By Alan Caruba
To the
naïve and uninformed, the Environmental Protection Agency exists to ensure clean
air and water in the nation. That was its initial mandate when it was created by
an executive order by President Nixon in 1970. It has since become a nation
killer.
In 2013
a flood of regulations will cost thousands of Americans their jobs and drive
more industry overseas to avoid the cost of doing business in America. It will
drive up the cost of energy from electricity, along with the cost of gas and
diesel fuel. It will effectively kill much of the coal mining industry in a
nation that is the Saudi Arabia of coal, an energy source that formerly provided
fifty percent of all electricity in America.
The EPA
is girding
up to kill “fracking”, a technology that has safely been in use for decades
and one that holds the promise of further provision of natural gas. The
provision of oil is being thwarted as well; mostly famously by Obama’s
derailment of the Keystone XL pipeline in a nation laced with energy-providing
pipelines. Energy, the lifeblood of the nation, will be under attack as never
before.
A new
EPA ozone standard will occur, one that the EPA estimates would cost $90 billion
a year while other studies put the figure at nearly a trillion dollars and
destroy 7.4 million jobs. The EPA’s projections are that 650 additional
communities would be deemed “non-compliant” and effectively ensure plant
closings and that no new manufacturing and other businesses would set up shop.
The EPA
has pushed to regulate—control—every body of water in America, no matter how
small. A recent court decision derailed EPA storm-water regulations that would
have established a first-time standard for post-construction storm-water runoff
could include mandates on cities to change existing buildings, storm-water sewer
systems, and streets. It would have been the most expensive rule in EPA
history.
The EPA
will release regulations on the manufacture of cement—the MACT rule—that would
increase the cost of manufacturing this essential element of construction by 22%
to 36%. Many such plants would have to close and the U.S. would have to import
cement from nations like China.
Expect
regulations on cooling towers to protect fish under the Clean Water Act. A
proposed coal ash rule could cost between $79 to $110 billion over the next
twenty years, ending between 183,900 and 316,000 jobs over 20 years, affecting
states that include Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Missouri. The EPA has
been regulating “farm dust” for decades and new rules would affect the nation’s
food supplies as farmers and ranchers adjust by raising fewer livestock and the
till fewer fields. Spill prevention rules would further impact farmers and
ranchers.
If you
were asked what is the most costly federal agency which would you suggest?
Would it be the
Department of Homeland Security? Department of Defense? Labor? Agriculture?
Housing and Urban Development? Transportation?
In
terms of the regulations it generates, the Environmental
Protection Agency is the most expensive rulemaking agency. It costs $353
billion annually to comply with its regulations.
The
Competitive Enterprise Institute recently published a report by Ryan Young, a
Fellow in Regulatory Studies, regarding the EPA and it is further testimony to
the way this predatory agency has gone from the first year of its operation in
1971, costing $701 million, to outlays in 2011 of $10.722 billion, employing
20,610 full-time workers.
The
public is expected to believe that this army of environmental bureaucrats are
all diligently saving Americans from particulates in the air, rain run-offs in
the water, any pesticide that might actually protect them from pests, and the
countless other life-threatening dangers that required, from 1999 to 2011, a
total of 4,995 rules in the “Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and
Deregulatory Actions.”
These
regulations have little to do with clean air and water and everything to do with
destroying the nation’s economy, putting thousands out of work at a time when
economic growth is barely occurring, and new taxes will further reduce the
spending and investment power of Americans.
After
having put in motion the flood of regulations that will strangle the economy,
EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, will step down after Obama’s inauguration. Her
decision came after a law suit by the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Chris
Horner will make known the thousands of emails Jackson sent under an alias,
a practice forbidden to federal employees, presumably shedding light on policies
and views she intended to be kept secret.
Reacting to the news of her
forthcoming resignation, S.T. Kornick, Director of Research for The Heartland Institute, said, “Jackson
played the environmental ‘bad cop’ to President Obama’s ‘good cop’, but the
result of their tag-team effort has been a huge expansion of the EPA’s power.
Appointing another bad cop to head the EPA could by itself push the nation into
recession.”
The
most powerful economy in the world is being destroyed from within by an agency
that has declared war on America. It must be downsized and restrained if the
nation is to survive.
© Alan
Caruba, 2013
1 comment:
Alan,
The first step to curtailing the EPA would involve blowing up every network broadcast tower in the nation. They have won the PR battle fifty times over. Half the schoolchildren in America think the EPA comes from God and the NRA comes from the devil.
Electing Barry Soetoro wasn't the opening shot in the last war, it was the victory drum of the left. If that piece of shit could be POTUS, we have lost.
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