems that circumvention
includes the Supreme Court of the United States.
If the Lights Go Out.
Say what you will about Obama Administration regulators, their problem has rarely been a failure to regulate.
Which makes the abdication of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission especially notable — and dangerous
for the U.S. power supply. Last week FERC convened a conference on the wave of new Environmental Protection
Agency rules that are designed to force dozens of coal-fired power plants to shut down. The meeting barely
fulfilled the commission's legal obligations, but despite warnings from expert after expert, including some of
its own, the FERC Commissioners refuse to do anything about this looming threat to electric reliability.
Top 10 Most Needed Government Reforms.
[#5] Reduce regulations: America is drowning in red tape, which is choking the entrepreneurial spirit
of small businesses and hampering job creation. The best way to get the economy moving again is to relieve the
regulatory burden dumped on the private sector by overbearing federal bureaucrats. Do we really need the
Environmental Protection Agency to start regulating workplace dust?
Washington
doesn't need to regulate rain. If the Supreme Court declines to review it, a recent ruling from
the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will put federal courts into the business of managing
every acre of privately owned timberland in America. Farmers beware. You could be next. In
May, the 9th Circuit determined that rainwater draining from forest roads into local streams, rivers and lakes
is "point source pollution." As such, it must be regulated in the same way effluent from sewage-treatment
plants is regulated. To make a long story short, rainwater that accumulates alongside logging roads has
become a new target of environmental litigators. Several lawsuits were filed within days of the 9th Circuit's
decision.
EPA Fracking
Report and Energy Politics. Yesterday's EPA report raising water pollution worries about fracking in
Wyoming amounts to psy-ops in the Obama re-election campaign. ... The electorate is coming to realize that there
are a lot of new hydrocarbon resources out there in the American interior and offshore. Even the New York
Times has noted the oil boom in North Dakota, poster child for the New American Prosperity that lies ahead if we
vigorously pursue the energy opportunities that lie ahead. Energy independence is in prospect, and that alone
would change the strategic dynamics of world politics, and weaken many of our overseas antagonists. Oil prices
could actually drop substantially if the worldwide potential of oil sands, shale, and fracking of natural gas is
developed. The biggest game changer of all is the bounty of clean-burning natural gas unlocked by fracking,
with which America is particularly well-endowed. The only way Obama can defend his energy policies is to raise
fears of pollution.
EPA
Spending Another Million Dollars of Taxpayer Money on 'Environmental Justice' Grants. Forty-six
non-profit and tribal organizations are getting a chunk of taxpayer money to spend on "environmental justice
issues," the Environmental Protection Agency announced on Thursday. At the same time it announced the
grants — more than a million dollars in total — the EPA said it is now seeking applicants for
another million dollars to be awarded in 2012.
More
unsupported hysteria over fracking. Fracking was first used in Oklahoma in the 1940s and
in the years since has been employed in more than a million oil and gas wells across the nation. There
is not a single independently documented instance of groundwater contamination by fracking anywhere in the
country, a fact that was confirmed as recently as May by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
Lisa Jackson during congressional testimony. So why did the EPA announce Thursday [12/8/2011] in a draft
report that chemicals "likely" associated with fracking were found at a drilling site near Pavilion, Wyoming?
Environmental
Protection Agency adds Wise, Hood counties to DFW ozone-nonattainment area. The Environmental
Protection Agency has informed Texas officials that it plans to add Wise and Hood counties to the Dallas-Fort Worth
nonattainment area that has failed to meet federal ozone standards, with Barnett Shale natural gas operations
cited as a major factor in increasing air pollution in the counties. ... The EPA provided a document Friday [12/9/2011]
to the
Star-Telegram showing that emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
from Barnett Shale natural gas and oil operations helped it decide about Hood and Wise.
The Editor says...
Nitrous Oxide (NO2) can't be all that bad. Dentists have used it for years. NO2 is used in dentistry and
medicine in a concentration of 30 to 50 percent, apparently with no ill
effects.
*
The EPA standard for airborne NO2 is 53 parts per billion,
or 0.0000053 percent.
*
Clearly, the EPA is straining at a gnat, to use a Biblical expression. Something tells me that "volatile
organic compounds" — whatever that means — are probably just as harmless. The EPA
has obviously run out of meaningful things to do, and is now going about the country helping President Obama
choke the life out of America's energy sources.
