E.P.A. Delays Tougher Rules on Emissions

From the New York Times:

The Obama administration is retreating on long-delayed environmental regulations — new rules governing smog and toxic emissions from industrial boilers — as it adjusts to a changed political dynamic in Washington with a more muscular Republican opposition.

The move to delay the rules, announced this week by the Environmental Protection Agency, will leave in place policies set by President George W. Bush. President Obama ran for office promising tougher standards, and the new rules were set to take effect over the next several weeks.

Now, the agency says, it needs until July 2011 to further analyze scientific and health studies of the smog rules and until April 2012 on the boiler regulation. Mr. Obama, having just cut a painful deal with Republicans intended to stimulate the economy, can ill afford to be seen as simultaneously throttling the fragile recovery by imposing a sheaf of expensive new environmental regulations that critics say will cost jobs.

The delays represent a marked departure from the first two years of the Obama presidency, when the E.P.A. moved quickly to reverse one Bush environmental policy after another. Administration officials now face the question of whether in their zeal to undo the Bush agenda they reached too far and provoked an unmanageable political backlash.

What next? Will Obama try legislation rather than regulation? I doubt that will fly with the new Republican dominated Congress.

It seems that elections do have consequences.

h/t

Putting the brakes on the EPA

From the Politico, Jerry Lewis pledges to strip funds for climate rules.

Specifically, Lewis said he wants to target EPA’s “ongoing arbitrary interpretation of the Clean Air Act” to begin regulating greenhouse gases in January. He said he will refuse to support federal funding to regulate greenhouse gases in the 112th Congress “unless Congress passes bipartisan energy legislation specifically providing the authority to do so.”

Lewis is hoping to be chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee come January and as such, would have his hands on the purse-strings.

h/t: Captain Ed

Challenging the EPA

The EPA isn't getting a free ride on its decision to regulate CO2. We reported earlier that Utah, Texas and Virginia had challenged the ruling. Now another big player, non-government this time, has waded into the fray:

The world’s largest private sector coal business, the Peabody Energy Company (PEC) has filed a mammoth 240-page “Petition for Reconsideration,” a full-blown legal challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The petition must be answered and covers the entire body of leaked emails from ‘Climategate’ as well as those other ‘gate’ revelations including the frauds allegedly perpetrated under such sub-headings as ‘Himalayan Glaciers,’ ‘African Agricultural Production,’ ‘Amazon Rain Forests,’ ‘Melting Mountain Ice,’ ‘Netherlands Below Sea Level’ as well as those much-publicized abuses of the peer-review literature and so called ‘gray literature.’ These powerful litigants also draw attention to the proven criminal conduct by climate scientists in refusing to honor Freedom of Information law (FOIA) requests.

Peabody is, in effect, challenging the right of the current U.S. federal government to introduce cap and trade regulations by the ‘back door.’

via climategate.com

Update: There's more.

Industry groups, conservative think tanks, lawmakers and three states filed 16 court challenges to U.S. EPA's "endangerment" finding for greenhouse gases before yesterday's deadline, setting the stage for a legal battle over federal climate policies.

Update 2: John O'Sullivan offers general legal strategies for challenging what is fast being recognised as the greatest criminal fraud of all time.

Common law tells us that governments cannot impose climate regulations on their citizens by regarding similar facts differently on different occasions. This principle is known among legal practitioners as stare decisis (i.e. judges are obliged to obey the set-up precedents established by prior decisions). I’ve examined two of the recently filed climate skeptic petitions filed by U.S. corporations. In both there is the common argument that ‘arbitrary and capricious’ governmental climate-related decisions have been imposed upon the people. These EPA regulations, they argue, must be over turned because the science that underpins them has been proven to be fraudulent and significantly based on subjective elements. Thus, the basis of the EPA’s decision to determine that carbon dioxide is a pollutant is unlawful due to the ‘arbitrary and capricious’ components within the EPA’s fact finding process.

Virginia joins fight against EPA

Via Climategate.com:

This week, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed a petition that challenges the EPA’s recent finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gases contribute to alleged climate change.

Good for Virginia for standing up to the EPA.

Previous: Utah and Texas.

EPA battle heats up

It was reported here the other day in Utah vs the EPA that there's a fight brewing between some states and the federal government's EPA.

