EPA Regulation Opponents Should Tell Us What They're For
June 9, 2010
Senator Lisa Murkowski's
(R-AK) resolution to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from
regulating greenhouse gas emissions will not become law.
If
it passes the Senate on June 10, it would face a rough road in the
House. Even if it passed Congress, it would surely face a presidential
veto.
According to Senator Murkowski, the premise behind
the resolution is that regulating greenhouse gas emissions is a job
best left to Congress. Then why is Senator Murkowski not spending her
time and effort helping to craft and pass energy and climate
legislation?
Instead of thoughtfully determining EPA's
proper role within the context of a climate bill, Murkowski seeks to
preemptively tie EPA's hands without any regard for if, when, or how
Congress might act.
Worse yet, her resolution seeks to nullify
EPA's scientific finding that greenhouse gas emissions present a danger
to the public. Regardless of what lawmakers might believe, the laws of
physics take no notice of fiats from Congress.
If EPA
can't act, what should Congress do? The public would benefit from
hearing a robust and civil debate on how carbon emissions could be
scaled back through legislation in ways that are equitable, stimulate
the growth of clean, domestically produced energy, and reduce America's
dangerous dependence on oil.
We've heard a great deal from
Murkowski and other resolution backers about the climate and energy
legislation that they oppose. Unfortunately, we've heard very little
about what they would support.
They don't like cap-and-trade, having demonized that market-friendly policy as "cap-and-tax."
Which implies that they don't like carbon taxes either.
They
haven't embraced the "cap-and-dividend" alternative that would require
producers and importers of fossil fuels to buy carbon emissions permits
and return most of the proceeds to taxpayers.
Once you
take a statutory cap or a carbon tax off the table, there aren't any
practical alternatives left for putting a price on carbon emissions.
Without
a price on carbon emissions, low-carbon energy sources are at a
significant competitive disadvantage, including the one low-carbon
energy source that the resolution's sponsors support wholeheartedly –
nuclear energy.
As long as carbon pollution can be
dumped into the atmosphere for free, the power market will favor coal
over nuclear. A 2009 MIT study found that adding a $25-per-ton price to
carbon pollution would enable nuclear to compete with coal, especially
if nuclear could lower its risk premium by cutting its capital costs.
Senator
Murkowski said at her press conference that the choice is "whether
Congress or unelected bureaucrats should set climate policy."
She and her backers, however, have yet to spell out what climate policy Congress ought to adopt.