EPA
Regulations Cost Jobs and Cause Blackouts. Reports indicate that the predominant costs of implementing
the Environmental Protection Agency's new "green" economy regulations are job loss (as coal plants are forced to
close) and mass blackouts.
Where is the evidence
for EPA's claims? [By implementing the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule,] EPA claims it will "protect
hundreds of millions of Americans, providing up to $280 billion in benefits by preventing tens of thousands of
premature deaths, asthma and heart attacks, and millions of lost days of school or work due to illness," because
of the cleanup of mercury, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, and other emissions. Exactly where did the EPA come up
with these incredible health benefits?
API blasts EPA
report on hydraulic fracturing. Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead and state regulators have raised questions
about some of the water samples drawn at EPA's deep test wells in Pavillion, Wyo., after some of the results
could not be replicated. Industry and Wyoming officials also have questioned whether the EPA may have
introduced contaminants when it drilled those test wells.
Industry:
What happens in Wyoming doesn't happen in Texas. Oil and gas industry leaders are pushing back today
against an EPA draft report that linked hydraulic fracturing with water contamination in Wyoming by insisting that
what happened in that state is light years away from drilling being done in Texas, New York and other parts of the
country.
Bias alert: It's NPR, so have a grain of salt handy.
EPA To Unveil
Stricter Rules For Power Plants. More than 20 years ago, Congress ordered the Environmental
Protection Agency to regulate toxic air pollution. It's done that for most industries, but not the biggest
polluters — coal and oil-burning power plants. The EPA now plans to change that later this week,
by setting new rules to limit mercury and other harmful pollution from power plants.
The Editor says...
First of all, let's clear up NPR's misconception of the word
regulate. When Congress regulates
something, like interstate commerce for example, it makes it happen
regularly. In recent years,
the term has been used as a synonym for
constrict or
impede. The EPA's job 40 years
ago (not 20) was to clean up the air by eliminating airborne lead. This was accomplished by mandating
unleaded gasoline, and airborne lead was reduced by practically 100 percent. Power plants may be
emitting trace amounts of mercury or other pollutants, but in my opinion those amounts are not enough to be
of any concern, because (at least here in Texas) power plants are located way out in sparsely populated areas.
And when the power goes out on a brutally hot Texas afternoon, air pollution will be among the least of my concerns.
Wildfires and volcanoes are much more significant pollution sources, but there's nothing the EPA can do about them, so
they strain out gnats and lets the camels go.
Green Groups' Attack On Fracking Based On Bad
Science. After admitting there's no documented evidence of groundwater contamination due to a
technique used to extract oil and gas from shale, the EPA tries to manufacture a crisis in Wyoming.
EPA
Regulations Cost Jobs and Cause Blackouts. Reports indicate that the predominant costs of implementing
the Environmental Protection Agency's new "green" economy regulations are job loss (as coal plants are forced to
close) and mass blackouts.
Obama's Regulatory
Burden. In the next few days, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue
another final regulation directed at electricity utilities. This rule, known as the Utility MACT, will impose
an estimated $11 billion each year in new costs on our economy. It will threaten electricity-generating
capacity in many parts of the country. And it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this
administration's runaway rulemaking.
EPA
finalizes tough new rules on emissions by power plants. As part of last-minute negotiations between
the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency, the regulations give some flexibility to power plant
operators who argued they could not meet the three-year deadline for compliance outlined by the EPA. Several
individuals familiar with the details declined to be identified because the agency will not announce the rules
until next week.
The EPA's Fracking Scare.
The shale gas boom has been a rare bright spot in the U.S. economy, so much of the country let out a shudder
two weeks ago when the Environmental Protection Agency issued a "draft" report that the drilling process of
hydraulic fracturing may have contaminated ground water in Pavillion, Wyoming. The good news is that
the study is neither definitive nor applicable to the rest of the country.
New
EPA Pollution Rules May Force Shutdown of Dozens of Coal-Fired Power Plants. More than 32 mostly
coal-fired power plants in a dozen states will be forced to shut down and an additional 36 might have to close
because of new federal air pollution regulations, according to an Associated Press survey.
