by Brad Johnson
Cross-posted from the Wonk Room.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is leading the bipartisan effort with
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to craft comprehensive climate legislation that
can overcome a Senate filibuster. “The green economy is coming,”
Graham said when he announced the partnership with Kerry and Sen. Joe
Lieberman (I-Conn.) last November, explaining that he was “convinced with
my colleagues that controlling carbon pollution is good business.”
However, Graham is also co-sponsoring the effort by Sen. Lisa Murkowski
(R-Ark.) to reverse the scientific finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that global warming pollution
endangers public health and welfare. Speaking to business and
environmental leaders Monday in Columbia, S.C., Graham declared that he
wants “to stop the EPA from regulating carbon,” which would be “a disaster for every state:”
This administration is not going to back off. They are going to regulate carbon. If Congress doesn’t get involved, it’s going to be a disaster for this state and it’s going to be a disaster for every state.
He continued:
The Supreme Court has allowed the regulation of carbon through the Clean Air Act. The question is, is
Congress going to be smart enough to stop it? I want to stop the EPA
from regulating carbon and allow elected officials to come up with a
statutory scheme that not only cleans up the air, it creates
jobs instead of losing jobs and gets this country on the path to energy
independence.
Graham’s assertion that Clean Air Act regulation of global warming
pollution would be a disaster is baseless. The Clean Air Act has been
such a successful piece of legislation that the coal industry front
group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and the oil-funded think tank American Enterprise Institute tout its track record of cleaning up our air while keeping our economy
strong. The myth that environmental protection and economic growth are
incompatible has been repeatedly debunked, in theory and practice. A healthy economy thrives on a strong framework of rules.
The Clean Air Act global warming rules for mobile sources—the
joint EPA-Department of Transportation greenhouse gas tailpipe
standards—have been embraced by environmentalists and the auto industry alike,
after years of litigation and astroturf campaigns claiming that such
regulation would destroy Detroit. It was the decay of regulation that
brought the American auto industry to its knees: the lack of competitive
standards for domestic carmakers and the lack of financial regulation
that allowed Wall Street to blow up the American economy.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has acceded to the unfounded attacks on the Clean Air Act by delaying and weakening rules for stationary greenhouse sources that were first proposed by the EPA
under the Bush administration, even as politicians promote a fear
campaign that “churches, schools, restaurants, and even large homes
could fall under new federal regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse
gases.”
The traditional tools of the Clean Air Act must be complemented by a
comprehensive redirection of national energy policy if we are to
confront the increasing disaster of climate change. But the idea that
Congress should pass climate legislation to prevent the specter of the
mean nasty EPA Carbon Cops—as Koch Industries’ Americans for Prosperity is selling in Arkansas right now—is, quite simply, toxic.
Related Links:
Obama Ends 150-Year War of Strip-Mining in 24 States!
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Conservativeclimate.org lauds Reagan as climate hero