On Tuesday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson agreed to reconsider her predecessor's conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions are not subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act's "PSD" program which governs emissions from large power plants and industrial facilities. As the Washington Post and New York Times report, this is likely the first step toward the EPA's adoption of greenhouse gas emission controls under the Act. As the Times notes, EPA's Jackson has already asked her staff to prepare the necessary documentation for the legal finding that would trigger regulation -- regulation that (as I've argued before) is inevitable under current law.
Regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act will create a regulatory train-wreck. It will impose substantial costs, and yet fail to meet the President's ambitious emission reduction targets (80% by 2050). For this reason, many believe that the prospect of loosing the Clean Air Act on carbon dioxide (combined with the unleashing of the Endangered Species Act as a consequence of the polar bear listing) will encourage Congress to enact climate legislation. That's when the real fun will begin. If, as the President has suggested, Congress puts forward a cap-and-trade proposal, it will unleash a feeding frenzy of rent-seeking, as every conceivable industry and interest group seeks to protect its own or gain competitive advantage. This is one reason why I would prefer a revenue-neutral carbon tax, combined with policies to accelerate technological innovation and adoption -- but I'm not holding my breath.
You should, it would reduce carbon emissions.
(1) It at least implicitly endorses the idea that
Global CoolingGlobal WarmingClimate Change is a problem worth addressing through legislation.(2) To the extent that revenue-neutrality is accomplished via cuts in Medicare and FICA taxes, a carbon tax breaks the link between workers' contributions to these programs and the benefits they enjoy from them when they retire. Reducing payroll taxes destroys the "retirement contribution" or "insurance premium" model and pushes Social Security and Medicare pure welfare programs.
(3) The tax burden is shifted from those who are working to those on fixed incomes. We're taxing your poor grandmother's gasoline so that "strapping young bucks" can pay less in payroll taxes.
Can affected industries bring suit to challenge the science fiction underlying an initial finding that manmade CO2 is causing climate change or do they have to wait until regulations are enacted?
Of course, we have the example of another nature worshipping, Green focused movement that prevented millions of Europeans from continuing to produce carbon dioxide.
For some of the reasons you suggest, I would prefer to offset a carbon tax with the reduction of elimination of taxes other than the payroll tax. Specifically, I'd start with the federal gas tax, various excises and corporate taxes (including the corporate income tax). I'd also allow full expensing of capital investments in the year of purchase.
Bart --
If the endangerment finding is a final agency action, it should be subject to challenge. While there could be standing and ripeness issues, the statutory window on challenges to EPA action under the Clean Air Act is sufficiently short that waiting for regs could mean industry misses its chance. But it doesn't matter when the finding is challenged, as it won't be struck down unless EPA is asleep at the switch. The relevant statutory standard is that the EPA Administrator just needs to conclude that GHG emissions can be "reasonably anticipated" to threaten public health and welfare. Whatever your view of climate science, belief that climate change could be a big problem is "reasonable" and courts are extremely deferential to scientific determinations made by agencies. As a consequence, any legal challenge to such a determination is almost certain to fail.
JHA
I agree with you that there is no end to the stupidity that will be proposed for a cap and trade system enacted by legislation. At this time, I would prefer the just awful rules that the EPA will enact. EPA rules can be modified by later administrations, whereas statutes are usually here forever.
Inexorable fact? Prediction?
Inexorable fact? Prediction?
I guess they are posited as factual.
What grade would a typical Professor give to this legal argument?
The problem is that the Clean Air Act is not all that flexible, and subsequent administrations will not be able to "improve" the regulations in meaningful ways.
JHA
"Of course, we have the example of another nature worshipping, Green focused movement that prevented millions of Europeans from continuing to produce carbon dioxide."
Care to make that a little more explicit?
EPA "science" has been successfully challenged before and the manmade global warming "science" is essentially a fraud and hardly reasonable. It consists entirely of hypotheses in the form of computer models, none of which has ever stood up to testing by predicting future weather or explaining past weather.
The last time manmade global warming was challenged in court, a British court all but called Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth a pack of lies.
The spike in manmade CO2 emissions coupled with global atmospheric cooling over the past decade is pretty obviously putting the lie to the manmade global warming theory and makes this a rather opportune time to put the entire enterprise to cross examination in a court of law.
A cap-and-trade system would almost certainly push nuclear power way into profitability.
It's amusing to see Bart parroting the talking point that the British judge who wrote "Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate," and who rejected a lawsuit to prevent the film from being shown to public schoolchildren, "all but called it a pack of lies." Full debunking of that old chestnut here, for anyone who's interested.
You can find the pertinent parts of the British court's opinion here. In this case, the climate computer models were not subject to cross examination as I suggest industry should do when EPA makes its finding. Rather, even assuming that these models were essentially correct, the court found nine of the specific claims in Mr. Gore's propaganda film were facial "errors" that did not even pass the snicker test.
I wonder how long it is until we reach Dilbert's "Have you earned your air today?"
Is environmental protection limited to pollutants?
OT, I believe that BGates ties the record for fastest winner of a thread.
Since air contained a base load of sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide long before we started operating coal plants, how is it that SOx, NOx and CO are pollutants but CO2 isn't? They're as "natural" as CO2, at some level.
So you do believe there is a correlation between CO2 and temperature, just a negative one?
Thus, by filling up my SUV and then driving on the rims just to waste gas, I'm saving the world! Take THAT liberals!
Since the advent of the automobile and industrialization, manmade CO2 emissions have been steadily increasing.
However, during that time period, temperatures went up less than a degree and peaked in the 30s (which set four of the top ten annual averages for the past century), dropped less than a degree from around 1940 to 1979, went back up less than a degree between 1980 and 1998 and then has come back down less than a degree since 1998.
I no more think that the two temperature drops over the past century are negatively correlated to human CO2 emissions than I think that the two temperature increases are positively correlated to human CO2 emissions as do the manmade global warming religionists.
In contrast, nearly all of the shifts in atmospheric temperatures during this entire period are consistently correlated to solar activity and water vapor shifts apparently caused by solar activity.
Since the advent of the automobile and industrialization, manmade CO2 emissions have been steadily increasing.
However, during that time period, temperatures went up less than a degree and peaked in the 30s (which set four of the top ten annual averages for the past century), dropped less than a degree from around 1940 to 1979, went back up less than a degree between 1980 and 1998 and then has come back down less than a degree since 1998.
I no more think that the two temperature drops over the past century are negatively correlated to human CO2 emissions than I think that the two temperature increases are positively correlated to human CO2 emissions as do the manmade global warming religionists.
In contrast, nearly all of the shifts in atmospheric temperatures during this entire period are consistently correlated to solar activity and water vapor shifts apparently caused by solar activity.
I'm sure if I filled your dwelling with 100% oxygen, you would shortly be accusing me of poisoning you.
Other people link to dubious "scientific" papers where someone with a thermometer and a car "disproved" backscattering of radiation, and others propose hydrogen taxes because of the water emissions from fossil fuel combustion.
You have done none of these; thanks to you for that. I apologize for being snarky earlier.
Of course, from what I have read some degree of the observed warming cannot reliably be attributed to solar cycles. May I ask if you have a source for your claims? The discussion here seems very interesting and scientifically focused, but yet they say only that "an alternative mechanism [solar and cosmic ray variance]...can explain a large part of the warming". (Emphasis mine).
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