Obama's
Regulatory Burden. In the next few days, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is
expected to issue another final regulation directed at electricity utilities. This rule, known as the
Utility MACT, will impose an estimated $11 billion each year in new costs on our economy. It will
threaten electricity-generating capacity in many parts of the country. And it's just the tip of the iceberg
when it comes to this administration's runaway rulemaking.
EPA
Ponders Expanded Regulatory Power In Name of 'Sustainable Development'. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency wants to change how it analyzes problems and makes decisions, in a way that would give it
vastly expanded power to regulate businesses, communities and ecosystems in the name of "sustainable
development," the centerpiece of a global United Nations conference slated for Rio de Janeiro next June.
The EPA vs.
Private Property: The Fifth Amendment states that "No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty
or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just
compensation." But the EPA wants to issue compliance orders without its subjects being able to retaliate
via judicial review. And now a couple trying to build a home on their private property are being issued
fines and orders left and right. They can't challenge the EPA without the EPA's permission-even if the
original compliance order was issued in error.
Will the Supreme Court
stop the EPA? Mike and Chantell Sackett thought that they had achieved the American dream of not
just owning their own home, but building one themselves. They bought a parcel of land zoned for residential
construction in Idaho that was slightly larger than a half-acre and began construction on the house. The
EPA stopped them from proceeding by informing the Sacketts that their land was considered federally-protected
wetlands, and that not only would they have to cease construction, they were required to return the land to the
same condition as they had found it. Each day that they failed to do so, the EPA could fine
them $32,500.
The Editor says...
Wetlands is a bureaucratic way to say
swamp. Any construction on privately-owned swamp land
is an improvement. This action by the EPA is about
control, not about protecting the environment.
To reiterate my opinion, if I may, the EPA has run out of useful things to do and must be abolished.
New EPA rule
will cost each taxpaying American $280. By the EPA's own admission, power plants will have to
spend $10.6 billion over the next four years to meet new, more stringent standards for anti-pollution
controls. The EPA says that these measures will "save $59 billion to $140 billion in annual
health costs, preventing 17,000 premature deaths a year along with illnesses and lost workdays." Of
course, just how those ridiculous figures were arrived at is anyone's guess, because the EPA doesn't make
that research readily available. Think about it: those statistics are, at face value, patently
false. We have 17,000 premature deaths a year thanks to dirty air?
The Editor says...
And who has "lost workdays" because the air pollution is so bad? Nobody!
New EPA rules
expected to cause closures of at least 32 power plants. At least 32 mostly coal-fired power plants
in a dozen states will be forced to shut down and 36 more might have to close because of new federal air
pollution regulations, according to an Associated Press survey.
EPA
unveils rules limiting mercury, other power plant toxics. The long-delayed final standards have been the
subject of a ferocious lobbying and public-relations battle. And it's a fight that could spill onto the presidential
campaign trail at a time when GOP candidates routinely accuse Obama of pursuing an overzealous green agenda.
The EPA's Unconscionable
War on Fracking. The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees that "no person shall be ... deprived
of life, liberty, or property without due process of law." For government to harm investors in a private business by
bringing false charges against that business is most certainly a violation of the Fifth Amendment. The Environmental
Protection Agency, it seems, has been engaged in just this sort of unconstitutional activity ever since Obama appointed
Lisa Jackson as director.
Fracking
firm calls EPA move a threat to whole industry. Many in the oil and gas business, as well as the larger
business community, fear that the Obama administration is so fundamentally opposed to domestic drilling that the results
of the EPA study are already foregone conclusions. A highly critical report from the agency likely would stir greater
opposition to fracking and could deal a major blow to one of the few economic success stories of the past few years.
Blackout: Monday Night Football Previews Living In a
World Governed By Increasing EPA Regulation. Last night, the power went out twice during the San Francisco
49er's return to Monday Night Football. This is significant for two reasons. First, we live in a country with
such a reliable electrical system that it's news when the power goes out. Second, this reliability may soon come to
an end with EPA's latest Utility MACT regulation and other rules in the regulatory pipeline.
The EPA's
Mercury Madness. The EPA thinks it's worth spending billions of dollars each year to reduce
already minuscule amounts of mercury in the outside air. So why is it trying to shove mercury-laced
fluorescent bulbs into everyone's homes?
More
about fluorescent light bulbs.
