EPA regulations on carbon dioxide could cause power bills to spike, writer says

By: | TriCities.com
Published: March 13, 2010

It’s encouraging to see Democratic senators challenge Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate carbon dioxide (Coal-state Democrats oppose global-warming rules, 2/23/10).

Perhaps this effort will produce legislation barring the EPA from hamstringing the coal industry with senseless limits on carbon dioxide emissions thus correcting some of the damage caused by the erroneous 1997 Supreme Court ruling regarding regulation of carbon dioxide.

Regardless of what you hear in the media, that bad court ruling did not declare carbon dioxide to be a pollutant. What it did was rule that if the EPA (then under the Bush Administration) could not disprove that carbon dioxide was causing global warming, then the EPA must regulate carbon dioxide emissions in new cars and trucks (not coal-fired, electric generating plants).

Obviously the court could just as well have ruled that if Massachusetts and environmentalists (the plaintiff) could not prove that carbon dioxide did cause global warming, then EPA had no obligation to regulate.

Today, the Obama EPA, supported by Congressman Rick Boucher, the Al Gores of the world, and the media, etc., have wrongfully twisted this bad ruling to their purpose, and if not blocked, the EPA will use its assumed power to force cap-and trade legislation or directly force the coal-fired electric plants to limit carbon dioxide emissions.

We must prevent such regulation of carbon dioxide for coal-fired plants. If not, trillions of taxpayer dollars will be spent building carbon dioxide capture and sequestration facilities, and all the costs required forever to operate those facilities will be passed along to you and me on our electric bills.

If you think our electric bills are climbing too fast now, just wait. If and when the EPA, or the government, succeeds in strapping coal with carbon dioxide regulation, the price of electricity will take off like the space shuttle; making the current upward price trend seem flat by comparison.

Dick Hollars

Glade Spring, Va.