The coming legislative battle over repealing the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions promises to produce little more than gridlock and TV soundbites while failing to take on the real challenge of boosting the future competitiveness of U.S. industry. New modern production in fast-growing developing countries – combined with aggressive policies to improve the efficiency of existing industrial facilities – is a recipe that promises to capture ever higher shares of demand for products like cement, steel, aluminum, and pulp and paper. Rather than halting EPA’s cautious efforts to boost the efficiency of our largest industrial polluters, it is time for Congress to complement EPA action by providing the financial incentives needed for modernizing our aging industrial sector and improving the competitiveness of American-made products. Attacking EPA’s regulations is a strategy that looks backward, not forward.

We need to be proactive in modernizing our industries, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and protecting public health and the climate. We need to take a page out of China’s playbook – improve our competitiveness by creating incentives for improving energy efficiency, for developing new technologies, and for replacing aging, less efficient facilities with modern new ones. Like us, China relies heavily on imported oil. But they are moving aggressively to reduce that reliance through standards to improve the efficiency of their energy use and to incentivize investments in new facilities and new innovative technologies. Today China, Mexico, Korea and Brazil are far more efficient than the United States in many key industrial sectors, and they are reaping the benefits of that in the form of economic growth.

EPA is embarking on a “sectoral approach” to air quality regulation, a strategy that will optimize the requirements for reducing an array of pollutants from each of our key sectors, ranging from powerplants to cement kilns, from oil refineries to steel mills. EPA’s approach will create incentives for facilities to improve energy efficiency as a central part of compliance with new standards. Instead of blocking this constructive approach to protecting public health, Congress should support it by enacting complementary financial incentives for industry to modernize. We need to return to our once preeminent position in the development of new industrial technologies. And we can do that by pursuing a national clean energy standard that directly rewards industrial modernization and innovation. Senators Lugar and Graham last year introduced separate legislative proposals that marked constructive steps in this direction. Rather than wasting its time on repeal of EPA rulemaking authority, Congress should turn its attention to perfecting these cleaner energy strategies that will encourage U.S. industry to take the crucial steps needed to boost U.S. energy sources and regain market share for products made here in the USA.

Well over a year ago, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson keynoted a breakfast of the Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP) coalition with a straightforward plea to Congress: Act wisely now on comprehensive energy and climate legislation, and I’ll gladly cede my legal mandate to regulate highly destructive greenhouse gases.

Now, a Congress that failed to take responsibility on what may well be the great crisis of the 21^st Century is making noise about doubling down on its error by stripping EPA of its authority to act.

Let’s deconstruct just how wrong-headed this is with some hard truths many in Washington seem content to ignore:

-- Every day, America falls further behind in the rapidly-accelerating worldwide race to dominate clean energy technologies.

-- This failure to grasp one of the 21^st Century’s great economic opportunities is already emerging as a blunder of historic proportions for our economy, American workers and our global competitiveness.

-- The climate change crisis is grave – no amount of special-interest disinformation about the overwhelming scientific consensus can change that – and not going away.

While the less draconian proposals call for a two-year delay – claiming that the economy can’t take new regulation now -- that dog won't hunt on many levels. And the economic argument is especially galling because it stands logic on its head.

Acting now on emissions is by far the most cost-effective and economically sound policy for our country. It’s about saving on health costs - trillions of dollars according to Lisa Jackson--as well as about jobs. We must get on the clean energy express or be left behind. The Chinas, Germanys, South Koreas, Spains, and Brazils of the world are grabbing market share in these core technologies today -- ask Microsoft’s competitors what it means to be second to market during a technological revolution.

Just yesterday, my organization Ceres and the University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute issued a new study that strengthens the case for strong EPA action. “New Jobs-Cleaner Air: Employment Effects Under Planned Changes to EPA’s Air Pollution Rules,” finds that, based on recent estimates of impacts from the new "MACT" and "Transport" rules, the electric power sector alone will invest almost $200 billion in capital improvements over the next five years -- with total employment created by these capital investments estimated at 1.46 million work-years, or about 290,000 jobs on average in each of the next five years.

Compliance with EPA rules then, whether for air toxics like mercury, or acid rain pollutants, or greenhouse gases is not a "job-killer."

