The EPA: Enemy of Civilization

I can come to no other conclusion that Lisa Jackson and the rest of President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency are bound and determined to de-industrialize America. And I can prove it. Please consider the following panoply of headlines from around the country:

• West Virginia: End EPA War Against Coal

"[The EPA] sprang a terrible Christmas "present" on West Virginians, Ohioans and ...other Americans. In mid-December the agency - merely doing the bidding of its boss, President Barack Obama - announced drastic new regulations aimed primarily at industries such as coal-fired power plants... the EPA's new rules will force utility companies to close at least 32 power plants...

...Obama's goal, in which top EPA officials and liberals in Congress cooperate enthusiastically, is to wreck the coal industry... One especially outrageous aspect of the rules - but, ironically, one cause for hope - is that they are the EPA's attempt to overrule Congress. Even under Democrat domination of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the Obama administration's "cap and trade" proposal was rejected. His response was to tell the EPA to plow ahead without lawmakers' approval."

And all this time I thought Bush was "the imperial president".

• Wyoming: The EPA's CYA Move

"It all started when Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said something never before stated by the EPA... In comments to a Bloomberg TV news show, she said the oil and gas industry practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, may have been responsible for the contamination of water at Pavillion, home to a few hundred people in west-central Wyoming.

...[Congress then demanded] she provide evidence to support what she had claimed. The next day the EPA announced it would release the report draft that very tentatively connected fracking with contamination in Pavillion, and then did so several hours later... It felt rushed. It felt like something that happens when an agency is trying to CYA, or to put it respectably, cover its butt.

...This time, the agency’s credibility — far more important than its chief’s butt — is on the line. Can the agency be trusted to do something important the right way? For many people, particularly in the oil and gas industry, that answer is already no."


So the EPA wants to destroy the coal, oil and gas industries. Gee, I wonder what they'll use to power those big, heavy government Suburbans?

• Oklahoma: EPA policy consistently incorrect

"The EPA has been consistently incorrect through the years, as with the Alaska pipeline and the Tennessee snail darter, to name a few, costing taxpayers billions. Now they plan to force coal-powered electrical plants to spend billions that will drastically increase electrical rates...

Their stated justification includes prevention of 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks annually. How does one determine who died prematurely? How do they separate the air pollutants of coal-powered plants from the many other air pollutants such as volcanoes, internal combustion engines, natural waste from mammals, forest fires, exhaust from home heating/AC systems and more?"

Dude, didn't you hear? The science is settled!

But there is a little bit of good news:

• Texas: Federal court stays EPA’s CSAPR

"A federal court Friday put on hold a controversial Obama administration regulation aimed at reducing power plant pollution in 27 states the Environmental Protection Agency contends contributes to unhealthy air downwind... [The] EPA’s unrealistic timelines for unspecific regulations have forced company orders to idle units in both plants, threatening their respective power grids, and potentially increasing utility costs to customers.

...So, the stay will be a bit of a reprieve."

Two good quotes to tie a bow on things

1. Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, said the stay was a "first step to setting it right. The underlying rule was the subject of hasty process, poor technical support, unequal application and substantial threat to jobs, power bills and reliability."

2. Nebraska A.G. Jon Bruning stated, "this stay means Nebraskans will not have to foot the bill for unnecessary modifications mandated by the EPA. We will continue to fight these job-killing regulations by an overreaching federal government run amok."

If you want to live in a third-world country that has an unstable electric grid, then -- by all means -- please vote for Barack Obama in 2012.

But if you've gotten used to having electricity in your life, then my recommendation would be to vote against every Democrat you possibly can. In fact, do it for the children.