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.
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6 comments:
Have you lowered your breathing rate, you greenhouse gas polluter?
Well, you do spew quite a bit of hot air there Steve, but I don't think you'd be classified as a polluter unless you put out as much CO2 as a coal plant or three.
Most people just classify you as an idiot troll.
Well, you're the one who religiously believes man is causing global warming. What are you personally doing about it? You admit you live in a crappy old building which probably has a lot of inefficient appliances and is probably barely up to code. Since you don't lessen the amount of computer time you use, what do you intend to do to follow what you believe?
Or is it that you want to restrict others while you yourself do nothing about the problem your belief forces you to espouse? Didn't you just say in another post that liberals want to expand the rights of everyone?
Since I'm not convinced that man is causing global warming, I agree that the EPA needs to be slapped down. Maybe Lisa Jackson can reduce her carbon footprint by lowering her breath rate to maybe one breath every 10 minutes.
What I do about my carbon footprint is my business. If I recycle, or choose to spend a little extra to buy environmentally friendly packaging, that's what I can do.
What an energy company or factory does however affects all of us and at a much larger scale.
Your lazy conflation of personal environmentalism somehow invalidating corporate environmentalism is idiocy, as is your assumption that liberals are restricting your rights here.
If you can show me in the Constitution where you specifically have the right to pollute and destroy the environment and that right is protected, you win.
Do stop being a complete moron.
What I do about my carbon footprint is my business.
Au contraire. With the EPA involved, it becomes, in your words, "the people's business", or in realistic terms, the federal government's business. You show me where in the Constitution that exists (I'll give you a hint: it doesn't; Massachusetts v. EPA was another bullshit liberal ruling with no basis in the Constitution or science).
If you can show me in the Constitution where you specifically have the right to pollute and destroy the environment and that right is protected, you win.
Nice try. We aren't talking about pollution. We're talking about idiotic government controls over a substance all life absolutely needs in order to survive. In other words, government control over people (something you believe in greatly). Carbon dioxide is only a pollutant at extreme levels, not the levels that exist today or in the future barring some unforeseen natural (not man-made) disaster. There's no chance man has the ability to turn the earth into the planet Venus.
It has been proven scientifically that the earth has been warmer in the past, along with higher carbon dioxide levels, than it is today. You know what happened? A greater abundance of plant and animal life. Since you believe you liberals are all about science, will you ignore what I said because it doesn't fit in with your ideology or beliefs? Or maybe you will call me another name so that you don't have to answer?
You cannot dismiss a court ruling because you don't like it, Steve.
It's the law.
You can disagree with it all you want to...but it's the law of the land.
The Supreme Court has declared the EPA has the authority to deal with greenhouse gases as pollutants.
The EPA is now doing so.
This is law. Don't like it? Take up arms, then. Go, fight and die for your freedom to pollute. But you can't ignore laws you don't like, because we are a nation of laws, founded on laws.
End of thread.
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