Blogger Conference Call - EPA Overreach

Jane Van Ryan
Posted March 31, 2011

The U.S. Senate could vote today on measures addressing the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from stationary sources. These measures and the EPA's regulatory proposal on ozone were the topics of discussion in a blogger conference call on Tuesday. Howard Feldman, API's director of scientific and regulatory affairs; Misty McGowen, director of federal relations; and Khary Cauthen, director of federal relations, took questions from bloggers about Congressional action to limit EPA overreach.

Ms. McGowen explained that there is a "groundswell of activity" on EPA regulation of greenhouse gases in the United States Senate and House of Representatives. In particular, she highlighted Sen. McConnell's, Sen. Rockefeller's and Sen. Baucus' amendments to the Small Business Bill. Sen. McConnell's amendment would block all EPA regulation of greenhouse gases from stationary sources. Sen. Rockefeller's would delay EPA regulation for two years and Sen. Baucus' amendment would codify the tailoring rule, exempting agricultural sources and those sources below 75,000 tons from EPA regulations.

"Let's just say that we here at API strongly support the McConnell amendment," Mr. Feldman elaborated. "We think that what it does is holds off EPA from regulating an area that they were never authorized to do by Congress. The Clean Air Act never actually gets into greenhouse gases, and therefore we think that it should be up to Congress to come up with the solution for how to address greenhouse gases, and that's what the McConnell amendment would do."

The bloggers on the call included:

• Bear, The Absurd Report
• Brian Westenhaus, New Energy and Fuel
• Bruce McQuain, The Q and O Blog
• Dave Banks, The Missouri Mule
• Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum, Our Finite World
• James Shott, Observations
• Jazz Shaw, Hot Air
• Joy McCann, Little Miss Attila, RightNetwork
• Lee Doren, OpenMarket.org
• Lew Waters, Right in a Left World
• Pejman Yousefzadeh, A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days
• Rory Cooper, Heritage: The Foundry
• Tina Korbe, Heritage: The Foundry

For more information about the negative economic effects of EPA overreach, I encourage you to listen to the audio recording of the call using the player and follow along with the full transcript below.