EPA: Government Agency Abuses Authority for Meaningless Global Warming Gesture?

I cannot believe that the EPA would abuse their rule-making powers to impose a global climate tax on animals without a Congressional mandate. I wonder if they have ever heard of taxation without representation?

According to the Associated Press …

“Proposed fee on smelly cows, hogs angers farmers”

“For farmers, this stinks: Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if a federal proposal to charge fees for air-polluting animals becomes law.”

“Farmers so far are turning their noses up at the notion, which is one of several put forward by the Environmental Protection Agency after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases emitted by belching and flatulence amounts to air pollution.”

" ‘This is one of the most ridiculous things the federal government has tried to do,’ said Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, an outspoken opponent of the proposal.”

Welcome to the animal version of carbon caps … can emissions credits be far behind?

“It would require farms or ranches with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs to pay an annual fee of about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 for each hog.”

“The executive vice president of the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, Ken Hamilton, estimated the fee would cost owners of a modest-sized cattle ranch $30,000 to $40,000 a year. He said he has talked to a number of livestock owners about the proposals, and ‘all have said if the fees were carried out, it would bankrupt them.’"

This is an unauthorized indirect tax on the population as all costs will eventually be passed on to the public. This is the same type of indirect taxation that is being imposed by those who use the utility companies to collect local, state and federal taxes promulgated by agencies – rather than the lawmakers themselves; who would then become accountable to the public.

Which nation is likely to be the Saudi Arabia of meat production? Mexico? Argentina?

“Sparks said Wednesday he's worried the fee could be extended to chickens and other farm animals and cause more meat to be imported.”

" ‘We'll let other countries put food on our tables like they are putting gas in our cars. Other countries don't have the health standards we have,’ Sparks said.”

Another bogus feel good measure …

There is no way to measure the effectiveness of this proposal and it amounts to little more than a “feel good” measure for angst-ridden liberals and a source of additional income to the cash-strapped government.

“EPA spokesman Nick Butterfield said the fee was proposed for farms with livestock operations that emit more than 100 tons of carbon emissions in a year and fall under federal Clean Air Act provisions.”

It’s not a TAX: it’s a FEE!

“The fee would cover the cost of a permit for the livestock operations. While farmers say it would drive them out of business, an organization supporting the proposal hopes it forces the farms and ranches to switch to healthier crops.”

Since when did man need a permit to raise livestock – other than those permits required to insure the safety of the commercial food supply?

Enter the far-left liberal vegetarians …

" ‘It makes perfect sense if you are looking for ways to cut down on meat consumption and recoup environmental losses,’ said Bruce Friedrich, a spokesman in Washington for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.”

" ‘We certainly support making factory farms pay their fair share,’ he said.”

Wonderful comment by the “perfect people for a perfect planet” crowd that is led by radical socialists, communists and others who are subverting the environmental cause for their own political agenda.

“Butterfield said the EPA is reviewing the public comments and didn't have a timetable for the next steps.”

How can any government agency be involved in this idiocy while acting in the people’s name? Time to take back our government by curtailing the activities of agencies which are not producing tangible results and are spinning their wheels proposing non-productive measures which do little or nothing to solve America’s current problems.

Global warming’s inconvenient scientific truth: weather is variable …

According to the U.K. Guardian …

“2008 will be coolest year of the decade”

“Global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, but cooler temperature is not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists.”

“This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.”

Which really doesn’t prove anything other than the climate is cyclical and that we do not know the actual periodicity and amplitude of the cycles – or even where we are positioned in respect to the cycle itself.

What is really important …

However, what is important is to note is the very small numbers (.14C =  0.252F) which are well within the systemic measurement error rate of our current thermometers.

“In March, a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C (0.54F) warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade. They said that global temperatures would remain constant until 2015 but would then begin to accelerate.” <Source>

Natural variation is the key to understanding the global weather change phenomenon. Rather than spend inordinate amounts of money and cede political control to people who don’t have a clue to anything other than their self-interested manipulation of the system, might it not be more prudent to spend the money developing more efficient structures to protect us from nature’s vagaries. To build desalination plants to help with potential water shortages in the future. To improve our food growing methods to deal with potential food shortages.

