That didn't take long. On the first day of the 112th Congress, a group of Republican members—and one Democrat—offered a bill to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating planet-warming gases under the Clean Air Act.
E2 Wire flagged a note in the Congressional Register that Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) yesterday introduced a bill to amend the Clean Air Act, though the description didn't include much detail. A spokesman for the representative confirmed to Mother Jones that the new bill is exactly the same as HR 391, which Blackburn and others filed in January 2009. She's introduced a measure just like it, though the new text isn't posted yet.
The measure is just over one page in length, and would alter the Clean Air Act to specifically exclude greenhouse gases from regulation. It goes so far as to specify that carbon dioxide should not be considered pollution at all. "The term 'air pollutant' shall not include carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, or sulfur hexafluoride," the bill states.
In case that wasn't enough, it goes on: "Nothing in the Clean Air Act shall be treated as authorizing or requiring the regulation of climate change or global warming." The measure has 45 Republican co-sponsors and one Democrat, Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma.
Once again, any legislation that the House passes here has to get by a Presidential veto. I'd also like every co-sponsor of this bill to submit themselves and their families to one hour per day in a room filled with carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride since these aren't pollutants.
Let's see how long that lasts. Both the judicial and the executive are on the side of the environment here, and that the EPA has the authority. This question is settled law.