Fox News finally does a good news report:
The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn’t move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a “command-and-control” role over the process in a way that could hurt business.
“This is not an ‘either-or’ moment. It’s a ‘both-and’ moment,” she said. “If you don’t pass this legislation, then … the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area,” the official said. “And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it’s going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty.” “So, passing the right kind of legislation with the right kind of compensations seems to us to be the best way to reduce uncertainty and actually to encourage investment,” the official said.
What EPA means is that if Congress doesn’t pass the cap-and-trade bill, they will just make CO2 a pollutant and regulate it that way. It’s ridiculous.
gosh. i love living in soviet russia.
so if CO2 is a pollutant, then what will happen when i exhale? oops, broke the law. sorry, i just exhaled. dang. i did it again.
“Now Listen Here….”
A little power seems to go a long way. In 30 yrs of watching politics, The EPA has NEVER truly been a factor.
Why would they be starting now?
#1, absolutely.
#1, Matt, the next thing to be regulated might be ammonia since we all produce this when we sweat.
Other than that, water vapor may be next since it too is a green house gas (and in greater abundance than CO2).
In the end, we all just need a little government help to protect everyone from everyone else’s breath.
Easy. Congress just needs to pass a law to defund the EPA.
That’s funny. Joe Barton from Texas is making public an internal report created BY the EPA that states that CO2 has no effect on global warming. How will the EPA explain that CO2 is not harmful, but will be considered a pollutant.
Obviously, respired carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. But industrial quantities (hundreds of thousands of tons) can be. So what’s the scam here, that the EPA is threatening to do its job (and of course set up an incredible bureaucratic boondoggle), or that posters are making straw man arguments? Or is it all just business as usual?
A well trained grunt with a M40A3 and 100 rounds has a very small carbon footprint, but could prevent America from becoming a member of the 3rd world, if transported to Copenhagen and put to work, now.
We wonder why manufacturing jobs go China?
Obama administration talks out of two sides of their mouth. Smoke and mirrors it seems.
Here’s a description of Carbon dioxide euthanasia on “small” mammals.
http://acc.ubc.ca/SOP/SOP009E4.html
[Please drop the WWW from URLs as WordPress doesn’t display it properly. – ed.]
The problem with CO2 being regulated as a “pollutant” is there are no control technologies to reduced emissions. There is no scrubber, bag house filter etc thatcan reduced the amount of CO2 emitted like there are for otehr currently regulated pollutants (NOx, SOx, particulates, etc).
The only way to effectively reduce emissions is to reduce those activities that generate CO2, ie slow the economy.
The leftists don’t seem to care about a backlash at the polls anymore. What are they going to do to the polls? They have one more year to do whatever it is to stop the elections.
The executive branch has already overruled the congress on funding Acorn. They could overrule congress with regards funding a leftist EPA.
@#7 “Obviously, respired carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. But industrial quantities (hundreds of thousands of tons) can be. ” Quantities are not an issue or we’ll need to kill off all animals which are producing much more than the industry,… Pollutant, scientifically should be something that Nature can’t deal with via normal ecological cycles. Say, heavy metals… You introduce them in non-trace quantities and they stay in ecosystem and accumulate until we artificially remove them. Proportions of CO2 which are known to have existed in the past vastly dwarf what we are introducing… Life didn’t cease but have thrived at those times. Until we bypass those concentrations in significant way – no it ain’t pollutant.
11 / 12, Speaking of methane I how will they control flatulence? And since you can’t stop people from being flatulent, I suppose this will be another gravy train for government revenue? 🙂
13 / 14, Obama can always declare martial law.
Crap, forgot to brush my teeth. Too bad for you guys!!! hahahaha
#15, dusan,
Proportions of CO2 which are known to have existed in the past vastly dwarf what we are introducing… Life didn’t cease but have thrived at those times.
Wrong. Certain life flourished, but not all life. Current life is adapted to live within the normal parameters of the environment. That, includes temperature, water, food supply, protection from the elements (including solar radiation), etc.
Maybe if you are a giant insect and can tolerate the environment of the Carboniferous period this would work for you. I don’t think it would work for too many others.
This is currently within the purview of the EPA. Two years ago the Supreme Court even chided the Bush Administration for denying the EPA do anything about CO2 and green house emissions.
Congress either MUST write new regulations or the EPA must write them. Of course, the wing nuts think ignoring Supreme Court orders don’t count. Which is why they miss the Bush fiasco so much.
#6 Tim, wrt that report you noted, recall that the Bush Admin loaded its science agencies with political hacks, especially FDA and EPA. Everything that came out of those agencies during the second Bush term needs to be evaluated for excessive political influence. Quite a lot of the EPA’s output during that time was pure shit.
pedro,
Fox News finally does a good news report:
Wrong again. This is NOT a good news report.
