Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday it will take a hard look at whether new regulations are needed to cut emissions of methane from the oil and gas industry, part of President Barack Obama's plan to address climate change. Regulators will start by proposing new rules later this year to reduce venting and flaring from oil and gas wells on public lands, one way to begin slashing emissions of the potent greenhouse gas, said Dan Utech, Obama's top energy and climate aide. Most oil and gas production takes place on privately owned land. The Environmental Protection Agency...

Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), asked scientists at a climate change conference on Thursday in Arlington, Va., to help advance President Barack Obama’s agenda on climate change. […] Peter Saundry, executive director of NCSE, introduced McCarthy by noting Obama’s pledge to act unilaterally on climate change. “President Obama has announced that he will work with Congress whenever he can but will not be held hostage—will move forward and do the utmost, we hope, through executive authority and through the agencies,” Saundry said. “The Supreme Court has noted that EPA has authority under (the) Clean Air Act...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has still not complied with a subpoena issued August 1, 2013 by the House Science, Space and Technology Committee seeking the scientific foundation of virtually every Clean Air Act regulation the agency has issued. The subpoena demanded that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy hand over data from two decades-old taxpayer-funded studies as the agency moves towards the adoption of strict new ozone standards that could cost the U.S. economy $90 billion annually—which would make them the most expensive regulations in U.S. history. The subpoenaed data is cited as the scientific basis for EPA’s claim that microscopic...

The Environmental Protection Agency didn’t let a Clean Air Act requirement that mandated technologies be “adequately demonstrated” hinder their new performance standards ruling that puts a 1,100-pound limit per megawatt hour on carbon emissions from new coal power plants. Not only is there no scientifically-supportable climate benefit for limiting such emissions, there is no viable commercial-scale technology to achieve that ideological pipedream. Even if it mattered, the most modern coal-fired plants can only reduce CO2 emissions to 1,800 pounds. What’s more, they already knew that. Or at least they certainly should have after a fact-finding working group within EPA’s own...

A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a legal challenge by Texas and Wyoming to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in a 2-1 vote, said the states and various industry groups did not have standing to sue because they could not show that they had suffered an injury or that a ruling throwing out the EPA plan would benefit them. Texas and Wyoming objected in part to the tight deadlines the EPA imposed on them for coming up with...

The Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says no law empowers any judge to stop it from conducting illegal scientific experiments on seniors, children and the sick. That astounding assertion will be tested Friday, when a federal district court in Alexandria decides whether it has jurisdiction to hear claims made by the American Tradition Institute that EPA researchers are exposing unwary and genetically susceptible senior citizens to air pollutants the agency says can cause a variety of serious cardiac and respiratory problems, including sudden death. Although the lawsuit only addresses ongoing, purportedly illegal experimentation being carried out at an EPA laboratory...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday upheld the first-ever U.S. proposed rules governing heat-trapping greenhouse gases, clearing a path for sweeping regulations affecting vehicles, coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities. Handing a setback to industry and a victory to the Obama administration, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously ruled the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that carbon dioxide is a public danger and the decision to set limits for emissions from cars and light trucks were "neither arbitrary nor capricious." The ruling, which addresses four separate lawsuits, upholds the underpinnings of the...

C&S Wholesale Grocers Inc. has agreed to pay a $126,700 penalty for claims it violated the federal Clean Air Act when a gas leak sickened workers at its North Hatfield Road warehouse, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reports. "We appreciate the opportunity to finalize this agreement and close the door on this event that occurred five years ago," Bryan T. Granger, a vice president in C&S's legal department, said, referring to the May 2007 incident. C&S is a major supplier to supermarket chains in the northeast. The Keene, N.H.-based company did not admit to any liability, but did agree to audit...

A number of states have joined with industry organizations to challenge new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency on the grounds that they run contrary to the Clean Air Act. Oral arguments began on February 28 before D.C.’s Court of Appeals.Previous cases have not gone so well. In 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court affirmed the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. And last year, the Court unanimously threw out a lawsuit, American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, that was brought by eight states. In its decision, the court held...

