The question is, are we a country of laws made by our representatives, or a country of laws made by bureaucrats? The constitution provides only one answer, and Ms. Jackson would do well to read it.
Latest News release from the EPA:
CONTACT:
EPA Press Office
February 9, 2011
Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Opening Statement Before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Power
As prepared for delivery – Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify about Chairman Upton’s draft bill to eliminate portions of the Clean Air Act, the landmark law that all American children and adults rely on to protect them from harmful air pollution.
The bill appears to be part of a broader effort in this Congress to delay, weaken, or eliminate Clean Air Act protections of the American public. I respectfully ask the members of this Committee to keep in mind that EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act saves millions of American children and adults from the debilitating and expensive illnesses that occur when smokestacks and tailpipes release unrestricted amounts of harmful pollution into the air we breathe.
Last year alone, EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act saved more than 160,000 American lives; avoided more than 100,000 hospital visits; prevented millions of cases of respiratory illness, including bronchitis and asthma; enhanced American productivity by preventing millions of lost workdays; and kept American kids healthy and in school.
EPA’s implementation of the Act also has contributed to dynamic growth in the U.S. environmental technologies industry and its workforce. In 2008, that industry generated nearly 300 billion dollars in revenues and 44 billion dollars in exports.
Yesterday, the University of Massachusetts and Ceres released an analysis finding that two of the updated Clean Air Act standards EPA is preparing to establish for mercury, soot, smog, and other harmful air pollutants from power plants will create nearly 1.5 million jobs over the next five years.
As you know, Mr. Chairman, the Supreme Court concluded in 2007 that the Clean Air Act’s definition of air pollutant includes greenhouse gas emissions. The Court rejected the EPA Administrator’s refusal to determine whether that pollution endangers Americans’ health and welfare.
Based on the best peer-reviewed science, EPA found in 2009 that manmade greenhouse gas emissions do threaten the health and welfare of the American people.
EPA is not alone in reaching that conclusion. The National Academy of Sciences has stated that there is a strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that the climate is changing and that the changes are caused in large part by human activities. Eighteen of America’s leading scientific societies have written that multiple lines of evidence show humans are changing the climate, that contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science, and that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on society, including the global economy and the environment.
Chairman Upton’s bill would, in its own words, repeal that scientific finding. Politicians overruling scientists on a scientific question– that would become part of this Committee’s legacy.
Last April, EPA and the Department of Transportation completed harmonized standards under the Clean Air Act and the Energy Independence and Security Act to decrease the oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of Model Year 2012 through 2016 cars and light trucks sold in the U.S.
Chairman Upton’s bill would block President Obama’s plan to follow up with Clean Air Act standards for cars and light trucks of Model Years 2017 through 2025. Removing the Clean Air Act from the equation would forfeit pollution reductions and oil savings on a massive scale, increasing America’s debilitating oil dependence.
EPA and many of its state partners have now begun implementing safeguards under the Clean Air Act to address carbon pollution from the largest facilities when they are built or expanded. A collection of eleven electric power companies called EPA’s action a reasonable approach focusing on improving the energy efficiency of new power plants and large industrial facilities.
And EPA has announced a schedule to establish uniform Clean Air Act performance standards for limiting carbon pollution at America’s power plants and oil refineries. Those standards will be developed with extensive stakeholder input, including from industry. They will reflect careful consideration of costs and will incorporate compliance flexibility.
Chairman Upton’s bill would block that reasonable approach. The Small Business Majority and the Main Street Alliance have pointed out that such blocking action would have negative implications for many businesses, large and small, that have enacted new practices to reduce their carbon footprint as part of their business models. They also write that it would hamper the growth of the clean energy sector of the U.S. economy, a sector that a majority of small business owners view as essential to their ability to compete.
Chairman Upton’s bill would have additional negative impacts that its drafters might not have intended. For example, it would prohibit EPA from taking further actions to implement the Renewable Fuels Program, which promotes the domestic production of advanced bio-fuels.
I hope this information has been helpful to the Committee, and I look forward to your questions.
____________________________
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h/t to WUWT reader Michael C. Roberts
It appears to be some sort of announcement that we have become the Royal Subjects of the Queen of the Air, Empress of Energy, Redemptrix of America’s Power Plants and Oil Refineries, etc, etc..
