In the 1984 movie “Ghostbusters”, an overzealous junior administrator from the Environmental Protection Agency named Walter Peck takes brash action against the paranormal bunch because he didn’t understand the environmental impact of their “containment grid” for the ghosts.
While the Commonwealth of Virginia is certainly not picking up “slimers” and free-floating apparitions and storing them in the basement of the State Capitol (although the case can be made that maybe they should), the EPA and Obama Administration seem to be taking equally brash steps towards punishing the people of Virginia with their recent energy policies.
Whether it’s cap-and-trade, climate and emissions policy, or extending the current ban on offshore oil and natural gas exploration, it seems that extreme liberal progressives have once again reasserted themselves in directing environmental policy, all the while undermining the delicate balance between truly protecting the environment and promoting the conditions necessary for energy independence and economic prosperity.
Cap and trade, which is legislatively dorment, but still instructive at understanding what the administration hopes to do with energy, seeks to limit the total number of emissions permitted in the United States (cap), while creating a market for those who do emit to “trade” their allowable CO2 credits with others – effectively giving some polluters the license to emit more than they should, while at the same time stifling the economy by enacting arbitrary restrictions.
What this specifically means to Virginia is double-trouble: not only is the coal industry effectively a target because CO2 is a product of its use as an energy source, but the cost associated with this plan by stifling job creation, increasing the tax burden, and passing on the higher cost of energy onto the consumer in the midst of a recession is a terrible idea.
One of the primary authors of this legislation – Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA9) – learned how voters felt about this plan in November by rewarding him with a one-way ticket out of Washington.
Thankfully, the U.S. Senate is not planning on considering cap-and-trade this Congress, but the mere fact that it passed the House of Representatives on partisan lines, shows what environmentalists are capable of when given the reins of power.
So, if they can’t do it legislatively, they’ll do it through the EPA.
Under the guise of the Clean Air Act, the EPA, through executive fiat – and based largely on data found from a United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC) – will be implementing new rules Jan. 2, 2011 that take an aggressive approach to regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
Regulation of as many as six million American industrial facilities, power plants, hospitals, small businesses and commercial establishments, known as “stationary sources”, and associated unfunded mandates on the states, will go into effect next year based largely on data that is suspect at best.
Under the new rules, the EPA has proposed that some states be required to change their state implementation plan (SIP) to ensure GHG emissions are accounted for in the permitting of large new or expanded facilities, and to establish a federal implementation plan to apply to states that do not adopt such a SIP. These rules could impose a significant burden on the U.S. economy, requiring expensive investments in stationary sources by businesses across the country, diverting capital that might otherwise create jobs and assist us in our economic recovery.
Back in September, U.S. Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner had a chance to block this nonsense by voting against a so-called “endangerment finding” – which supports the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases are hazardous to human health and permits the EPA to regulate the heck out of coal and greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act – but the senators demurred and voted to support the EPA’s claims.
The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said in a September 2010 report that was ignored by our two senators “[T]hese rules threaten the economic viability of America’s manufacturing base and hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs. Moreover, these rules will bring little, if any, public health or environmental benefits. As Americans suffer through a jobless recovery, EPA is pursuing policies that exacerbate our economic problems and do not improve the environment.”
This caution was echoed recently by 15 trade associations, led by the American Petroleum Institute which wrote:
“EPA’s greenhouse gas rules will stifle job growth…and further burden state budgets already hampered by slow revenue growth and increased costs. . .We can expect a virtual freeze on new construction of manufacturing facilities or energy efficiency modifications to existing facilities. That result will harm not only our industries but those that are dependent on construction and the clean energy sector.”
Meanwhile, in the recent debate over funding the government (which includes the EPA) in the omnibus spending bill, Republican members attempted to “defund” the EPA for the next year over this unilateral approach to regulation. The vote on the bill was kicked down the road to December 18 – so there’s still time to contact your congressman and tell them to defund the EPA over this gross expansion of federal power.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has already once attempted to stand up to the EPA, but had his hearing rejected. This doesn’t mean he intends to stop.
“We are all for blocking the EPA’s effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions by denying EPA the funding for implementing its new rules,” said Brian Gottstein of the Attorney General’s office. “The EPA is relying heavily on the data from the discredited and suspect UN IPCC report to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as dangerous pollutants. The costs of such regulation in terms of lost jobs due to companies shutting down or moving overseas to avoid costly or prohibitive regulations, higher energy bills, and higher prices on practically every manufactured or transported good, will be astronomical. If such monumental power is given to the EPA, it should be using the best data possible to make its determinations about CO2’s effect on the environment. With the revelations of Climategate and the retractions of some of the scientists who participated in the IPCC report, clearly the data the EPA is relying on is at least suspect, if not outright wrong.”
If that’s where the government’s effort to over-regulate and over-burden the consumer on environmental matters stopped, that would be bad enough. But it’s not.
Last week, the Obama administration announced that exploration for oil and natural gas off the coast of Virginia and other places nationwide would not occur between 2012 and 2017. This unilateral decision – which even Senators Webb and Warner will write a strongly worded letter to the president about – has the potential to cost Virginia thousands of jobs, billions of dollars of revenue, and not take us any closer towards energy independence.
But the administration is also acting a bit like its bipolar.
Not only did the administration favor oil and natural gas exploration before the Deepwater Horizon accident earlier this year, but then there’s this from the Washington Post:
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says his department wants to use its “critical resources” to supervise areas in which rigs already are operating. One translation: The administration won’t waste time scoping off the Gulf Coast of Florida as long as Congress maintains its own ban on drilling there. But that doesn’t explain the reversal for the Atlantic Coast. Both Democratic and Republican governors of Virginia have expressed support for careful exploration.
So what message is the administration sending here? It’s a bit inconsistent as even the Post can see. There’s no reason exploration lease sales can’t go forward in the next period of 2012-2017. It seems that the administration just has a vendetta against Virgnia.
[P]olicy considerations haven’t changed. America will require oil for years, and a lot of it will come from undersea wells – off Brazil, Nigeria and Azerbaijan if not the United States. Mr. Obama’s about-face may make some Americans feel better, but it’s unlikely to be a net plus for energy independence or the global environment.
Towards the end of “Ghostbusters”, there’s a great scene in the New York City mayor’s office where Dr. Peter Venkman makes his case to ply their trade and rid the city of spooks, against the recommendations of the EPA:
“ If I’m wrong, nothing happens! We go to jail – peacefully, quietly. We’ll enjoy it! But if I’m *right*, and we *can* stop this thing… Lenny, you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters.”
While Governor Bob McDonnell, Attorney General Cuccinelli, federal Republicans, and others are certainly not Ghostbusters, and opposing the federal government’s mandates won’t send him to jail (we hope), if our leadership is able to stand-up to and reverse the ever-increasing federal intrusion on the state’s ability to enact rational energy policy, they, too, will have saved billions of dollars for millions of registered voters – certainly something they’ll want to keep in mind for future electoral prospects.