For the doubters, we’ve seen their movie before. Entrenched interests scream at the tops of their lungs when events conspire to challenge their position. And today our century-old, core sources of energy – fossil fuels – are highly privileged. They receive not only explicit government subsidies but gigantic hidden subsidies because they are improperly priced – the health and environmental impacts of their use are not factored into what today’s users pay.

This can’t go on. It unfairly crowds out alternatives, and kicking the can down the road on this is the mother of all losing propositions for America.

History is instructive here: When change arrives, from seat belts to catalytic converters to acid rain solutions to the original Clean Air Act itself – the economic scare tactics of entrenched interests invariably turn out to be gross over-exaggeration. The benefits end up far outweighing the costs – you can look it up.

And no one’s saying fossil fuels won’t be with us for some time to come. There’s no alternative. If those industries would take the free market’s cues and move to clean up and diversify during this transition period, they can limit and perhaps even eliminate their losses.

But stopping efforts to cut down on poisonous emissions is not a way forward.

So Congress, it’s time to move ahead on pollution and clean energy and not backward. America needs the policy certainty that will ignite the clean energy revolution a wide majority of Americans support.

Stopping the EPA from protecting public health and giving that economic revolution a major boost would be a mistake that history won’t forgive.

The United States should not have to choose between cheap energy and dirty air. A commonsense regulatory policy would identify and help deploy technologies that can displace use of fossil energy, stabilize U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce other pollutants. Sustainable use of renewable biomass to generate energy and other products enabled by industrial biotechnology can promote economic growth, create jobs and lead to a cleaner environment.

The EPA recently postponed for three years an important decision on whether the use of biomass for energy, chemicals and fuels will be regulated under the same standards as fossil fuels. The agency should properly recognize that the use of renewable biomass can recycle atmospheric carbon and mitigate the growth of emissions while still providing the energy and liquid transportation fuels necessary for economic growth.

The development and commercialization of biomass utilization technology can generate new jobs not just in the lab, but also in many other areas of the economy. The production of advanced biofuels, for instance, could generate nearly 200,000 direct jobs by 2022; overall, though, nearly 800,000 jobs would be created in the economy through impacts on transportation and distribution. Hundreds of thousands of additional jobs can be created in growing and transporting renewable biomass, and producing renewable chemicals other biobased products.

Combining industrial biotechnology with agricultural biomass feedstocks is a win-win proposition with economic and environmental benefits produced simultaneously. The EPA has recognized that biotechnology can prevent pollution in manufacturing, including carbon emissions. But current regulations do not give manufacturers and energy generators the direction or incentives they need to shift to these cleaner technologies as quickly as they should. Congress ought to work with EPA to ensure the appropriate regulatory changes are made so this 21st century technology is more widely deployed.

(These comments were submitted by Nick Loris, Research Associate in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation.)

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) endangerment finding gives the agency justification to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, most notably carbon dioxide (CO2), under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The EPA already began targeting motor vehicles last year and will start regulating emissions from new power plants and major expansions of large greenhouse-gas-emitting plants (more than 25,000 tons of CO2 per year) this year.

Several Members of Congress released or plan to release bills to either delay or prohibit the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases. Some ideas are better than others; unfortunately, the proposal garnering the most support in the Senate is also the least effective. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D–WV) wants to delay the EPA’s ability to regulate CO2 for two years, but this is not the right approach for Congress to take. Voting for a two-year delay is nothing more than a political cover. It’s not a step in the right direction and will do more harm than good by creating uncertainty and leaving the endangerment finding intact.

One problem with a two-year delay is that it creates uncertainty for energy-intensive businesses looking to build new projects or make major expansions. Heritage expert Bill Beach explained this well, saying:

What can increase risk for investors and businesses? Many factors, of course, but public policy commonly looms largest. For example, tax increases, especially on capital, increase the cost of capital and lower investment returns. When investors are uncertain about whether taxes will increase or stay the same, they can still act as though taxes have risen if they judge the risk of an increase to be nearly equal to an actual increase. And rising uncertainty can have the effect of driving down investments in riskier undertakings.

Since America gets 85 percent of its energy from carbon-emitting fossil fuels, CO2 regulations would act as a massive energy tax. From planning to construction and operation, such projects have much longer time horizons than two years. Not knowing whether a two-year delay will be renewed in two years or if the energy tax will go into effect in two years will deter businesses from making new investments and creating jobs at a time when they’re most needed.

