Federal agencies are increasingly defining dry land as “wetlands” and “waters of the United States” based on sweepingly expansive interpretations of the Clean Water Act. They then send compliance orders to property owners, restricting use of their property. The test for what is a wetland has become so vague that owners often cannot figure out the status of their property without a court ruling. But the government claims that courts cannot decide this issue unless the owners first go through lengthy permit proceedings or unless they’ve been hit with potentially ruinous enforcement proceedings.
The government’s claim is now being contested in a case before the Supreme Court. In Sackett v. EPA case, landowners Mike and Chantell Sackett hoped to build a home on their half-acre lot in the Priest Lake area of Idaho’s Panhandle, but four years later found themselves in an unexpected legal battle with EPA. The agency claimed the property was a wetland even though it was in a residential neighborhood with houses on either side of it. EPA told the couple they would have to return the property to its original state and seek a costly development permit, or else be slapped with a fine in the tens of thousands of dollars. What’s more, the agency refused to grant the Sacketts a hearing on its ruling.
For a primer on the President’s Clean Water Act power grab, click here.
To read CEI’s amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to allow property owners to promptly contest federal agency directives imposing wetland restrictions on private land, click here.
Two nights ago on Glen Beck TV, CEI’s Chris Horner discussed the case. See video of his appearance below.
Just over half our electricity is produced by coal. For decades, greens have tried in vain to reduce the use of coal, lobbying for regulations on how it is mined and the chemical compounds it emits when burned. But the global warming scare seems to have finally given them some traction.
For the first time, applications to build new coal-fired power plants are being rejected based on their emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2)—and not just a few plants. Of more than 150 coal plant proposals submitted to regulators for approval in recent years, by the end of 2007 just thirty-five had either been built or were under construction. An astounding fifty-nine of the proposed plants were cancelled, abandoned, or put on hold because of concerns over CO2 emissions. Many coal plants are falling victim to aggressive legal challenges by the Sierra Club, whose “Stopping the Coal Rush” website sports a database and map proudly showing the various plants being attacked by green groups.
And lawsuits aren’t the greens’ only weapon in this campaign, as they now insert themselves directly into big business deals. Incredibly, greens played a key role in the $45 billion buyout of the electric utility TXU Corp by a group of led by the private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts in 2007. Prior to the buyout, TXU had angered greens by planning to build eleven new coal-fired power plants. So the KKR group reached out to the activists, who agreed to end their campaign against TXU and to support the buyout in exchange for KKR’s capitulation to two green demands: not building eight of the eleven plants, and having TXU support federal carbon-reduction legislation.
Since the late 1970s, California has prided itself as being a laboratory for progressive environmental policy. Not coincidentally, since the late 1970s, California’s once-mighty manufacturing sector has left the State.
I could care less about the California’s self-inflicted wounds, although I would find them humorous, all else being equal. Alas, I am forced to care, because the state’s massive Congressional delegation is adept at enacting federal laws that nationalize California’s boneheaded environmental standards. This is no laughing matter.
With this danger in mind, consider the first two paragraphs of an article published yesterday by Bloomberg, about California’s newly minted cap-and-trade scheme:
House Majority Leader John Boehner said in a statement yesterday that he will continue to support a Republican proposal that would tie expanded energy production on federal lands and in offshore areas to highway funding: “In the coming weeks and months, the House will take action on the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act, which will link expanded American energy production to high-priority infrastructure projects like roads and bridges in order to create more jobs.” We previously noted this development here on GlobalWarming.org in November. I had been holding out hope that House GOP leadership would adopt a New Year’s resolution disavowing this flawed proposal… unfortunately, here we are.
In December, National Review Online published a brief op-ed of mine explaining the problems with “drilling for roads” and the danger such a funding mechanism would pose to the Highway Trust Fund:
Barack Obama swept into the Presidency promising a new political order, one characterized by “transparency” and “openness.” Three years later, the President’s lofty campaign promises are belied by the Environmental Protection Agency’s record of suppression.
Federal agencies cannot issue regulations willy-nilly; rather, they are bound to rules stipulating administrative procedure, in order to ensure the voice of affected parties is heard. Obama’s EPA, however, evinces a troubling tendency to circumvent these procedural rules. Regulated entities are being subjected to controversial, onerous regimes, before they even have the opportunity to read the rules, much less voice an objection. The wayward Agency is exercising an unanswerable power, straight out of a Kafka novella.
