An EPA War on Coal?

New federal efforts to cut emissions are the result of longstanding legal and judicial mandates, not a sudden Obama administration push

By Richard L. Gordon

The Environmental Protection Agency, under the direction of administrator Lisa Jackson, has launched a number of regulatory initiatives that affect the energy industry. Given President Obama’s belief in the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and in the ability of renewable energies to help secure those emission reductions, critics argue that the administration is using the EPA to conduct a “war” on coal (along with, to a lesser degree, oil and natural gas). The objective is to achieve through administrative action what the president could not achieve via cap-and-trade legislation by Congress.

The truth, however, is that the agency is implementing longed delayed legislative mandates dictated by various environmental statutes that well predate the current administration…… Congress,….. has long ignored the problems it has created….To Read More….  

My Take – The article points out that there is a “design flaw” in the Clear Air Act and the Clean Water Act in that it requires the EPA to reduce pollution to “meet sweeping mandates” and still not allow “major regulatory initiatives to create benefits that exceed costs”.  So how does EPA respond to those two opposing positions?  “The EPA routinely uses selective reading of the statistical scientific literature to assert that there are large health effects from exposure to various pollutants.”