Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-OK, the ranking GOP member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, predicts dire economic consequences from the Obama administration’s decision to go forward with the EPA’s “endangerment” ruling to justify massive new economic regulation aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
The decision, announced earlier today by EPA Adminitrator Lisa Jackson, will, according to Inhofe, have “far-reaching implications for each and every American. The Administration’s endangerment finding will lead to a wave of new regulations and bureaucracy that will wreak havoc on the American economy, destroy millions of jobs, and force consumers to pay more for electricity and gasoline.”
But besides all of the practical reasons to oppose the EPA decision, Inhofe pointed to another, even more basic reason why the decision is flawed – It’s based on junk science:
“Lisa Jackson, Obama’s EPA Administrator, admitted to me publicly that EPA based its action today in good measure on the findings of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. She told me that EPA accepted those findings without any serious, independent analysis to see whether they were true.
” Of course, we now have thousands of emails showing several of the UN’s top scientists apparently evading laws requiring transparency, defaming scientists with opposing viewpoints, and manipulating data to fit preconceived opinions. They cooked the science.
“For example, some of the scientists involved worked to exclude inconvenient facts — most notably the fact that there has been no global warming since 1998. The scandal, which has come to be known as ”Climategate,’ has rocked the scientific community. The Atlantic Monthly said, ‘The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.’ And the U.K. Telegraph said, ‘This is the worst scientific scandal of our generation.’
“The UN is investigating it; leading academic and scientific institutions are investigating it; and I am investigating it. Yet, Democratic leaders in Congress and the Obama Administration have dismissed it. I agree with Sen. Joe Lieberman, who said of Climategate, ‘We ought to be demanding that that be cleaned up. We ought to be angry about it.'”
And yet, Jackson moves forward with the Obama administration’s Plan B in the event Congress refuses to pass either the Waxman-Markey or Boxer-Kerry Cap-and-Trade anti-global warming proposals. Go here for a video of Inhofe’s full statement of the EPA decision today.
There can be little doubt that EPA will in the absence of effective counter-vailing power from either Congress or the federal courts use the endangerment rule as the chief battering ram to remake the current U.S. economy from one based on capitalism and carbon to one based on government fiat that creates a green depression.
As Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey observes:
“By classifying CO2 and methane (among other so-called greenhouse gases, it can inject itself into just about every industry in the US. Energy production will be its primary target, but the EPA has also gone after coal mining on the basis of the Clean Water Act; it will certainly not be shy about using this new authority to kill coal mining altogether. It will also impact agriculture, especially dairies and cattle ranching, as well as transportation. The entire manufacturing sector will have to answer for its output.”
There are millions of people in America whose very livelihoods depend upon their access to electricity produced by power plants burning coal. There is simply no way that alternative energy sources will be able to replace coal-generated electricity in the near future (that’s decades, not months).
There are grim times ahead if EPA is allowed to go forward.