Another serious problem with a two-year delay, specifically the Rockefeller bill, is that the EPA can still regulate CO2 under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) program. If CO2 becomes an NAAQS, it would trigger requirements that could be met only by severely curtailing economic activity. As David Lungren of the Senate Environmental Public Works Committee put it, “A CO2 NAAQS would twist the CAA into knots and spread EPA’s regulatory tentacles into every corner of the economy.”

Fortunately, there are far better alternatives to rein in the EPA’s regulatory invasion. Most recently, Senator James Inhofe (R–OK) and Representatives Fred Upton (R–MI) and Ed Whitefield (R–KY) released a discussion draft that would remove the EPA’s power to regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Senator John Barrasso (R–WY) recently introduced a bill that is more encompassing. His would prevent the EPA and other federal regulators (such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) from using any environmental act to impose regulations based on climate findings, including the CAA, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

Congress needs to enact policy that would permanently prevent unelected bureaucrats from regulating CO2 and the catastrophic economic consequences that come along with it. Only this approach would provide the regulatory certainty American businesses need.

The U.S. economy and job creation are still weak and the EPA's aggressive regulatory approach on greenhouse gases will exacerbate our slow recovery. It will raise the cost of capital, curbing new investments which will result in slower job growth. I will be testifying to this point and more from my recent special report this week before the The House Subcommittee on Energy and Power.

The Clean Air Act is one of America’s most effective tools for protecting our health. Rather than stymie the EPA, our elected officials should allow the agency to do the job Congress gave it in the first place.

Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, requiring the EPA to regulate air pollutants that endanger our health and the environment. The agency has done this job for 40 years, successfully reducing lead from gasoline, phasing out the ozone-depleting chemicals, and slashing the pollutants that cause acid rain. It has saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the process.

Congress gave the EPA the duty, not just the authority, to stand guard, assess the science, and act accordingly when the science says new pollutants are hazardous.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act unambiguously covers all air pollutants, including carbon dioxide pollution. So the EPA did what the Supreme Court ordered it to do: it undertook an exhaustive review of the scientific evidence on climate change. Last year, the agency concluded that global carbon dioxide pollution is hazardous to our welfare and the environment.

Representative Upton and members of the oil and coal industry may not like that finding, but if Congress and polluters get to pick and choose which pollutants they feel like regulating, then the Clean Air Act would quickly become the Dirty Air Act—mired in campaign donations and rooted in political science instead of medical science.

And the science is clear. EPA has documented how carbon dioxide and other climate-changing pollutants are bringing Americans death, illness, and injury in many ways: by causing more killer heat waves, more intense smog, the spread of infectious diseases, and stronger storms, floods, and hurricanes. Blocking EPA from reducing carbon pollution would mean more lives lost and more illness and injury.

Americans want the government to take care of this unfinished business. A new poll conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for NRDC found almost two thirds of Americans (63 percent) say “the EPA needs to do more to hold polluters accountable and protect the air and water.” Well under half of Republicans (44 percent), less than a third of Independents (29 percent) and under a fifth of Democrats (16 percent) think the EPA is going too far today.

Americans know that the EPA’s has made real, concrete improvements in our lives with programs to reduce pollution. Industries fiercely opposed each one of these efforts to make our air safer to breathe. Without the EPA holding firm and backing their programs with the best scientific evidence available, we wouldn’t have achieved the public health gains of the past few decades. It’s time to let the agency do the same with global warming pollution.

As congressmen consider how to react to EPA’s carbon dioxide regulations, they should consider what they want. Do they want a future of higher energy prices? Do they want to further hamstring the economy? Do they want to give unelected bureaucrats greater control over how Americans make and use energy? Do they want unelected bureaucrats to usurp Congresses' prerogatives? If this is what Congress wants, then they should either vote to delay EPA regulation of GHGs or just allow them to proceed to do so immediately.

It is also important for EPA to consider the costs and benefits of such regulations. The costs, as common-sense dictates, would be extremely high. By forcing Americans to buy less energy from affordable sources and more from expensive, intermittent sources, EPA would essentially increase the price of all goods and services and reduce the efficiency of the American economy. American families would be forced to spend more on their energy bills and less on everything else. Businesses would have to raise prices in order to make up for the increased cost of production in the U.S.