These are the “real details” about that EPA-funded self-intersted “study” that she is citing from CERES…. Parts of the original are from Penn Energy’s web site
Enviro’s Claim: Emissions control rules to create 1.4 million new jobs (New EPA Regs->New Costs)
Penn Energy On-Line Reports ^ | 02-08-2011 | RACookPE1978
Posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 9:32:40 PM
http://www.freerepublic.com
Report: Emissions control rules to create 1.4 million new jobs
Emissions control rules being proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will provide economic benefits and jobs across much of the U.S. in the next five years, according to a new report from Ceres, a network of investors and environmental organizations.
The report found that the power sector will invest almost $200 billion total in capital improvements over the next five years. Total employment created by these capital investments is estimated at 1.46 million jobs, or about 290,000 jobs on average in each of the next five years. Among the states that will see the biggest job gains from this construction activity are Virginia, Tennessee, Illinois, North Carolina and Indiana.
The study also finds that permanent operation and maintenance (O&M) jobs associated with pollution control installations and new generation construction will be created in all states. Although some O&M jobs will be lost because of projected retirement of older, less efficient coal plants, these losses will be offset by new O&M jobs, resulting in an approximately 4,200 net job gain across the 36 states studied.
The new report evaluates job impacts under two Clean Air Act rules expected to be finalized in 2011: the Clean Air Transport Rule, and the Utility MACT rule.
To download a copy of the report, visit http://www.ceres.org/epajobsreport.
Notice that this “study” – funded for and by the EPA and the environmental groups to “justify” the (very real) job losses and economic pain as energy costs are raised regionally to pay for these UNNEEDED changes in the emission control systems of existing power plants itself is propoaganda tool.
This 200 billion in “unneeded” new construction for unneeded new emission systems? Yet another Obama “tax” – that he hasn’t raised on businesses in the US.
Notice also that the new emission systems themselves waste money, time, fuel, power, and material and effort to build, but that they will ALSO cost money to operate, require more material to operate, and will waste power operating. Net efficiency of the plants goes DOWN!
She’s screaming for money and willing to lie AND KILL for it.
So, I have a better idea. Lewt us point our how DANGEROUS being wrong on all this could be. Latitude, people in the US have died from CO2–from alcoholic beverage fermentation, when enormous concentrations can be produced. That is not the issue here, but amounts between 300 ppm and 800 ppm. At those levels, increases are highly beneficial.
Letting the EPA get away with slpppy science like this could both starve and directly physically harm people. EPA needs to be directed to study the actual effects of 200 to 1000 ppm on humans and farm animals and wildlife. If we build animal and bird nest boxes, CO2 rises in them. Does this directly contribute to increased survival? Could we increase wildlife by encouraging schoolchildren to build birdhouses and animal nest boxes and install these in National Forests?
All this takes MONEY. I want some of that money for US, the skeptics (actual scientists).
If we don’t get this money, we might make mistakes that will not only sabotage the economy, but harm all life into the bargain. The danger there is actual and great. Truth to tell, it is far better established scientisfically than the warmist alarmism.
The warmist alarmists cheat. The CO2-loving alarmists don’t have to. The dangers I cite are real and the facts are on my side.
CRS, Dr.P.H.:
As a practicing realist for over 30 years, I take exception to your premise.
Many, or most of the claims you just made are exaggerations, in some cases outright misrepresentation. The Great Lakes were never “essentially dead”, thank you very much.
I am more amused than anything at claims by people that “if” the EPA or (insert name of greenie idealist organization) didn’t exist, we’d be awash in (insert pollutant: horse feces, mercury, acid rain, etc.)
That represents a fundamental belief that anyone NOT a self-described environmentalist is, by definition, a flaming MORON, and likely to destroy their immediate environment, and by extension, the planet. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
However, even putting that aside, remember that ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS, ABSOLUTELY.
Give some government organization unlimited power to control something and you will find people taking advantage of that power to further their own personal agenda.
Ms. Jackson is a perfect example of an absolutely corrupt individual. This little screed is a blatant (amateur) attempt to push greenie buttons, especially with its unnecessary and ridiculous plea to “saaaave the chiiiilldren!”.
She should be embarrassed. As should anyone who backs even a tiny portion of this CO2 regulation farce.
Fortunately for us, Her Majesty is in Her Royal Good Mood, and will use her Absolute Scientific Fiat to favor her subjects with her Sovereign automobile designs, which are best; and she will create an atmosphere on earth conducive to life, and save us from ghastly deaths, and create millions of jobs for our undirected and lost lives to be occupied with.
But what if we make her mad? haha
I’m having a hard time taking the EPA seriously any more.
