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Inhofe, Jackson Testify on Bill to Strip EPA of Power to Regulate GHGs

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson were questioned by panels of the House’s Subcommittee on Energy and Power this morning as part of a discussion on draft legislation that seeks to strip the EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs). The legislative hearing’s witnesses also included other major players in the climate change regulatory debate, such as Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

The hearing was held to discuss “H.R. ___, the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011,” draft legislation sponsored by Sen. Inhofe and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) that seeks to amend the Clean Air Act (CAA) and prohibit the EPA administrator from taking action on matters relating to GHGs as they apply to climate change (and other issues).

At the hearing, Republicans said the EPA regulations would raise power prices, hurt the economy, and hemorrhage jobs. “We’re doing this for one simple reason,” said Inhofe at the hearing, “EPA’s regulations will impose enormous costs for no meaningful benefits—in other words, all pain for no climate gain.”

Democrats said Republicans are denying the reality of climate change. “This bill is called the Energy Tax Prevention Act,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member. “This is a title that is total nonsense because EPA has no authority to level energy tax. What this bill should be called is the Big Polluter Protection Act.”

Even before the hearing this morning, lawmakers had come out swinging. Rep. Waxman  circulated a letter on Tuesday that George W. Bush’s EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson wrote in January 2008, which claimed climate science was settled and was possibly a danger to public health. The letter was sent six months before Johnson announced that the agency would continue to evaluate whether an endangerment finding was needed. 

Inhofe countered the claim by pointing to a different statement Johnson made in July 2008, which suggested regulating GHGs under existing law would cause legal, economic, and technical problems. At the hearing he shot at the EPA: “EPA claims the Supreme Court forced it to act. Not so; the Supreme Court ruled that EPA possessed the discretion under the Clean Air Act to decide whether greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare,” he said. “EPA was given a choice, and it made the wrong choice.”

EPA Administrator Jackson told the committee that children and adults relied on the Clean Air Act, and that Inhofe and Upton’s bill to eliminate portions of the law would weaken it. “The bill appears to be part of a broader effort in this Congress to delay, weaken, or eliminate Clean Air Act protections of the American public,” she said.

Responding to claims that GHG regulation would affect the economy, she said that “EPA’s implementation of the Act also has contributed to dynamic growth in the U.S. environmental technologies industry and its workforce. In 2008, that industry generated nearly 300 billion dollars in revenues and 44 billion dollars in exports.” She also pointed to a University of Massachusetts and Ceres study that said the CAA—updated with mercury, soot, smog, and presumably GHG standards—would create 1.5 million jobs over the next five years.

The science behind the endangerment finding—the determination that GHGs could endanger public health and welfare—was supported by the National Academy of Sciences and 18 of America’s leading scientific societies. “Chairman Upton’s bill would, in its own words, repeal that scientific finding,” she said. “Politicians overruling scientists on a scientific question—that would become part of this Committee’s legacy.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott testified that if Upton and Inhofe’s bill became law, it would “effectively resolve most of the lawsuits filed by Texas against the EPA.”

Abbott said Texas had upheld all environmental laws to date, but it could not support the EPA’s pursuit of “regulations that are contrary to the law and devastating to the economy,” he said. “Although the EPA’s legally flawed pursuit of GHG regulations has forced Texas into a legal dispute against our federal partners, the last year of litigation stands in contrast to years of cooperative enforcement between Texas and the EPA.”

Abbott claimed the EPA, “in it zeal” to regulate GHGs, had “ignored the plain language of the Clean Air Act, violated notice and comment requirements, and attempted to re-write congressionally enacted federal laws by administrative rule-making.”

The bill under discussion would put an end to the EPA’s “illegal effort” to rewrite the CAA, he said. “We are a nation of laws, and it is elected members of Congress—not unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats at the EPA—that must make legislative decisions for the country. One of those decisions is whether the federal government will attempt to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Congress can reassert its proper role by reclaiming this important decision-making process on behalf of the American people.”

For more, or to watch the webcast hearing, click here.

Sources: POWERnews, House Subcommittee on Energy and Power

 

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