So, what are the benefits of EPA’s GHG regulations? Unfortunately, there are none. While Americans workers are forced to deal with higher prices to decrease carbon dioxide emissions, emerging nations like China, which is already burning 3.5 times more coal than the U.S., will offset any decrease in global GHG emissions for which the agency is aiming. And while advocates claim that America’s actions will serve as leadership to the world, they overlook the fact that European countries have been regulating carbon dioxide for years. Studies in Spain, Denmark, and Germany have shown that not only are these policies destructive to a country’s economy, but also that they have no impact whatsoever on global climate trends. That’s why no one is following; nor should they.

If EPA was truly interested in benefiting public health, they would promote the most efficient, effective means of lifting citizens from poverty and improving living conditions: affordable energy. Study after study shows that those nations that have access to affordable, reliable energy are able to enjoy exponentially greater qualities of life than other nations. The EPA’s plan to increase energy costs means increased costs for healthcare, transportation, housing, and just about everything else. While Americans spend more time and money trying to please EPA, our quality of life will be severely impacted.

In order to increase production and continue hiring, companies have been demanding market certainty and Congressional involvement in fending off the EPA. A two year delay does neither of those. In fact, a two year delay increases uncertainty for American businesses and decreases the likelihood of Congressional involvement.

If Congress is concerned with crafting policies that encourage American citizens to start productive businesses and invest their money with American companies, they should jealously guard the energy sector from the bureaucrats over at the EPA. This agency is making a dangerous power grab that could adversely affect the American way of life.

In his last State of the Union address, President Obama pledged that he "will not hesitate" to protect commonsense safeguards that ensure America's air is safe to breathe. A vital part of our clean energy future is protecting the Clean Air Act. Congress and the president will need to fend off political pressure from polluters to weaken a law that works and works well and the National Wildlife Federation will ensure the voices of concerned sportsmen and women and conservationists is heard loud and clear in this critical debate.

The proposals we’ve seen in recent weeks that open polluter loopholes in the Clean Air Act are a huge step backward for people, wildlife and our economy. They attack clean air while undermining our ability as a nation to protect public health, not to mention our ability to compete in the clean energy economy.

The American people want Congress to put forward solutions that create jobs, protect public health and position our nation as a global leader in the clean energy economy. Policies that support clean air, energy independence and a strong economy are within reach—if Congress embraces this as our "Sputnik moment” and acts decisively to win the race in the clean energy economy.

Overwhelming majorities of Americans want the Environmental Protection Agency to do more to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink. By a more than two-to-one margin, those who say “the EPA needs to do more to hold polluters accountable and protect the air and water” outnumber those who believe the EPA already “does too much and places too many costly restrictions on businesses and individuals,” according to a poll conducted by ORC International. Most importantly, a mere 18 percent believe Congress should block the EPA from updating its pollution standards.

Against this background, it is outrageous that House Republicans are launching an attack on the most basic law that keeps our air safe. This effort, undertaken primarily for the benefit of corporate polluters, will effectively turn the Clean Air Act into the Dirty Air Act by gutting one of our nation’s most successful public health laws. Since 1970, the Clean Air Act has saved hundreds of thousands of lives and improved the health of Americans in every state.

Over the last 20 years the Clean Air Act has prevented an estimated 843,000 asthma attacks, 18 million cases of respiratory illness among children, 672,000 cases of chronic bronchitis, 21,000 cases of heart disease and 200,000 premature deaths. What’s more, the economic benefits of the Clean Air Act during this period – including fewer sick days and hospital visits – have outweighed its costs by more than 30 to 1. The Clean Air Act tailpipe standards for model years 2012-2016 (which are part of the greenhouse gas regulations) will also save Americans 77 billion gallons of fuel over the life of the vehicles sold in those years; this represents over $240 billion in economic benefits including over $182 billion in fuel savings. Undermining the Clean Air Act will threaten public health, our economy and our energy independence.

In compliance with a 2007 Supreme Court decision, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward in a responsible way to update the Clean Air Act to limit global warming pollution. These limits – which apply only to the biggest and dirtiest power plants – will help protect our economy and our people from the worst effects of global warming. It saddens me that some of my Republican colleagues continue to deny the science of global warming; they do so with reckless disregard for the devastation it will cause to our economy and our environment.