“Meanwhile coal production in China increases at an astonishing pace, and most of the operating coal plants in China lack modern scrubbers to remove gross air pollution. In this regard, concerns over CO2 may be misplaced. It could be that black soot that settles on arctic ice is warming the northern polar regions more than the CO2 that accompanies that soot. And the ill-health attendant to that soot is beyond debate. The costs to remove genuine pollution, nitrogen dioxide, sulpher dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and toxic metals – is far, far less costly than attempting to sequester the CO2 emissions. And the technology to do this is well established.”
http://www.ecoworld.com/energy-fuels/chinas-coal.html
After China starts actively participating in an easily achievable reduction is actual pollutants, then we can talk about global CO2. Until then KMFA.
If 160,000 were saved here in America then there must be millions dead in China.
In other words: “This bill would impede our attempts to gain centralized government control of the United States economy”.
“Based on the best peer-reviewed science, EPA found in 2009 that manmade greenhouse gas emissions do threaten the health and welfare of the American people.”
I wonder how much of that peer-reviewed science was paid for by the EPA? It’s trivially easy for a government agency to fund research papers that say whatever the agency wants.
If the EPA takes credit for millions of lives saved, how many lives have they ended? The price of food has gone up as a result of EPA encouraged use of corn as fuel. How many children at the bottom of the economic ladder have starved as a result of this policy? If the climate really *is* warmer as a result of CO2 emissions, how many people have not frozen to death? The EPA administrator is not doing her job if she doesn’t count the deaths caused by the EPA’s action.
Ms Jackson,
Can you explain the EPA’s mitigation plan for H2O and O3, both of which are greenhouse gases, with severe pollution potential ?
In particular, gasoline powered automobiles typically emit more of the H2O pollutant, than they do of the CO2 pollutant.
Shouldn’t your priorities be to clean up the most prevalent problem first ?
The EPA has become a “Great Machine”. Something we learned in the 60’s about organizations and how, as they grow, they take on a life of their own and they seek out work/projects that they perceive they have the skills and power to do so they can grow and survive. The Columbia River Treaty between the USA and Canada was said by many to be a result of the BC Hydro Authority having developed a huge expertise in dams and river works and therefore needed the government to develop policies that would allow them to carry on. The Tennessee Valley Authority and the US Corps of Engineers have/had the same characteristics. I wrote a term paper on this in the 60’s but I don’t see any good references on the Internet, although I see something a bit a similar called “Complexity Theory” which makes the comparison between organizations and life forms – they feed, they grow, they adapt, they fight for their lives … but it is different from the Theory of Great Machines if I could find it.
http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Bun-Comp/Complexity-Theory.html
The EPA is what I would call a Great Machine that needs to keep feeding itself and growing in order to survive, but the result is they end up moving into areas where they really should not be. They have become so massive that its parts have no idea of the actual direction they are going, what their objectives are or the likely consequences of their actions while maintaining complete deniability as individuals or parts.
Great Machines must eventually fail under their own weight.
The argument that 160,000 lives were saved is completely specious. The number is derived something like this: If the atmosphere were replaced by solid soot to a depth of 1000 meters, six billion people would die. So, do some rectal plucking to come up with a curve between zero concentration and 100% soot and multiply the current point on the curve by six billion. Something like that, anyway.
They do the same kind of thing to come up with meaningless numbers for mortality to exposure to low levels of radiation. They ignore the fact that “harm” actually goes negative as you move away from the origin until you get well past the point of not being able to call it “low-level” any more.
Please if anyone can help, Chris Horner at CEI.ORG is litigating, “tangentially,” these issues as we speak. His organization can use all the support we can give.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly.
But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.
For the traitor appears not traitor, he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.
He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.”
– Cicero, 42 B.C.
I wasn’t going to comment on this, but after reading so many diatribes about the EPA (which were all well deserved) I decided a few observations are in order.
First, the EPA is not going to set a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) in ppm for CO2. NAAQS’s are set for “criteria” pollutants. IMO, the protocol for becoming a “criteria” pollutant is far too rigorous for CO2 ever to be declared a “criteria” pollutant. Instead, for mobile sources, the EPA is relying on section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act which states:
“(a) Authority of Administrator to prescribe by regulation
Except as otherwise provided in subsection (b) of this section—
(1) The Administrator shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. Such standards shall be applicable to such vehicles and engines for their useful life (as determined under subsection (d) of this section, relating to useful life of vehicles for purposes of certification), whether such vehicles and engines are designed as complete systems or incorporate devices to prevent or control such pollution.”
