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Something Troubling is In the Air
Townhall.com ^ | July 8, 2009 | Ed Feulner

Posted on 07/08/2009 10:44:09 AM PDT by Kaslin

You may want to think twice before taking your next deep breath. Every time you exhale, you’re supposedly endangering the planet -- by contributing to global warming.

The Environmental Protection Agency says global warming poses a “serious threat to public health and safety.” That sets the stage for the EPA to regulate, through the Clean Air Act, almost anything that emits carbon dioxide.

CO2, of course, is a naturally-occurring gas. It’s produced whenever a person breathes and, yes, whenever we use any sort of fossil fuel. Driving a car, mowing a lawn, boiling a cup of water, even flipping on a light switch (thus using electricity generated in CO2-emitting power plants) produces carbon dioxide. Yet in 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide may be considered a pollutant as defined by the Clean Air Act -- thus giving the EPA the authority to regulate it.

Last year the EPA issued an “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” (ANPR) that shows it plans a strict regulatory regime for CO2. The ANPR and its supporting documents run to 18,000 pages. The level of detail suggests that the EPA has already decided to impose regulations unprecedented in their cost, complexity and scope.

Unelected federal bureaucrats could soon be demanding that manufacturers change how they design their products and insisting that all vehicles meet higher fuel economy standards. In fact, the ANPR outlines just such restrictions in detail. But the agency doesn’t stop with moving objects.

Its restrictions also would apply to as many as a million buildings, 200,000 manufacturing plants and 20,000 farms. And dealing with the EPA is no picnic. Strict agency regulation typically imposes an average of $125,000 in costs and requires companies to spend 866 hours every year to complete its bureaucratic forms.

Of course, these regulations would weigh down our already-sagging economy.

A study last year from The Heritage Foundation predicted CO2 regulations could cost up to 800,000 jobs per year in some years. Even in a “good” year, our economy would lose more than half a million jobs every year from 2015 through 2026. (These are net job losses, by the way. The Heritage estimate takes into account all the “green” jobs the government is supposedly going to create, and still shows hundreds of thousands of lost jobs each year.)

Man­ufacturing would be hit especially hard. As many as 3 million people could end up unemployed. That’s because business owners, faced with a massive carbon tax, would pack up and move their plants to China, India or some other location where the government doesn’t impose exorbitant costs.

Congress hasn’t helped matters with its latest attempt at “cap and trade” legislation. Expect significantly higher energy costs if the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, which recently passed the House, becomes law.

As Heritage energy expert Ben Lieberman testified before Congress, the trouble starts as soon as the bill's provisions take effect in 2012. “For a household of four, energy costs go up $436 that year, and they eventually reach $1,241 in 2035 and average $829 annually over that span,” he said. “Electricity costs go up 90 percent by 2035, gasoline by 58 percent, and natural gas by 55 percent by 2035. The cumulative higher energy costs for a family of four by then will be nearly $20,000.”

Regulating CO2 isn’t what Congress had in mind when it passed the Clean Air Act in the 1970s. If the EPA moves forward, a handful of unelected bureaucrats could wreak havoc on our economy. It’s time lawmakers take a deep breath -- and think twice.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: agenda; airquality; bho44; bhoenvironment; bhoepa; co2; feulner
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1 posted on 07/08/2009 10:44:09 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

I just don’t breath out.


2 posted on 07/08/2009 10:45:29 AM PDT by Colvin (Harry Reid is a sap sucking idiot.)
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To: Kaslin
Something Troubling is In the Air

Oh, that's just the leftover pasta salad I had for lunch.

3 posted on 07/08/2009 10:46:44 AM PDT by B-Chan
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To: Kaslin
Exhaling will get you 2 to 5.

Farting will get you 10 to 15.

4 posted on 07/08/2009 10:46:45 AM PDT by AU72
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To: Kaslin

Just wait. When Waxman-Markley goes down in flames, the great 0 will use the EPA to impose it by regulatory means.

