Posted on 09/21/2014 9:39:46 AM PDT by jazusamo
Green groups are fearful of Republicans winning the Senate majority in November, predicting it could lead to a “whittling away” of environmental regulations at the hands of GOP leaders.
While environmental groups are spending millions of dollars trying to save the Senate for Democrats, they acknowledge the possibility that they could be forced to play defense against an all-Republican Congress in 2015.
“I think that the wholesale repeal of environmental legislation, repealing [Environmental Protection Agency] greenhouse gas authority, things like that, that’s unlikely to happen,” said Ben Schreiber, director of the climate program at Friends of the Earth.
“It is much more the painful whittling away [regulations] by attaching things to must-pass legislation,” he said, referring to policy riders that could be attached to legislation funding the government.
Republicans feel bullish about their chances of gaining the six seats they need to win Senate control. That outcome could elevate Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a staunch opponent of Obama’s environmental policies, to majority leader, provided he wins his own tough reelection race.
McConnell has begun to talk about the agenda that Republicans would pursue in the majority, placing a heavy emphasis on energy and environmental issues. He has promised to bring up a bill that would force the federal government to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, and vowed action on measures to overturn EPA pollution rules.
The GOP has done all it can to stop many of Obama’s environmental regulations, and the House has voted dozens of times to roll back his authority.
“Americans have seen a barrage of regulations and red tape from the president’s Environmental Protection Agency, strangling the coal industry, one of my home state’s most important sources of jobs and economic development,” McConnell said recently on the Senate floor.
“The regulations and lack of certainty in the coal industry that this administration has caused have contributed to a loss of 7,000 Kentucky jobs in that industry since the year President Obama took office,” he added.
Even if Republicans do triumph at the polls, they are not expected to come anywhere close to the 60-vote majority that would be needed to break filibusters by Democrats.
That means votes from centrists Democrats — many of whom hail from energy producing states — could be decisive in whether any of the GOP bills reach President Obama’s desk.
Daniel J. Weiss, who leads the campaign activities for the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), said he fears that Republicans would seek to block the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which it has been able to do since a 2007 Supreme Court ruling.
“Mitch McConnell has made it clear that if he’s the majority leader, one of his top priorities is to block EPA from doing its job and forcing the Clean Air Act on cutting carbon — which is the biggest step the country has ever taken to cut pollution,” Weiss said.
“And he has made it clear, he’s suggested he’s willing to shut down the government to block EPA, and we want to make sure doesn't happen,” he said.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) predicted that a Republican-controlled Senate would be an “environmental nightmare.”
He said the GOP-led House has voted twice as many times to weaken environmental rules as it has to overturn ObamaCare.
“They’re a wholly-owned subsidiary right now of the polluting industries, and they’re going to do what they’re told,” he said. “The only limit on them is if the American public, I think, has really had it with that.”
Schreiber said the GOP House offers a good model of what a Republican Senate would do.
“We have an idea of what they’re going to do, because we’re seeing it in the House right now,” he said. “Drilling everywhere, anytime, any place. More subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. Attacks on renewable energy. Attacks on EPA.”
Schreiber said his worst fear would be if the Senate acted to remove the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. But that drastic of a move would be unlikely, he said.
Environmental advocates say they take comfort in the fact that President Obama will retain the veto pen no matter what happens in the election.
“It’s a challenge to pass any legislation, and certainly climate is in that same place,” said Alan Rowsome, a senior director of government affairs for the Wilderness Society. “But I think the president is going to continue to move forward and be a leader on that.”
The Wilderness Society focuses a large part of its advocacy on conservation, which Rowsome said gets more bipartisan support than climate change rules.
“These issues transcend the parties in many instances. There is a lot of support across the aisle for many conservation measures, and we’re going to focus on those opportunities to really find common ground,” he said.
Schreiber said his group would also work to find common ground with the GOP.
“All that we can do is educate the public about our issues, like we always have, and talk to members of Congress and educate them about our issues as well,” he said.
Ping
They fear the comeback of a robust and prosperous America once industry gets the environmental shackles off. Not what these lefties want. They won’t be able to control the people as before.
Nothing like the author fitting their article with some humor!
I think the country has more to fear from eco-nazis chipping away at our liberties and our economic growth than from exercising common sense in our stewardship of the planet.
Just scarmongering to drum up contributions(the NRA does it all the time). As if 0-Tard would sign any legislation that would do ANYTHING weakening over zealous envirwhacko rules or regulations.
Poppycock, they should be concerned about a coming Conservative President who enforces his executive authority over the EPA and stops the new found regulatory authority found during Obama years.
Insane, unrealistic regulations are behind America’s loss of jobs to other countries. Regulators passed over beneficial compromises in favor of environmental absolutism. A fish known as the snail darter destroyed America’s breeder reactor. If it hadn’t been the snail darter they’d have found a butterfly or moth they’d claim would be destroyed by the project. On that score, Bill Bryson, author of “A short history of nearly everything,” said, of all the things that have ever lived, most, in fact, 99.99% are now dead.” (snip) “Paradoxically, extinction is the motor of biological advancement.” (He goes on to give lip service to it’s-only-good-if-man-is-not-involved.) But we are a part of the ecosystem and perhaps not everything can be kept alive. Last I read, the spotted owl, for which America’s timber industry was summarily sacrificed, is being destroyed by a different kind of owl. To prevent it the government is now hunting the other owl, possibly to extinction. Where do we stop?
Precisely, and they’ve already got a fair start in crippling our economy.
I strongly doubt that there would be a wholesale reversal of environmental regulation even if republicans got the senate, the house and the WH.
No he wouldn’t sign any bills limiting the EPA or the enviros but he and the EPA would be limited somewhat without Dem control of either House.
Does your comment mean that you consider McConnell no different than Reid and Obama when it comes to environmental policy? Do you think that a Republican held Senate will dial back or block some of the environmental excesses that we have seen over the past 5 and a half years?
The Enviro Wackos are a small minority of even the Democrat Party and they are practically nonexistent in the Republican Party. Yet they act in collusion with the EPA to advance a radical agenda enabled by Democrat driven legislation and with the full support of a profoundly unpopular President. The shift of power in the Senate to Republicans will stop many of these excesses and can possibly reverse others. It’s called a significant different to the status quo.
Exactly right, plus the spotted owl fiasco basically shut down the timber industry in the NW and the whole program was an enviro sham.
I don’t think the Greenies have a lot to fear. These Gopes are conservative in that they will conserve assiduously what is already in place. Obamacare isn’t going anywhere and the EPA will not be weakened.The best we can expect is for the Republicans to say, “We just have to add more regulation to make things fairer.”
Short of the votes necessary to override a veto, we’ll only have more of the same. Gridlock.
...Which isn’t necessary a bad thing.
A government in a political stalemate that can make no laws, can do no harm! I’m a FIRM BELIEVER in the saying: “A government that governs least, governs best.”(or something to that affect)
Actually, I’m all for voting ‘R’ where the GOP-Tp primary was stolen by the GOP-e... so that includes Cochran; and I’ll throw McConnell in that mix. I view the necessity of an R Sinate more vital than the evil of GOP-e.
I just get a hearty laugh, thinking of McConnell as a staunch opponent of Ø in any department.
Just wait until you see the environmental regulations they put into effect, if the Republicans do not take the Senate.
Agreed, plus there are possibilities of Dem help from the ones in energy states.
Defund them all, including the entire EPA-nazi organization!
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