United Liberty

Despite that cap-and-trade is likely dead for the foreseeable future, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be imposing regulatory mandates on energy producers after declaring that carbon dioxide is a “health hazard”:

The latest step by the government to regulate carbon dioxide emissions saddles industry with uncertainty and potentially higher costs, industry groups said Monday after the Environmental Protection Agency declared carbon dioxide a health hazard.

The EPA’s decision paves the way for new regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and factories even if Congress doesn’t pass legislation to do so.

If nothing changes, the EPA, sometime next year, could require big carbon emitters – such as power plants, steel mills, cement makers and others – to put the best available equipment on new and modified plants to curb emissions.

Industry groups say EPA regulation would eventually drive up energy costs, lead to lost jobs and delays in project permits and construction. More immediately, “This adds more uncertainty and could impact how companies make decisions,” says Keith McCoy, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers.

What bothers me here more than anything is the Obama Administration going around Congress and using non-elected bureaucrats to make energy policy. Explain to me how that is remotely constitutional?

The “good news” is that the Senate could override the EPA’s regulations, and according to Dave Weigel at the Washington Independent, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) believes that will be possible in 2011, after the mid-term elections.