Will the Supreme Court permit EPA climate decisions to stand?

If it does, the impacts on our lives, livelihoods, liberties and living standards will be enormous

Guest opinion by Paul Driessen

The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency. The case will determine how far EPA can extend its regulatory overreach, to control “climate changing” carbon dioxide from power plants and other facilities – by ignoring the Constitution’s “separation of powers” provisions, rewriting clear language in the Clean Air Act, and disregarding laws that require the agency to consider both the costs and benefits of its regulations and what it is regulating.

Put more bluntly, the Court will decide whether EPA may deceive the American people, by implementing regulations that have no basis in honest science and will be ruinous to our economy. It is the most important energy, economic and environmental case to come before the Court it in decades.

Suppose a used car dealership routinely rolled back speedometer mileage, deleted customer complaints from its website, posted fabricated compliments, and lied about defects and accidents, to sell more cars. Or a manufacturer misstated its sales and bottom line, failed to mention major safety violations and fines, and made false claims about new product lines, to attract investors and inflate stock prices?

Both would be indicted for fraud. Now apply the same standards to EPA, whose actions and regulations will affect far more people: virtually every family, facility, company and community in the United States. Jurors would likely rule that the agency is engaged in systematic deceit, dishonesty and fraud.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy insists there is “no more urgent threat to public health than climate change.” She is determined to impose President Obama’s anti-hydrocarbon agenda. “I just look at what the climate scientists tell me,” McCarthy told Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Translated, she means she talks only to those who advocate climate alarmism, and ignores all contrary scientists and evidence.

In fact, thousands of scientists and studies argue that there is no empirical, observational evidence to support any of her claims. Recent NOAA and NASA temperature data confirm that global warming ended in 1997 and continues today, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase steadily, improving plant growth worldwide. Seas are rising at barely seven inches per century, and there is no evidence that recent weather events are any more frequent, intense or “dangerous” than what mankind has dealt with forever.

There is no convincing evidence that carbon dioxide emissions have replaced the powerful, complex, interrelated natural forces that have always driven climate and weather changes. No evidence supports the notion that slashing CO2 emissions and trashing our economy will “stabilize” global temperatures and climate variations, or that developing countries will stop pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

EPA brushes all this aside. The agency just assumes and asserts human causes and disastrous results, disregards any and all experts and evidence to the contrary, and ignores any and all costs imposed by its regulations.

It has also violated the Constitution, by rewriting specific Clean Air Act provisions that specify 250-ton-per-year emission limits, in sections that EPA is relying on for its climate rulemakings. To shut down coal-fired power plants, the agency illegally and arbitrarily raised the threshold to 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, and ignored the fact that in 692 bills Congress never contemplated applying these sections to greenhouse gases. Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, EPA will continue rewriting the law, gradually tightening its standards to control millions of natural gas generators, refineries, factories, paper mills, shopping malls, apartment and office buildings, hospitals, schools and even large homes.

EPA and other agencies have paid out billions in taxpayer dollars to finance and hype “research” making ludicrous claims that manmade global warming is hidden in really deep ocean waters or obscured by pine tree vapors; tens of thousands of offshore wind turbines could weaken hurricanes; and climate change will cause more rapes and murders. They have used “climate disruption” claims to justify giving eco-activist groups billions of taxpayer dollars to promote alarmist climate propaganda … spending tens of billions on crony-corporatist “green energy” and “climate resilience” programs … and forcing the United States and other nations to spend hundreds of billions on worthless climate change prevention capers.

EPA’s so-called “science” is intolerable “secret science.” The agency refuses to share it with outside experts or even members of Congress and businesses impacted by its regulations. The agency claims this taxpayer-funded information is somehow “proprietary,” even though it is being used to justify onerous regulations that dictate and impair our lives, livelihoods, liberties, living standards and life spans. EPA refuses to be transparent because it wants to prevent any examination of its internal machinations.

Just as bad, EPA routinely ignores its own scientific standards, and many climate reports it relies on come straight from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, as the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow observed in its amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court in this case, the IPCC has been caught red-handed presenting student papers, activist press releases and emailed conjecture as “peer-reviewed expert reports.” It has been caught deleting graphs that clearly show its computer models were worthless, and employing junk models like the one that generated Michael Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” to support assertions that it is 95% certain that humans are causing climate change chaos.

These computer models are built on unproven alarmist assumptions, have never been “validated” and are not merely “unverifiable.” They are flat-out contradicted by real-world evidence right outside the EPA windows, making their results worthless for sound, legitimate public policy. Any yet they drive policy.

In violation of federal laws and executive orders, EPA hypothesizes, concocts or exaggerates almost every conceivable carbon “cost” – to agriculture, forestry, water resources, coastal cities, human health and disease, ecosystems and wildlife. But it completely ignores even the most obvious and enormous benefits of using fossil fuels and emitting plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide: affordable heat and electricity, jobs, transportation, better crop growth and nutrition, and improved living standards, health and welfare.

In reality, hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide benefits outweigh their alleged costs by as much as 500 to 1! That means EPA’s “climate change mitigation” rules impose costs on society that exceed even EPA’s exaggerated regulatory benefits by as much as 500 to 1. The EPA “cure” is far worse than the “disease.”

And let’s not forget that one of Ms. McCarthy’s senior advisors devising the agency’s climate change policies and regulations was none other than John Beale – the guy who bilked us taxpayers out of $1 million in salary and travel expenses for his mythical second job as a CIA agent. To suppose his fraudulent actions did not extend to his official EPA duties defies belief. And yet EPA has apparently taken no steps to reexamine Beale’s analyses or conclusions.

EPA has done all of this knowingly, deliberately, with full knowledge of the grossly deficient foundations of its pseudo-science and policies – to drive an anti-hydrocarbon agenda, without regard for the consequences that agenda will inflict on millions of Americans and billions of people worldwide.

This goes beyond mere sloppiness or incompetence. It is dishonest. It violates the law. According to standards applicable to every citizen and business in the land, it is fraudulent. By controlling the energy that powers our homes, cars, businesses and nation, EPA’s carbon and carbon dioxide policies will control and impair our economy, wipe out tens of millions of jobs, and kill thousands of people – for little or no health or environmental benefits.

The real threat to public health and welfare is not climate change. It is EPA and what this rogue agency is doing in the name of preventing climate change. If the Supreme Court allows this, by giving carte blanche authority to EPA, the battle will rage on countless other fronts, because voters are sick and tired of being lied to, manipulated, defrauded, and forced to pay outrageous prices for oppressive regulations.

Democrats say they plan to use climate change to attack Republicans in 2014. I say, Bring it on!

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.