Free Republic

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) forthcoming climate change regulations for new and existing electricity generating units have been appropriately labeled the “war on coal,”[1] because the proposed limits for carbon dioxide emissions would essentially prohibit the construction of new coal-fired power plants and force existing ones into early retirement. However, the casualties will extend well beyond the coal industry, hurting families and businesses and taking a significant toll on American manufacturing across the nation. Congress should stop the EPA and all other federal agencies from regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Driving Energy Prices Up, Economic Activity Down...

The Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules aimed at phasing out coal-fired power in favor of low-carbon fuels will come at a high cost, according to a newly released report. Over the next two decades, the EPA’s rules to fight global warming will cost the economy $2.23 trillion, raise energy prices and lower families’ incomes. Using economic models based on the federal government’s National Energy Model System, the conservative Heritage Foundation found that, by the end of 2023, EPA climate regulations will cost the U.S. nearly 600,000 jobs and reduce a family of four’s income by $1,200. EPA rules would also...

The Obama Administration is trying to regulate Americans’ livelihoods away. Will Congress do anything to stop it? The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pushing regulation of “greenhouse gases”—something even its own officials have admitted would have no noticeable impact on the climate. New Heritage research shows the devastating impact it would have, however, on American manufacturing jobs.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued final rules Monday to slash the amount of sulfur in gasoline, which would help cut smog-causing pollution from autos and bring the rest of the country's fuel supply in line with California's standards. The new rule for "Tier 3" gasoline calls for reducing the amount of sulfur in fuel by two-thirds, to 10 parts per million from 30 parts per million. Similar low-sulfur gasoline is already in use in California, Europe, Japan and South Korea. The new gasoline would be available at the pump by January 2017. Cutting sulfur improves the efficiency of catalytic converters...

It has the makings of a royal mess for “King Barack.” Monday morning’s Supreme Court argument about the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases went badly for the Obama administration — so much so that the real question before the justices seemed to be how severe the EPA’s loss would be. The administration’s solicitor general, Donald Verrilli, pleaded with the justices to recognize the “urgent problem” of climate change, because the “threat to future generations gets worse” with each passing year. But as the argument played out, the court’s swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, made clear that he agreed...

The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency. The case will determine how far EPA can extend its regulatory overreach, to control “climate changing” carbon dioxide from power plants and other facilities – by ignoring the Constitution’s “separation of powers” provisions, rewriting clear language in the Clean Air Act, and disregarding laws that require the agency to consider both the costs and benefits of its regulations and what it is regulating. Put more bluntly, the Court will decide whether EPA may deceive and defraud the American people, by implementing regulations that...

If the White House and the EPA is permitted to implement the MATS regulation the economy will dramatically decline. Life in America will resemble that of third world nations. It is entirely based on lies

There are many reasons that Barack Obama’s presidency has proven so ineffectual even by its own standards — boosting economic growth, improving health care, preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, enhancing America’s world reputation. One reason is that Barack Obama is the most ideologically rigid president in American history. He believes in all the wrong ideas, and holds to them with mulish tenacity. But there’s a second reason that was on vivid display in the past few days — overweening arrogance. This president has no patience with attempting to solve the actual problems that afflict the people he...

The Obama administration heaped praise on the world’s largest solar thermal power facility, which began sending energy to customers in California on Thursday. The 392 megawatt Ivanpah solar facility was hailed as a grand achievement, but the administration neglected delivering solar power to consumers is much more expensive than coal. The Ivanpah solar thermal facility in California’s Mojave Desert is the largest in the world, but it comes with a high cost. To start, the facility received $1.6 billion in loan guarantees from the Obama administration in 2011 — about 73 percent of the project’s total costs, according to BrightSource...

In Europe, where fracking is heavily regulated or prohibited altogether, consumers pay more than twice for natural gas than what they do in America (currently $11.59 per mBtu vs $4.78). As consumers, businesses, and electric utilities pay more, the result is a stalled economy and lower standard of living. Thanks in part to its large investment in solar energy, Spain's per capita GDP in current U.S. dollars has dropped from $31,679 in 2010 to $28,624 in 2012. Based on his recent words and actions, Obama wants the same for the U.S. Over half the homes in America heat with natural...

