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GOP Protest Builds Against EPA Regulating Greenhouse Gases
A storm of Republican protest is erupting over the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases pose a public danger, with the latest wave coming from a state among those most at risk from the effects of climate change.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, one of the party’s rising stars, launched a letter-writing offensive from Baton Rouge this week to protest the possibility of EPA regulation that the finding now allows. His own letter focuses on the economic dislocation he says such regulation might bring; it doesn’t mention the economic threats climate change poses to costal communities and cities like New Orleans.
The letters from Jindal and the secretaries of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and Louisiana Economic Development joined letters sent by the executive director of the Louisiana Workforce Commission and the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality in previous weeks. They also echo letters from the governor of Texas and an outcry from GOP congressional figures, most notably Alaska’s Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Joe Barton of Texas.
Once Congress returns from recess, Murkowski has said she plans to introduce a so-called "disapproval" resolution in the Senate. The goal is to veto the EPA’s endangerment finding — and the authority to regulate greenhouse gases that results from that finding. Barton has joined with other Republican congressmen to introduce a parallel resolution in the House.
"I remain committed to reducing emissions through a policy that will protect our environment and strengthen our economy, but EPA's backdoor climate regulations achieve neither of those goals," Murkowski said in announcing her decision to challenge the agency’s finding.
"EPA regulation must be taken off the table so that we can focus on more responsible approaches to dealing with global climate change."
Jindal focused on the economic impacts to his state’s heavily fossil fuel-dependent economy. He says new regulations that could follow the endangerment finding could damage his state’s economy to such an extent that the “energy supply, fuel prices and energy security for the entire country” could be impacted. The rules could also cause a dislocation of jobs and industry, he argued.
“These EPA’s proposed regulations [sic] will tangentially force commercial, industrial and major agricultural employers to spend less money on labor, thereby further reducing employment during these already tough economic times. Worse, Louisiana and the entire country will likely lose industry to other countries without an increased benefit to the environment,” Jindal writes, explaining that industry may relocate to countries with more lax environmental standards.
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We are being sold out by Obama..we are doomed
Senator Lisa Murkowski is attempting to stop the EPA from
usurping the powers of Congress. The EPA does not care about your job, our economy or economic survival.
The Obama Administration should not bypass the consent of Congress and force job-killing cap-and-tax policies on the American people through Washington, D.C. bureaucracy! We know how Casey and Specter will vote. What we need to know is where Senatorial candidate Rep. Joe Sestak stands on this issue. Will Rep.
Carney lift a finger to hinder the EPA?? Don't hold your breath!
Man made climate change is a fruad.
What a bunch of lies. Carbon Dioxide is a harmless gas needed by plants to breath and helps increase plant life. Man made climate change is a fraud of highest proportions and clear criminal intent to impose taxes and control, and destroy any new industrialization.
CO2 levels were much higher in the past anyways.
Vikings once living on Greenland and Iceland when the climate was warm. The Vikings then had to leave because it became so cold. This fact alone proves climate change is a natural occurrence. Yet it is never mentioned by those imposing climate fraud.
There is so much evidence of fraud and no evidence that man made CO2 has much of anything to do with any climate changes.
EPA is completely fraudulent in claiming CO2 is harmful and show how corrupt our government has become.
Anyone who supports this movement is an enemy to freedom and prosperity.
EPA must act
The mission of the EPA, to protect our environment, requires them to regulate toxic greenhouse gases. Their refusal to do so is criminally negligent.
Most of the public debate is about the greenhouse effect and CO2, which is destabilizing our climate. Swept under the rug are the even more noxious effects of the "other" emissions such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide that mix high in the atmosphere to eventually fall or rain down as ozone and acid rain.
These compounds are virulently poisonous. In humans, they cause lethal cancers, asthma and emphysema. They acidify waterways and lakes, killing fish. All over the world, they are destroying vegetation. The damage can be acute, but is also cumulative, so long-lived species like trees are being killed at an accelerating rate. Soils are leached of essential minerals to maintain roots, and foliage is unable to photosynthesize and produce chlorophyll. The trees are starving to death and with weakened immunity they are prey to insects, fungi and disease.
Trees are the foundation of terrestrial life, just as coral reefs are the foundation of life in the sea. Without trees, all animals and understory plants that are dependent upon them for food and shelter will go extinct. Soils will wash away and the earth will become a gigantic dust bowl. Crop failure and famine are already the result in many parts of the world. To take comfort in thinking the developed nations will be the exception is a fantasy.
This has been a slow emergency for decades that has suddenly reached critical dimensions. It requires nothing less than immediate collective action if humans are to preserve anything near a habitable environment and an ability to grow food. The rapid ecosystem collapse is evident from a cursory inventory - but the US agencies, the FDA, the EPA, the DEP, the Forestry Department, Interior Department and Geological Survey refuse to confront this topic because the only way to resolve it is to curtail the burning of fossil and biofuels through urgent government regulations.
Oh, and they're afraid of mass panic, hoarding, and civil unrest.
Photos and links to scientific research at www.witsendnj.blogspot.com
US Supreme Court mandated CO2 be regulated back in 2007! not EPA
The US Supreme Court mandated that CO2 be classified air contaminant, and must be regulated under the 1990 Clean Air Act, during the Bush Administration. The case is known as Massachusetts V. US EPA, and was settled after four years of deliberation, in 2007 [http://www.pewclimate.org/epavsma.cfm].
The EPA was under legal obligation to do so. To accuse them of acting unilaterally is to deceive the public.
In the words of the Supreme Court,
("EPA can avoid taking further action only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do . . . . If the scientific uncertainty is so profound that it precludes EPA from making a reasoned judgment as to whether greenhouse gases contribute to global warming, EPA must say so . . . . The statutory question is whether sufficient information exists to make an endangerment finding." Id. at 533-34.)
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