Tell Congress to Rein in the EPA and Protect Western Jobs!
posted on: Apr 14, 2010
The Senate is now considering a resolution sponsored by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) that would prevent the EPA from circumventing Congress and stop its misuse of the Clean Air Act (CAA). This resolution has bipartisan support, and is even supported by Senators who favor climate change legislation. Unfortunately, some western Senators such as Michael Bennet of Colorado, have been very vocal in their opposition to this common sense resolution.
The House is also considering legislation that would prevent misuse of the CAA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Bills such as Congressman Earl Pomeroy’s (D-ND) “Save Our Energy Jobs Act” would ensure that EPA regulation does not take over all aspects of the American economy.
Background:
The Obama Administration’s EPA is circumventing the legislative process and attempting to use the CAA to control greenhouse gas emissions. Doing so would greatly expand the CAA to regulate carbon emissions that come from every vehicle, home, factory and farm in America. This economy-wide, command-and-control regulation ignores the net benefit to air emissions that developing and using more domestic natural gas provides, and presents a clear danger to hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the West.
Led by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson (recently described by Rolling Stone magazine as an “eco-warrior”), this 17,000 person government bureaucracy is increasing the regulatory burden on the development and production of natural gas and oil, putting jobs and the economy at risk. Some common sense leaders in Congress are attempting to stop this unprecedented power grab, but many others need to hear from the working families of our industry.
EPA regulation is an awful choice for climate policy. If a pollutant is regulated under one section of the Clean Air Act, it triggers identical treatment in other sections of that statute. So while the EPA initially intends to address only mobile source emissions (vehicles), the agency will also be required to regulate stationary source emissions as well. Think of it this way: if the EPA attempts to control any greenhouse gas emissions, the agency will be required to control all greenhouse gas emissions.
The Clean Air Act was meant to control traditional air pollution, not greenhouse gases that come from every vehicle, home, factory and farm in America! The Democratic Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee declared that EPA regulation would result “in one of the largest and most bureaucratic nightmares that the U.S. economy and Americans have ever seen.” He went on to add, “Let me be clear, this is not a responsibility we want to leave in the hands of EPA.”
EPA recently came out with a rule on greenhouse gas reporting for the oil and gas industry, which would require companies to aggregate their operations and report on a basin-wide basis. IPAMS is preparing comments, which are due June 11th. Please let Kathleen Sgamma know if you are interested in helping to coordinate comments.
Click here to send a message to your Congressmen.
