Well, boohoo: The local chapter of the Sierra Club is outraged by Congress’s attempt to do something about unemployment and the economy. You would think from reading the spew by the chapter’s executive committee (“Worst. Bill. Ever.” Aug. 18), that Congress was hell bent on annihilating the planet. Birds will refuse to migrate, “evil” corporations will drill for oil, the Great Lakes will not be restored, there will be fewer fish and wildlife grants, and hungry bears will prowl the streets.
All this rhetorical hand wringing is because a federal budget appropriations bill (H.R. 2584)—known as the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act—actually sliced off some of the environmental pork (grants to states and localities for waste-treatment plants, fish ladders, climate action planning, etc.) and crimps the ability of the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection (EPA) to carry out its activities. Local Sierra Club chapters all over the country bayed about the bill in unison. We figure there must have been a dictum from the national Sierra Club headquarters politburo in San Francisco.
H.R. 2584 contains appropriations not only for the Department of the Interior but for everything from the National Endowment for the Arts to the National Parks Service to Sequoia National Park. The problem for the Sierra Club is that Congress added some restrictions on the EPA’s enforcement and regulatory discretion. Specifically, the legislation would forbid the EPA from using its budget dollars to administer, enforce, or expand many of its existing regulations. Some of the benefits of local interest include that it:
• Stops the EPA from imposing even more restrictive dust standards.
• Stops the EPA from imposing what amounts to a cow tax on livestock producers.
• Stops the EPA from implementing double permitting requirements for pesticide applications that are already being regulated.
• Forestalls more ethanol requirements and subsidies. (There is an immense worldwide grain shortage driving up food prices and threatening large populations in poorer countries with starvation. Are government officials who require the use of ethanol and who thereby starve millions of people guilty of crimes against humanity?)
• Slows down imposition of ever-higher automobile and diesel engine emission requirements.
• Reduces restrictions on the development of domestic energy sources.
• Forbids the EPA from enforcing its rule that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants.
Overall, the bill attempts to slow down the torrent of 40 years’ crushing accumulation of regulations. It also attempts to reduce the discretion of agency bureaucrats in issuing new rules that have not been legislatively approved. It is estimated that the nation’s total regulatory financial impact has reached $1.7 trillion per year. The bottom line here is that the new, more conservative House of Representatives is actually listening to the American people and taking practical action to curb the regulatory burden, which severely hamstrings the economy and prolongs unemployment.
The Sierra Club chapter offers no plan to combat the recession and the accompanying suffering. Remember, they even opposed solar plants in the Carrizo Plain in San Luis Obispo County.
Charlie Whitney is a director of COLAB San Luis Obispo. Send comments via the opinion editor at econnolly@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 1-8, 2011.