The Environmental Protection Agency called a Daily Caller report “comically wrong” this morning. That is an interesting analysis given that the EPA’s hideously bad global warming regulations are more of a joke than actual regulatory structure. Either way, the fun and games will soon end when Americans are paying higher energy prices and businesses are shedding jobs as a result of these “comically wrong” regulations. Earlier this week, The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle wrote that “The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” …
Video chat rooms at Ustream The Bloggers Briefing is a weekly policy discussion hosted by The Heritage Foundation. You can watch the live feed (above) via Ustream.tv beginning at noon today. We have three guests speaking at today’s briefing: Cal Dooley, president of the American Chemistry Council, will discuss how the NAT GAS Act would impact U.S. businesses. Heritage Action has documented growing opposition to the bill, which expends billions of dollars for failed energy subsidies. Fourteen lawmakers have already withdrawn their support for the legislation. Alex Cortes, executive director of Let Freedom Ring, …
In 1999, the Clinton Environmental Protection Agency released a report required by the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act which estimated the economic benefits of the legislation to be $170 billion in 2010. Sounds believable. Fast forward to last week, the Obama EPA released their own report on the economic benefits of the Clean Air Act in 2020. Total CAA benefits according to the Obama the EPA: $2 trillion. A more than 1000% increase. Did the Clean Air Act get 1000% better in just 10 years? Or did the …
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is developing the reputation for moving forward with plans Congress cannot accomplish. Last Congress, Representative Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) tried to expand the powers of the EPA by introducing legislation that would replace the term “navigable waters” in the Clean Water Act with “waters of the U.S.,” which would significantly expand what the EPA could regulate. Reforming the Clean Water Act is necessary, but this is the wrong way to go about it. Congress rejected the Oberstar-Feingold approach, but now EPA …
Last Friday, House Republicans re-introduced legislation that would fund the federal government for the remainder of fiscal year 2011. This iteration included deeper cuts that would reduce spending for the rest of the year by a total of $100 billion compared to the President’s budget proposal. Though the new proposal includes $16 billion in unwise cuts to security spending, taking their initial spending reduction proposal back to the drawing board for more cuts shows lawmakers’ commitment to putting the federal budget on a sustainable path, and is a promising step …
The economic harms of carbon cap-and-trade policies are so well established that even a state as reliably leftist as California has never been able to pass a plan through their legislature. Instead, environmentalists in the Golden State have relied on the California Air Resources Board (CARB), whose appointed governing board is democratically unaccountable, to develop and impose carbon regulations by bureaucratic fiat. And this past December, much to the delight of many environmentalists, CARB passed the first carbon cap-and-trade scheme in the United States. Everything looked ready to go … …
Yesterday marked the 40th birthday of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Air Act (CAA), and environmentalists celebrated by reminding us how beneficial the regulation has been at improving air quality in the U.S. Now the EPA wants to turn the Clean Air Act’s birthday party into an all-out rager by allowing them to do what elected officials could not: regulate carbon dioxide (CO2). First things first. Air quality was improving before the passage of the 1970 CAA. Environmentalists should give more credit to innovation and less to top-down regulation. …
Nowhere in the Clean Air Act does the term “greenhouse gas” (GHG) appear, yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is invoking the statute to unleash economy-busting emissions strictures. The agency’s latest power grab is not going unchallenged, however. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has filed a federal lawsuit to force the EPA to reconsider the regulatory scheme that will otherwise encumber the energy and manufacturing sectors as well as millions of offices, apartment buildings, shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, houses of worship, theaters, and sports arenas.
Whatever prospects lie ahead for cap and trade legislation moving through the Senate might not matter if the Environmental Protection Agency continues forward on its path to regulate carbon dioxide. The EPA’s endangerment finding, which took place earlier this year, gives the agency the authority to use Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs). New restrictions on automobiles were the first step in what could eventually be a long, economically painful set of regulations imposed by unelected government bureaucrats – unless Congress steps up to the plate and stops …
For Earth Day’s 40th anniversary, President Obama and the White House released a video praising Americans for our environmental awareness, and urging us to get personally involved with improving our local environments. The president’s message of individual responsibility is commendable but his message that we’ll spend and regulate our way to a clean energy economy is troubling. “It’s clear change won’t come from Washington alone,” the president said in his message. The reality is that most productive change comes from outside Washington. The government is good at obstructing that progress …
