House Panel Passes Bill To Stop EPA Climate Regulations

4:02pm EST
By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill to stop the Environmental Protection Agency's greenhouse gas rules passed a first step in the Republican-led House of Representatives on Thursday.

The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee passed the bill by voice vote that would block the EPA from regulating big carbon dioxide polluters such as oil refineries and power plants. The measure will next be sent to the full House Energy and Commerce Committee.

It faces an uphill battle as officials in the Obama administration have said the president would veto the measure.

Fred Upton, the chairman of the committee and the bill's sponsor, said the EPA rules would raise gasoline prices by adding costs to refineries that they would pass to consumers.

"This committee is working hard to ease the economic pains of rising gas prices. This bill is the first step," Upton said.

Democrats on the panel said Upton's gasoline price rise scenario was based on a two-year old study of the failed climate bill, not the EPA regulations.

"Just because it's politically convenient to evoke peoples' fears over rising gasoline prices doesn't mean it's responsible to pull out a study from over two years ago on an entirely different proposal," said Representative Mike Doyle, who opposed the bill.

The Senate has a similar bill sponsored by climate skeptic Senator James Inhofe, a Republican. He hopes to pick Democratic senators from states with heavily energy-dependent economies. At least one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin, from West Virginia, has signed on.

But several Democrats in the Senate blasted the bill. "I will do everything in my power to stop attacks on the Clean Air Act that threatens the health of our families," said Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Environmentalists also opposed the legislation. "This bill ignores the vast body of scientific evidence that carbon emissions are leading to climate change and harming public health," said Lexi Shultz, legislative director of climate and energy at Union of Concerned Scientists.

(Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[Roadrun]

09:58 AM on 04/15/2011

Environment? We don't need no stinking environment!

[jimboy71]

02:44 PM on 03/30/2011

All that EPA ever did was keep pollution out of our skies, streams, and food...

Who wants that?

[planit]

08:47 AM on 03/29/2011

Well, lets see. The republicans weigh in for big bucks for industry over protecting our health. How interesting. Who voted for them?

[Dale D]

10:40 PM on 03/22/2011

Been a while since the greenshirts have been advocating for the false scientific and religious claims they make about carbon emissions causing climate change, specifically gloabal warming. Maybe they heard from one other scientist who knows better.

[DocSkull]

09:27 AM on 03/24/2011

What is a "greenshirt?" If it was last week, people were wearing green for Saint Patrick's day.

[jimboy71]

02:42 PM on 03/30/2011

What utter rubbish. Please demonstrate your claims using reference to sound experimental evidence.

[MikeWebster]

02:48 AM on 03/16/2011

I suppose the next step for the Republicans is to make smoking mandatory amongst children.

Nevermind the vast damages beginning due to climate change, the Republicans want people to be able to enjoy the same smog we saw in Beijing prior to the olypmics.

[Dale D]

07:39 PM on 03/16/2011

And you think you can change the climate?

[Publicola]

03:47 AM on 03/17/2011

The science is overwhelming that anthropogenic CO2 emissions change the climate.

[AuldLochinvar]

11:58 AM on 03/21/2011

It took 64 million years, but the forests that died to make the coal seams changed the climate. We're burning them up a lot faster.

[dragonmaster]

03:54 PM on 03/15/2011

The GOP T Party has decided to dump science and adopt Shamanism- which clearly reflects the party and its constituents understanding of the scientific method.

[Dale D]

07:41 PM on 03/16/2011

Your pantheism is coming through loud and clear. Your ignorance of what causes climate change is breathtaking. And your science is so-called. Don't push your religion on me.

[dragonmaster]

08:18 PM on 03/16/2011

Really? My ignorance of climate change? What I am saying comes from Dr. James Hansen- Chief Climate Scientist at NASA

What he says, I am simply repeating, word for word- you can therefore call him ignorant as well.

[Publicola]

03:48 AM on 03/17/2011

Q: Why can;t science deniers understand the difference between science and religion?

A: Because they are science deniers, of course.

[Dale D]

01:33 PM on 03/15/2011

Put on your enviro-statist thinking caps on folks. Since you are so knowledgeable about the cliamate and you have the answers as to how to "control" the climate, what can be done about sun spot activity? And don't tell me that has nothing to do with our climate.

[Wanderland]

03:14 PM on 03/15/2011

No one will do anything about it because we can't. Regardless, it's not the issue.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=sun-spots-and-climate-change
http://www.agci.org/dB/PDFs/10S1_JKatzenberger_SolarIrradianceClimate.pdf

Now you can be knowledgable.

[Publicola]

02:08 AM on 03/16/2011

Dale D's momma, a generation ago:

"Put on your anti-smoking thinking caps on folks. Since you are so knowledgea­ble about lung cancer and you have the answers as to how to "control" lung cancer, what can be done about radon? And don't tell me that has nothing to do with lung cancer."

Science denier rhetoric is stupefying.

[Dale D]

07:42 PM on 03/16/2011

Have you moved out of yo momma's basement yet?

[Publicola]

03:52 AM on 03/17/2011

Do you understand the difference between science and religion yet?

Quite clearly not.

Here's a hint: science is based on independently verbalize empirical evidence and logical inference based on said empirical evidence.

