Indulge me for a moment, and imagine if an American president nominated the CEO of ExxonMobil to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Do you think that would fly with the public? I doubt it. Regardless of the nominee’s beliefs on environmental policy, it looks wrong. Yet the flip side also holds true: A rainbow warrior is an incongruous choice to head the Commerce Department. Again, it simply doesn’t look right.
This is why I’m amazed that President Barack Obama nominated John Bryson, co-founder of the environmental special interest Natural Resources Defense Council, to be the Secretary of Commerce. Mr. Bryson isn’t merely a discordant nomination; his record suggests he’s an awful one. Environmentalist lawyers, such as the ones employed by the NRDC, are a clear and present danger to job creation. At every turn, they litigate to stop employment opportunities that would benefit human beings, in order to protect insects, or minnows, or America’s supposed population of pregnant, subsistence fisherwomen. For environmental extremists like John Bryson, economic development—the purpose of the Commerce Department—takes a backseat to critters and phantom communities.
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Regulating air quality under the Clean Air Act is like eating Pringels: Once you pop, you can’t stop. That is, the Clean Air Act is structured such that regulation begets more regulation. This chain reaction is a major reason why the Obama administration’s decision to regulate greenhouse gases pursuant to the Clean Air Act was either foolish or diabolical. In so doing, the Environmental Protection Agency opened Pandora’s Box. It wants to choose when and where it regulates greenhouse gases, but it doesn’t have this discretion. Environmentalist special interests can and will use the courts to force the EPA’s hand. By the same token, however, this means EPA can use such suits as political cover, claiming it does not want to regulate this or that industry, or does not want to regulate under this or that Clean Air Act provision, but has no choice because ‘the court made us do it.’
To wit, last week the Center for Biological Diversity, an extremist environmental organization, won a significant case against the EPA in the D.C. Circuit Court. The litigation stemmed from the Center for Biological Diversity’s desire for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation sector under the Clean Air Act. The first step towards such regulation is for the EPA to determine that greenhouse gases from airplanes “endanger” public health and welfare. In December 2007, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the EPA to make this “endangerment” finding. To date, the EPA has refused. So the Center for Biological Diversity sued to compel action.
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Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2012 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that would block EPA from using any funds to:
- Develop greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles and vehicle engines manufactured after the 2016 model year; and
- Consider or grant a Clean Air Act waiver allowing the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to establish GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles and vehicle engines manufactured after the 2016 model year.
Capital Alpha Partners, LLC, a firm providing political and policy risk analysis to institutional investors, rightly notes that the amendment, sponsored by Rep. Steve Austria (R-Ohio), could “shift the debate over fuel economy standards and pressure the administration to soften its 56.2 mpg target floated two weeks ago.” In addition, the measure “would slice two of the three currently-involved agencies [EPA and CARB] out of the rule-making loop,” leaving fuel economy regulation to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), “the one agency seen as ‘most reasonable’ by industry and other observers.”
Capital Alpha reckons the measure “has a 25% chance of enactment into law this year.” If enacted as part of the one-year EPA funding bill, the measure would expire on September 30, 2012. “However,” says Capital Alpha, “should it make it into law, opponents would be hard-pressed to strip it out in future years.” An exciting prospect for liberty-loving Americans! [click to continue…]
Last Thursday I appeared on Fox Business News to discuss the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, the Obama administration’s latest salvo in its war on coal. See the segment here.
Truth be told, the Cross-State Rule is probably the least objectionable of this administration’s many anti-energy regulations. The Clean Air Act’s “good neighbor” provision (section 110(a)(2)(D)(i)(I)) requires upwind states to control emissions that affect the ability of downwind states to meet federal air quality regulations. In 1997, and again in 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency tightened air quality standards for ozone and particulate matter. Computer models suggest that emissions from 27 upwind states contribute to violations of these standards in downwind states. If the EPA did not regulate this interstate transport of ozone and particulate matter, downwind states would sue to force the EPA’s hand. According to the EPA’s economic analysis (which is almost assuredly a low-ball), the Cross-State Rule will cost the power industry in the eastern U.S. $6.5 billion through 2014. The coal-fired power industry will bear virtually all of these costs.