It is biased, quotes Administration officials with no collaboration, does not interview any politicians except those supporting the Republican viewpoint, proposes a viewpoint that is contrary to accepted science without question or dispute, and does not mention the EPA is under a court order to make regulations concerning CO2.
#20, Mr. Baggins,
Quite a lot of the EPA’s output during that time was pure shit.
Well, the EPA is tasked with governing the amount of “shit” released as it is a pollutant. Yet as the case for the Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency is when the EPA declared that even if CO2 was a pollutant, they still wouldn’t regulate against it. So here, their shit was no shit which caused the Supreme Court to rule the shit did belong with the EPA which, under Bush, were too constipated to give a shit anyway.
EPA is bluffing.
The Clean Air Act requires major sources to jump through very clear hurdles before any major construction or modification can be approved.
And for starters, a “major source” is defined by the Act (not EPA) as an emitter of pollution ranging from 10 tons per year to 250 tons per year, depending on the pollutant and the location of the source. EPA is proposing the major source threshold for CO2 emitters at 25,000 tons per year. (How do you think “arbitrary and capricious” will sound in a court room?)
The Clean Air Act requires EPA to establish a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS)for a pollutant that is protective of human health and the environment. This requires EPA to conduct toxicological studies to ascertain appropriate health-based standards. Just how is this going to work when CO2 levels don’t impact human health until concentrations approach the percent level, not the ppm levels under discussion.
The Clean Air Act requires EPA to designate areas as being in either attainment with the NAAQS or in violation of the NAAQS. States with portions declared to be in non-attainment with NAAQS are required to develop and implement a plan which will bring it into compliance within 5 years. Just how in the hell is this supposed to work when CO2 is considered uniformily distributed throughout the world? How can Nebraska be in compliance if India exceeds EPA’s standard? Oh, by the way, states failing to meet the standard are denied federal funds for road construction and mass transit.
There are literally dozens (hundreds?) of legal challenges that EPA will need to defend, without the benefit of statutory authority. Courts have traditionally taken a dim view of EPA asserting powers not granted by statute.
They want Congress to pass a new law and are using this as a threat. But it’s a bluff, pure and simple, because they know they can’t win this in court.
There should be a constitutional amendment clearly defining any compulsion or threat directed towards congress as treason, with an established independent body working full time on investigating and standing by to prosecute such crimes. Congress exists as a check and balance.
Americans elect a president every 4 years, but once they pick one of usually only two candidates they are stuck.
Look at what Obama promised re: troops, and what he has done. He has defied the majority and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, except CONGRESS.
The Vietnam war, a tragic mistake of epic fail proportions, ended only when congress decided to cut the funds. The voice of the majority was finally heard, but not through the “administration”.
@23- You are correct. There are many legal hurdles that must be crossed for the EPA to regulate this as a pollutant. I spoke to a consultant today that said their is a ridiculous amount of lawsuits that will brought against the EPA if this passes.
When did the EPA become a separate branch of government. It is under the jurisdiction of the executive branch. So if the EPA is threatening to regulate CO2, then it’s the Obama administration that is doing the threatening.
Either Congress can pass a law limiting what the EPA can do, or Obama can issue an executive order to the EPA.
If the EPA has the power to regulate, what’s the point of having Congress weigh on this at all?
Furthermore, how did we get in this situation?
The EPA is effective, at fulfilling it’s agenda. The Congress, is not.
#19 Fusion — you have your facts wrong. What the Court ruled (5-4) is that nothing in the Clean Air precludes EPA from regulating CO2 as a pollutant. But it also instructed EPA to either regulate CO2 under CAA or to tell the Court why it can’t. The Bush administration laid the groundwork for why it can’t, but the Obama administration scrapped all that and is claiming that CO2 fits under the CAA just fine (a bluff, as I posted earlier).
And another VERY important item that I failed to mention in my earlier post: All data, documents, and models used by EPA in establishing its regulation of CO2 as a pollutant must be available for public scrutiny. Let’s see if the AGW crowd can hide its dirty laundry during the discovery phase of a legal challenge.
Sounds like it’s time for someone in Congress to propose a bill to deauthorize the EPA or at least explicitly strip their ability to regulate CO2. When is congress going to wake up and stop letting the executive branch usurp their authority by decree? Even congressmen who want CO2 regulated should realize this is just another executive branch power grab and put them in their place.
I think the EPA at first brought some real value to help eliminate some very clear environmental problems. The trouble for them now is, much of the work is done. Ongoing monitoring and enforcing compliance with regulations doesn’t make the front page. No, they have to have something to do so they nit pick everyone and make up problems to justify their continued existence. Common to bureacracies, when the job is done, make up some work to keep the pay checks rolling.
In other news, President Obama’s poll numbers continue to plumet.
http://www.chrisweigant.com/index.php/obamapollwatch/