Photo Credit: DOE/NREL. The picture shows smoggy haze near Denver, CO.
Thanks to our friends at Alternet for a story about H.R. 97. That legislation would declare various gasses not to be ‘air pollutants’ so EPA couldn’t regulate them.
Free Industry Act – Amends the Clean Air Act to: (1) exclude from the definition of the term “air pollutant” carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, or sulfur hexafluoride; and (2) declare that nothing in the Act shall be treated as authorizing or requiring the regulation of climate change or global warming.
The story said that H.R. 97 is just one of several bills designed to limit the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency. A search for more information led to Govtrack.us a tool to find the status of pending legislation. Govtrack.us has a link to PopVox so that you can express your support or opposition to that bill. You enter your name and address. The application looks up your legislator and prepares a short message. Depending on what action you take, you are then offered related legislation to review. That is how I found the Ensuring Affordable Energy Act. Here is more information. Ensuring Affordable Energy Act
Ensuring Affordable Energy Act – Prohibits any funds appropriated or otherwise available for the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from being used to implement or enforce: (1) a cap-and-trade program; or (2) any statutory or regulatory requirement pertaining to emissions of one or more greenhouse gases from stationary sources that is issued or becomes applicable or effective after January 1, 2011. Defines: (1) “cap-and-trade program” as any regulatory program established after the date of enactment of this Act that provides for the sale, auction, or other distribution of a limited amount of allowances that permit the emission of one or more greenhouse gases; and (2) “greenhouse gas” to include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, or any other designated anthropogenic gas.
As of this writing H.R. 97 has 113 cosponsors including Cory Gardner. H.R. 153 has 42 cosponsors. Congressman Gardner not one of them. Govtrack.us offers widgets for bloggers. Since our local Congressman is trying to hogtie the EPA I put in a widget to keep readers up to date. The Alternet story notes that sulfur hexafluoride [SF6] is a very toxic greenhouse gas.
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don’t automatically see “GHG” and realize that you are talking about “greenhouse gases.” While headline space is scarce, spelling it out in words in an introductory sentence at the beginning of the post would have been much more clear.
It also took a few beats to grok that you were talking about legislation in the United States Congress rather than the Colorado General Assembly.
Do you know if the President or Democrats in the Senate have taken a stance on the bill? Is this just one more DOA publicity stunt, or is it going anywhere?
Fortunately I can edit. The reason I thought this is important: yesterday HR 97 had 46 cosponsors – I should have mentioned Doug Lanborn was one of the 46. Today it has 113 and Cory Gardner is one of the new ones. Interesting since Gardner is in more of a swing district than Landborn. The blogs I read say repubs are making a serious effort to clip EPA authority under the mantra of eliminating ‘job-killing’ federal regs. I’m reading that sulfur hexafluoride is a very scary gas. Will it go anywhere? Don’t know but I put in a Govtrack widget so my readers can keep up.
So how many days was he in office before Gardner signed on to roll back air quality standards?
what do you mean ‘roll back air quality standard?’ House Republicans are taking impressive steps to clean up the atmosphere. Hate Greenhouse Gases? Just legislate them out of existence. That’ll fix the problem.
Nothing new there — that’s been the Republican environmental legacy since James Watt, as later perfected by Colorado’s own Gale Norton.
and I could see methane. There are cattle ranchers and dairy farmers very worried about methane. OK. But sulfur hexafluoride? These definitions do not get into legislation by accident. SF6 is used in high-voltage switching products. There must be some manufacturer or trade group pushing to get it off EPA list of pollutants. EPA says that once it escapes it has horrid global warming potential. Off topic: Gail would have had a much better chance of taking the seat don’t you think?