That said, the Cross-State Rule only can be described as “least objectionable” relative to the Obama administration’s other anti-coal regulations. For example, it’s not as bad as destroying the surface coal mining industry in Appalachia in order to protect a bug that lives for a day. Nor is it as egregious as the Utility MACT, one of the most expensive regulations ever, whose primary justification is to protect America’s supposed population of pregnant, subsistence fisherwomen. If, however, the Cross-State Rule is considered on its own, absent a comparison to other policies that are part of the current administration’s war on coal, then it is very objectionable. This is due to the EPA’s seemingly vindictive treatment of Texas.
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A new study by Quest Offshore, prepared for the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), finds that a return to the pre-moratorium permitting rate for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would create 430,000 jobs by 2013. [click to continue…]
Despite a downward trend in the prices at the pump, overall energy costs are rising. While most people could not quote the price they are paying per kilowatt hour—as they can for a gallon of gas, they do know their electricity bills are skyrocketing. They also understand that the government policy of picking winners and losers makes taxpayers the losers.
As legislators fight to show their spending-cutting credentials, folks phoned their Senators in June and expressed enough ire that a Democrat-sponsored amendment easily won bipartisan support: by a margin of 73-27 the Senate voted to end ethanol subsidies. The Feinstein amendment was attached to a bill that did not pass and, therefore didn’t change anything. Its importance is mostly symbolic and represents more than just ethanol.
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The EPA gives millions to the environmental groups that sue it. “When the EPA settles or loses those suits, it then awards the groups millions more in attorneys’ fees,” notes legal commentator Walter Olson. “‘The EPA isn’t harmed by these suits,’ said Jeffrey Holmstead, who was an EPA official during the Bush administration. ‘Often the suits involve things the EPA wants to do anyway. By inviting a lawsuit and then signing a consent decree, the agency gets legal cover from political heat.’ Holmstead called this kind of litigation ‘sweetheart suits.'”
The EPA gave millions to groups that sued it to get it to regulate greenhouse gases, like the Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council. Those groups brought a lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), which vastly expanded the EPA’s jurisdiction. More recently, they sued to compel the EPA to issue greenhouse gas “performance standards” for power plants and refineries. In a recent settlement, the EPA agreed to do just that. Critics “said the costly settlement was ‘concocted in secret’” and that other lawsuits by EPA grantees resulted in collusive settlements that cost the economy billions, increased the EPA’s powers, and gave environmental groups things that they were unlikely to win in any court ruling.
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Quick, which one of these statements does NOT come from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four?
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
INCANDESCENT BULBS AREN’T GETTING BANNED…IN FACT, THEY ARE GETTING BETTER.
Tough choice? OK—take a few more seconds.
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Well, what many predicted has come true, subsidies for ethanol aren’t actually going away:
Ethanol advocates Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), meanwhile, won multi-year extensions of tax credits for producing “cellulosic” ethanol — which isn’t made from corn — and installing ethanol blender pumps at gas stations.
The deal will steer $1.33 billion — two-thirds of the savings from ending the blenders’ subsidy — into deficit reduction, while the balance of $668 million would support the other incentives, according to the lawmakers.
Any rational proposal for the future of ethanol should aggravate industry trade groups, and they’re predictably cheer-leading about how they’re being fiscally responsible, fueling our freedom, and all that other nonsense. It seems as if they saw the light at the end of the tunnel was fading fast, and they hopped on a train that would funnel a remaining 600 million into the industry. [click to continue…]
Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan on Thursday upheld the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Environmental groups had sued to change the listing to endangered, which would lead to much more restrictive protection measures. The State of Alaska and industry groups represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation had sued to de-list the polar bear.
The decision to uphold the Interior Department decision made during the George W. Bush administration does not stop the litigation underway to overturn a separate ruling made by then-Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and upheld by the current Secretary, Ken Salazar, that the threatened listing should not be used to force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (which allegedly cause global warming which allegedly threatens the sea ice that polar bears depend on for hunting seals), but should be confined to protecting polar bear habitat in Alaska.
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