Free Republic

Republicans’ latest attempt to slow the Obama administration’s climate change agenda calls for new regulations to be halted until all legal challenges are settled — an argument similar to the one President Obama has used when blocking the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has begun work on legislation that would temporarily stop implementation of the administration’s Clean Power Plan, designed to force states to dramatically cut carbon pollution. The pollution reductions envisioned by the Environmental Protection Agency could only be achieved by addressing emissions from power plants, particularly coal-fired facilities. More than a dozen states,...

There are very real consequences to the Environmental Protection Agency’s continued efforts to undermine America’s coal industry. Those consequences were recently spotlighted in an industry-produced video, embedded above. Maria Tworek owns a sports bar in Omaha, Nebraska. “Our energy bills are sky-high,” Tworek explains. The bar has to keep its cooling facilities running 24/7 to keep all of its beer cold. If “we can’t cool our product, we don’t make money,” Tworek says. “It’s as simple as that.” The bar is Tworek’s livelihood. “This is how we live,” she says. “This is how we support our family.” Nebraska is a...

Lost in the kabuki-dance drama of last week's budget showdown were immensely important votes in the Senate and House on the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to govern through regulation. In the House, 19 Democrats joined the Republican majority in a decisive 255-172 vote to defund the EPA's attempt to circumvent Congress and begin its own cap-and-trade program. The measure was introduced by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan. A companion measure introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee,

Last August, the the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) graded itself on its enforcement of the Clean Air Act (CAA) in terms of economic benefit-cost analysis. Surprise not: EPA came up with an astounding $31 of clean air benefits for every dollar of cost. That, and Administrator Lisa Jackson can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Deja Vu: EPA’s 1997 Study Back in 1997, the EPA credited itself with providing $22.2 trillion in benefits at a cost of a half trillion dollars from enforcing the CAA from 1970 (when the EPA was established) through 1990 (when Congress amended...

The top Republican on a Senate environmental panel released a scathing report Tuesday that he contends shows that the Environmental Protection Agency's new proposed rule on cleaning up boilers nationwide could devastate America's manufacturing base and imperil hundreds of thousands of jobs without providing any real public health or environmental benefits. In June, the EPA issued a proposal that would force industrial, commercial and institutional boilers and heaters to use "maximum achievable control technology" to reduce harmful emissions that erode air quality and pose a public health risk.