Wait a minute: these water and food shortages exist now – so why are we playing around with carbon cap and trade systems when we should be funding nuclear energy, pollution reduction, improving water and food sources? Why are people starving around the world while we diddle with nature – something that man’s puny power cannot control on a global scale.

Perhaps the Emperor has no clothes and what we are looking at is a massive diversion of resources to benefit those already in power and who have already bought and paid for their own politicians on the installment plan. And perhaps, Representative Randy Cunningham will turn out to be the most ethical politician of the decade: he has a price list which was available to all and did not change in relation to who you might be.

The perfect cause for politicians, charlatans, scam artists and profiteers …

Imagine a cause which generates considerable media attention at little or no cost, can serve as the basis for raising taxes, enlarging the scope and size of government, curtailing personal freedoms and expectations, allowing surcharges to be added for using the word “green,” and most of all, is based on a speculative computer-generated theory that can never be proven one way or another in your lifetime – or possibly in many hundreds of years. What an opportunity for exploitation of the world’s population by those who seize the initiative.

Politicians: acting in their own ego-centric self-interest …

It is amazing how quickly malevolent members of the far-left, many held over from the cold-war, have commandeered the environmental movement as a vehicle for the promotion of their socialistic agenda. These are our former enemies who have found that they can use our own gullibility and environmental laws against us to promote their own purposes of weakening both our military and our economy so as to reduce our world influence. And it is no surprise that they continue to rail against the use of modern nuclear energy to achieve the very goals they are trying to promote.

Exploitation of global warming for political purposes -- the Schwarzenegger effect: because I say so …

And then there are the political opportunists like California Governor Schwarzenegger, an ego-centric movie star who dreams of greater glory, recognition and adulation on the world state … and sees the environment as his prime mover towards his goal.

Truth be told, Schwarzenegger is a famous political failure: the triumph of artificially generated style over substance. He was elected by the people of California to curb the legislature’s profligate spending, cut down on the waste, fraud, corruption and burgeoning size of the state’s government, and repair or replace much of the state’s crumbling infrastructure. And over his two terms, he has sat idly by while the spending continued. Preferring instead to prove that he was a more prolific fundraiser than the man the people voted out of office, Gray Davis, for proposing the very programs that are  now being considered by Schwarzenegger. Our debt and deficit has been artificially manipulated during his watch and the state has devolved into a financial crisis. For a “post partisan” politician, it was amazing that he couldn’t even get his own Republican party to sign off on a budget that was not only constitutionally late, but was so filled by manipulation and misrepresentation as to be invalid when signed.

So why should be be surprised when Schwarzenegger gloms onto the global warming scheme as another path to promote his own personal agenda? As the management guru Tom Peters defined, “failing upward.”

California liberals, once again leading the way into sham legislation and controls …

According to the Sacramento Bee …

“A team of top California environmental officials are heading off to Poland this weekend.”

“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has increasingly fashioned himself as a worldwide environmental figure, is dispatching the team to the United Nations conference on climate change.”

“Schwarzenegger hosted his own, pre-UN climate change conference last month (where President-elect Barack Obama made a surprise video-appearance.)”

There are those who believed that Schwarzenegger was angling for a prominent environmental position in the Obama Administration even though he is nominally a Republican. I say nominally, because a closer observation of Schwarzenegger’s activities over the past years has proven that he is a RINO (Republican In Name Only) who acts more like a liberal democrat than as a conservative Republican.

All with the lame explanation (or excuse) that  he is a “post partisan” politician who is acting in the best interests of the people. I am sure that Schwarzenegger is dreaming of the title of “Climate Czar” where he can continue to promote his own self-interests as well as continuing the public acclaim of his celebrity.

See-and-be-seen junket or fact-finding mission?

Continuing from the Sacramento Bee …

“In any case, Linda Adams, secretary for environmental protection, Mike Chrisman, secretary for resources, Margret Kim, international climate advisor, Tony Brunello, deputy secretary for resources and Anthony Eggert, senior advisor, are off to the week-long UN summit.”

More bad news?

“Who's not on that list? Mary Nichols, the chair of California's Air Resources Board and a rumored top contender to be Obama's administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

Which should surprise no one as she is a well-credentialed member of the liberal democratic left. (Heaven forbid that Schwarzenegger should have appointed a similarly qualified Republican to the position.)

