Hey EPA: Don’t Mess with Texas

Pajamas Media ^ | September 30, 2010 | Lance Brown

[Kaslin]

Lance Brown dissects and dismantles the Obama EPA's latest attack on the Lone Star State.

Here’s some advice for the Environmental Protection Agency: Don’t mess with Texas.

Furthermore, don’t mess with our nation’s most affordable and reliable forms of energy, either.

After declaring greenhouse gases hazardous earlier this year, the EPA plans to use the Clean Air Act to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions from emitters of all sizes beginning January 2011. The EPA’s plan has been widely criticized for being too burdensome and expensive, so the EPA attempted to downsize the plan with a “Tailoring Rule,” targeting only the largest emitters.

In August, Texas filed a lawsuit against the EPA, declaring the proposed “Tailoring Rule” illegal. The state rightly claims the EPA’s plan is unlawful because the Clean Air Act does not address greenhouse gases, even after its last revision by Congress in 1990.

Texas is not alone, as a number of states from Alabama to South Dakota have opposed the EPA’s plan, along with groups like the Ohio Coal Association and the National Alliance of Forest Owners.

It’s alarming enough that the EPA plans to regulate emitters like power plants and factories, which are necessary components of energy production and provide needed jobs. However, it’s even more alarming that the EPA would regulate at least one clean, reliable form of energy — woody biomass, which will not be exempt by the Tailoring Rule.

By regulating woody biomass — which is, in fact, carbon neutral — the EPA would be lumping foresters and biomass emissions with less clean energy producers like coal factories. In addition, the EPA would be ignoring long-held policy, based on scientific fact, and ignoring the carbon benefits of biomass.

The regulation of woody biomass runs counter to common sense. The EPA’s ultimate goal is to reduce greenhouse gases and get our country on a path to using more renewable energy sources. However, by regulating woody biomass, the EPA would be deterring the use of one of our country’s most reliable and inexpensive sources of clean, carbon-neutral energy.

Some states, like Maine, obtain about 30 percent of their energy from woody biomass. Because it is abundant and sustainable— foresters re-plant some 4 million trees every year — it’s a good renewable energy option for states that don’t have access to sources like wind and solar. (And, as I wrote on my blog two weeks ago, even states like Texas that do have high wind capacity aren’t able to utilize wind if the wind doesn’t blow!)

Let’s run through it again. The EPA is attempting to use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases, which might be illegal. In addition, it’s overturning decades of precedent regarding woody biomass, which has long been considered a reliable, clean, carbon-neutral source of energy. Furthermore, by imposing these regulations, especially on foresters and woody biomass producers, the EPA will be effectively killing a valuable source of energy and jobs at a time when we need both.

The EPA’s plan doesn’t make any sense, and many states and organizations are on to the administration’s misguided plan. Let’s hope the EPA realizes that it is making a huge mistake and leaves the energy legislating to our elected officials.

[jtal]

The federal government is making war on Texas.

[utherdoul]

anyone who makes war on Texas has ended up regretting it.

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[steelyourfaith]

Thanx, Army Air Corps !

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !EPA: An unelected, flunky bureaucracy populated with radical, no-growth, Marxist, environmental nut-jobs wielding rogue powers based in junk science. A cancer on the private sector. Ultimately, the EPA is not about the environment. It is about legislating from the Executive Branch in Soviet Agency style. It has the convenient unconstitutional feature of allowing the Obama Administration to pursue an extreme global warming agenda, to make energy prices necessarily sky-rocket, and gain sweeping regulatory control over the US economy without a politically difficult vote in congress.

Action against EPA abuse of power by private enterprise:

• CEI: CEI, Science Groups Petition EPA to Reconsider Increasingly Dubious Global Warming “Endangerment” Finding
• CEI: New Lawsuit, Petition Challenge EPA Global Warming Regulations
• PEC: World’s biggest coal company brings U.S. government to court in climate fraud
• PEC: World’s biggest coal company brings U.S. government to court in climate fraud
• CEI, NAM, API, CRA, OCA, UARG, etc.: 16 'Endangerment' Lawsuits Filed Against EPA Before Deadline
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce: U.S. Chamber lawsuit attacks basis for EPA emissions limits

Action against EPA abuse of power by state/federal government:

• TX: Hey EPA: Don’t Mess with Texas
• TX: A Green Tea Party
• TX: Texas, Skeptics Seek Court Review of EPA's 'Endangerment' Finding
• TX: Texas sues EPA over anti-pollution plan
• TX: Texas to challenge US greenhouse gas rules
• TX: UPDATE 1-Texas to challenge US greenhouse gas rules
• TX: Governor Rick Perry To Sue the EPA
• TX: Texas Fight! What Other States Can Learn from Texas vs U.S. EPA
• VA: Cuccinelli, Virginia Attorney General Challenges EPA on Greenhouse Gas
• VA: Va. challenges EPA's stance on global warming
• VA: Virginia challenges EPA ruling on greenhouse gases
• VA: Video: Virginia AG Tells EPA To Go Back To The Drawing Board Over Globaloney
• VA: Cuccinelli seeks to block EPA’s global-warming petition Attorney general disputes climate change...
• VA: Cuccinelli Fights the EPA
• VA: EPA, Countering Critics of Greenhouse Gas Findings, Says 'Science Is Settled'
• VA: Newly-Elected Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli: Activist!
• UT, TX, VA: Texas, Utah, Virginia Sue over Fraudulent Glo-Bull Warming
• AL, TX, VA: Three States Sue EPA Over Global Warming Ruling
• MS: Barbour Lobbies Fellow Governors to Oppose EPA Regulations
• AK: Alaska senator moves to strip EPA's authority
• FL, IN, SC, VA, TX, AL et al: US states sue EPA to stop greenhouse gas rules [FL, IN, SC, VA, TX, AL...]
• Fed: Effort To Block EPA Greenhouse Ruling Now Bipartisan
• Fed: Senior Democrats floating bill to block EPA on plans for greenhouse gas rules
• Fed: US Reps from Mo. to propose blocking EPA gas rules
• Fed: Democrat slow learners wake up to EPA power grab ( CO2 Gas is a pollutant?)
• Fed: House Democrats challenge EPA on greenhouse gases
• Fed: Helter-Skelton: Key Lawmaker Reverses On Climate Action
• Fed: House GOP targets EPA rules
• Fed: US Sen. Rockefeller seeks EPA carbon rule delay