Not incidentally, the scientific evidence supporting anthropogenic global warming theory is overwhelming.

HTH

[DrMandible]

09:27 AM on 03/15/2011

Who needs clean air or water anyways. Sigh.

[StephenBP]

07:37 AM on 03/15/2011

The progressive nuclear engineer we had for a president before Ronald The Cowboy Reagan tried to lead America to energy independence over 30 years ago. Unfortunately, the petroleum pushers who backed Reagan did not see any profit in alternative energy and crippled that initiative.

So here we are, a third of a century later, with solid scientific evidence of global warming caused by petroleum waste products, but the petroleum pushers will not let the public hear the whole story. Saudi- backed FOX news for some reason wants us to doubt global warming. We have buy in from every major scientific organization in the world, but that is not enough evidence for people who have blinded themselves to science and reason.

Trying to replace the wealth-and-pollution-generating- petroleum-industry that is owned by the spoiled brats of the petroleum class, and that is supported by their clueless teabagger minions, is no small task.

[MikeWebster]

02:51 AM on 03/16/2011

The policies being put forward by Republicans now, are aimed at nothing less than damaging all the people of America. Unfortunately their lies and their cons will also have ongoing impacts on the climate of the rest of the world as well.

[Dale D]

04:15 PM on 03/14/2011

Enviro-religionists need to stop talking. The carbon dioxide they are exhaling are poluuting the air we breathe. Maybe they should pay a tax.

[ClimateHawk]

05:12 PM on 03/14/2011

Where do you suppose all that exhaled carbon comes from?

[Publicola]

11:36 PM on 03/14/2011

Breathing is carbon neutral, which is to say it does not contribute to the observed increasing levels of atmospheric CO2.

HTH.

[Dale D]

01:31 PM on 03/15/2011

So its the proportion of carbon in your stale exhalings?

[Publicola]

05:31 PM on 03/15/2011

DaleD: 'So its the proportion of carbon in your stale exhalings?"

Yawn.

The carbon in the CO2 that we exhale comes from breaking down sugar in our bodies, which liberates the carbon in the sugar. That carbon can then bond with oxygen (that we get from inhaling) to form CO2.

So where does the sugar come from? It is produced via plant photosynth­esis, which uses the sun's energy to turn CO2 (from the air) and water into sugar and oxygen.

In short, the carbon in the CO2 that we exhale into the air comes from sugar that was made with carbon that came out of the air.

And that is why breathing is carbon neutral.

HTH.

[blood1]

12:36 PM on 03/14/2011

One of my fav. games is connect the dots!

1. GOP want to quit making future generations from paying for past mistakes.
2. GOP are all for passing contamination of air and water on to future generations.

It is all about money for today and they really don't care about the future.

[leftword]

12:26 PM on 03/14/2011

I fell asleep at the beginning of last November and found myself in a nightmare. I dreamed that the Republicans took control of the House and immediately began a draconian program to restore Regan-era government --- meaning more tax cuts for the rich, subsidies for corporations, and a broad assault on the poor, the unions and the environment.

I didn't believe it, of course; even in a dream you sometimes realize that it's just a dream. Surely we've learned a thing or two since the 1980s, mainly that tax cuts don't create jobs and that corporations can't be trusted to regulate themselves. Then there's the fact that the Democrats still control the White House and the Senate, and surely they wouldn't allow any of this nonsense to pass. Surely.

Then I woke up, or at least I think I did, and found a Republican budget proposal that would quite literally take food from the mouths of children, limit or eliminate programs to help the poor and the sick, and gut the EPA --- all while continuing to donate $4 billion of our tax money to oil companies! And this is AFTER they gave huge tax cuts to the rich, tax cuts that, among other things, would help if not solve the states' budget problems.

Obviously the nightmare continues. I hope I can wake up soon...

[William David Smith]

12:04 PM on 03/14/2011

What makes their whole stance absurd is the fact they also want to pass rules so states (California for example) cannot even control their own greenhouse gases. We passed a state law and the environment is important to us here. (apparently not so in the red states)
I thought their whole plank was "States Rights" or is that only when it suits them? The longer these idiots are in power the worse its going to get. We will not even have water to drink by the time they are done destroying our environment and our way of life.

[Wanderland]

03:24 PM on 03/15/2011

California is right on this. California's utilities and other industries will have purchased a lot of the easier carbon offset credits that are available throughout the country (and possibly beyond), and when the rest of the country pulls its collective head out of its butt, they'll be buying them at inflated prices from those same California companies. That is IF those companies want to sell them instead of taking advantage of their weakened competition.

[Malcolm Hensley]

09:50 PM on 03/15/2011

Yes the environment is important to California and if we have to send our jobs to Asia and Texas then that's just the way it has to be and we like it!

Got a problem with that!

[MikeWebster]

02:57 AM on 03/16/2011

Aside from the new green energy industry that starts up in in California, providing good paying jobs for everyone.

[AuldLochinvar]

12:28 PM on 03/21/2011

If our workers are put out of work because we can import the goods they would have produced from places where the environmental controls are lax, we still have to put up with exactly the same amount of greenhouse gases as before. This is where free trade arguments fail. Admittedly, mercury contamination downwind of a foreign polluter might not reach us, but some of it will do so if it reaches the oceans.