Freedom Line Blog

Last week, in her first debate with U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R-MA), Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren tried to nationalize their contest in terms designed to solidify her support from Bay State environmentalists:

“Senator Brown has been going around the country, talking to people, saying, you’ve got to contribute to his campaign because it may be for the control of the Senate.  And he’s right.  …  What that would mean is if the Republicans take over control of the Senate, Jim Inhofe would become the person who would be in charge of the committee that oversees the Environmental Protection Agency.  He’s a man that has called global warming ‘a hoax.’  In fact, that’s the title of his book.”

To be fair to Senator Inhofe, who, as the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is in line to lead the panel if Republicans become the majority, the full title of his book is The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.

The hoax Inhofe describes is the use of Climategate-manipulated science to legitimize massive increases in taxes and regulation.

In its war on coal, the EPA has been at the forefront of the environmentalists’ push to tax and regulate an entire industry out of existence; most specifically by requiring coal operators to adopt expensive and experimental manufacturing techniques that are already making it necessary to lay off workers and close down plants.

By parsing Inhofe’s insight about how global warming alarmists politicize science to justify liberal policies, Warren was trying to substitute Inhofe’s complete rejection of global warming for Brown’s position on the issue.  In fact, Brown thinks global warming/climate change/something is happening.  But like Inhofe, he thinks that getting the job market growing again trumps spending billions of dollars on policies built in part on scientific fraud.

Brown shouldn’t shy away from this issue so long as he frames it correctly.  The environmental activists that Warren was playing to won’t be voting for him anyway.  But the independents that put Brown in office two years ago know that job-killing taxes and regulations don’t make sense; especially in an era of chronic unemployment.

Throughout the Obama Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has imposed innumerable costly regulations that threaten American jobs and impede economic recovery.  During Obama’s Twitter “townhall” earlier this week, a good question would have been, “Why does your administration continue to impose a regulatory agenda that squeezes small businesses, which create most new jobs in America?”  Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, that question did not come up.  Regardless, it’s a sad state of affairs when administrative agencies, the most hyperactive part of our federal government, do so much to recklessly increase the cost of business and to reduce economic momentum.

Now, the scientific methods the EPA employs to reach its conclusions on a wide array of new federal regulations have been called into question by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).  In a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Senators David Vitter (R – Louisiana) and James Inhofe (R – Oklahoma) from the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works cited scientific deficiencies identified by the NAS within the EPA’s assessment of alleged formaldehyde risks.  Accordingly, the Senators demanded an immediate answer on whether the fundamental scientific problems raised by the NAS warrant reconsideration of all EPA risk assessments that use the same methods.  That includes the EPA’s ongoing revision of its National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone, scheduled for release later this month.

As most Americans are beginning to realize, some fresh element of sanity is needed within the federal regulatory process to ensure that government regulations are based solely on sound science, and that American jobs and growth do not continue to be gratuitously sacrificed at the altar of the Obama Administration’s reckless partisan agenda.

The letter from Senators Vitter and Inhofe to EPA Administrator Jackson can be read in full by clicking here.

A new poll released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that Americans are becoming less enthusiastic about capping greenhouse gas emissions.  According to the survey, only 35% say global warming is a very serious problem.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) commented, “Perhaps the most interesting finding in this poll, aside from the precipitous drop in the number of Independents who believe global warming is a problem, is that the more Americans learn about cap-and-trade, the more they oppose cap-and-trade.”

Surprisingly, 55% of respondents said that they have heard “nothing at all” about cap-and-trade (legislation that would impose new energy taxes) proposals being debated in Congress.

For more info see here and here.

Call Congress at 202-224-3121 and urge your representatives to oppose new energy taxes.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, penned a great op-ed in Roll Call this week about the climate change legislation (aka Cap-and-Trade) being pushed by the Obama White House and the majority leadership in Congress.

No matter how many times Congress debates it, and no matter how environmentalists couch it, cap-and-trade will do virtually nothing to stop global warming, and cap-and-trade, as Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said, ‘is a tax, and a great big one.’ These are the fundamentals in the cap-and-trade debate…

We need to remind the American public, for example, that the 1,400-page Waxman-Markey monstrosity is a monument to big government that will make food, gasoline and electricity more expensive, increase mandates on small businesses, and increase the size and reach of the federal bureaucracy — all while doing nothing to affect climate change.

The Kerry-Boxer legislation introduced Sept. 30 is, in many ways, worse than the Waxman-Markey bill. This reflects the attitude of one of the bill’s sponsors, who said recently that, because of the recession, businesses should be expected to make even more expensive emissions reductions. While it’s never a good time to pass a national energy tax, one would have thought that imposing such a tax during a recession is especially bad.”

Read the full column here.