“Mary D. Nichols was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as Chairman of the California Air Resources Board in July 2007. She returns to the Air Board 30 years after serving as the Chairman under Governor Jerry Brown from 1978 to 1983.”

“Nichols has devoted her entire career in public and private, not-for-profit service to advocating for the environment and public health. In addition to her work at the Air Board, she has held a number of positions, including: assistant administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Air and Radiation program under the Clinton Administration, Secretary for California's Resources Agency from 1999 to 2003, and Director of the University of California, Los Angeles Institute of the Environment.”

“As one of California's first environmental lawyers, she initiated precedent-setting test cases under the Federal Clean Air Act and California air quality laws while practicing as a staff attorney for the Center for Law in the Public Interest. Nichols holds a Juris Doctorate degree from Yale Law School and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University.” <Source>

“Inconsistent and incomplete:” like most politically- inspired plans that purport to deal with global climate change…

According to the Sacramento Bee …

“ …Assemblyman Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, is demanding that Nichols push back approval of California's roadmap to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.”

“That roadmap, known in Capitol parlance as the ‘AB 32 scoping plan,’ was criticized by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office as ‘inconsistent and incomplete’ in a report requested by Niello and Assembly GOP leader Mike Villines.

“AB 32 requires California to limit greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a roughly 20 percent reduction when the was passed in 2006. The scoping plan is the guideline to achieve the goal.”

“Niello, who voted against AB 32 in 2006, cited the LAO report in a letter to Nichols on Thursday asking her to reschedule next week's air board meeting, where members are expected to adopt the plan.”

The letter …

Specifically, the LAO letter suggests ‘the plan's evaluation of the costs and savings of some recommended measures is inconsistent and incomplete’ and that the plan ‘fails to
layout an investment pathway ... to attain the AB 32 GHG emission reduction goals.’”

“Unfortunately, the LAO was not able to complete some elements of their analysis as they were not provided with some written responses from CARB even though, ‘it had been provided ample time to do so.’"

“The peer review critique of the Scoping Plan goes even further in suggesting that the cost
of the AB 32 Scoping Plan would be significant, and that CARB drastically underestimated these costs. Additionally, peer review comments suggest that there is some underlying manipulation of data in the Scoping Plan by stating that, ‘The economic
analysis selectively includes or excludes various existing non-AB 32 policies in its
baseline precisely in ways that lead systematically to under-estimating the costs of the Scoping Plan.’"

Bottom line …

“AB 32 granted the ARB broad, unprecedented regulatory authority with minimal legislative oversight.”

Seems like the Paulson plan for the bailout of the financial industry. We’re not sure of the amount or the details of the program, but we need unprecedented authority with little or no regulatory oversight to accomplish our mission.

Unfortunately, these people have no clue on how man can begin to affect global weather patterns other than the promotion of policies which lead to higher taxes, larger government, reduced personal freedoms and windfall profits for the Wall Street Wizards who game the emissions credit trading scheme.

What can YOU do?

Before any politician or political entity goes off on a flight of fantasy to curb “global” climate change, force them back to reality of dealing with an omnipresent situation which can drastically affect your health … local pollution.

Demand that your local, state and federal environmental protection agencies fulfill their stated mission: reducing environmental pollution of the the ground, water and air by imposing curbs on local gross polluters instead of allowing them to mitigate their pollution with emissions credits purchased at the public’s expense. Pollution at this level is measurable and containable.

Do not elect or re-elect politicians who spout global warming nonsense without a specific plan that provides measurable results and capitated costs. There should be no blank checks for fantasy programs which convey benefits to the special interests over the wants and needs of the public. It’s OUR government and they are acting in OUR name. Something they often forget.

Whether or not you believe the manipulated science that is being promoted by the malevolent United Nations, you owe it to yourself to research the subject of global climate change and pollution before draining your personal resources and curtailing your personal activities to provide more money and support to politicians and their latest self-serving schemes.

And consider the almost unthinkable: that what we are really measuring is the “urbanization” of the landscape

-- steve

Quote of the Day: “The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.” --Patrick Young

A reminder from OneCitizenSpeaking.com: a large improvement can result from a small change…

The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius

Reference Links:

Proposed fee on smelly cows, hogs angers farmers|Associated Press

Climate scientists say 2008 will be coolest year of the decade| guardian.co.uk

Nichols Letter|Roger Niello