Action in support of EPA abuse of power:

• NYC et al: CLIMATE: States seek to intervene in challenge to EPA's endangerment finding

---

☆☆ States Officially Rejecting Anthropogenic Global Warming

☆ Utah
☆ Arizona

[ForGod'sSake]

Thanks Army Air Corps!

I couldn't really tell if there was anything new here, so as much as anything else, a ping so's everyone knows that Texas and a few other States are still battling the EPA brown shirts over the air we exhale. Next step: Individualized and personalized breath "scrubbers" for all! Oh, and what about that methane stuff??? WHEN will the EPA get serious?

For instance, when one's effort to maintain their grip on an air biscuit fails and leads to inadvertent aromatics in a crowded elevator or other close quarters, particularly after a round of burritos and cerveza can be, well, interesting, not to mention offensive -- to some. However, it's a rare and singularly brave individual indeed who will claim ownership so I'm thinking some extraordinary measures are necessary. For example and for those that wear them, underwear built to contain the leak, as it were. The mandating of methane mitigating undergarments only makes sense. A blowout preventer of a sort. I'm sure the oil industry themselves in collaboration with the Mexican food industry could be instrumental in providing some expertise.

All of which reminds me: Some 30 years ago, give or take, I was listening to radio station KIKK in Houston Texas when an apparent blowout occurred in their small studio. It wasn't pretty. The on air personalities consisted of two men and a woman, whose names escape me now. Anyhow, the first words I recall hearing alerting me to something being amiss was something like "OH MY GAWD!" from the lady DJ. Huh, I says to myself. "THAT'S JUST AWFUL!", again from the lady DJ followed by some snickers from her two partners. The snickers grew to a crescendo as the lady DJ called for a gas mask or for someone to "PLEASE CRACK A WINDOW" and "OPEN THE DOOR". Alrighty then I says, as one of the guys, between guffaws, said something about tamales.

They went to a commercial break and when they returned they had all more or less regained their composure -- temporarily. Now I'm not sure if there wasn't maybe another blowout, but soon enough they all were once again unable to maintain. The lady DJ said something about payback -- ANOTHER commercial break. I'm wondering to myself if this sophisticated and erudite lady fully intended to visit the local purveyor of Tex-Mex to exact some revenge on her antagonist(s). Turnabout is fair play I says to myself but am unaware if she was ever able to pull it off. Still I wonder to this day about the old saw about the hen that lays the egg cackles first. Whatever...

[metmom]

It’s about time someone stood up to the feds.

[RVN Airplane Driver]

We Texan's are blessed...we have a Governor that stands up to the Feds and an Attorney General who, although wheel chair bound "Stands Tall".

We have a dumbcrat crook from Houston who nearly bankrupted that city running for Governor. He refuses to release his income tax returns when he was a part of the klintoon white house....does anyone wonder why...the bald headed "peckerhead" got rich....being a thief.... The dumbcrats are spending a ton of money in these media markets with attack ads that only FR's resident pain in the a$$ pissant would find attactive....

[AbolishCSEU]

I SO want to move from NYS to TX or AZ!!!!

[Danae]

I only have one thing to say....

A woman in the midst of her “monthly time” trumps ALL with the mere addition of a taco.

[mstar]

KIKK in Houston Texas

I haven't thought about KIKK in years. Is it still going? KILT used to be "top 40 pop" and KIKK "kicker". Then they both went "kicker".

[ForGod'sSake]

A woman in the midst of her “monthly time” trumps ALL with the mere addition of a taco.

Which, truth be known, may have been exactly what happened. SHE cackled first, but that may just be an old wives tale. Regardless, I still get a chuckle to this day over that episode.

[ForGod'sSake]

I haven't thought about KIKK in years. Is it still going?

I don't know. I moved from the Houston area in the early 90's at about the same time I stopped turning on the radio. No explanation for it, just happened. Too many commercials maybe...

[Osage Orange]

Taco?

[freekitty]

The EPA does not have the authority to impose on the states.

[rlmorel]

We used to say...

“He who smelt it, dealt it...”

and

“The fox smells its own hole...”

:)

[Blood of Tyrants]

Fascism- a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

[ForGod'sSake]

Heh,heh. It’s entirely possible it was a joint effort with multiple points of methane escape; Tex-Mex being very popular in the Lone Star State and all. Alls I know is it’s about the funniest thing I’ve ever heard on a radio station. A major market one at that. It took the better part of ten minutes before they were able to continue the show with a modicum of decorum.

[LibLieSlayer]

The next REAL PRESIDENT of the US should rescind Nixon's Executive Order creating the epa... I would celebrate those people losing their jobs.

LLS