Just What The Economy Needs: EPA To Begin Regulating Carbon Emissions Soon
Because nothing says “stimulate the economy” like a massive government bureaucracy regulating a “pollutant” that every sing one of his exhales while we breathe.
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials.
The decision, which most likely would play out in stages over a period of months, would have a profound impact on transportation, manufacturing costs and how utilities generate power. It could accelerate the progress of energy and climate change legislation in Congress and form a basis for the United States’ negotiating position at United Nations climate talks set for December in Copenhagen.
The environmental agency is under order from the Supreme Court to make a determination whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant that endangers public health and welfare, an order that the Bush administration essentially ignored despite near-unanimous belief among agency experts that research points inexorably to such a finding.
I know the idea of this “accelerating” the progress of energy legislation, and making the bureaucrats at the UN love us again, is appealing to liberals. But the problem is that compliance costs that come with new, sweeping regulations like this will be essentially a new tax on domestic industry. And one that our domestic businesses can ill afford in this time of recession.
I know that Obama’s “stimulus” wonder bill will supposedly feed the hungry and employ the unemployable and make everything better again, but maybe we shouldn’t tempt fate with heavy new government regulations on top of the burden of massive new government spending programs and bailouts.
