Dec. 23, 2010

The EPA’s mandate will be effective in January, 2011 and comes on the heels of its finding late last year on the dangers of greenhouse gases.

The move gives EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Oregon, and Wyoming, and it will disapprove part of Texas’ Clean Air Act permit program.

With today’s action, power plants and oil refineries will have to obtain federal permits that cap their greenhouse gas emissions.

Republicans charge these new greenhouse gas rules will stifle businesses and kill jobs.

The administration is trying to “regulate what they have been unable to legislate,” said Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, the Republican set to take over the House Energy and Commerce Committee in January. “This Christmas surprise is nothing short of a backdoor attempt to implement their failed job-killing cap-and-trade scheme.”

Democrats hailed the move as one that would promote a clean energy future for the United States.

“I applaud the EPA for taking this measured and reasonable step toward addressing the pollution that threatens the health and welfare of our families and children,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee said in a statement. These pollution control standards would apply to some of the largest emitters of dangerous pollution across the country, while also encouraging investment in the nation’s clean energy technologies.”

Today’s ruling promises to be the template for many future fights between Congress and the White House as the administration, having lost leverage to pass new laws, uses the EPA’s authority to write new rules.

Power plants and oil refineries are the country’s largest sources of carbon dioxide, responsible for about 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. But efforts to impose caps on their emissions have been met with great resistance from Republicans and even some Democrats, like incoming Sen. Joe Manchin of coal-producing West Virginia.

Environmental groups today hailed the EPA’s efforts as a critical step forward in what has been a tough political fight.

To read the entire article click here:http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/epa-regulate-greenhouse-gases-draws-republican-ire/story?id=12469305

Commerce Republicans announce subcommittee roles

By Sara Jerome – 12/16/10 03:24 PM ET

By Andrew Restuccia – 12/10/10 10:21 AM ET

The Environmental Protection Agency is pushing back against criticism from environmentalists that the agency bowed to pressure from Republicans and industry this week when it announced its intentions to delay the release of two key air rules.

The air rules have gained significant attention in recent days, with environmentalists raising red flags about the delays. The decision to delay the release of the final regulations is the latest example, environmentalists say, of the Obama administration being too willing to compromise with Republicans, who have mounted significant opposition to the rules.

But the EPA rejected those characterizations late Thursday night — EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said environmentalists are reading too much into the delays. 

“These announcements have nothing to do with each other or with the other rules we’ve announced in the past, or will announce in the future, to protect Americans’ health,” Gilfillan said in an e-mail to The Hill. “No one should read anything more into this than the fact that we’re doing what we’ve said we’d do all along: following the best science and the law.”

The EPA on Tuesday filed a motion in federal district court to extend until April 2012 the deadline for releasing a final rule meant to reduce potentially harmful air emissions from industrial boilers. EPA officials have suggested that the initial draft boiler rule is too stringent. In making the announcement Tuesday, the agency said comments from industry on the rule “shed new light” on a number of issues. 

Then, on Wednesday, the EPA said it would delay releasing tougher smog rules until July 2011 in order to get more input from its scientific advisers.

Both proposals have come under attack from Republicans and industry groups, who argue that the rules are just the latest example of the EPA overreaching. But industry groups responded to this week’s delays with the sort of praise rarely given to the agency. The American Chemistry Council, for example, said it was “encouraged” by the EPA’s effort to delay release of the boiler rule. 

Republican lawmakers weighed in on the delay of the smog rule in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Thursday. Incoming House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), both vocal critics of the Obama EPA, praised the delay, but said they “remain gravely concerned with the direction the EPA is headed.”

Environmentalists and clean air advocates say they fear the delays are symbolic of a larger retreat by the Obama administration on environmental protections. 

“The fact that EPA coupled these two rules and significantly delayed them — both under sharp attack by Republicans including [Rep.] Fred Upton — suggests EPA wants to avoid a frontal clash with the new Congress,” Clean Air Watch President Frank O’Donnell, a prominent clean air advocate, said in an e-mail to The Hill.

Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents air pollution control agencies around the country, expressed similar concerns. “It is regrettable that EPA has postponed two very important air pollution control regulations that have such huge public health impacts,” he said in an e-mail. “We hope these postponements are not the beginning of an unfortunate pattern of future EPA delays.”

http://thehill.com/

He doesn’t expect the policy to hinder his ability to find a compromise on spending measures with Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii). 

“I can’t imagine there will be a problem,” he said. 

House Republicans have tapped Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) to be chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, setting up an old bull appropriator with a history of earmarking to deliver on the anti-spending tea party platform that carried the GOP to victory this fall.

The House GOP Steering Committee selected him for the powerful position Tuesday. The entire Republican conference is expected to confirm his bid Wednesday.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN

One of Al Gore‘s campaigns to save the planet has scaled back its field operations since climate legislation failed earlier this year in Congress.

The Alliance for Climate Protection was operating in about 25 states at its peak, including Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

By Michael O’Brien – 12/01/10

Editorials

Charleston Daily Mail

Monday November 29, 2010

Nations that burn it or supply it are creating plenty of new jobs………….