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For many years, those of us in the Arctic have been fighting the wood stove ban. The use of PM2.5 particulates has been an issue pursued by local agencies as a way to swipe at those who choose to live beyond the borders of traditional civilization. That attack has now extended to the rest of the United States. In a stunning move, the Environmental Protection Agency decided to ban most of the operational wood stoves in the U.S. In those places where there is you, God, and nature, the wood stove has represented that one thing that can sustain. Going...

Big Brother: The government we entrust our medical records to under ObamaCare has its EPA sharing confidential data on farmers with green groups and the IRS reading your email. Smile and wave at the EPA drone. The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged that it released personal information on potentially thousands of farmers and ranchers to environmental groups, violating their privacy rights and acting in collusion with private groups with private political agendas. In Nixonian fashion, the EPA has provided these environmental groups with the dossiers of farmers it has gathered to help them create an enemies list of potential polluters....

This column was co-authored by Niger Innis From New York, Washington and Atlanta to Chicago, St. Louis and Dallas, America is baking in a furnace. As millions swelter and gasp, they thank their lucky stars for air-conditioned cars, homes, offices and other places of refuge. And for the reliable, affordable electricity that makes AC possible. Previous generations weren’t so fortunate. When a record heat wave slammed the nation in July 1936, Midwest temperatures hit 100-107 for a week. With most homes and businesses lacking even fans in this pre-AC era, millions suffered heat prostration. In Wisconsin, 449 died. Nationwide, thousands...

President Obama wants to control all the land and all the water in the United States. Legislation that would have deleted the word "navigable" from the federal Clean Water Act and given the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers jurisdiction over every drop of moisture in the country crashed and burned last Congress, ending the 36-year congressional career of its lead sponsor, Jim Oberstar, in the process. But Obama's EPA, as usual, won't take no for an answer, and is now attempting to ignore two Supreme Court decisions, commonsense, and the American people and vastly expand federal Clean Water Act...

HOUSTON– Nearly 140 Texas plants, including some of the nation’s largest refineries, have reached a deal with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to receive new permits even though a long-standing battle between the Lone Star State and the federal agency is far from over.The EPA’s announcement Tuesday that it reached a deal for all 136 companies to apply for new permits came more quickly than initially expected when the agency ruled last year that Texas’ so-called “flexible permits” violated the federal Clean Air Act. At the time, Texas blasted the EPA ruling, challenging it in court and saying

U.S. EPA warned of the potential dire consequences of legislation being fast-tracked through the House that would give states final say on rules concerning water, wetlands and mountaintop-removal mining. In a four-page legal analysis (pdf), EPA said the measure (H.R. 2018 (pdf)) sponsored by House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) and ranking member Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) "would overturn almost 40 years of federal legislation by preventing EPA from protecting public health and water quality." GOP House leaders expect to bring the bill to a floor vote this summer. EPA said the Mica-Rahall bill would "significantly undermine" the agency's...

There must be something in the water coolers on the other side of the aisle. Earlier this year, at an Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing concerning reducing regulations, a Democrat colleague expressed his “concern” over reducing the regulation on business and stated boldly that increased regulation on businesses creates jobs in America. According to his logic, more regulation creates more requirements for businesses to hire compliance officers to oversee the regulations imposed upon them by government; therefore the government creates more jobs. At first, I thought he was joking, but he was serious. I later asked the witnesses at the hearing...

Let’s face it. Obama doesn’t give a damn about creating jobs. He only cares about fundamentally changing America and destroying its wealth. American Electric Power announced this week that the latest Obama EPA regulations will cost the company at least 600 jobs and over $6 billion which will be pushed on consumers. Today, Barack Obama’s horrible EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson lashed out at utility companies for revealing the economic destruction of her department’s policies. She then claimed her administration’s policies will prevent premature deaths… What garbage. The Hill reported: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson struck back Wednesday at American...

By WILLIE SOON AND PAUL DRIESSEN The Environmental Protection Agency recently issued 946 pages of new rules requiring that U.S. power plants sharply reduce their (already low) emissions of mercury and other air pollutants. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims that while the regulations will cost electricity producers $10.9 billion annually, they will save 17,000 lives and generate up to $140 billion in health benefits. There is no factual basis for these assertions. To build its case against mercury, the EPA systematically ignored evidence and clinical studies that contradict its regulatory agenda, which is to punish hydrocarbon use. Mercury has always...

However, the state has reluctantly agreed to let the EPA impose the federal plan for now, because the agency could have blocked construction or expansion of projects that need the air permits. The new rules, which took effect Sunday, add greenhouse gases to the list of pollutants covered under air-quality permits and will eventually require the largest polluters to reduce emissions. The federal intervention widens a rift between Arizona and the EPA, which have been feuding over a dust-control plan in Maricopa County. "It's not a good situation, but our approach will prevent a bad situation from getting worse," said...

