Year 3, Month 7, Day 8: Gonna Build A Big Fence Around Texas….

The Nashua Telegraph (Nashua, NH) is one of many papers reporting on the decision of the Federal Appeals Court’s decision upholding the EPA’s authority to regulate GHG emissions. Note the huge floater left in the bowl by Texas’ AG Greg Abbott:

WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court here ruled unanimously to uphold the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions, dealing a setback to fossil-fuel industries, states and lobbying groups that have fought for years to delay action on climate change.

(snip)

Led by the conservative Chief Judge David B. Sentelle, the three-member appeals panel found that the EPA’s approach to regulating greenhouse gases has been “unambiguously correct.”

Continually facing litigation from environmentalists and industry alike on a multitude of issues, the EPA welcomed the court’s decision. “I am pleased that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that the EPA followed both the science and the law in taking common-sense, reasonable actions to address the very real threat of climate change by limiting greenhouse gas pollution from the largest sources,” said agency Administrator Lisa Jackson.

Plaintiffs decried the decision and warned the economy could be hurt if the EPA continued to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the ruling “failed to rein in the unelected bureaucrats at the agency who are holding our country’s energy independence and fragile economy hostage to a radical environmental agenda.”

Of course, if it was a Republican administration’s EPA, they’d be given free rein to regulate environmentalists, don’cha know. Sent June 27:

It’s as predictable as a disco hit: any legal victory for environmentalists cues a chorus of faux outrage from Republican officials. Today, it’s the US Court of Appeals upholding the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse emissions, followed by some righteous trumpeting from Texas’ Attorney General Greg Abbott about a “radical environmental agenda.”

Only in Conservastan is a sensible legal decision aimed at holding back the accelerating catastrophe of global climate change “radical” in any sense of the word. The real radicals are the corporate “persons” whose profits depend on a consumer economy entirely dependent on fossil fuels, who continue to pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in clear disregard of the overwhelming consensus of climatologists everywhere around the world. No, there is nothing radical about protecting the environment, despite the steady drumbeat of derision from politicians and pundits whose allegiance to their paymasters trumps their responsibility to the common good.

Warren Senders