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…)

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…)