Green Leaf Report

It’s become quite a popular movement to reduce your personal carbon footprint and minimize your impact on the earth.  But that isn’t the lack of impact I refer in my title- I’m concerned about our government’s apparent desire to do nothing of any importance to help the environment.  Please read Bucking Court, EPA won’t control climate gases about how our current federal leadership will not take any action on greenhouse gas emissions in spite of their court-dictated ability and the pressing need.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Friday rejected regulating greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, saying it would cause too many job losses.

In a 588-page federal notice, the Environmental Protection Agency made no finding on whether global warming poses a threat to people’s health, reversing an earlier conclusion at the insistence of the White House and officially kicking any decision on a solution to the next president and Congress.

Environmentalists criticized the move, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce worried it left open the door for mandatory reductions.

So the White House is making the EPA change their story and forcing the agency to deliberately not protect the environment.  Neither side of the issue is happy with the decision: environmentalists are worried that the false economic argument will continue to trump the environmental argument until we have no economy or environment worth saving. Utilities worry that if this administration doesn’t provide a workable template, the next administration will provide an even harsher set of restrictions.  The administration’s apparent desire to do absolutely nothing solves no problems and helps no one.

Back to the idea of this decision as some benevolent way to save jobs - which jobs are they talking about?  The automotive industry jobs that are imploding as American cars can no longer compete with more fuel-efficient foreign cars? The airline industry jobs that are quickly disappearing?  The mortgage and banking jobs that are disappearing because of vast corruption and mismanagement?  The administration seems to think that no regulation is the better path for our current economic situation, without recognizing that regulations could actually create a rush of new jobs as companies work towards compliance.

Our administration’s refusal to take action has created a problem for our utilities in a deregulated market: Those utilities that want to act to reduce emissions have a real risk of becoming uncompetitive in the market if their costs rise compared to their nearest competitors. So they all wait and hope the government forces compliance at one time.  Haven’t we learned anything from the automotive implosion?  If fuel standards had been aggressively put in place, the American automotive companies may have had temporary pain but would be more competitive today. Developing technologies to create clean and cleaner energy creates jobs; it would be nice to have some of those job created in America. Are we going to set up American utilities to also not be competitive in the world market because of a short-sighted leadership that doesn’t want to make any waves in the current, sinking status-quo?