Actually, it’s not just the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s minority contingent that fears the loss of nearly a million jobs from new EPA rules on greenhouse gases and other emissions issues. It’s also groups like the United Steel Workers, Unions for Jobs and the Environment, and experts like King’s College Professor Ragnar Lofstedt. Hot Air got an exclusive look at a report that the EPW minority staff will release later this morning detailing the economic damage that an activist EPA will do to the American economy, and which will come at perhaps the worst possible time, both economically...

Objecting to how Texas regulates air pollution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday it is taking over the issuance of an operating permit for a Corpus Christi refinery and could step in at some 39 other major facilities across the state. “I think the writing will be on the wall — unless we start seeing better permits that address our objections, we are very likely to begin federalizing others,” EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz said in a telephone interview. “The state is not following federal Clean Air Act requirements.” Tuesday's unprecedented action affected a Flint Hills Resources refinery in...

EPA mandate New renovation rules to push up costs BY ALESHIA HOWE April 12, 2010 Renovation companies nationwide are preparing for a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s mandate beginning April 22 and local experts say homeowners should be prepared to see a higher bill because of it. According to the EPA’s new Renovation Repair and Paint rule, beginning on April 22 builders performing renovation, repair and painting projects that disturb lead-based paint in homes, child care facilities and schools built before 1978 must be EPA certified and must follow specific work practices to prevent lead contamination. “Some things won’t change,...

Pollution Control: From cars to coal mines, the imposition of economy-killing restrictions is under way. Are the new EPA regulations on auto emissions the precursor to regulating carbon dioxide by executive order? In announcing the Environmental Protection Agency's first regulations on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars, Administrator Lisa Jackson has promised they won't be the last such rules stemming from the EPA's "endangerment finding" that carbon dioxide, six pounds of which every human being exhales every day, is a dangerous pollutant. "These are the first regulations that cover greenhouse gas emissions in the United States," Jackson told reporters in...

Abandoning all loyalty to the democratic processes this nation holds dear, President Obama has made the decision that getting energy tax legislation through Congress with the approval of the American people is just too much of a pain to bother with. Instead he will have the EPA declare as early as next week that CO2 is a dangerous global warming gas and will start regulating its emissions immediately. Obama’s promise to open up vast stretches of ocean on the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico to energy exploration is simply a ruse to soften up the public for soon to...

The world’s largest private sector coal business, the Peabody Energy Company (PEC) has filed a mammoth 240-page “Petition for Reconsideration,” a full-blown legal challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The petition must be answered and covers the entire body of leaked emails from ‘Climategate’ as well as those other ‘gate’ revelations including the frauds allegedly perpetrated under such sub-headings as ‘Himalayan Glaciers,’ ‘African Agricultural Production,’ ‘Amazon Rain Forests,’ ‘Melting Mountain Ice,’ ‘Netherlands Below Sea Level’ as well as those much-publicized abuses of the peer-review literature and so called ‘gray literature.’ These powerful litigants also draw attention to the proven...

A bipartisan effort to stop the EPA's anticarbon crusade.The Obama Administration has been moving full-speed ahead on anticarbon regulation, never mind waiting for Congress to pass a bill. But now opposition is building among senior Democrats, with two powerful committee Chairmen introducing a bill last week to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from declaring that carbon is a dangerous pollutant. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is busy writing new rules that would let her drive a tax-and-regulation bulldozer through the U.S. economy under laws never meant to apply to greenhouse gases. Ms. Jackson is expected to issue new anticarbon regulations for...

Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., has co-sponsored a bill to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee — which has some jurisdiction on climate issues — explained his thinking in a statement: “I have no confidence that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act without doing serious damage to our economy.

... Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Mary Landrieu, D-La., on Thursday signed on as co-sponsors to a new resolution offered by Murkowski that would effectively veto the Environmental Protection Agency's formal declaration last year that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare. With that formal endangerment declaration, the agency is prepared to move forward with new limits on emissions from vehicles in March. EPA lawyers and environmental law experts say the tailpipe limits would automatically lead to requirements that new or modified power plants, refiners and other industrial facilities emitting carbon dioxide...

Dr. Miklos Zagoni, Dianna C. Cotter Earth's Greenhouse Effect is constant and does not rise with human CO2 emissions. That is the main point of Dr Miskolczi's results, called to the attention of the EPA in the 'Endangerment Finding' evaluation process. The EPA could not disprove this or Miskolczi’s conclusions. Recently the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued an “Endangerment Finding” stating that CO2 and 5 other green house gasses constituted a danger to public health and welfare. Many people are not aware that the Obama Administration through the EPA’s finding can now pass through environmental regulations that will force...