New climate politics

March 28, 2011
No better measure exists of change in climate politics than the lone amendment Democrats managed to attach to a House bill last week blocking regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency.

No better measure exists of change in climate politics than the lone amendment Democrats managed to attach to a House bill last week blocking regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency. The attachment expressed a "sense of Congress" about "scientific concern over warming of the climate system."

Who would deny the existence of such concern? Far more important was Democratic failure to push through an amendment granting congressional acceptance to EPA's finding that GHGs endanger human health. With that declaration, EPA activated a 2007 Supreme Court judgment upholding its authority to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act. The consequent transfer of regulatory power is extraordinary, and EPA has not been timid about using it.

Necessary effort

Any effort to get the EPA under control is necessary, righteous, and, on this issue, probably futile. It develops in a political climate hardened by politically influential scientists who act concerned more that the climate seems NOT to be warming.

Surface-temperature records at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicate Planet Earth has been warmer than the 1901-2000 average each year since about 1978. But the difference between the annual and long-term temperature averages hasn't changed much since about 2001. In terms of climate change, none of this constitutes a trend. But global-warming politics feeds off the proposition that as the concentration of GHGs increases in the atmosphere, global average temperature must follow. Well, GHG concentrations have continued to rise, but the temperature anomaly has not.

Why the disconnect? No good explanation has emerged from scientists otherwise certain of the need for humanity to relinquish hydrocarbon-fueled prosperity or face doom. One such scientist even called the lack of an explanation a "travesty" because of doubt it might create about the need for costly changes in human behavior. His observation appeared in one of the infamously leaked e-mails at the University of East Anglia showing how politically distorted climate science had become. As if the mischievous e-mails weren't enough, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been caught in a series of major errors, all tilting "science" toward climate alarm.

Global-warming activism thus has lost credibility. Largely for that reason, a corrupt cap-and-trade bill that a delirious House had passed dropped dead in the Senate. So a power-hungry EPA has assumed the mission with nothing more going for it than residue in the Senate and White House of wildly liberal Democratic ambitions that the American public has rejected.

Congress should, then, try to stop the EPA from regulating GHGs under the Clean Air Act. The law didn't intend to treat GHGs as pollutants like ozone and sulfur dioxide. Even EPA acknowledges, through its scheme to control only the largest stationary emitters, that regulation of all emitters is impossible. But that won't stop it. And its initiative will raise energy costs, suppress manufacturing, encouraging refining capacity to close in the US, and fail to keep global average temperatures from doing whatever they're destined to do.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has passed a bill by Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to stop the EPA. The full House will act on the legislation in a few weeks. In the Senate, a similar measure by James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) appeared as an amendment to a floor bill dealing with small business. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) opposes the measure but will allow a vote. The House might pass its bill. In the Democratically controlled Senate, where the amendment would need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, prospects are poor.

Proceeding carefully

But Democrats are proceeding carefully. "A simple majority vote in the upper chamber would be politically embarrassing for Democratic leaders," says a report from Bradley Woods & Co. Ltd., a New York securities firm that monitors politics for clients.

Embarrassing, indeed. A majority vote would show, yet again, that the American public doesn't support this nonsense. That's reason enough for Republicans to sustain the fight.

More Oil & Gas Journal Current Issue Articles
More Oil & Gas Journal Archives Issue Articles
View Oil and Gas Articles on PennEnergy.com