Obama’s Eco Nazis’ Overreach

Hat Tip to Michelle Malkin.

Update 4:30pm Eastern. The Murkowski resolution to stop the EPA power grab failed on a 47-53 vote.

The 6 Dems who voted with Rs to try and head off the eco-usurpation…

Landrieu, Lincoln, B. Nelson, M. Pryor, Bayh, Rockefeller.

Remember in November.

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/06/10/senate-showdown-over-epa-power-grab/

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) proposed a resolution that would have banned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating carbon emissions. The EPA, at Obama’s behest, is pushing for even more power and control over what is and isn’t considered “carbon emissions”. This is an extension of the Cap and Trade farce.

From Freedom Action:

Freedom Action urges Senators to vote Yes on Thursday on S.J. Res. 26, Senator Lisa Murkowski’s Resolution of Disapproval of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Endangerment Finding. Senate passage of the Murkowski Resolution will be the first step in stopping EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate the economy into stagnation. This is a key vote that will have a major impact on Americans’ future living standards.

Senators who vote No on the Murkowski Resolution are voting for a regulatory train wreck that will result in much higher energy prices, less money in consumers’ pockets to spend on other things, and lost jobs in manufacturing industries that will lose competitiveness from higher energy costs. It is therefore critically important for the Senate to pass the Murkowski Resolution on Thursday and begin the process of taking back Congress’s authority from an out-of-control EPA.
http://freedomaction.org/

GOP Sen. James Inhofe:

……The debate over the Murkowski resolution began even before the resolution was introduced in January. It really began 11 years ago, when the International Center for Technology Assessment, along with 18 other organizations, petitioned EPA to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and trucks under the Clean Air Act.

That petition went to then-EPA Administrator Carol Browner, but she never acted on it. And that was really no surprise, considering the US Senate, just two years earlier, voted 95 to 0 against the ruinous Kyoto Protocol.
So the decision on the petition carried over into the Bush Administration. In 2003, the Bush EPA denied the petition, which prompted a predictable raft of lawsuits by some states and environmental groups.

The case-called Massachusetts v. EPA-made its way to the Supreme Court, which in 2007 ruled that CO2 is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and that EPA must make a fundamental decision: either greenhouse gases from cars and trucks “endanger” public health and welfare or they don’t; or the science is so uncertain that it can’t make a decision either way.

The clock ran out on the Bush Administration, so this critical question of “endangerment” under the Clean Air Act carried over into the Obama Administration. In December last year, to no one’s surprise, the Obama EPA decreed that there is in fact endangerment.

This decision has far-reaching implications for how we use energy, how this country is governed, how businesses are regulated and controlled, and how we conduct our daily lives.

Make no mistake: despite testimony to the contrary by senior officials, the Obama Administration was not forced by the Supreme Court to choose endangerment. As I noted, they had a choice, and they made the wrong choice. They chose to make an endangerment finding based on the flawed scientific conclusions of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

By now everyone in this body is familiar with the work of the IPCC. This is the UN body that represents-at least according to some-the so-called “scientific consensus” that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are causing catastrophic climate change. But the Climategate scandal shattered the consensus once and for all.

……Climategate scientists-again, these are no ordinary scientists; they are supposedly the best and brightest of the climate community-refused to share their work with those who disagreed with it; they undermined peer-review by blocking publication of legitimate work by skeptics; and they trashed the reputations of anyone who dared question their findings.

An independent inquiry conducted by the UK’s Information Commissioner concluded that the scientists employed by the University of East Anglia, and who were at the center of the Climategate controversy, violated the UK’s Freedom of Information Act.

……Let me be blunt: EPA’s growing regulatory regime will lead to one of the greatest bureaucratic intrusions into the lives of the American people. Peter Glaser, an attorney with Troutman Sanders, and one of the foremost Clean Air Act attorneys in the country, said that EPA’s endangerment finding will lead to federal regulation of schools, hospitals, nursing homes, commercial buildings, churches, restaurants, hotels, malls, colleges and universities, food processing facilities, farms, sports arenas, soda manufacturers, bakers, brewers, wineries, and many others.

Imagine heading to church on Sunday to find the doors locked because it couldn’t afford to install Best Available Control Technology on its boiler. Of course EPA dismisses this and similar examples as nothing more than empty scare tactics. Besides, they contend, we exempted those facilities in our tailoring rule-that’s right, they’re out, so don’t worry.

……To get around this unmitigated administrative and economic disaster, EPA just changes the rules. That’s right: it merely decreed that regulations would apply only to facilities that emit more than 100,000 tons starting next year. That threshold would be tweaked over time and apply to sources at differing stages. But the point is clear: EPA can’t just change the unambiguous intent of Congress. 250 tons is 250 tons.

So don’t be fooled: EPA can’t wave away inconvenient provisions in the Clean Air Act with a regulatory wand. EPA’s so-called tailoring rule is now the focus of 14 lawsuits. It seems almost certain that the DC Circuit will overturn it and force EPA to grapple with the regulatory nightmare of its own creation.

Read the whole thing: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=22ae7874-802a-23ad-444a-c2112140bcdb

This is another item on the list of the Dems’ power grabs. They want total control over every aspect of our lives. The legacy of the current regime will be one of a hubris-laden autocracy. It has nothing to do with a clean environment and everything to do with power.

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