Re: “An imperial EPA,” June 19 Vincent Carroll column.
I read Vincent Carroll’s piece on the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases with considerable dismay. It contains several misstatements concerning the effects of the Murkowski amendment and unfairly disparages Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet for voting to defeat such a short-sighted and dangerous approach to mitigating climate change effects now. It also wrongfully challenges the EPA’s authority to administer the Clean Air Act.
It is the EPA’s mandated duty as an executive agency to do exactly that. Sen. Bennet is correct in his assertion that a comprehensive climate change and energy act passed by Congress would be the optimal solution, but to prevent the EPA from fulfilling its regulatory duties until such a bill is passed clearly serves to enable the Republican Party’s efforts to prevent passage to our country’s detriment.
Mr. Carroll ignores the fact that if the Murkowski amendment had passed, it would have significantly increased our dependence on foreign oil and derailed critical efforts to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. The provisions of the amendment would have weakened our nation’s new fuel efficiency standards, eliminating an opportunity for the country to save millions of barrels of oil and hard earned dollars.
Mr. Carroll would have us uselessly look backward to solve present and future problems. The EPA and other agencies must quickly toughen their regulations if we are to stave off the wide ranging effects of fossil fuel use and climate change.
Finally, Mr. Carroll ignores the fact that if the Murkowski amendment had passed, it would have put the Senate on record as denying the existence and effects of climate change, the wide-ranging negative impacts of greenhouse gases, and its proven connection to human activities, particularly the use of fossil fuels. The country cannot following such a path as advocated by Mr. Carroll.
All Coloradans should be thankful for Sens. Udall and Bennet for their role in helping to defeat the Murkowski amendment.
Their votes helped preserve the EPA’s authority to properly use the Clean Air Act to protect our citizens from the calamitous impact of the burning of fossil fuels. Mr. Carroll should remember that the next time he breathes in our fresh Colorado mountain air.
James Thurber is an environmental attorney in Lafayette.