Texas joins the battle:

DALLAS, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Texas and several national industry groups on Tuesday filed separate petitions in federal court challenging the government's authority to regulate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

If Obama and the Dems think they can accomplish by regulation what they cannot achieve by legislation, they may find out it ain't going to be that easy.

Utah vs the EPA

I smell a fight brewing here between states like Utah and the federal government that wants to accomplish by regulation (EPA) what it can't pass by legislation (cap & trade). This via the Guardian:

Utah delivers vote of no confidence for 'climate alarmists'

Carbon dioxide is "essentially harmless" to human beings and good for plants. So now will you stop worrying about global warming?

Utah's House of Representatives apparently has at least. Officially the most Republican state in America, its political masters have adopted a resolution condemning "climate alarmists", and disputing any scientific basis for global warming.

The measure, which passed by 56-17, has no legal force, though it was predictably claimed by climate change sceptics as a great victory in the wake of the controversy caused by a mistake over Himalayan glaciers in the UN's landmark report on global warming.

But it does offer a view of state politicians' concerns in Utah which is a major oil and coal producing state.

The original version of the bill dismissed climate science as a "well organised and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate "tricks" related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome". It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a "gravy train" and their efforts would "ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty".

Sounds reasonable to me. But that language proved a little too strong for the Utah legislature.

By the time the final version of the bill came to a vote, cooler heats apparently prevailed. The bill dropped the word "conspiracy", and described climate science as "questionable" rather than "flawed".

However, it insisted – against all evidence – that the hockey stick graph of changing temperatures was discredited. It also called on the federal government's Environmental Protection Agency to order an immediate halt in its moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions "until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated".

The poor reporter couldn't help herself... "against all evidence" ...is she kidding? Michael Mann's hockey stick has been long discredited.

Global Warming: a means to an end

Writing at Canada Free Press, Dr. Tim Ball says that President Obama knows little and cares less about global warming or climate change. For him, it’s simply a means to a political end.

Obama pursues the claim that CO2 is causing global warming regardless of the lack of scientific evidence and the corruption of science exposed in files leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Global warming was the vehicle chosen by the Club of Rome to achieve one world government as stated in their 1974 publication “Mankind at the Turning Point.” “It would seem that humans need a common motivation… either a real one or else one invented for the purpose... In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. (My emphasis). Global warming was chosen and then “invented” and now we know how.

Thwarted by the evidence and a cooling world Obama avoided Congress through Lisa Jackson, his appointed head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They identified CO2 as a pollutant to impose draconian, arbitrary regulations with the ability to cripple or shut down industries as they see fit. The great engines of capitalism and democracy are now firmly in the hands of left wing bureaucrats. Shannon L. Goessling, Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) Executive Director and Chief Legal Counsel has filed a lawsuit against the EPA saying, “The scientific basis for the EPA Endangerment Finding is flawed, based on questionable and potentially fraudulent data, and certainly does not rise to the level of certainty necessary to upend the American economy, toss millions out of work, and which promises little or no climate change benefit over the next half-century. Using the Clean Air Act as a weapon and a shield does not justify the bigger agenda of command-and-control.”

Update 1: More on the above quote from the Club of Rome.

"In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself."

- The Club of Rome's The First Global Revolution (1991) by Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider - Page 75

Some more quotes from so-called environmental leaders. You've seen some of them here before, but this is an excellent compilation.


Update 2. More on the book Mankind at the Turning Point: The Second Report to The Club of Rome by Global Research.ca

In 1974 the book Mankind at the Turning Point: The Second Report to The Club of Rome [1] was published. This report states the need to create an "organic" or a truly interdependent society as the only way to save the world from the almost overwhelming world problematique.

According to The Club of Rome, the world problematique is the set of interlocking world problems, such as, over population, food shortages, non-renewable resource depletion, environmental degradation, etc. With the use of absurd, exponentially based computer models, the complete unravelling of society and perhaps the biosphere was predicted. Not surprisingly the only solution capable of adverting global catastrophe is the development of an organic society. As I will show, a global organic society is only a euphemism for totalitarian world government.

The Club of Rome is a premiere think tank composed of approximately 100 members including leading scientists, philosophers, political advisors and many other characters who lurk in the shadows of power.