Note that the Administrator can set emission standards (grams/mile or grams/HpHr) for motor vehicles for anything the Administrator decides is an air pollutant. No wonder the SC decided that the EPA had the power to set emission standards for CO2 for mobile sources. Since the carbon comes from the fuel, these emission standards will really be fuel economy standards in miles per gallon..
For stationary sources such as power plants and factories, the approach is different. The EPA is relying on its New Source Review (NSR) permitting authority. Congress established the New Source Review (NSR) permitting program as part of the 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments. Read about it here:
http://www.epa.gov/nsr/
The NSR was never meant to be a means of controlling a non-criteria pollutant. So the Administration is going through the backdoor to get a cap-and-trade system established.
The reality is, even if congress passes a bill restricting EPA from acting on CO2, the president will never sign it. Only a change in the President in 2012 will stop the EPA from controlling CO2.
George E. Smith says:
February 10, 2011 at 1:53 pm
“”””” CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
February 10, 2011 at 10:20 am
*ahem* As a practicing environmental scientist for the past 30 years, I’ve seen the vast improvements made in the environment, thanks to initiatives from the EPA as well as their partners at the state and local level. (EPA sets the regs, and states implement & enforce them). “””””
Well I have no disagreement with your conclusion that the Clean Air Act may have resulted in cleaning up many different problems. I have no problem with the EPA continuing to implement the environmental laws.
I just don’t want them ususrping the Congressional powers, and actually making up their own environmental laws. How simple is that.
———
George, the EPA was created BY Congressional powers, with the leadership and vision of President Nixon:
The EPA was proposed by President Richard Nixon and began operation on December 3, 1970, after Nixon submitted a reorganization plan to Congress and it was ratified by committee hearings in the House and Senate.[3](Wikipedia)
The Supreme Court made an independent determination that CO2 and other GHG were air pollutants and handed this judgement to the EPA, so the USEPA has no legal option but to move forward on some plan. EPA does not make up laws, they make up regulations with the blessings of Congress. Big difference.
If Congress wants to yank the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide, then fine. However, when they are including other hazardous materials including nitrous oxide (N2O) generated by the manufacture of nitric acid, as well as chlorofluorocarbons, I get pretty upset.
They’ve even worked water vapor into the act, which could backfire…I’ve worked with large paper mills that had to reduce fog generated from massive cooling towers that caused problems on rural highways, and the local authorities operated under federal guidelines. The paper company would not have done anything otherwise.
The proposed laws that Inhofe and others are recommending have the potential to backfire badly. If you want nicely polluted air, I suggest you try Shanghai.
EPA knows that their approach to regulating greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act is unworkable; they are not interested in that. They are interested in finding vehicles by which they can initiate comprehensive regulation of the American economy. This is not a question of science, but of public policy.
There is, in my view, no competent evidence upon which EPA could make an endangerment finding. Using SCOTUS as an excuse to make such a finding is chintzy, sleazy politics at its worst. The litigation challenging their finding must continue, unless Congress enacts its ban on EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases, which legislation should be passed forthwith. And if the President vetoes it, he will be held to account in 2012, and will be hoisted by his petard and out of the White House.
EPA calculates the AQI for five major air pollutants regulated by the Clean Air Act: ground-level ozone, particle pollution (also known as particulate matter), carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. Carbon dioxide is not part of any AIR QUALITY INDEX. So why all the concern about carbon dioxide endangering human life ? STRANGE?
To CRS, Dr.P.H.,
In the hundreds of hours of reading I have invested in this issue, I have yet to hear an environmentalist decry the incredible WASTE of billions of dollars that were meant to clean up air and water directed to the sole purpose of eliminating carbon dioxide from our vast and chaotic atmosphere.
As carbon dioxide comprises .00035 of our atmosphere this is nothing but outrageous. Politicians worried by UN declarations of worldwide catastrophe funded this fear with a bottomless money pot. Unscrupulous universities and our own national science foundations followed that money and altered the scant and dubious “data,” backed by the good intentions of the common-sense and righteous willingness of Americans to do what we could to clean our air and water.
No one could have convinced me that there was a conspiracy here if I had not seen it myself. It is all there for you to find. The multiple statements made by NOAA, GISS, UN IPCC, James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt, Andy Revkin, Paul Krugman, Michael Oppenheimer and many others describe the immediate neccesity of de-industrializing the West, and reducing human population, sometimes by 90%.
If you choose to be ignorant of these readily available statements, then so be it. But it must be a choice you have made. There is no other explanation.