The
Government Grinches That Stole Christmas. Led by Administrator Lisa Jackson, the EPA has been on
an aggressive regulation push this year with rewriting air quality codes and using sustainability as argument
to leverage control over business. In Texas alone new EPA rules have cost the state thousands of jobs
and have halted in some cases energy production which increases the cost of gasoline. Nationwide the
cost of compliance with the new EPA regulations to businesses will be in the hundreds of billions.
MF
Global chief missing $1.2B is financial adviser to EPA. During two days of recent congressional
hearings into how as much as $1.2 billion disappeared from MF Global customer accounts, the chief operating
officer of the imploding investment firm responded again and again that he did not know. Yet as the House
and Senate interrogated Bradley I. Abelow and other top executives at MF Global Holdings Ltd.,
lawmakers did not mention Mr. Abelow's role as a financial adviser for the Environmental Protection Agency,
which as of Tuesday [12/27/2011] listed him as the chairman of its financial advisory board.
Greens
Target Pro-Life Evangelicals with EPA Propaganda Blitz. [The Evangelical Environmental Network]
announced it had just completed a quarter-million-dollar radio, television, and billboard advertising campaign
in nine states and the District of Columbia aimed at convincing evangelical and Catholic voters that supporting
the new EPA regulations is the "pro-life" position they should be urging their Senators and Congressmen to take.
Incredibly, the EEN ads bestow a "pro-life" label on politicians with a voting record 100 percent in favor
of abortion — because they support the new mercury regulations.
EPA to Raise
Electricity Prices, Risk Blackouts. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seemingly undeterred
by the slow economic recovery, is marching ahead with air pollution regulations that would increase electricity
prices, raise costs for businesses and consumers, and risk power outages. The EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution
Rule (CSAPR) and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) are scheduled to go into effect in January of 2012
and 2015, respectively. Other pending related regulations include the Boiler MACT and Utility MACT rules,
coal ash regulations, and new standards for cooling water intake structures. All of these are expensive
and put jobs at risk.
The EPA's
Global Warming Regulation Plans. In 1999, several groups of environmental activists sued the EPA
to force the agency regulate CO2 from motor vehicles. Eventually the case made it to the Supreme Court;
in April 2007 the Court ruled that carbon dioxide and five other GHGs are pollutants and can be regulated under
the [Clean Air Act]. ... In July 2008, the EPA released its 564-page Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR),
which details the types of businesses and entities that would potentially be affected by broadening the scope of
the CAA. Schools, farms, restaurants, hospitals, apartment complexes, churches, and anything with a
motor — from motor vehicles to lawnmowers, jet skis, and leaf blowers — could be subject
to regulations.
Small
Business Impact of the EPA Endangerment Finding. While Congress continues to debate the merits of
climate change legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been steadily moving forward with a
process to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs) under the ill-suited framework of the Clean Air Act (CAA). On
January 14 [2010], the first major step of that process — a final rule concluding that GHGs endanger
public health and welfare — took effect, and with it the obligation to move forward with what could easily
become the most expensive and intrusive set of regulations in history.
Obama's War on U.S. Energy.
It is coal-fired plants that currently provide fifty percent of all the electricity generated in America!
The EPA is feverishly trying to force a quarter of that capacity offline. Why? Because the EPA claims
that these plants are "polluting" the air. The air in America has never been cleaner. The EPA demand
for cleaner air is a bludgeon being used to deprive America of its ability to function. America has more
than 497 billion short tons of recoverable coal (not counting Alaska) or nearly three times as much as
Russia, which has the world's second largest reserve.
Labor unions double-crossed by the White House:
Obama gives coal workers the shaft.
The leader of the United Mine Workers of Americas, the continent's largest coal workers union, December 21
denounced the President and the EPA on the day the agency issued its new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards
rule. ... The union leader's tone was a sharp contrast from his full-throated 2008 support of candidate
Barack H. Obama Jr., when he said, "Obama's election will mean a new day for American coal miners and all
working families throughout our nation."
Supreme
Court case involving Idaho lake house ignites conservative cause against EPA. This month, the
Supreme Court will review the Sacketts' four-year-long effort to build on land that the EPA says contains
environmentally sensitive wetlands. A decision in the couple's favor could curtail the EPA's authority
and mean a fundamental change in the way the agency enforces the Clean Water Act. Even before the court
takes up the case, the couple have become a favored cause for developers, corporations, utilities, libertarians
and conservative members of Congress, who condemn what one ally told the court is the EPA's "abominable
bureaucratic abuse."
