by Senator Jeff Merkley
Today one of my Republican colleagues introduced a proposal
to brazenly overturn sound scientific work done by our nation’s leading public
health experts and prohibit the Environment Protection Agency from doing its
job to protect the health and welfare of the American people. This extremely damaging proposal is a
political stunt designed to effectively strip the EPA’s power to curb harmful
air pollution.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) proposal takes the form of a “Resolution
of Disapproval” under the Congressional Review Act. It is so extreme that it would legally
overturn scientists’ very conclusion, based on decades of scientific study,
that greenhouse-gas emissions threaten public health and the environment, and
it would have the effect of prohibiting the EPA from making the same conclusion
in the future. It could block any action
by the EPA to protect our families, our communities, and our economy from
greenhouse-gas pollution.
This resolution represents an irresponsible attempt to take
away the power of an independent agency whose sole purpose is to protect the
health of our families, friends, and neighbors and the environment we live in.
Imagine if Congress always put the interests of polluters
ahead of the health of our families. Our
rivers and lakes would be choked with sewage.
Acid rain would pour down from smog-filled skies. Hundreds of thousands more of our neighbors,
friends, and loved ones would be victims of cancer, heart disease, and
asthma. President Nixon—Nixon!—signed the EPA into law because even Republicans recognized that unchecked
pollution was poisoning our people.
This resolution is a return to that polluter-first approach
that even President Nixon found intolerable.
Decades of scientific research has proven that carbon pollution
is harmful to human health and causes global warming. The EPA’s endangerment finding—as required
by the Clean Air Act—found that carbon pollution endangers the health of
millions of American families and future generations. This resolution would block the EPA’s ability
to regulate unsafe air pollution and would continue to allow our nation’s
considerable contribution to global warming to go unchecked. What’s worse, this resolution aims to
politicize an independent agency and prevent it from protecting the health of
our citizens and our communities.
While supporters of this misguided resolution try to tout its
supposed positive impact for our economy, it would actually harm our economy by
helping maintain our dependence on foreign oil, hamstringing EPA’s ability to
promote clean energy options, and negatively impacting our nation’s clean
energy jobs industry. This resolution encourages big polluters to
continue polluting, and discourages one of the fastest-growing industries in
America: clean energy. Continuing on the path of spending billions
of dollars a day to import foreign oil rather than make significant progress
transforming our energy economy and developing American-made renewable energy
is a deeply flawed approach.
Plainly
put, this dangerous resolution has the best interest of big energy industries
in mind, not the health and welfare of the American people or our environment,
and not the clean energy job creation we urgently need right now. Because
this extreme resolution only needs a simple majority to pass, we need you to
speak out. Please consider calling your senators and urging them to put the health of our citizens before politics and vote against
this harmful resolution.
Related Links:
Murkowski’s floor speech on EPA regulations was full of deceptions
The Climate Post: Asian ice granted temporary stay of execution
Hanging EPA regulations around Democrats’ necks
