Introduced by Republican Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan, a bill that would prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from placing limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and oil refineries passed the House of Representatives 255-172 on Thursday. Nineteen House Democrats joined in support.<\/p>\n
The EPA is preparing to set limits on emissions of carbon dioxide from large sources, such as coal-fired power plants, under the Clean Air Act. The move is prompted by a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that held increasing carbon dioxide emissions from human activity is causing climate change and that, under terms of the Act, the EPA must thus regulate those emissions.<\/p>\n
(For the record, it\u2019s the \u201cgreenhouse effect\u201d that keeps us all from freezing at night. Though at 0.033 percent of the earth\u2019s atmosphere, carbon dioxide\u2019s \u201cgreenhouse\u201d potential is slim — water vapor does most of the job. Nor is carbon dioxide \u201cunclean,\u201d even for children. In fact, it\u2019s necessary to life on earth.)<\/p>\n
Given that Democrats oppose the measure — President Obama has threatened to veto it — some may wonder why the Democratic leadership in the U.S. Senate allowed votes Wednesday, a day earlier, on amendments to a small business bill also advertised as \u201cpreventing or delaying the EPA from taking action on carbon dioxide pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n
The answer is that three of the four Senate amendments — proposed by Democrats, interestingly enough — were half measures designed to blunt the growing public outrage over treating carbon dioxide as a \u201cpollutant.\u201d<\/p>\n
One Democratic proposal was to delay the EPA\u2019s ability to regulate CO2 for two years. But that would merely have injected two more years of uncertainty into energy facilities planning, while leaving the court\u2019s \u201cendangerment\u201d finding intact.<\/p>\n
In another half-measure, Senator Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced an amendment that would have (supposedly) permanently exempted small emitters of greenhouse gases from CO2 regulations. But that would do nothing to protect farms, small businesses, and other consumers from the vastly higher energy costs that CO2 regulation would impose on energy producers.<\/p>\n
The Baucus amendment got 7 votes, Wednesday. The other two Democratic \u201chalf measures\u201d drew 7 and 12 votes, respectively.<\/p>\n
Senate Republicans instead backed the amendment proposed by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., which would have prohibited the EPA from \u201cpromulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas to address climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n
That got 50 votes, drawing support from every Republican except Susan Collins of Maine, and drawing the support of four Democrats — Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Mary Landrieu of Lousiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.<\/p>\n
The amendment thus failed, though this is a battle Americans can\u2019t afford to lose.<\/p>\n
Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are far smaller than in past \u201cwarming\u201d periods; only a small percentage of atmospheric carbon dioxide comes from man-made sources; global temperatures have been steady or declining for years, and any hope of affecting world climate through these new regulations were dashed when much of the rest of the world — especially fast-developing China and India — refused to go along with this particular plan for economic suicide.<\/p>\n
The U.S. economy could lose millions more jobs if Congress permits the EPA to continue down this path, according to Dana Joel Gattuso, director of the Center for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs at the National Center for Public Policy Research.<\/p>\n
Not even a worldwide depression permanently reducing global economic output and emissions to, say, 1970 levels, would stop harmless trace CO2 concentrations from rising over the next 90 years, Ms. Gattuso says.<\/p>\n
What fans of these Draconian penalties on energy production really seek is an end-run around the national legislature\u2019s understandable reluctance to pass the administration\u2019s job- and prosperity-destroying \u201ccap-and-trade\u201d energy tax proposals last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not allow this administration to regulate what it had failed to legislate last Congress,\u201d says Rep. Upton, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.<\/p>\n
Actually, Ms. Gattuso of the Center for Public Policy Research says that, because the EPA now plans to limit emissions of non-toxic CO2 to 350 parts per million, where the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill (deemed too economically dangerous even to bring to a vote, last year) would have set a higher limit of 450 ppm, the proposed EPA regulations could have a more severe impact on energy costs, U.S. jobs, household income, and economic growth than even the failed cap-and-trade legislation.<\/p>\n
What Congress needs to do now is to permanently prevent un-elected bureaucrats from regulating CO2, with all the catastrophic economic consequences that would entail, blocking \u201coverreaching EPA regulations that will send jobs overseas and increase gasoline and energy prices,\u201d as Congressman Upton puts it.<\/p>\n
The measure OK’d by the House Thursday would be good, and possibly adequate, though an even more comprehensive approach would be to permanently prohibit any federal regulators from using \u201cgreenhouse gas emissions\u201d as a reason to do ANYTHING that could slow or prevent economic activity.<\/p>\n
Senator John Barrasso, R-Wyo., sponsors the Defending America\u2019s Affordable Energy and Jobs Act, which would specifically \u201cpreempt regulation of, action relating to, or consideration of greenhouse gases under Federal and common law or enactment of a Federal policy to mitigate climate change\u201d — by ANY federal agency.<\/p>\n
That would be better.<\/p>\n
The 305 members of Congress who stood up for sanity and economic progress last week deserve congratulations. Unfortunately, a handful of reactionary Senate Democrats and a single diehard opponent of economic recovery at the far end of Pennsylvania Avenue, all clinging to a long discredited anticapitalism now disguised as \u201cenvironmental\u201d superstition, managed to block the road to economic recovery one more time.<\/p>\n
But the enemies of prosperity are weakening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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