James M. Taylor
The Heartland Institute
11/29/2010
Any hope for a rapid and forceful U.S. economic recovery is taking a punch to the gut under new greenhouse gas restrictions issued by the Obama administration.
The Environmental Protection Agency is making economic malaise a new national priority by forcing power plants, refineries, large industrial operations, and other large, stationary sources of greenhouse gases to pay for the “best available” technology to control greenhouse gas emissions.
This will have literally no effect at all on the world’s temperature, but it will deal a catastrophic blow to the U.S. economy.
EPA is singling out large, stationary sources because they tend to make easy political targets. Tell mom and pop running their small business that they must navigate the nightmare of endless EPA red tape and the ever-present threat of some overzealous environmental pencil-neck shoving a federal lawsuit down their throat, and the nation will revolt in a manner that will make the Democratic Party’s recent electoral beat-down look like a love tap.
But single out Big Bad Power Plants and other large targets that appeal to class-warfare themes and, the theory goes, people will take the new restrictions in stride.
Forcing power plants to purchase and implement the “best available” technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions every time a plant is built or any kind of significant maintenance or renovations occur, however, means by definition that electricity prices are going to start rising in a manner that will make the economy-shocking energy price spikes during the summer of 2008 seem downright wimpy by comparison.
The article continues at Heartland.org
There are several additional articles about the EPA’s ‘holiday sucker punch’ to the U.S. economy at Heartland.org