Former President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus’s conclusion to his book Blue Planet in Green Shackles at first doesn’t seem like it directly pertains to environmental or energy issues at all, but most profoundly does. His argument strikes at the heart of environmentalist arguments for energy regulation, rationing, public planning, and other environmentalist agendas. While he doesn’t deny that environmental problems exist, he answers the question “What to do?” much differently than an environmentalist would.
Blue Planet in Green Shackles was published by CEI in 2008
What to do? The first, and in fact, the only reasonable answer to the question is “nothing,” or rather “nothing special.” It is necessary to let the spontaneity of human activity—unrestrained by any missionaries of absolute truths—take its course, or else everything will get worse. The aggregate outcome of independent actions of millions of informed and rational individuals—unorganized by any genius or dictator—is infinitely better than any deliberate attempt to design the development of human society.
Communism demonstrated that megalomaniac human ambitions, immodesty, and lack of humility always have a bad end. Although the system of human society is to some extent robust, although it has its natural defense mechanisms and can bear a lot (just as nature itself can), every attempt to command the wind and the rain has so far always turned out to be very costly and ineffective in the long term and to have devastating effects on freedom. The attempts of environmentalists cannot lead to different ends. In any complex system (such as human society, economy, language, legal system, nature, or climate), every such attempt is doomed to failure. Humankind has already had this experience and—together with the various “revolts of the masses”—again and again has tried to forget it.
Socialists and environmentalists have usually believed that the more complex a system, the less it can be left to itself and the more it has to be masterminded, regulated, planned, and designed. That belief is not true. Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. Hayek, and the whole Austrian school of economics have—for some, perhaps a bit counterintuitively—demonstrated that just the opposite is the case. It is possible to control and design only simple systems, no complex ones.
A topic CEI has written about frequently gets covered in The New York Times, the bizarre requirement by the EPA that refiners spend up to $7 million on ghost “credits” from the EPA in lieu of purchasing cellulosic ethanol, which doesn’t exist:
When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.
But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.
In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.
That’s a good summary. Let’s look at one specific paragraph, where the coverage borders on editorializing in support of an agency under attack by the right:
Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide. In fact, while it may seem harsh that the Environmental Protection Agency is penalizing them for failing to do the impossible, the agency is being lenient by the standards of the law, the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.
Congratulations on winning the Iowa Caucus! I know you have worked long and hard for the Republican Presidential Nomination.
On the night of the caucuses, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (DWS), was heard saying: “Republicans, in general, aren’t enthusiastic about any of their choices.” This is clear as evidenced by the search for the “not Romney” candidate.
While DWS was correct, one thing all Republicans are enthusiastic about is beating President Obama. They will unite behind that cause. If you are to be the candidate who unites the Republican Party, you are going to have to differentiate yourself from President Obama to win support beyond Iowa. You’ve got several problems there.
One problem is your view on manmade climate change. The American public doesn’t view global warming as an important issue—this is especially true for Republicans. Yet President Obama continues to tout green jobs. In the name of saving the planet, his administration’s policies are making it difficult for people to feed their families and heat their homes.
Last week on Fox News Channel’s Your World with Cavuto, my colleague Chris Horner discussed the Environmental Protection Agency’s “environmental justice” grants. Horner’s thesis is that these grants are used to “teach people to oppose economic activity in the areas where they most need economic activity.” See the whole segment:
Just a few days after our previous post outlining the ethanol industry’s brave, unprecedented, legendary, and 100% voluntary decision to give up the ethanol tax credit, we see that there are still other subsidies that they are interested in keeping:
But the head of the Renewable Fuels Association—Bob Dinneen—says the industry will work to ensure that tax credits for cellulosic ethanol will continue past the end of 2012.
“We think that the production tax credit and the depreciation that is now allowed for cellulose needs to continue,” Dinneen says.
Extension of the cellulosic tax credits will send an important signal to the marketplace and encourage investment in the next generation of ethanol technology, Dinneen says.
And to those who consider it just another federal subsidy for ethanol…
“They need only look at the tax incentive for grain-based ethanol that has just expired–that demonstrates you don’t need a tax incentive forever,” Dinneen says.
“You need to encourage investment—convince the marketplace that there is going to be consistent government support that will allow the industry to get on its feet.”
Cellulosic ethanol has not yet been produced commercially, but according to the U.S. Department of Energy web site, several commercial cellulosic plants are under construction.
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