Video at link. Stymied by the GOP's long resistance to cap and trade legislation, the EPA this week began public hearings -- the next step toward a final rule -- to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new coal plants. The rule would limit emissions to 1100 pounds per Megawatt hour, a level the coal industry says is technologically unattainable. Green energy proponents disagree. "Opponents say this will prevent ever building another coal-fired plant in the United States today. They say that the technology is not commercially available. These claims are scare tactics," Rep. HenryWaxman, D-Calif., said in a press conference...

‘The House should sharply reduce IRS funding until the agency is more responsive.” Well, I’d have omitted everything after “funding” but this was still an astute observation, offered at the conclusion of Thursday’s excellent Wall Street Journal editorial. I’m grateful to have smart guys on the team, even if slumming with us power-of-the-purse radicals may get them booted from the GOP’s “We’re only one-half of one-third” circle of submission. The editors were exercised over the revenue agency’s latest shenanigans, which include covering up its past shenanigans — the willful targeting of conservative groups in order to frustrate their opposition to...

Colorado Republican Rep. Cory Gardner is demanding an emergency waiver from the Endangered Species Act for a species of mouse that threatens to delay flood recovery in Colorado. The Preble’s Meadow Jumping Mouse is a threatened species under the ESA, meaning that any governmental action—such as flood recovery—must first consider potential impacts on the tiny animal’s habitat, even if that habitat was also destroyed in the flood that wiped out entire Colorado communities in September. On Monday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency sent a notice to Colorado officials that the presence of the mouse in the flood zone “may cause...

In his State of the Union address, President Obama advocated an energy policy aimed at reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), which he claims are causing catastrophic changes to the earth’s climate and “harming western communities.” In his policy prescription, the president advocates a combination of increased regulation of the energy and transportation industries and more government spending on research designed to bring low-carbon-emitting sources of energy, i.e., so-called renewables, to market. He considers those actions to be the only viable options “leading to a cleaner, safer planet.” But the president’s concerns for the planet are based upon flawed and...

Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), asked scientists at a climate change conference on Thursday in Arlington, Va., to explain the science of climate change. She also said that the EPA looks at climate change as an opportunity to grow the economy and create jobs. […] Obama referenced climate change in his State of the Union address while talking about “cleaner energy.” “The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way,” Obama said. “But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has still not complied with a subpoena issued August 1, 2013 by the House Science, Space and Technology Committee seeking the scientific foundation of virtually every Clean Air Act regulation the agency has issued. The subpoena demanded that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy hand over data from two decades-old taxpayer-funded studies as the agency moves towards the adoption of strict new ozone standards that could cost the U.S. economy $90 billion annually—which would make them the most expensive regulations in U.S. history. The subpoenaed data is cited as the scientific basis for EPA’s claim that microscopic...

Among Washington's most important but rarely covered realities is the daily close coordination among Democratic politicians, executive branch bureaucrats and the left side of the non-profit activism community. Emails obtained recently through a Freedom of Information Act request submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute exposed a slice of that coordination in the campaign to stop construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The emails show, according to Fox News correspondent John Roberts, "senior policy officials at the EPA working closely with environmental groups in what appears to be an effort to kill the pipeline."...

A former high-ranking EPA official who recently was sentenced to prison for fraud told lawmakers last month that, before he left the agency, he was working on a "project" examining ways to "modify the DNA of the capitalist system." The startlingly blunt comment was included in newly released transcripts of John Beale's deposition before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. One group that is frequently critical of the Obama administration's energy policy, the Institute for Energy Research, said the claim is a "smoking gun" that reveals the administration's true intentions.

Why is the EPA altering state boundaries in Wyoming - and reversing over 100 years of established law? Well, apparently the city of Riverton now falls under the jurisdiction of the Wind River Indian Reservation. Wyoming Governor Matt Mead warned of the dangers to all Americans of this type of unilateral land redistribution by the EPA: ...My deep concern is about an administrative agency of the federal government altering a state's boundary and going against over 100 years of history and law. "This should be a concern to all citizens because, if the EPA can unilaterally take land away from...

But Gina McCarthy tells GOP lawmakers she can't answer climate-change questions: 

“I just look at what the climate scientists tell me."