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.
If the SCOTUS won’t stop obama from deporting a German family that wants to home school their kids, I don’t see them stopping obama on much of anything. Looking back, the German family should have enrolled their kids in public school first, gotten their American citizenship, then started home schooling them.
I’m guessing obama would have let them stay if he thought they could be brainwashed in the public common core school system. He knows that home schooling has become the enemy of common core.
I live in a small town in Idaho, and I am surprised by how many kids I have talked to who say they are home schooled. For parents who want to home school their own kids, there are now Internet programs that are already prepared, just like regular schools, but you get to decide which one has the curriculum you want. I have had several parents tell me how easy it is to home school their kids.
Of course SCOTUS will rule for the EPA. The EPA is central to the undermining of our once capitalist economic system. Zippy is all about top-down control. The EPA will eventually tax us for every breath that we take, since we exhale carbon dioxide. You must have control.
The U S economy must be destroyed, so that George Soros can become the first trillionaire.
And Holder has something on Roberts, which will force Roberts to rule as the WH directs.
That is how we got Obamacare.
I could be proved wrong, but I doubt it. An emendation of a penumbra will be found which allows the EPA to unilaterally extend its mandate to cover everything.
@mathman: #2
I’m guessing that the obama administration has something on all of the politicians, and the future people who will run for office. Remember, the NSA has stored emails, phone calls, text messages, etc., on everybody they could. If a devout conservative wants to run for office, they will be confronted with stuff they might not went the public to know. This is the main way the democrats try to control who runs against them.