Saved 160,000 lives. It will produce millions of tons of CO2 to feed, house them and drive their autos.
Just to keep them unfrozen this winter will take a lot of petrol.
I am sure Browner and Jackson can’t detect contradiction in their mission or agenda.
“”””” CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
February 10, 2011 at 9:34 pm
George E. Smith says:
February 10, 2011 at 1:53 pm
“”””” CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
February 10, 2011 at 10:20 am
*ahem* As a practicing environmental scientist for the past 30 years, I’ve seen the vast improvements made in the environment, thanks to initiatives from the EPA as well as their partners at the state and local level. (EPA sets the regs, and states implement & enforce them). “””””
Well I have no disagreement with your conclusion that the Clean Air Act may have resulted in cleaning up many different problems. I have no problem with the EPA continuing to implement the environmental laws.
I just don’t want them ususrping the Congressional powers, and actually making up their own environmental laws. How simple is that.
———
George, the EPA was created BY Congressional powers, with the leadership and vision of President Nixon: “”””””
Sometimes I think I need to take courses in remedial English. I’m aware that the Congress created the EPA along with president Nixon; but I choose to disagree with those words “BY Congressional powers.” So just which of the 17 Congressional Powers did they use to create the EPA ?
And since we now have the EPA to make laws; why do we still need the Congress?
WE the People helped establish The Congress, and told it what they DO have the authority to do. Creating an EPA to replace them in making laws; was not one of the 17 things we authorised them to do.
I want ALL; as in each and every single law, to be written by, and voted on, by the elected members of the Congress; not by some otherwise unemployed and unemployable hacks; who answer to nobody.
We clearly made a mistake in providing for a Congress, if they aren’t going to write the laws we charge them with doing; but outsource them to Bangladesh or some other Constitutionally devoid of authorization amateurs.
There is an intellectual infection that is epidemic in our bureaucracy – equivocation. It is represented here as the confounding of “regulation” with “legislation” and elsewhere as the inability to distinguish ‘propaganda’ from ‘science.’ Symptoms include the use of poorly defined terms, facile shift of vocabulary in mid-stream, and “political correctness.’
CodeTech says:
February 10, 2011 at 2:21 pm
CRS, Dr.P.H.:
As a practicing realist for over 30 years, I take exception to your premise.
Many, or most of the claims you just made are exaggerations, in some cases outright misrepresentation. The Great Lakes were never “essentially dead”, thank you very much.
——
REPLY The Great Lakes were so heavily polluted before the Clean Water Act that vast areas were biologically dead, including Green Bay, Wisconsin. The lakes were full of coarse fish species, dead zones depleted of oxygen, and massive areas where PCBs and PBBs had been spilled for many years (Outboard Marine in Waukegan Harbor was a major polluter).
————
Here, let me teach you:
http://www.great-lakes.net/teach/pollution/water/water5.html
I’m alarmed at the tone on this thread of “SHUT DOWN THE EPA!” I work in countries that lack even the basics of air and water pollution, and it is not pleasant.
One refinery in Irapuato, Mexico caused my eyes to burn before it even appeared over the horizon.
Be careful what you wish for is all I ask. The direction Congress is heading may make the GHG arguments worse, by forcing them out of the regulatory control of the EPA and into the courts. “Noisome” pollution lawsuits are already being filed, and these will cause even greater harm.
The EPA’s finding, not the Supreme Court, classified CO2 as a dangerous pollutant. This was based upon the language of the “Clean Air Act”, which was found to be “Broad”, “Sweeping”, “Capacious” and covers everything airborne. Bottom line, the Congress defined CO2 as a pollutant, and can act to revise that act to reflect common sense.
The EPA relied upon IPCC, 2001 and ignored / suppressed and internal report urging caution. Alan Carlin wrote an EPA internal report:
Carlin, Alan. 2009. Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act (Based on TSD Draft of March 9, 2009). Scientific Blog. Carlin Economics and Science. March 16. http://www.carlineconomics.com/files/pdf/end_comments_7b1.pdf
Carlin took fire from the bureaucratic hierarchy. He later retired from government service.
Kazman, Sam. Letter to Environmental Protection Agency2009. Re: Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2009-0171. June 23. http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/Endangerment%20Comments%206-23-09.pdf
Here is the Supreme Court’s decision:
Justice Stevens. 2007. MASSACHUSETTS ET AL. v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ET AL. April 2.
Cite as: 549 U. S. ____ (2007) No. 05–1120. Argued November 29, 2006—Decided April 2, 2007.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf
Pp. 12–23.