California
Truckers Take EPA to Court Over Emissions Rules. For the first time, the federal government
is regulating big-rigs, RV's, and tractor-trailers in much the same way it's held car makers to rigorous
fuel efficiency standards for decades. But a group of California truckers contends the regulations
will drive them right out of business — and has filed suit to block them.
Obama's Fascist
America in 10 Easy Steps. Writing back in 2007, Naomi Wolfe catalogued the steps to creating a
dictatorship (which she sought to apply to George W. Bush). Interestingly enough, they apply far more
to the man who replaced him. Wolfe's steps include: [#1] Invoke a terrifying internal and external
enemy. ... Isn't that what the EPA is doing with its endangerment finding — claiming that carbon dioxide
emitted by industry is going to cause catastrophic climate change?
EPA
reach too far? The Supreme Court on Monday [1/9/2012] heard arguments in a case that sounds small
but could have huge implications for property owners, corporations and federal regulations. Some of the
justices were clearly critical of the Environmental Protection Agency, calling its actions in the case heavy
handed. The justices were considering whether to let an Idaho couple challenge an EPA order identifying
their 0.63-acre lot as "protected wetlands."
The EPA searches desperately for a reason to exist:
EPA
Ponders Expanded Regulatory Power In Name of 'Sustainable Development'. At the time that the "Green
Book" study was commissioned, in August, 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson termed it "the next phase of
environmental protection," and asserted that it will be "fundamental to the future of the EPA." Jackson
compared the new approach, it would articulate to "the difference between treating disease and pursuing wellness."
It was, she said, "a new opportunity to show how environmentally protective and sustainable we can be," and
would affect "every aspect" of EPA's work.
Obama:
EPA Regulations Create Jobs. In a speech to employees of the Environmental Protection Agency on
Tuesday [1/10/2012], President Barack Obama said that EPA regulations are good for the economy and create jobs
and that the agency "touches" the lives of every American every day. "We can make sure that we are doing
right by our environment and, in fact, putting people back to work all across America," Obama told the federal
workers.
Also posted
under Lies about Job Creation.
EPA: Power plants main global warming
culprits. [One] coal-fired power plant reported releasing nearly 23 million metric tons of
carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, in 2010.
The Editor says...
Bias alert: Carbon dioxide is not the chief greenhouse gas.
Obama Thanks EPA
For 'Historic Progress'. In an apparent attempt to shore up support from environmentalists ahead
of the presidential election, President Barack Obama made a trip to the Environmental Protection Agency to thank
employees for what he said was the "historic progress" they've made in protecting the environment. "You
protect the environment not just for our children but their children, and keep us moving toward energy
independence," Mr. Obama said in a speech to about 200 employees at the EPA's headquarters in D.C.
A
Fine for Not Using a Biofuel That Doesn't Exist. When the companies that supply motor fuel close the
books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a
special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law. But there was none to be had.
Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.
EPA Fines Companies Because They Didn't Use A Fuel
That Doesn't Exist. The Orwellian nightmare of running a business in the shadow of the Obama
Administration is nicely captured in this story from the
New York Times, which explains why motor fuel
companies are about to be fined $6.8 million for failure to use a biofuel that does not exist.
EPA
Gives Activists a New Tool to Pressure Power Plants, Oil Refineries. Environmental activists are
applauding the EPA for releasing greenhouse gas emissions data for large polluters through a new, consumer-friendly
Web platform. The online reporting tool, launched on Wednesday [1/11/2012], "will help Americans work
together to develop innovative ways to reduce climate pollution," said the Environmental Defense Fund.
Moisturizing the EPA.
The Sacketts had purchased a small lot in Priest Lake, Idaho, to build their home. The lot was in a
residential area and they obtained all the necessary permits, graded the lot, and dumped gravel for the
foundation. Then the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suddenly declared their lot a federally
protected wetland under the Clean Water Act, and told the Sacketts they must restore it to pristine condition or
face a fine of $37,500 per day. They were told they could not appeal until they had exhausted
all administrative remedies.
