College students enticed by the environmental activist movement should give serious consideration to the consequences of their actions before jumping on this bandwagon. This unsettling epiphany came to me as I read EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s recent remarks condemning the coal industry at a Sierra Club-hosted event at Howard University. Her speech incited students to join the green ranks of the Sierra Student Coalition’s “Campuses Beyond Coal” initiative, which aims to eliminate campus-owned coal plants in a move to go “beyond coal” and onto “100% clean energy solutions.” Whether students recognize it or not, they do not live in a bubble and their university is not isolated from the community in which it is embedded. Students who support this cause must be held accountable for destroying the livelihoods of working people of that community and the economic opportunity for future generations that industries like the coal industry afford.
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The environmentalist movement continually touts itself as the well-meaning shepherd of America’s public health. It seems to me, however, that their cause consistently runs counter to our country’s economic health, which is deserving of some much-needed TLC. This week the Energy and Commerce Committee surveyed Rep. Kristi Noem’s (R-SD) Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act of 2011 (H.R. 1633), which aims to provide farmers and ranchers some protection from economic uncertainty due to overregulation by the US EPA.
In short, this bill bans EPA from revising the current National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for large particulate matter (PM) for one year, and prevents the agency from regulating rural nuisance dust (“farm dust”) unless it proves to have significantly adverse health effects, of which there is currently no evidence. When Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) asked EPA Assistant Administrator for Air Quality Regina McCarthy why the EPA has not changed the coarse PM standard if they feel it has adverse effects, she answered that there is scientific uncertainty.
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If there was ever a bully that deserved detention, it is the bureaucrats that run unchecked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. One only has to listen to the heartbreaking accounts of ordinary, innocent American citizens who have been treated like criminals by this rogue agency to get a sense of a Goliath crushing David into the ground. Senator Rand Paul’s roundtable forum, “Property Wrongs: A Discussion with Victims of the U.S. Government’s Assault on Private Property,” held on October 12, 2011, gave folks who have been bullied by government agencies the chance to share their disheartening realities with the public.
The discussion began with Sen. Paul addressing the problems we face today: keeping up with the myriad regulations imposed upon the individual by unelected, unaccountable, faceless bureaucrats. Instead of the passage of laws by Congress, where public debate and influence can be exercised, agencies like the EPA rule by administrative fiat, which is leading to exorbitant penalties that do not fit the “crime.” The agencies responsible for this over-criminalization of laws have taken a toll on property owners and their faith in the government as the protector of their rights.
The once lovely face of Lady Liberty now wears the quintessential looks of the mean kid on the playground: class bully. The saying “Because I said so”, comes to mind. Rand Paul is working on a bill targeted at putting bureaucracy bullies in a well-deserved time-out. The stories I will share are of those who have been bullied specifically by the EPA’s ever-expansive interpretation of its own authority under the Clean Water Act.
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