Since
its inception, the Obama administration has engaged in an all-out push to adopt
ever-stricter global warming regulations. Recall that Barack Obama was the only
presidential candidate – at least as far as I can remember – who took office
vowing to bankrupt
any company in an entire American industry that refuses to adhere to his
environmental agenda.
When President Obama’s attempt to impose
a carbon-trading scheme on the U.S. economy proved too
extreme even for a Democrat-controlled Congress to approve, the President
remarked that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. And since then, his
administration has passed crushing global warming regulations through
unilateral, administrative means. Despite the extensive list of taxpayer
subsidized green energy disasters – Solyndra, Fisker
Automotive, Beacon Power, A123 Systems Inc, EnerDel, to name a few – the
administration’s green policies march ever forward.
The
latest salvo is the president’s new “climate
action plan,” which mandates drastic reductions in carbon emissions from
power plants over the next few decades. The plan provoked a thoughtful Wall
Street Journal article
discussing the administration’s claim that these regulations will not result in
higher electricity prices that hurt the poor. That argument, the Journal
noted, is refuted by the plan itself, which demands that states launch
redistribution schemes to lessen the regulations’ impact on poor communities.
The
climate plan also led to observations
that despite the massive harm it will do to the economy, it will barely have
any effect at all on global warming – the problem it ostensibly aims to
address. However, the plan did have at least one immediate effect – an array of
business groups and states is vowing to sue
the government to stop these punitive regulations.
To
drum up support for these economically destructive policies, global warmists
resort to apocalyptic rhetoric, with President Obama claiming there is “no
greater threat to our planet.” As Chairman of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, I
have to, respectfully, disagree.
Separately,
the Nunes Digest is updated here.