Senators
warn new EPA rules would raise gas prices. Senators from both sides of the aisle are warning that
looming EPA regulations on gasoline could impose billions of dollars in additional costs on the industry and
end up adding up to 25 cents to every gallon of gas. The senators, in a letter this week to
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, urged the agency to back off the yet-to-be-released regulations. Though
the EPA has not yet issued any proposal, they claimed the agency is planning to call for a new requirement to
reduce the sulfur content in gasoline.
EPA: Kansas power
plants part of global warming. Power plants are responsible for the bulk of the pollution blamed
for global warming, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which this week released its most detailed
data yet of greenhouse gases. One Kansas plant — the Jeffrey Energy Center northwest of
Topeka — ranked as one of the nation's top 20 producers of carbon dioxide emissions, according
to a survey.
The Editor says...
I suspect that the list of CO2-emitting entities in the EPA publication does not include names like Kilauea, Mauna Loa, or
Mount St. Helens. And in case you have just
tuned in,
carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
How Obama
Betrays Martin Luther's King's Dream. [Scroll down] Lisa Jackson was chosen by Obama to be
the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Since assuming office she has been reckless in
her war on carbon and in the wake is leaving job losses, slow growth and an uncertain electric energy supply.
She has been accused of exceeding the bounds of her regulatory authority to such an extent that businesses are
paralyzed by uncertainty — unsure of what she will unleash next. She is blithely unconcerned that Congressmen
have taken her to task for performance. Was she chosen for the color of her skin or the content of her
character?
Mark Levin: You
Cannot Have This EPA and a Constitution. "The purpose of the Constitution is to have a limited
central government where the sovereignty remains with the individual and the people and the states," said
Levin. "The purpose of utopianism is the opposite of all that. It's a relative handful of
masterminds and their massive army of bureaucrats and their experts advising them from the colleges and so
forth on how to run society. "You cannot have an EPA and a Constitution at the same time doing what this
EPA is doing," Levin told CNSNews.com. "You cannot have an NLRB deciding who gets to work where, how,
and when, and at the same time follow the Constitution," he said.
Where will
Obama side on mud puddles? For 35 years, the Environmental Protection Agency has understood
silviculture — the act of harvesting trees, as opposed to processing them — to be an
agricultural activity, not a manufacturing one. The distinction is vital because of particulars in the
Clean Water Act. Runoff from "point-source" manufacturing facilities (including saw mills) is closely
regulated. Permits are required, and an involved monitoring and remediation process is prescribed.
On the other hand, the "natural runoff" from forest roads — basically mud puddles that accumulate in
ditches — has never required such permits or monitoring. It is cared for through what is known
as "best management practices." But in the case Georgia-Pacific West Inc. v. Northwest Environmental
Defense Center, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals turned this long-standing rule on its head.
Destroying America
by Denying Access to Energy. The EPA has just released a report of those power plants that top
the list of its regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. There is no basis in science to justify the
reduction of CO2. Indeed, since it is a gas on which all vegetation depends, much as oxygen is vital to
all animal life, reducing it would impair great crop yields and healthier forests. These regulations are
based on the global warming hoax that blamed CO2 for warming the earth. That is utterly false. The
Earth is currently in a perfectly natural cooling cycle and the climate of the Earth is almost entirely based on
the Sun — solar radiation — along with the actions of oceans, clouds, and even volcanic activity that spews
tons of particulates into the atmosphere.
Obama-EPA Moving Quietly to Impose Gas Tax.
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, commented on the
Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) plan to propose a Tier 3 rule on vehicles in March and finalize it in October.
These Tier 3 standards will cause gasoline prices to rise up to 25 cents a gallon.
Clean-energy hostages.
After failing to crush the coal industry with the ill-fated Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, Mr. Obama has since
loosed his regulatory agencies, especially the thuggish Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA is on the
verge of proposing its greenhouse gas emission rules for power plants — the "cap" part of cap-and-trade —
despite ongoing litigation over their legality. One concern is that the rules as implemented will block
the construction of new coal-fired power plants — the very same sort of power that safely provides
about 45 percent of U.S. electricity.
Agenda-Driven
"Science" at EPA. In fact, the final rule may be the most expensive one ever devised by EPA.
And yet, even EPA admits, the alleged "hazards to public health" from mercury and non-mercury emissions from
American EGUs [coal- and oil-fired power plants] are "anticipated to remain after imposition" of the new regulations.
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