The Obama administration, Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA, has decided to take the 'bull by the nose', so to speak, issuing a statement that she will use the agency, and the Clean Air Act, to regulate all consumption of fossil fuels in this country. That is, anything that burns fossil fuel will be regulated.
It appears that she has some people on both sides of the aisle in opposition to her heavy presumption of absolute authority on CO2 emissions. Read on. A very good article.
WRONG WAY
Agency Rules Prompt Pushback
Dave Hoopman
Wisconsin Energy Cooperative
The Obama administration makes no secret of its dual strategy to regulate greenhouse gases. On the contrary, the administration has openly used the threat of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation under the Clean Air Act to prod passage of cap-and-trade bills that would make power-plant operators cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions or pay for allowances to emit—with their cost of producing electricity and the consumer’s cost of using it to rise accordingly, whether they’re buying allowances or buying technologies to lower emissions.
That strategy got cap-and-trade through the House of Representatives last summer. But now, with the bill stalled in the Senate and presumed dead, and with the EPA well underway in its rulemaking, there’s a new roadblock. Who’s behind it? Big oil and coal companies? Electric utilities? Newly elected Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown?
None of the above.
The serious resistance to EPA regulation has arisen within both houses of Congress. Perhaps more surprising, the resistance is not confined to the Republican minority but is bipartisan, and conspicuous among its leaders are senior House Democrats.
No Ordinary Turf Battle
No ordinary political issue would prompt a showdown between the current Congress and the EPA over regulatory turf. Congress and state legislatures routinely cede authority to regulatory agencies, letting them make the rules in full knowledge that if a rule proves unpopular, the elected lawmakers will blame the unelected bureaucrats.
Thus—knowing cap-and-trade would make absolutely everything cost more because today’s economy can’t function without electricity—many observers thought Congress would happily toss this hot potato into the eager hands of the EPA. The agency was eager enough.
At a news conference last December 7, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson declared herself “proud” to announce the EPA had decided carbon dioxide presents a threat to human health and was therefore “authorized and obligated to take reasonable efforts to reduce greenhouse pollutants under the Clean Air Act.” Jackson said the finding “cements 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States government began seriously addressing the challenge of greenhouse gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform. In less than 11 months, we have done more to promote clean energy and prevent climate change than happened in the last eight years.”
Looking to the climate summit in Denmark that opened the previous day, Jackson said the endangerment finding “also means that we arrive at the climate talks in Copenhagen with a clear demonstration of our commitment to facing this global challenge,” calling her announcement “another incentive for far-reaching accords in our meetings this week.”
But Copenhagen delivered no binding accords, far-reaching or otherwise, and within 24 hours after Jackson’s announcement, members of the legislative branch were moving to see that no EPA rule on greenhouse gases would be adopted either.
Feisty Farmers
On December 8, Democratic Rep. Earl Pomeroy, North Dakota’s sole member of the House of Representatives, issued a statement saying EPA greenhouse regulation “is exactly the wrong way to go, and I am against it. The last thing we need is government bureaucrats in Washington writing the rules when it comes to acceptable levels of greenhouse gas emissions. This will end up costing North Dakota jobs, and I will do everything in my power to fight this wrongheaded proposal.”
Eight days later Pomeroy introduced his “Save Our Energy Jobs Act,” a bill amending the Clean Air Act specifically to exclude greenhouse gases from being defined as air pollutants, putting them outside the agency’s regulatory reach. (The bill has attracted several co-authors, including Green Bay Democrat Steve Kagen.)
On February 1, Pomeroy, who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, denounced a $56 million Obama budget provision to fund EPA greenhouse rulemaking, saying that in a deep recession, “The last thing I want the EPA to do is start regulating greenhouse gases without specific direction from Congress.” “That’s the wrong way to do things, and it could end up raising electrical bills and costing jobs,” Pomeroy added.
The following day Representative Ike Skelton (D–MO) rolled out a Clean Air Act amendment of his own. It excludes carbon dioxide, methane, and four other gases from classification as air pollutants “solely on the basis of its effect on global climate change” and goes further.
Anticipating EPA obstacles to an agricultural industry built around growing crops for fuel, the Skelton bill bars the agency from considering emissions related to international land-use changes in implementing a U.S. renewable-fuel program. Co-author Collin Peterson said this would “stop the EPA from punishing American farmers for deforestation taking place in foreign countries, and it would broaden the definition of renewable biomass in order to strengthen our own domestic renewable-fuels industry.”
Peterson chairs the House Agriculture Committee and held life-or-death power over the cap-and-trade bill that passed the House last June, bottling it up until he obtained broad concessions for agriculture and ultimately delivering a decisive number of farm-state votes. In January, Peterson said if the Senate sends that bill or one like it back to the House for final passage, he would vote against it.
“I have no confidence that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act without doing serious damage to our economy,” Peterson said. “Americans know we’re way too dependent on foreign oil and fossil fuels in this country—and I’ve worked hard to develop practical solutions to that problem—but Congress should be making these types of decisions, not unelected bureaucrats at the EPA.”
Sense of the Senate
On January 21 Senator Lisa Murkowski (R–AK) introduced a rare “disapproval resolution” to block EPA greenhouse enforcement under the Clean Air Act.
At press time, Murkowski had three majority Democrats among her 40 co-sponsors. If the resolution languishes in Barbara Boxer’s (D–CA) Committee on Environment and Public Works, Senate rules require only 30 signatures on a discharge petition to bring it to the floor.
The Alaska Senator sounded a lot like the farm-state Representatives in saying her resolution is “necessary to avoid the ‘economic train wreck’ that would result from the EPA regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.”
“As the EPA moves closer and closer to issuing these regulations, I continue to believe that this command-and-control approach is our worst option for reducing the emissions blamed for climate change,” Murkowski said.
What Happens Next?
The EPA plans to begin regulating motor vehicle CO2 emissions next month, with regulations for power-plant emissions expected to soon follow.
Collin Peterson takes a dim view: “The Clean Air Act was not meant for this,” the 10-term Minnesota Congressman says. “It was meant to clean up the air, to get lead out of the air. It was not meant to fight global warming.”Though the pending cap-and-trade bill is often claimed to be an alternative, it, too, would mean eventual EPA greenhouse regulation, just not under the Clean Air Act and not until 2015, to address shortfalls in achieving legislated emission cuts.—Dave Hoopman
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