Cap and Trade: Directives issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are coming down the pike to increase energy costs and kill jobs

Government by Regulations Instead of Laws and Treaties

By Phyllis Schlafly
Friday, December 3, 2010

Republicans are assuming that Cap-and-trade (a.k.a. Cap-and-tax) is dead because Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid lacks the votes to bring up the House-passed bill and because this issue proved a loser in the 2010 House races. Like the famous Mark Twain saying, its death may be exaggerated.

The Senate’s environmentalism expert, Jim Inhofe (R-OK), warns us that the Obama Administration is trying to implement Cap-and-trade anyway by bureaucratic regulations. Directives issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are coming down the pike to increase energy costs and kill jobs.

Last May, the EPA issued what it called a tailoring rule to govern new power plants, oil refineries and factories that yearly emit 100,000 tons or more of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, or sulfur hexafluoride. Inhofe reports that this tailoring rule will further reduce our manufacturing base and especially hurt the poor and elderly.

Inhofe predicts that the EPA standards planned for commercial and industrial boilers will cost 798,000 jobs. He also warns about the harmful effects on jobs caused by new rules on ozone emissions.

Since Obama moved into the White House, the EPA has proposed or finalized 29 major regulations and 172 major policy rules. The EPA is, for the first time, simultaneously toughening the regulations on all six major traditional pollutants such as ozone and sulfur dioxide.

Before Climategate exposed the politics behind the “scienceâ€