The Anti-Industrial Coup: Environmental Dictatorship by Executive Decree

Jewish World Review ^ | March 26, 2009 | Robert Tracinski

[reaganaut1]

We all expect that there will be a contest in Congress this year over global warming and a "cap-and-trade" bill limiting carbon dioxide emissions. After all, the government cannot impose sweeping new controls on our lives without extensive public debate and a vote in Congress that must gain the support of a clear majority of the representatives of the people.

Or can it?

Yesterday, the EPA issued a "finding" that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that threatens human health and can thus be regulated under the 1990 Clean Air Act.

This is a scientific farce. How can a basic constituent of the atmosphere that all humans constantly exhale be designated a "pollutant"? Moreover, water vapor is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, yet the EPA has not yet declared dihydrogen monoxide gas to be a threat to mankind.

This is also an assault on the entire structure of representative government. Controls on emissions of carbon dioxide will reach into every nook and cranny of the economy, creating a fine network of restrictions on economic activity that will make the recent regime of bailouts, salary caps, and business seizures look like laissez-faire by comparison. But it will all be done — in effect, it has just been done — by the decree of executive agency bureaucrats, without an opportunity for public debate or a legislative vote. Sure, Congress will be invited to "participate" in drafting carbon dioxide controls, but it will do so under the threat that the EPA can simply create those controls on its own, without needing to consult the people's representatives.

Ayn Rand warned that the environmentalist movement constitutes an "Anti-Industrial Revolution," but the term "revolution" implies a broad base of popular support.

[eyeamok]

if CO2 is now a deadly gas that needs to be regulated, I propose that treason be redefined as :Any Public Servant who makes false or misleading statements about a material fact, shall be immediately charged with Crimes Against Humanity. Their Lies while spewing deadly CO2 should be TREASON.

[Don Corleone]

We are truly “A Nation of Sheep”.

[Condor51]

The EPA is evil.

[Anima Mundi]

What really happened to our economy is that they went after: tobacco, oil, auto, timber, fur, agricultural, pharmaceutical, banking, real estate...etc. Almost nothing is left which isn’t regulated to death. What is not made illegal is made impossible through regulation.

[steelyourfaith]

Excellent article.

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !