Senate Nears Showdown On EPA Regulatory Powers

From The Washington Times and The Heritage Foundation:

Bid to curb EPA's regulatory clout on climate nears Senate showdown


By Sean Lengell

8:44 p.m., Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska Republican, has proposed overturning EPA rules designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. She says the rules threaten her state's economy. (Associated Press) PrintEmailView 4Comment(s)Enlarge Text
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The Obama administration's key backup weapon in the climate-change debate faces a critical test as the Senate votes Thursday on whether the Environmental Protection Agency should have the power to impose new regulations to attack global warming even if Congress fails to act.



The resolution, proposed by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska Republican, would overturn EPA rules scheduled to begin kicking in next year to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, which many scientists say are a major contributor to global warming.



Mrs. Murkowski said the EPA regulation would adversely affect her state's economy by threatening projects such as the construction of a natural-gas pipeline.



"There has been a great deal of misinformation spread about my effort by groups — almost all of which are based outside of Alaska — who want to cut the emissions blamed for climate change no matter what the cost," the senator said in a statement.



Conservative lawmakers and energy industry officials applaud the move to scale back the decades-old Clean Air Act, which they complain is too restrictive, bureaucratic and expensive.



But environmentalists and other critics say Mrs. Murkowski's measure is based more on partisan politics than solid scientific evidence. Efforts by congressional Democrats and the Obama White House to pass a major new energy bill have stalled on Capitol Hill, and many global-warming activists have looked to the EPA as an alternative way to curb U.S. carbon emissions.



Opponents of the Murkowski resolution got a late boost as a new poll Tuesday from Yale University and George Mason University reported that 77 percent of Americans now favor government regulation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant, up six percentage points from January. A March Gallup Poll, conducted before the BP oil spill in the Gulf, had found growing public skepticism of global warming concerns.



The EPA last year announced that six gases, including carbon dioxide, pose a danger to the environment and the health of Americans and that it would draft new regulations to reduce those emissions.



The EPA's "endangerment finding" came as a response to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that carbon dioxide and other gases should be considered pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The George W. Bush administration did not act on the court's ruling, but the EPA moved quickly after Mr. Obama took power in 2009.



Mrs. Murkowski said the Clean Air Act, the bulk of it written in 1977, was never intended to regulate issues such as climate change.


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