Why Support Waxman-Markey Now?
"As Ed notes below, Lisa Jackson now says EPA won't regulate CO2.
My colleague Iain Murray suggests in an e-mail exchange that this could be a Machiavellian ploy to get Congress to pass Waxman-Markey — since the administration's reversal now leaves no backstop for action on climate change, absent legislation.
I see it otherwise. Without sufficient support from masochistic industry (to join the slavish rent-seekers actually behind the bill), Waxman-Markey won't pass Congress — maybe not even the House. So why should any fence-sitters support it now that the admiinistration has backed off its CO2 regulation through EPA? Wasn't the principal argument in favor of Waxman-Markey that "you'd rather be at the table while Congress is writing this than let EPA regulation open some devil-you-don't-know can of worms" (an argument that was nonetheless hard to accept for anyone who actually read Waxman-Markey)?
Well, no longer. Not now, with the EPA coquetishly indicating it may not write such a scheme after all. Any rational actor would take their chances with an iffy EPA, and then in the courts — especially in light of internal administration revelations, and given the climate-alarmism industry's arbitrary and capricious reliance on unverifiable and now disproven computer models.
Beam me to Planet Gore !