Amid the self-destructive lunacy of the Environmental Protection Agency’s declaration of carbon dioxide as a pollutant that threatens public health and welfare, the New York Times reports this gem:
“As the E.P.A. begins the process of regulating these climate-altering substances under the Clean Air Act, Congress is engaged in writing wide-ranging energy and climate change legislation that could pre-empt any action taken by the agency. President Obama and Ms. Jackson (E.P.A. administrator Lisa) have repeatedly said that they much prefer that Congress address global warming rather than have the E.P.A tackle it through administrative action.”
Put aside for a moment that “compelling and overwhelming” science supporting the E.P.A. declaration is compelling only by virtue of the overwhelming political pressure behind it. Never mind that the actual science is sketchy and regulating carbon emissions will have little effect on carbon levels in the atmosphere but will have a dramatic, negative effect on the nation’s economy. The larger question for President Obama and Ms. Jackson is, “When did following the U.S. Constitution become optional?”
Article I section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States …” Simply stated and strictly speaking, Congress cannot delegate its legislative authority to executive branch bureaucracies, irrespective of what a president or bureaucrat might “much prefer.” A plain reading of the text of the Constitution defines legislative authority solely as a function of Congress, which President Obama somehow construes to mean Congress and/or the E.P.A.
The Constitution-when-convenient crowd will point to New Deal era Supreme Court decisions that chipped away at the non-delegation doctrine while ignoring that these cases rest on the holding that when Congress delegates legislative authority, it “shall lay down … an intelligible principle to which the person or body authorized … is directed to conform.”
What “intelligible principle” has Congress provided to the E.P.A. to guide its regulation of “heat-trapping” gases? What is the proper temperature of the Earth Congress is shooting for? What cost parameters must the new regulations meet? Who will bear those costs? “Stop Global Warming” is a bumper sticker, not an intelligible principle of conformance.
What will come of the dueling efforts of Congress and the E.P.A. to craft carbon emission regulations is some vague legislation out of Congress that shifts actual rule-making authority to the E.P.A. Congress can then take credit for acting on climate change and still blame the E.P.A. when it fails in the impossible task of altering natural climate conditions.
The founders’ clear intent was that Congress, the body elected by and accountable to the people, ought to make the law. Questioning the constitutionality of bailout legislation, which also fails the non-delegation doctrine test, Robert Levy of the Cato Institute notes that John Locke got it right in his Second Treatise of Civil Government. The legislative power, wrote Locke, is “to make laws, and not to make legislators.”
Even if one buys that carbon emission is a serious threat to human health and welfare, the claim of “crisis” does not make the Constitution optional. Neither do presidential preferences. That the Obama administration insists on making a mockery of science in pursuit of its collectivist policies is one thing; it must not make a mockery of our Constitution in the process.
Seems to me that all we need is a good lawyer to sue the EPA to produce an “environmental impact assessment” on the proposed regulation. They’re always demanding it of everybody else, and it seems to have the effect of stalling or completely stopping whatever some free citizen wants to do with their own property. In this case, I think we are entitled to know exactly how much the global temperature will come down, based on this implementation of whatever the rule is. The fact is that, if the US cuts its carbon emissions by 50% (thus killing the economy and a whole lot of people), we will have altered the composition of the atmosphere by something like 8 parts per million. Are they really going to say that matters?
By their logic, we must all quit breathing. I say the environutters at the EPA go first.
The US seems not to be the only country bound to curb carbon emissions. In fact, quite some do already, and as far as I know, no lethal casualties in Denmark or Sweden yet. Can you really believe that all of the industrialized countries with similar targets are “killing their economies and a whole lot of people”? Doesn’t that sound a bit silly, really?
Plus: what else do we have the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change for, if not to scientifically and on a global basis tell us exactly which emission curbs will matter to keep temperatures on earth bearable? it’s obviously not about just the US keeping 8 particles per million out of the atmosphere, but the cumulative effect of others’ emissions, too. And then it’s obviously a matter of collective egoism again: if every country thinks its contribution does not matter, then nothing will happen (in terms of climate policy of course, in terms of a climate going wild and loose, that’s quite another story!). Or do you prefer to read the book of Genesis as your compelling science source?
Is the ludicrous Bush era in this really not over yet for some of you? Haven’t we had enough nonsense produced by the oil lobby that held the former administration hostage to half-truths and untenable denial of facts?