Where You Go, EPA will Follow
Posted July 18th, 2008 at 12.55pm in Energy and Environment.
Bob gets up for work and promptly leaves his apartment complex at 8:00 a.m. It’s an important day for Bob; he’s flying to Chicago to take an important client out to dinner. But as he’s leaving, he notices a handful of men inspecting his apartment complex. Puzzled and a bit concerned, he moves in for a closer look: It’s the Environmental Protection Agency.
Shrugging it off, he stops by work to pick up his briefcase and notices more EPA officials trolling around his office building. Not wanting to miss his flight, he shrugs them off again, assuming he’ll catch the scoop when he returns to the office.
Checking into the hotel, it’s the same deal. The EPA is conducting a full inspection of the hotel. Has the EPA taken over every building in the United States? Finally, he has the time to ask what all the commotion is. The EPA official responds by telling Bob that under the Clean Air Act’s prevention of significant deterioration program, the EPA is measuring building designs on a case-by-case basis to determine the level of carbon dioxide emitted from the building. Any building that emits more than 100 tons of greenhouse gases a year would be subject to a complicated and arduous permitting process.
And when Bob goes to take his client out to dinner? All right, you get the point. Under the EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), this program can become a reality. Small businesses, schools, restaurants and any building over 100,000 square feet will be subject to the EPA’s regulatory power.
This regulation would be unprecedented and disastrous. The EPA would literally have its nose in everyone’s business. Anyone that is a small business owner, restaurant owner, or even a residential home owner with a gas burner should take advantage of the EPA’s 120 comment period to suggest what this could do to their investments.
- Author: Nick Loris
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July 19, 2008 Terrance, Richmond, VA writes:
Simply amazing. I can’t understand who in the world possible thought it was a good idea to have the EPA snooping around and measuring our lives this much. If someone, anyone, can show me the text in the Constitution where it gives the Executive Branch the right to create a fourth branch (lets call it the Bureaucratic Branch) and that that branch has the right to measure our gas production, I’ll vote Democrat. It reminds me of the movie the Ghostbusters. You’ll remember that in the movie, the EPA agent (I believe that his name is Walter Peck) goes into the private business of the Ghostbusters and shuts down the containment unit for no other reason than that he can’t understand it. The causes major problems for the heroes of the movie as all the Ghosts escape. The real EPA, but trying to regulate carbon output is mimicking the movie EPA in playing with something that they don’t understand, and in real life, we are the heroes that are going to have to deal with it (through higher taxes, lower standards of living, more interference by the government in our lives etc, etc, etc.)