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Beyond Furloughs: Ax EPA Climatism

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#p_dreissen">Paul Driessen</a> -- May 30, 2013

“We need to save our environment from environmentalists and EPA – and safeguard our liberties, living standards and lives against the arrogance of too-powerful politicians and bureaucrats. How we will be able to do that is one of the greatest challenges we face today.”

Imagine if instead of ten furlough days for each of the 17,000 employees of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the department let employees choose which programs to eliminate from EPA’s $8.5 billion annual budget.

Assuming the most agenda-driven, anti-environmental programs were chosen, down the climate-change rathole the cutters would go, leaving the real air and water areas for continued EPA focus.

Good Timing

A strong case can be made to cut climate first. Numerous articles document how European climate policies have been disastrous for affordable energy, economic growth, entire industries, people’s jobs and welfare, wildlife habitats and human lives.…

Hassling Electricity: EPA's Proposed MACT Rules

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#p_dreissen">Paul Driessen</a> -- March 30, 2011

Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that his policies would cause electricity rates to “skyrocket” and “bankrupt” any company trying to build a coal-fired generating plant. This is one promise he and his über-regulators are keeping.

President Obama energetically promotes wind and solar projects that require millions of acres of land and billions of dollars in subsidies to generate expensive, intermittent electricity and create (really centrally plan) jobs that cost taxpayers upwards of $220,000 apiece – most of them in China.

His Interior Department is locking up more coal and petroleum prospects, via “wild lands” and other designations, and dragging its feet on issuing leases and drilling permits.

Meanwhile, his Environmental Protection Agency is challenging shale gas drilling and fracking, and imposing draconian carbon dioxide (CO2) emission rules, now that Congress and voters have rejected cap-tax-and-trade.…