The Los Angeles Times editorial board last week penned a widely circulated thesis that “[t]he environment and public health will be thrown under a bus for the sake of his [President Barack Obama’s] reelection in 2012.” While I would love, love, love for this to be true, it isn’t; the L.A. Times editorial board’s contention that the president has abandoned greens to score political points is bunk.
In fact, this administration is waging a war on conventional energy supply and demand in this country, with very real repercussions for everyday Americans. Just ask the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, oil and gas drillers along the Gulf, or coal miners in Appalachia, all of whom have urged the Congress to roll back the president’s regulatory crackdown in an effort to protect their livelihoods.
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The 2012 presidential election is starting to bend some of the Obama Administration’s environmental and energy policies. I have noted previously that the White House realizes that gas prices are a huge threat to President Barack Obama’s re-election. Consequently, the President is trying to shift the blame to oil companies and speculators while at the same time talking up what his Administration is doing to increase domestic oil production. The reality, of course, is that the Obama Administration has moved across the board to decrease oil production in federal lands and offshore areas.
Another sign of the Administration’s focus on the President’s re-election is that the Environmental Protection Agency has suddenly started paying attention to the concerns of industry. The timetables for new regulations of coal ash disposal and of surface coal mining in Appalachia have been extended. EPA announced last week that it was reconsidering, but not delaying, some parts of its new Clean Air Act rule for cement plants. This week EPA suspended indefinitely a similar rule for industrial boilers that it had promulgated in February. EPA said that it will conduct more analyses and re-open the public comment period for the boiler rule.
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Three of the Congress’s most influential energy policymakers this week “urged” the Environmental Protection Agency to delay an ultra-costly regulation targeted at coal-fired power plants, the source of 50 percent of America’s electricity generation. For the sake of keeping the lights on, all Americans should hope the Obama administration heeds these Congressmen’s request.
Senate Environment and Public Works Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-OK), House Energy and Commerce Chair Fred Upton (R-MI), and House Energy and Power Subcommittee Chair Ed Whitfield (R-KY) yesterday sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson demanding a longer comment period for a proposed regulation known as the Utility HAP MACT
[The HAP stands for “Hazardous Air Pollutant,” and the MACT stands for “Maximum Achievable Control Technology”; to learn what these terms entail, read this summary of the regulation, Primer: EPA’s Power Plant MACT for Hazardous Air Pollutants.]
The EPA issued the Utility HAP MACT in mid-March, and it gave the public 60 days to comment. The Congressmen “urge the agency [to] extend the comment period to a minimum of 120 days to allow adequate time for stakeholders to assess and comment on the proposal.”
The extended comment period is well warranted. For starters, the EPA included a number of “pollutants” in the proposed regulation that shouldn’t be there. The EPA’s authority to regulate hazardous air pollutants from power plants is derivative of a study on the public health effect of mercury emissions. The EPA’s proposed regulation, however, would regulate acid gases, non-mercury metals, and organic air toxins, in addition to mercury. Yet the EPA’s evidence only pertains to mercury. The EPA’s authority to regulate these non-mercury emissions, despite their not having been a part of the aforementioned study, will be challenged, and the DC Circuit Court ultimately will decide.
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