In a column she posted at the Huffington Post, USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson continued in her attempts to rebrand the Agency into something it never has been nor was intended to be: a creator of wealth. Jackson surely recognizes that the tired, old “sky is falling” message that has traditionally driven environmental agendas has less traction than ever given the economic realities of 2010. So, while she isn’t ready to abandon the fear-mongering tactics that are ingrained in the green movement, Jackson is working hard to create a parallel reality, one in which there is an absolutely phenomenal return on investment whenever the government imposes a new round of environmental regulations.

In a draw-dropping example of the old saw that “correlation does not equate to causation” the administrator told America that the Clean Air Act has created a venerable cornucopia of riches:

“…as air pollution has dropped over the last 40 years, our national GDP has risen by 207 percent. The total benefits of the Clean Air Act amount to more than 40 times the costs of regulation. For every one dollar we have spent, we have received more than $40 of benefits in return, making the Clean Air Act one of the most cost-effective things the American people have done for themselves in the last half century.”

How does one calculate a whopping 4,000% return on Clean Air Act investments? If you’re the EPA, you point to increased productivity that you happily attribute to less lost time due to illness in the workplace, as well as avoided medical costs. Not that you actually have to prove that any of those results actually occur. All you need is a few pointy-headed academics with calculators who can punch the right numbers, attach a certain value to sick days and medical condition and – voila – you too can create trillions in phantom economic benefits.

That’s the method that has been used to justify just about every major piece of Clean Air regulation and Jackson’s EPA has shifted this technique into hyper-drive. If the numbers that she uses to justify the sweeping, radical environmental initiatives her Agency is pushing are to be believed, nobody will ever miss work again and the health care industry will have to close its doors for a lack of business. And yes, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. (more…)

Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but some opinions are just plain embarrassing. In a June 8 Op-Ed published in the New York Times, Stanford University professor Jon A. Krosnick postulated that the vast majority of Americans believe that global warming is both real and man-made, and – ergo – Senators would be well-advised to vote against the Murkowski Resolution when it comes to a vote today.

It’s pretty obvious that Krosnick, a professor of communication, political science and psychology, doesn’t actually understand the subject matter or what the Murkowski resolution is about. He starts his Op-Ed by declaring:

On Thursday, the Senate will vote on a resolution proposed by Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, that would scuttle the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to limit emissions of greenhouse gases by American businesses.

And he closes with this piece of advice:

When senators vote on emissions limits on Thursday, there is one other number they might want to keep in mind: 72 percent of Americans think that most business leaders do not want the federal government to take steps to stop global warming. A vote to eliminate greenhouse gas regulation is likely to be perceived by the nation as a vote for industry, and against the will of the people.

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Is the Obama administration trying to ban sport fishing? Not at this time. Is the Obama administration setting up structures and processes that could, and probably will, eventually result in more regulatory restrictions on sport fishing? You betcha. But, with all due respect to anglers, that’s not the biggest problem with the “Interim Framework For Effective Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning” issued by the Interagency Ocean Policy Taskforce (latest version dated December 9, 2009). Government goes after industry long before it dares to subtly, oh-so-subtly, impose new restrictions on individuals. The framework, which we will now shorthand as “CMSP,” will affect off-shore drilling operations, commercial fishing and commercial shipping first and foremost.

Some conservative bloggers erupted in outrage when the report came to light, saying that – as Gateway Pundit put it – “Obama’s latest assault on your rights – he wants to ban sport fishing.” That was an overreaction, but an understandable one given the aggressive nature of this administration when it comes to environmental issues and the fact that the CMSP report specifically lists “recreational fishing” as an activity that needs to be “better managed” (page two of the report). Perhaps “better managed” translates into “leave them alone,” but one may be forgiven for thinking not.

On the other end of the spectrum, George Soros’ steno pool declared that worries about a sport fishing ban were “absurd,” as though nothing in the CMSP report could possibly have an impact on recreational fishing, even though the report itself kicked that particular door wide open. That is not to say that a ban on recreational fishing is in our immediate future, but it’s terribly naïve to believe that the CMSP framework won’t create the regulatory environment that will result in painful restrictions on the sport in the future. What does it all mean? Sit back, relax and let Dr. Environment break it down for you kids. (OK, so I don’t have an actual PhD, but seeing as how the University of Tennessee is awarding Al Gore an honorary doctorate, I’m sure that my degree just has to be in the mail).

