US Chamber of Commerce Launches Campaign Against Clean Air
by David Sassoon - Sep 9th, 2008
The US Chamber of Commerce, one of the nation's most powerful and conservative business lobbying groups closely tied to polluting industries, today launched a new month-long campaign -- against clean air.
The Chamber is taking aim to overturn the landmark April 2007 Supreme Court decision -- Massachusetts v. EPA -- which ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. In response to the Roberts court's instruction, EPA is dutifully examining how to apply the law to CO2, and the Chamber of Commerce wants them to stop. Here's what they told Congress in a letter today:
Over the next month, the Chamber will educate members of Congress and the public about the different options EPA is weighing and the impact those options would have on businesses, should EPA continue down its path of regulation.
Starting today, the Chamber will transmit daily summaries of the methods EPA believes it can use to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars, trucks, planes, trains, boats, office buildings, refineries, pipelines, boilers, landfills, manufacturing plants, tractors, lawnmowers, motorcycles, schools, hospitals, breweries, bakeries, farms, and countless other sources, as well as radical new standards for the design and operation of those sources.
At first blush, it sounds like a great educational service they're providing. It identifies precisely what the nation needs to grapple with to reduce global warming pollution. Couldn't have made a better list of pollution sources myself.
Trouble is, the Chamber thinks it's an awful idea, and has gotten their shills in Congress to float a bill "to amend the Clean Air Act to provide that greenhouse gases are not subject to the Act."
Introduced by Rep Blackburn, the bill is officially known as HR 6666.
Ironic, isn't it, that it is so reminiscent of the "number of the beast" from the Book of Revelation -- 666 -- the symbol of Satan?
Back in March 2001, when President Bush pulled out of Kyoto, he was careful to declare that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. And ever since, the administration has done everything in its power to deny the applicability of the Clean Air Act to carbon dioxide. Under the law, as determined by the Supreme Court, the administration was dead wrong, and the denialist fringe has been chafing ever since.
Their flank was exposed. They know that in the hands of a willing chief executive, the Clean Air Act can break the gridlock on climate action and jump start solutions, without the need for new legislation.
It is a flexible and successful body of law with decades of achievement under its belt; it's got an established and functioning regulatory structure; and the full weight of legal authority. The effort by the administration to bury it for eight years has been one of its greatest environmental crimes.
And so now here's the Chamber, "the world's largest business federation representing more than three million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region," carrying the Satanic water to Congress, in this new campaign of continued denial and delay.
You'll find their pockets lined with pieces of silver from polluters, no doubt, and one day they will hang themselves when they perceive their sorry betrayal of humanity.
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