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Court
Upholds Greenhouse Gas Rule; Congress Needs to Step Up
by Nicolas
Loris
Today, the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously upheld
the
Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) finding that carbon dioxide and
other
greenhouse gas emissions are a threat to public health and the
environment.
Although not a surprising decision, the ruling is a disappointing one.
Unless
Congress prohibits the EPA’s regulatory assault on fossil fuels,
Americans will
suffer from dramatically higher energy costs and a slower economy-all
for no
noticeable change in the Earth’s temperature.
In 1999,
several groups of environmental activists sued the EPA to force the
agency to
regulate carbon dioxide from motor vehicles. Eventually the case made
it to the
Supreme Court; in April 2007, the Court ruled that carbon dioxide and
five
other greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are pollutants and can be
regulated under
the Clean Air Act. The Court ordered the EPA Administrator to determine
whether
these CO2 emissions were dangerous to human health and the environment
and
whether the scientific consensus on the effects of GHGs was settled.
In 2009,
the EPA issued its decision, known as an endangerment finding,
determining that
carbon dioxide (a colorless, odorless, non-toxic gas) is a
pollutant-not
because it has any direct human health impact, but because-according to
some-it
can lead to sea level rises, stressed water resources, increased size
and
quantity of wildfires, and other effects linked to global warming.
Since the
EPA has long ignored the disagreement among the scientific community
regarding
the EPA’s classification of CO2 as a pollutant as well as the magnitude
of
man-made warming, industry groups contested that the courts should
reverse the
EPA’s ruling on the grounds that it was arbitrary and capricious. When
it comes
to why climate change is occurring and how fast, the real scientific
consensus
is that there is no consensus. Despite a lack of scientific consensus,
the
challenge faced an uphill battle, because the courts are very
deferential to
agency fact-finding. The Supreme Court is unlikely to take up the case.
We need a
permanent fix to prevent unelected bureaucrats from regulating CO2 and
from
implementing major policy changes that have not been passed by
Congress. The
EPA is unnecessarily meddling with America’s energy markets and
allowing the
federal government to manage our economy.
Regulating
carbon dioxide will significantly increase energy prices and
insignificantly
reduce global temperatures. Since an overwhelming majority of our
energy needs
are met by fossil fuels, these rules directly raise the cost of
electricity,
gasoline, diesel fuel, and home heating oil.
But the
pain doesn’t stop there. Businesses, faced with higher energy costs,
will pass
those costs on to consumers. However, if a company has to absorb the
costs,
high energy costs squeeze profit margins and prevent businesses from
investing
and expanding.
The EPA’s
regulations will not reduce CO2 enough to have any meaningful effect.
Attempting to reduce CO2 unilaterally will have an insignificant impact
on
overall global emissions. Chinaand India’s CO2 emissions are rapidly
increasing
as they continue to expand their respective economies, and they have no
intention of scaling back economic growth to curb emissions. Even if
the EPA
were to reduce U.S. carbon emissions 83 percent below 2005 levels by
2050 (what
cap-and-trade bills called for), it would constitute a negligible
portion of
worldwide emissions and do nothing to impact global temperatures.
The most
effective approach to such harmful, bureaucratic regulatory
undertakings would
be to permanently prohibit any federal regulators from using greenhouse
gas
emissions as a reason to slow or prevent economic activity. A
comprehensive
approach would prevent the EPA and other federal regulators such as the
U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service from using any environmental act to impose
regulations based on climate findings, including the Clean Air Act, the
Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National
Environmental
Policy Act.
Congress
must stop the implementation of this drastic energy tax.
Source:
blog.heritage.org
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