Congress could pass a law telling the EPA that it has no power to regulate CO2, but this Congress won’t.


5 posted on 07/08/2009 10:50:22 AM PDT by mojito
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To: AU72

roflmao


6 posted on 07/08/2009 10:50:45 AM PDT by cranked
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To: Kaslin
This is the statist's dream - to scare people enough that they will pay taxes for breathing...

What kind of moronic electorate falls for this? The Main stream media has brainwashed everyone.

7 posted on 07/08/2009 10:52:06 AM PDT by x_plus_one ("Salvation comes about though change in individual lives, not through the ending of unjust society")
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To: Kaslin
It’s time lawmakers take a deep breath -- and think twice -- and hold it indefinitely so as not to emit any CO2.
8 posted on 07/08/2009 10:52:41 AM PDT by VRWCmember
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To: Kaslin

I saw a motor home the other day that said on the side “Meat Is Not Green” so we don’t eat meat and the animal population grows larger and where does the gasses from them go??


9 posted on 07/08/2009 10:52:58 AM PDT by handy old one (It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. Aristotle)
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To: Kaslin; rdl6989; Little Bill; IrishCatholic; Normandy; According2RecentPollsAirIsGood; ...
 


Beam me to Planet Gore !

10 posted on 07/08/2009 10:53:37 AM PDT by steelyourfaith ("The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money" - Lady Thatcher)
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To: Kaslin

The 2nd amendment takes care of this, we just shoot the bozos in charge of this bs and they don’t pollute when they aren’t breathing


11 posted on 07/08/2009 10:53:42 AM PDT by longfellow (Bill Maher, the 21st hijacker.)
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To: x_plus_one
Personal Carbon credits for the privilege of breathing “the people's air”.
12 posted on 07/08/2009 10:54:04 AM PDT by massgopguy (I owe everything to George Bailey)
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To: handy old one

Tangent:

“Salad is not food. Salad is what food eats.”


13 posted on 07/08/2009 10:54:11 AM PDT by ctdonath2 (John Galt was exiled.)
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To: Kaslin

Not to mention we need it to go our food.


14 posted on 07/08/2009 10:54:49 AM PDT by AliVeritas ( Pray, Pray, Pray)
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To: handy old one

I asked a Moonbat if Buffaloes fart. She didn’t get it. So I explained to her that before the White Man came and killed them all, that the Buffalo heard of the Great Plains covered four states.


15 posted on 07/08/2009 10:55:48 AM PDT by massgopguy (I owe everything to George Bailey)
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To: Kaslin

The largest source of CO2 in the world is the oceans, lakes and rivers.

What are we going to do about that?


16 posted on 07/08/2009 10:56:20 AM PDT by Captain Jack Aubrey (There's not a moment to lose.)
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To: Kaslin
you’re supposedly endangering the planet

You mean this planet? Cuz there are lots of planets. But "the" is a definite article.

(By the way, when did "the world" become "the planet"? And why?)
17 posted on 07/08/2009 10:56:43 AM PDT by LearsFool ("Thou shouldst not have been old, till thou hadst been wise.")
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To: Colvin
I just don’t breath out.

That's all right--Clinton never inhaled.

18 posted on 07/08/2009 10:56:44 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: massgopguy

Don’t know if they fart but the meat sure is good!!


19 posted on 07/08/2009 10:57:07 AM PDT by handy old one (It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. Aristotle)
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To: Kaslin
CO2 = 0.038% of our atmosphere; 3% of which (at most) man is responsible. The global temperature is unchanged over the past 30 years, and has cooled by 0.74 degrees during the past ten years, during which time the CO2 concentration (such as it is) has risen. Facts are stubborn things.

That's why "Climate Change" has nothing to do with scientific or any other sort of facts - it is about power and money and control.

20 posted on 07/08/2009 10:59:44 AM PDT by andy58-in-nh (You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.)
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