How Green is Earth Day?
Lisa P. Jackson, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Earth Day, begun 40 years ago, has become one of many loud, incessant messages decrying our ill-treatment of Planet Earth.
Today in 2010, let’s look at America’s progress in the Environmental sector. Even the most environmentally unfriendly SUV engine today puts out far cleaner emissions than any car built in 1970. Yet this year once again, the EPA has insisted on another round of crackdowns and cleanups of auto emissions, including that Most Evil of All Emissions–CO2.
Since CO2 is actually a necessary substance for any kind of green plant to grow, an outsider might wonder–is it really CO2 emissions the EPA is after, or is the car itself?
A survey of our country’s lakes, rivers and beaches will find that overall, the United States has one of the cleanest, most “environmentally sound” environments in the world.
Up until now, businesses have worked within a partnership that included local, state and yes, federal regulations, which has proved effective and the best in the world at balancing environmental with monetary benefits.
But with the addition of a “Carbon Tax” or any kind of cap or tax on carbon dioxide emissions, or on gasoline for that matter, free enterprise as we know it can not continue. In fact, if taken to its logical extreme, every human being on the Planet could be liable for the carbon dioxide emitted with each breath we exhale.
Could it be that preserving the physical environment is not the real purpose of the Greenies? Could it be that their real aim is the heart of our country’s greatness, as laid out in the Constitution of the United States? Is it our individual freedoms, even down to including the right to breathe, that the government wishes to control?
If that’s a ridiculous statement (which it is), then who is to say where
it stops? Right now, EPA has arbitrarily set CO2 emissions caps on only the “LARGEST” emitters, including coal-fired power plants, our country’s most essential source of electricity.
But the Agency reserves the right, based as they say on an erroneous 2007 Supreme Court decision, to regulate CO2 emissions just as they regulate demonstrably toxic emissions such as sulfur dioxide and NOx. Those toxins are now regulated to extremely minute quantities, and if CO2 were similarly regulated, every home in America would be subject to the regulations.
Obviously, the EPA is out of control here and it may need some help to cut itself back down to size.