EPA To The Economy: Drop Dead

James Pethokoukis isn’t enthused about what the EPA’s new classification of CO2 (read: the air you exhale) as a “dangerous pollutant” will do for our economy:

Here’s the theory about the new U.S. position on greenhouse gases. The official finding by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that the emissions endanger human health sets the stage for permit requirements on power plants, factories and automobiles. It also supplies President Barack Obama with more evidence at the Copenhagen summit of a “new normal” in America when it comes to climate policy. And back home, it supposedly gives a nudge to the Senate where cap-and-trade legislation is stuck on the back burner.
But in practice, the only thing certain about the EPA ruling is more regulatory uncertainty leading to less economic growth and fewer jobs. Bad news, to be sure, for American businesses already flummoxed by the mercurial state of healthcare, financial and tax reform. Call it Obama’s Uncertainty Tax.

I think that if the EPA started actually using this new power they’ve grabbed for themselves to regulate pretty much everything (remember that as carbon-based life forms we can’t do anything without emitting carbon), but Pethokoukis’ point about an “uncertainty” tax is a good one. If some business owner or group of investors were thinking about expanding operations, or heading off on a new venture, this new power-grab by the EPA may be enough to derail those efforts. If you’re not sure that your new Taxi service company won’t get nailed with new emissions regulations, if you’re not sure that your new factory won’t have the huge additional expense of carbon permits or something like that, then how likely are you to invest money into those ventures? How likely are you to hire new people?
Not very likely. And that’s the problem. At a time when we want the private sector to hire new people we keep heaping more and more burden on that private sector.