THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIV, Issue # 4, January 5, 2012
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
EPA'S KILLER MACT
By Alan Caruba
HOW THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY OPERATES: TELLING LIES TO THE AMERICAN NATION, LYING ALL THE TIME, CONSTANTLY
DISSEMINATING POLITICAL PROGANDA -- BOGUS "ESTIMATES" OF THE BENEFITS & COSTS OF U.S. ECONOMIC & ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY-- BOGUS CLAIMS OF
THE LIVES
SAVED BY IMPLEMENTATION OF EPA RULES & REGULATIONS -- THRIVING ON SUBJECTING THE AMERICAN PUBLIC TO SCARE-MONGERING, A PUBLIC WHICH IS
SCIENCE-CHALLENGED -- WHAT THE EPA MUST BE REQUIRED TO DO: ACCURATELY REPORT THE REAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE & SAVE AMERICA FROM THE
LOSS OF THE ENERGY THE NATION NEEDS TO FUNCTION. UNLEASH THE HUGE ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF ENERGY RESOURCES SUCH AS COAL, OIL & NATURAL GAS,
RESOURCES THAT CAN REVERSE OUR PRESENT ECONOMIC DECLINE.
FULL STORY:
To understand how the Environmental Protection Agency operates, one must first understand that it lies all the time. Its “estimates” are bogus. Its claims of lives
saved are bogus.
It thrives on scare-mongering to a public that is science-challenged, but the science remains and the EPA must be challenged to save the nation from the loss of
the energy it needs to function. It must be challenged to unleash the huge economic benefits of energy resources — coal, oil, and natural gas — that can reverse
our present economic decline.
The latest outrage is the MACT rule — an acronym for “maximum achievable control technology” intended to reduce mercury emissions and other trace gases.
The rule is 1,117 pages long. Its purpose is to shut down coal-fired power plants that generate over fifty percent of all the electricity used daily in the United
States of America.
The value of the total benefits asserted by the EPA is alleged to be $6 million. Not billion, but million. The MACT rule would force 14.7 gigawatts — enough
power for more than eleven million households — to be “retired” from the power grip in the 2014-2015 period, when the rules take effect.
Senator James Inhofe (Republican - Oklahoma), the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works says, “The economic
analysis of the Obama EPA’s MACT paints a bleak picture for economic recovery, as it will cost $11 billion to implement, increase electricity rates for every
American, and, along with the Cross-State rule, destroy nearly 1.4 million jobs.”
MACT is all about mercury in the environment of the nation. On May 25, 2011, the Wall Street Journal published a brief opinion piece by Willie Soon, a
natural scientist at Harvard, co-authored by Paul Driessen, a senior policy advisor for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. It was titled “The Myth of
Killer Mercury.”
Here are a few of the facts it offered.
“Mercury has always existed naturally in the Earth’s environment. A 2009 study found mercury deposits in Antarctic ice across 650,000 years.”
“Mercury is found in air, water, rocks, soil and trees, which absorb it from the environment.”
There is “200,000,000 tons of mercury naturally present in seawater” that “has never posed a danger to any living thing.”
“U.S. forest fires emit at least 44 tons (of mercury) per year; cremation of human remains discharges 26 tons; Chinese power plants eject 400 tons; and volcanoes,
subsea vents, geysers, and other sources spew out 9,000-10,000 additional tons per year.”
“Since our power plants account for less than 0.5% of all the mercury in the air we breathe, eliminating every milligram of it will do nothing about the other 99.5%
in our atmosphere.”
This is the same EPA “logic” that insists on reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere when all life on Earth depends on it as plant food for all vegetation.
More CO2 means more crops for humans and livestock, healthier forests and jungles, and food for the Earth’s wildlife population.
In a foreword to Regulators Gone Wild: How the EPA is Ruining American Industry, Dr. Jay Lehr, the Science Director of The Heartland Institute, wrote,
“This administration is pushing an unprecedented radical environmentalist agenda.”
The EPA, along with major environmentalist organizations such as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and others, have engaged for decades in a massive
propaganda effort to convince Americans they are imperiled by the nation’s air and water. It is a lie. As the author of Regulators Gone Wild, Rich Trzupeck
notes, “Though our world is actually cleaner than ever, most Americans are convinced it is dirtier.”
“Toxicity,” wrote Trzupeck, “is a matter of dose, as sober scientists have observed since ancient times. A particular compound may kill you if you drink it, but a
few parts per billion of the same compound can have no effect at all…. one can find toxic air pollutants in the parts-per-billion level in human breath.”
The EPA’s latest rule, which will no doubt be subject to lawsuits, is a killer MACT. It is not about mercury or other trace gases. It is about deliberately depriving
the nation of energy, which, in turn, means less jobs, less economic growth, and a Third World lifestyle being imposed on Americans by the radical
environmentalists inside the Obama administration.
Remember that when you are in the election booth on November 6, 2012.
© Alan Caruba, 2012
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Science, Ethics, & Human Health:
Human Health & Public Policy
The Earth's Natural History, Global Climate Changes,
& the Future of Human Life & Civilization on the Planet:
Science, Ideology, & Public Policy
Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at Warning Signs, his popular blog -- and thereafter on dozens of other
websites and blogs. His monthly report on new books is posted at Bookviews.
A business and science writer, Caruba is the Founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information
about "scare campaigns" designed to influence public opinion and policy.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity