Texas Leads Resistance to EPA Climate Action
Come January, the Environmental Protection Agency will — in theory — begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions around the country for the first time. Large polluters planning expansions must include carbon dioxide and other gases linked to climate change on their permit applications, with broader regulations coming into force over time.
But not if Texas can help it. Attorney General Greg Abbott last week lodged legal challenges in a federal court against EPA actions on multiple fronts, including a reiteration of the state's long-standing argument against the EPA's scientific foundation for determining the dangers of greenhouse gas pollution. EPA regulation, Abbott ...
Comments (10)
D Karen Wilkerson via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Do we need any better reason to elect Barbara Radnofsky than the sheer stupidity exhibited by Attorney General Greg Abbott? How many rocks can this man live under at one time? Note to Abbott: the world stopped being flat a long time ago, sir. Get with the program.
Sharon Cooper Morgan via Texas Tribune on Facebook
One more reason to be embarrassed to call myself a Texan!
Mary Lynn VanZandt Neill via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Plus ca change,plus ca meme chose,yeah.The more TX changes(!),the more it stays the same.
Donald Dickson via Texas Tribune on Facebook
If we're going to secede, we oughtta do it before we get expelled.
Jonathan Gal via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Doesn't seem right to be spending money on anti-EPA litigation when the budget is not balanced. Let the private sector fight the EPA.
Jonathan Gal via Texas Tribune on Facebook
How exactly does using State funds to fight corporations' legal battles for them qualify as "Small Government" anyways???!!!
Perry is not for 'Small Government' as he claims. He is actually for 'Corporate Government'. This is corporate welfare. Handouts to people who don't need it.
The Emperor Has No Clothes!!!
Dusteen J. Barber via Texas Tribune on Facebook
@Sharon Cooper Morgan - If you are embarrassed to call yourself a Texan, perhaps you should be so kind as to pack yourself off to any ... other ... state that will take you :P
In general:
If one has not read the new EPA regulations, their fines, and their usurpation of states' rights to enforce them, one has no leg to stand on regarding whether or not Abbot has acted rightly to resist them by filing suit. The issue really isn't about whether or not Global Warming or Climate Change or whatever they are calling it now is "real." The issue is about how these laws and regulations - many of which are simply illegal as the EPA oversteps its jurisdiction as a matter of course - will affect various state economies. It *is* possible for a law meant to do good (save the environment!) to actually do harm (bankrupt people, collapse the economy).
Many of us know full well that industry needs to be progressively more responsible and more cautious in dealing with the environment. However, some things simply cannot be done in the fell swoops demanded by the EPA without literally *destroying* the businesses involved.
Do you know why so many oil fields in Texas are still using 30 year old technology? It's not because the corporations do not want to upgrade. More modern tech means greater yield with less loss and that means *more money* for the profiteers. But the EPA has wrapped so much red tape around even *upgrading* technology that the companies end up finding it neigh unto impossible to even begin. If you started *today* on the paperwork to build a new high tech oil refinery from scratch, it would be 2025 before you'd be able to break ground on the facility (and by then nothing you planned to build would be "high tech" by modern standards).
The EPA restrictions on CO2 (that's the air we *all* exhale) alone will serve to *shut down* many small farms that cannot afford to pay the fees and fines for their cattle. The irony is that as a rule, the smaller farms are more responsible in their treatment of the environment overall, so it will be these "greener" businesses that we lose, as the mega-corps subsume the markets once again because only they can soak the fees -- that's why one of the biggest lobbyist forces for the EPA is Montsanto (a mega-corp that seems to come out from under all their *massive* EPA violations "smelling like a rose").
Jonathan Gal via Texas Tribune on Facebook
@Dusteen>
As you rightly point out, these are complicated issues involving technical, legal, economic, regional, and philosophic factors.
Whatever complicated and difficult problems Texas corporations may be having with the EPA, we will all be better off with a Governor who can communicate better with the current Democratic Administration.
Bill White has experience in Washington in the DOE, and he has education from Harvard where many of the current administration also attended. This combination of Washington experience and Yankee education, on top of his deep Texas roots, simply makes him a better man for the job of Governor of Texas.
Rick Perry, on the other hand, simply doesn't have the kind of personality, education, and experience needed to communicate effectively with Washington.
Look at how Mr. Perry has fumbled around on the education funding issue, changing his mind, and - in the end - finally getting us the money on a delayed timetable. He portrays Texas as an adherant of the "Local Government" philosophy, but then he doesn't even consult localities on the $830 million federal funding initiative. Then, a couple months before the election, clearly responding to pressures, he does an about face. Well, guess what? The school year has already begun. Things would've gone a lot more smoothly, if he had accepted the money back in February, so that the schools could plan for this school year. This was nothing but a major fumble, and not his only one either.
Whatever your views on energy and EPA issues, it is better to have a personality who can communicate effectively with both sides of these issues, rather than an obstructive, arrogant, militant personality like Rick Perry.
And, if something as simple as planning ahead for a school year calendar caused him so much trouble, imagine how Rick Perry will fumble and mess up complicated issues like energy & environmental policy!!!
Mr. White is simply a better man for the job. By going to school in New England and working in Washington, he is better prepared for working with the US Government on these issues. And, with Texas roots deeper than any I've ever seen, he is sure to use those experiences and skills for the benefit of Texas.
Please support www.billwhitefortexas.com.
Todd Clay
So it has been decided that global warming is truth.and we're not going to entertain the facts and misleading arguments made by Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. Has anyone watched The Great Global Warming Swindle? Has anyone considered that maybe the end of the Ice Age is just a reality and it has nothing to do with anything but a very long cycle or that the earth as much as we may not like it is going to burn up in the sun and no matter what we do we are not going to be able to change the reality of what is happening? And what if this new plan or theory turns out to make things worse? Has anyone considered that possibility? And then what's plan B? I'm sure we don't have one of those.
Robert Nagle
When I read the AG petition a few months ago, I was flabbergasted at its politicized notion of science. Even if we grant that the full information about Climategate had not come out when the document was written (they didn't have the benefit of the Russell Muir report, for example when drafting the petition), it was still pretty clear by the beginning of 2010 that the impact of Climategate would be insubstantial (even if you assumed that all the right-wing assumptions turned out to be correct).
The basis of its challenge seemed to be that IPCC 2007 was not appropriate research to use as a basis for regulations. But that is a smokescreen; besides, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States" had already been released in 2009, so even that argument did not hold any water.
This document was a profoundly anti-scientific document; a clear indication of what happens when political operatives are allowed to write an environmental document. Seriously, aside from the legal citations, I've seen better briefs written by high school debaters. This document was a profound embarrassment for Texas.