The CMSP framework is another classic, benevolent big-government gambit. It sounds great, appears to encompass everyone’s concerns and the end results of the exhaustive process proposed are supposedly the epitome of noble. Consider a few features of the program: (more…)

Dear 111^th Congress,

I know that you are very busy these days pondering new ways to screw up health care and figuring out exactly how much money you need to spend in order to reduce the deficit, but you might want to take a moment to examine what’s going on at the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

You remember USEPA, right? Your predecessors created it and gave it the authority to ensure that America has clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. The Agency has been pretty darn successful at fulfilling that mission and it employs armies of scientists, attorneys, technicians and other professionals to accomplish the tasks assigned to it. Paying all of those troops is expensive, as in several billion dollars worth of expensive, but seeing as how new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has inflated the Agency’s budget by almost 50%, there would seem to be little reason for USEPA to outsource its authority. Yet, that’s exactly what has been going on, and I thought that someone should bring the situation to your attention.

Now as we all know, George W. Bush was the worst environmental President in history. Unfortunately, this assertion is complicated by the embarrassing fact that the amount of pollutants in the nation’s air was reduced to the lowest levels that we have ever seen since the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970. It therefore behooves USEPA and the current administration to redefine the term “clean air” by redefining the standards that determine what is clean and what is dirty. Administrator Jackson has tackled this problem, publishing a new standard for nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and proposing new standards for ozone and sulfur dioxide (SO₂). (more…)

This April, USEPA expects to finalize a rule intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from mobile sources (cars, trucks, buses, etc.), largely by demanding greater fuel economy in the transportation sector. No doubt there will be much rejoicing among the tree-hugging set when that happens, but there is another consequence to that action that has largely flown under the old media’s radar: the day that the mobile source rule goes final is the day that the Agency starts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other large industrial sources.

It’s a matter of regulatory logic. Once the Agency starts to regulate a pollutant in one sector, it must regulate said pollutant in all sectors under its purview. When and if this side effect of the mobile source rule come to light, it will – no doubt – be used as a “gotcha moment” by environmentalist groups and the old media. “See, now EPA is going to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Act, because you wouldn’t give us cap and trade. We waaaarned you!” (more…)

You’ve read the stories. You’ve seen the quotes and the scary pictures and graphics. Unless the Senate passes a cap and trade bill to regulate (aka: tax) greenhouse gas emissions, the USEPA will regulate those emissions through the Clean Air Act and – cue ominous music – you’re not going to like that.

Don’t buy it. It’s a bluff. The last thing that the Obama administration and USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson want to do is to try to regulate greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act. It would be a nightmare for the USEPA, creating enmity among large swathes of the populace, forcing people to reassess the shaky science behind global warming and it would take many, many years to implement the regulatory measures necessary to actually reduce these emissions. The Clean Air Act threat is a desperate attempt at extortion, with the ultimate goal of forcing a pointless cap and trade bill down our throats.

Trust me here. I’m an expert on two things: 1) the best places to enjoy a cold beer in the southeast side of Chicago, and 2) air pollution regulation, especially the Clean Air Act. Indeed, I wrote the book. (Which I encourage nobody to buy, because, unless you happen to manage environmental affairs for some industrial concern, it will bore you to tears). Even given Barack Obama’s vaunted talent for ignoring and working around rules that he finds inconvenient, the Clean Air Act presents too many insurmountable obstacles for even an “Ocean Reversing Czar” to overcome. The reasons why are complicated, but we’ll do this in a couple of parts and – hopefully – I’ll keep the explanations entertaining enough that you won’t fall asleep.

Let’s start here: exposing the tyranny of the system: (more…)

As a scientist, I have long been troubled by the way the mainstream media covers science in general and the environment in particular. Long before “global warming” became a watchword and Al Gore started burning tens of thousands of gallons in aviation fuel to lecture people around the world about their profligate energy use, journalists routinely butchered scientifically-focused stories so badly that it would make a high school physics teacher cringe. While many people have been shocked to learn how close the ties between leading global warming alarmists and some environmental reporters are, the only surprise for many of us in the scientific community is that it has taken this long to reveal those connections. For the truth is that global warming coverage in the mainstream media is merely a symptom of a larger disease.

The latest boil to burst forth upon the body of environmental journalism began to fester on Thursday, January 7, when the USEPA announced that it was proposing the latest, greatest and most-badly- needed-ever smog standard. (Officially the pollutant is “ground-level ozone”, but we’ll stick with “smog” for convenience). Mainstream media outlets everywhere fell over themselves to heap praise on the EPA for imposing a standard that administrator Lisa Jackson described as “long overdue.” This lead, from the Chicago Tribune’s lead environmental reporter/head Sierra Club cheerleader Michael Hawthorne’s January 8 story, was typical:

“Chicago and other urban areas across the U.S. would need to clamp down harder on air pollution under tough smog limits proposed Thursday by the Obama administration, which scrapped a George W. Bush-era rule that ignored the latest scientific advice.”

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