In another triumph for government transparency, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson signed the final MACT Rule last Friday, but she’s been keeping it secret until a formal announcement planned for today. MACT stands for Maximum Achievable Control Technology. It covers emission rules for various industries, controlling the technologies the EPA finds achievable in the same sense that a choke chain controls a dog. The new MACT rules are going to come down hard on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, despite serious questions raised by critics about the EPA’s methodology for calculating costs and benefits from the rule. Many of the...

The Environmental Protection Agency will unveil highly-anticipated regulations on Wednesday aimed at curbing mercury and other toxic air pollutants from power plants. The agency said Tuesday that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will make a “significant Clean Air Act announcement” Wednesday at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC. A source closely following the issue confirmed to The Hill that the agency will unveil the final mercury and air toxics standards. Jackson will be joined at the event Wednesday afternoon by public health experts and industry representatives, EPA said. But the agency did not name the officials. The long-delayed...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Democrat-controlled Senate on Thursday rejected a Republican attempt to block a regulation intended to curb power plant pollution that blows downwind into other states. By a 56-41 vote, senators defeated a resolution by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who said the step was needed to rein in what he called the Obama administration's overzealous job-killing approach to environmental protection. "We are simply asking that the clean air regulations already on the books stay in place and we do not make the regulations so onerous that they put utility plants out of business and we have an...

I was listening to Neil Boortz last night and he was talking about this new Carbon EPA stuff. He said that the EPA was hiring, get this, 230,000 new employees whose sole responsibility was to process this new paper work. He said that it was going to cost (I think) 1.4 million jobs right out of the box and companies will have to fold, and that some powerplants that we desparate need will be shut down, electricity is going to go through the roof. C02, a natural occuring Gas, is now pollution. He did say that Hermain Cain said the...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Monday asked President Barack Obama to use his executive authority to prevent or delay implementation of stricter pollution standards, saying they will have an "immediate and devastating" effect on the state. The standards have stirred up Texas' largest energy companies, which say they don't have adequate time to meet the deadlines without shutting down plants and jeopardizing the reliability of Texas' electric grid. Implementation of the rules starts Jan. 1. In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, Perry said the implementation of the Cross State Air Pollution Rules will have...

The president has found a way to add jobs, after all — 230,000 of ‘em, all within the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s the number of new bureaucrats the federal government will need to hire to implement new proposed greenhouse gas regulations, according to a report by The Daily Caller: The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion...

The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion — to attempt to implement the rules. The EPA aims to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the Clean Air Act, even though the law doesn’t give the EPA explicit power to do so. The agency’s authority to move forward is being challenged in court by petitioners who argue that...

If you came up with a bumper sticker that pulls together the platform of this year’s crop of Republican presidential candidates, it would have to be: Repeal the 20th century. Vote GOP. It’s not just the 21st century they want to turn the clock back on — health-care reform, global warming and the financial regulations passed in the wake of the recent financial crises and accounting scandals. These folks are actually talking about repealing the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, created in 1970s. SNIP They reject as thoroughly discredited all of Keynesian economics,...

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has exercised its authority under the Clean Air Act to temporarily waive certain federal clean gasoline requirements for parts of Pennsylvania. The waiver was granted by EPA in coordination with the Department of Energy (DOE), at the request of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson determined that...

Barbara Boxer: I hope greens sue President Obama By: Darren Goode September 7, 2011 09:01 AM EDT Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer said she hopes green groups sue President Barack Obama over his decision to punt a regulation curbing smog-creating emissions until at least 2013. Boxer — whose relatively mild reaction to Obama’s surprise announcement Friday was in contrast to heated rebukes by environmental groups — said she will stand by those groups in any litigation to force the administration to issue a final ozone rule that goes beyond what was enacted by President George W. Bush....

The unique way Texas regulates air pollution from refineries, chemical plants and other major industries is no more — for now. The EPA said Tuesday all 136 industrial plants with state-issued permits that do not meet federal Clean Air Act requirements have agreed to apply for new ones. The announcement comes one year after the federal agency rejected Texas' use of so-called flexible permits. But the dispute is not over, because state officials and at least 10 industry groups are challenging the EPA's actions in federal court. Gov. Rick Perry and other Texas officials have said the EPA was threatening...