EPA Auto Rules: Just the Beginning of Energy Takeover

Yesterday, the EPA announced its new regulations on Auto Emissions raising the  new MPG standards that were established less than a year ago. Their regulatory authority is based on their declaration under the clean air act, that CO2 is a pollutant.  According to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson the new auto regulations are just the start.

Just as the health care bill regulates the way you make personal choices about your body, the EPA will be adding energy consumption taxes to regulate what were once personal and corporate choices about the way energy is consumed. It doesn't matter whether global warming is real or a hoax, the EPA will force you to act if its real with regulations that will essentially be a back door energy tax that will  kill jobs,  tax every American who turns on a light drives a car or warm their house, drive up the cost of consumer goods and move jobs overseas, as the new regulations will increase the cost of manufacturing products in America.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said her agency’s inaugural regulations on greenhouse gas emissions on cars were only “the first” of such regulations, promising that her agency would move “deliberately” to institute regulations in other areas of the economy as well.

Speaking to reporters on a conference call on Thursday to announce the new regulations on cars and light trucks, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson explained that – for now – the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was only regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars and light trucks.


“These are the first regulations that cover greenhouse gas emissions in the United States,” she said. “Certainly it shows that it can be done, but I think it shows more than that.”

“It shows that it can be done in a thoughtful way that doesn’t turn the economy on its ear, that doesn’t cause the sky to fall,” she said, echoing a similar statement made by President Barack Obama when defending his recently passed health care overhaul.

Jackson noted that the Clean Air Act says that additional regulations are coming because the GHG emissions are labeled as a pollutant. She added, however, that the EPA would move “rather slowly” to allow states to deal with the impact of increased federal regulations “when and if they come.”

“Certainly, the Clean Air Act talks about additional regulation needed once greenhouse gas pollution is acknowledged to be exactly that, and I think we have done everything we’ve committed to doing in terms of giving clarity about the timetable and the scope of rulemaking and our desire to move very deliberately and actually somewhat slowly so that states and EPA can be ready to deal with additional regulations when and if they come,” said Jackson.


The new regulations mark the first time the EPA has regulated GHG emissions from any source, as well as the first time it has weighed in on fuel efficiency, an area usually regulated by the Department of Transportation.


Under the regulations, which begin in 2011, automakers would be required to reduce fleet-wide GHG emissions steadily each year, beginning at 295 grams of carbon dioxide per mile and culminating in a cap of no more than 250 grams per mile by the 2016 model year.


Automakers are allowed to use a fleet-wide average, meaning that they can use reductions from smaller, more fuel-efficient cars to offset the higher GHG emissions from larger cars and trucks, which are often their highest-selling vehicles.

There is no word whether the EPA will regulate man-made sources of green house gases such as exhaling and flatulence. But then again based on the Health Care bill the Obama administration is trying to regulate almost every other bodily function.

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) criticized the EPA move, saying there was no need for the agency to add regulations to the already struggling auto industry, and pointing out in a statement that Transportation Department regulations already got the job done.


“Achieving greater fuel efficiency and lessening dependence on foreign oil are two policy goals that I support,” Inhofe said. “We have many ways of achieving these goals without imposing a backdoor energy tax on consumers created by the EPA.”


“As the EPA Administrator admitted to me, EPA’s regulations won’t have any meaningful climate impacts,” Inhofe said. “This is the initial step in EPA’s regulatory barrage stemming from the endangerment finding.”


Al Mannato, fuels issues manager for the American Petroleum Institute, the trade association of the oil and natural gas industry, echoed Inhofe, explaining that the EPA’s action was the first step in expanding its regulatory authority over all GHG emitters. He noted that there was little difference between the new EPA standards and the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards.

..“The action by EPA was unnecessary and they took that action intentionally and expressly so that they could begin regulating GHG under the Clean Air Act,” he said.

Mannato also echoed Lisa Jackson, who told reporters on the conference call that any additional regulations of GHG emissions would not start until after January 2011, when the new car regulations kick in. Mannato explained that once the car regulations were in place, they would trigger new regulations of other GHG emitters.

“Once the care rules went into place the triggering event for regulating [GHG emissions] under the Clean Air Act would be January of next year,” he said. “It’s uncertain where else they’re going to go with this.”

Those actions which are only 8 months away hurt the middle class more than any other group. The rich will be able to afford the higher costs for goods and energy. Under an Obama administration the poor will probably receive subsidies to help them afford the inflated costs. It the middle-class who can neither afford nor receive aid that will be most burdened by Obama's intentional energy inflation.


Source: CNSNEWS