Environmental Zealots vs. The Constitution

President Obama has given more indication about what we can expect from the EPA in his second-term global warming agenda. He has picked Gina McCarthy, one of Lisa Jackson’s top lieutenants to head the Environmental Protection Agency as its new chief. Over the past four years, McCarthy has run the EPA’s air office, as a notably willful regulator.

Her promotion gives notice that Obama has given up on getting agreement from Congress on his anticarbon agenda, particularly given the number of Senate  Democrats from coal or oil states. The real climate fight is now over the shape of rules to come that could be released as early as this summer, and apparently a brutal under-the-table lobbying campaign is now underway.

The debate about global warming and the hysteria of the environmental movement, but the problems of the appointment of McCarthy and the nomination of Ernest J Moniz to take charge at the Department of Energy demonstrate that the president is planning to use these two agencies to pursue an aggressive climate change agenda in his second term.

The key issue involved in these nominations and the president’s agenda for the coming four years revolve more around legal issues than the scientific disputes. The real issue is a Constitutional one.

“The question before the nation is whether the executive branch can or should give itself the power to run roughshod over Congress and unilaterally implement new regulations that will give the force of law to the president’s climate beliefs,” as Jonathan Tobin wrote in “The Climate and the Constitution” at Commentary.

Read more at American Elephants. 

Photo credit: The COM Library (Creative Commons)

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4. EPA Nominee faces resistance from industry over coal regs
5. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Describes ‘Environmental Justice’ Agenda