done...
Posted on 08/23/2012 4:29:09 PM PDT by seamus
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970 to protect the nation’s air and water from pollution. Over the years, Congress put EPA in charge of implementing and enforcing many laws, some of them important and needed, but others based on faulty science and adopted without regard to their enormous costs and small or nonexistent benefits.
In recent years, EPA has become a rogue agency, spending billions of dollars (approximately $9 billion in 2012) directly and imposing on individuals and businesses hundreds of billions of dollars in compliance costs. This huge burden is destroying jobs by blocking the use of American energy resources and giving foreign competitors an enormous cost advantage over U.S. businesses.
EPA has perverted the Clean Air Act by declaring carbon dioxide a “pollutant,” despite the plain intent of the law’s authors to exclude such naturally occurring gases, and despite major flaws in the science used to claim carbon dioxide endangers human health.
EPA is shutting down coal-fired electricity generation across the country by enforcing air quality standards that are unnecessarily stringent and impossible to meet. This action is causing electricity rates to rise rapidly and for electrical supplies to become unreliable.
The toll EPA is now taking on our country is staggering, putting hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work at a time when millions of people are unemployed and our reliance on foreign sources of energy threatens to compromise the nation’s security.
The Solution
The solution is to rein in EPA through deep cuts in the size, power, and cost of the agency. This can be done by Congress, through its control over the government’s purse, or by a president willing to put sound science and a strong economy ahead of the demands of environmental extremists.
According to Dr. Jay Lehr, science director of The Heartland Institute and a leading authority on water pollution and environmental protection, EPA’s budget could safely be cut by 80 percent or more without endangering the environment or human health. Most of what EPA does today, according to Dr. Lehr, could be done better by state government agencies, many of which didn’t exist or had much less expertise back in 1970, when EPA was created.
Congress can repeal EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide in the name of “global warming,” and it can demand cost-benefit analysis be applied to all environmental regulations. It can demand that EPA reform its politicized and unreliable scientific research program, and go back to sound science and common sense.
The Petition
The Citizen’s Petition to Rein in the Environmental Protection Agency calls out EPA’s unscientific and destructive campaign to frighten people over the threat of man-made global warming and demands “deep cuts in the size, power, and cost of the EPA.”
So far, nearly 5,000 people have signed it and returned copies of the petition to us. When we reach 10,000 signatures, we plan to hold an event in Washington DC and formally submit the petition to members of Congress.
You can help! Please sign the petition, and urge your friends, relatives, and coworkers to sign it, too. You can sign it online here, or print out copies and fax signed copies to 312/377-5000, or mail them to us at The Heartland Institute, One South Wacker Drive #2740, Chicago, IL 60606.
By working together, we can rein in the Environmental Protection Agency! We can protect the environment without sacrificing jobs or our essential freedoms. Please help us by signing a petition today. You can also make tax-deductible contributions to The Heartland Institute by going here, or by sending your check or money order to the address above.
done...
Thanks, Chode. Help spread the word!
wilco...
I’ll sign it and here’s something else we can do. Encourage your congressman to join the other 100+ cosponsors of H.R.750 - Defending America’s Affordable Energy and Jobs Act
To preempt regulation of, action relating to, or consideration of greenhouse gases under Federal and common law on enactment of a Federal policy to mitigate climate change.
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h750/show
Excellent idea, CC. Thanks!
The GOP. GAVE as the EPA
Yup. One of many bad ideas from Nixon. But it’s never been more dangerous to our liberty and destructive to our economy than right now.
Well he have to admit back then the air and water were dirty....
done
Of course. And the EPA should be considered one of the most successful government agencies in American history. We have, by far, the cleanest air and water in the industrial world — and are leagues ahead of the Third World, of course.
But no agency, ever, says “mission accomplished.” There is always more power to grab, more areas to regulate. Left to their own devices — let alone purposely unleashed by this president — government agencies will run wild. If we don’t stop the EPA now from continuing to consider carbon dioxide a “pollutant,” and impose Cap’n Trade by fiat (after it has been rejected by the public and the Congress it has elected) we’re in big trouble.
The only way I'd support Reining it in would be if the Agency had Iron clad regulations that could never be ignored but its political masters.
Thanks, PA Engineer. I’m from Pittsburgh. You a Steelers fan?
Exactly right, PP. First you isolate it. Then you freeze it. Then you kill it.
I think some lefty agitator of some renown advised that. Time to use those tactics against the instruments of leftist control.
Yeah kill it.
I'm sure every state has one by now. Say buh-bye.
It’s a good start.
The EPA is the reason I’m still poor and have to keep working although I am almost 79, instead of having the wealth I should have had for the past 30 years.
I’m in, but where is the petition to overturn Wickard v. Filburn? That’ll be the daisy cutter.
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