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There are strong suggestions circulating that
President Bush is about to ask Congress to pass a bill on global
warming. The story even made the front page of the Washington Times today. What's going on?
My
hope is that this is actually a "trial balloon." As we used to say in
the British government when leaking a potentially unpopular idea,
"Let's run up a flag and see who salutes."
The purported
reason for the call is because the administration has correctly
realized the extent of the mess it is in following the ridiculous
decision by the Supreme Court last year (in Massachusetts v EPA)
that the Clean Air Act can apply to carbon dioxide. For the legally
minded, a good rundown of exactly why this was a bad decision can be
found here.
In any event, the administration now faces a regulatory nightmare
forced on the nation by the use of the Clean Air Act, Endangered
Species Act and the National Environmental Protection Act to take the
action on global warming that environmental zealots want but Congress
has been reluctant to take. The EPA has, very sensibly, announced a
wide public consultation so that people can voice their concerns about
what regulations under the CAA would mean for them.
So, one might
argue, the President would be right to take this action and call on
Congress to take action and avoid the regulatory morass. That'd be
wrong. What the activists have done via their court actions is to say,
'Pretty nice economy you got there. Shame if someone came along and
wrecked it.' This is policy extortion and the President should not
give in to it. Any bill proposed by the White House is likely to be
unacceptable to the zealots and their Congressional allies, but the
President's concession that "something must be done" will stregthen
their hand immensely. So what we are likely to end up with is a much
stronger global warming bill that probably also leaves the regulatory
nightmare unaffected, because they will not stand by and allow any
teeth to be pulled from their precious CAA, ESA or NEPA. We'd end up
with the worst of both worlds.
If this is a trial flag, first
indications appear to be that House Republicans, far from saluting,
want to tear it down and set it on fire. If so, I'd approve of burning
that flag. Source
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