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama outlined his legislative priorities to the Congress and the nation. Among them, he expressed his intentions to do away with federal regulations that negatively impact American businesses. I would encourage the House Energy and Commerce Committee not to overlook the high cost the recently implemented energy and carbon regulations have on the health of our economy as they begin examining preemption legislation this week.

On January 2nd, 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began implementing broad, sweeping regulations across the energy industry in an effort to address climate concerns. These regulations will affect many sectors of American industry, including energy generating facilities and other sources of “hazardous air pollutants” as strictly defined by the EPA. These costly regulations will have a widespread detrimental impact on many facets of the economy through the raised energy costs for consumers, lost jobs, and significantly compromised reliability of the energy grid.

The impact on energy cost and reliability could be enormous, as energy industry insiders predict it will likely be more cost effective to shut plants down rather than comply with the EPA’s burdensome regulations. With staggering new unemployment numbers released last week, now is not the time to be eliminating more American jobs through facility closures. Recent studies have shown just how detrimental the impact will be to both our energy options and the economy. The North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) found that the EPA's regulations on coal plants will cut about 7 percent of our energy capacity, primarily from coal, which supplies half of our country's energy. Meanwhile, Forisk Consulting found that the EPA's greenhouse gas regulations will hit renewable energy equally hard, jeopardizing over 130 renewable energy projects and as many as 26,000 jobs.

Last month, the EPA and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced plans for a joint study using modeling to examine the potential for coal-fired power plant closures prompted by pending EPA climate, water and other rules. The effort could provide fundamental data to help in planning a strategy for addressing any generating capacity loss resulting from plant closures. While I am encouraged the need for further examination of the true impact these burdensome regulations will have on the energy industry is being addressed, I’m troubled that the EPA didn’t find it necessary to launch similar efforts to recognize the implications before these regulations began taking effect. In the very least, the EPA needs to delay these job killing rules until more comprehensive data is available. It is risky to play roulette with American jobs right now. The stakes are too high and the odds are stacked against us.

The vast majority of Americans support the mission of cleaning up our environment. But with such an insecure economic future, and staggering numbers of qualified Americans out of work, we need to carefully examine any regulations that have potential to inflict further damage. Much of American manufacturing operations require reliable and affordable energy, and the EPA regulations and carbon rules could put this industry in jeopardy and incentivize corporations to outsource even more jobs south of the border or overseas. Furthermore, the energy facility closures resulting from these regulations will assuredly compromise the reliability of electricity delivery. Energy deemed “renewable” like wind and solar power are an important piece of a national energy strategy, but these technologies cannot fulfill the demand by themselves, at least not yet. America requires reliable “baseload” power that isn’t reliant on factors outside of our control, such as windless days and clouds. Coal and natural gas plants that produce when energy is needed cannot be eliminated. American industry and consumers won’t prosper without energy they can count on no matter what the weather.

The state of Texas is struggling with mandated power sources versus the harsh reality of supply and demand. A lack of reliable baseload power caused massive blackouts just last week, and the solution has been to actually import power from Mexico.

I am hopeful that Senator Rockefeller and others will succeed in preempting the implementation of these rules until they have been fully evaluated for their potentially devastating economic impact. This week’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing is a positive first step toward properly examining these rules and, hopefully, advancing legislation that would result in, at minimum, a two year implementation delay.

It is important that we recognize the necessity and urgency to delay or stop implementation of these rules, which will impact all sectors of the economy and cause unintended consequences beyond the power industry. Our energy future is a Rorschach Test at which some policy makers look and see only more regulation and restraint. The truth is we can have a power generation system that is clean, reliable, and affordable if we simply choose a path that liberates - not limits - our possibilities.

Let’s allow EPA to do its job for two years on greenhouse pollutants, and then have a meaningful debate about what actually occurs under the successful Clean Air Act, versus getting bogged down in horror stories with no basis in reality over the past 40 years.

Under the U.S. Constitution, federal agencies can regulate, but only Congress can legislate. Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency has crossed the line and is trying to do the work of Congress by issuing regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions after Congress failed to pass legislation to do the same thing last year.

NPRA, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the EPA greenhouse gas regulations because we believe that such regulations are not authorized under the Clean Air Act. EPA takes the opposite position, maintaining that greenhouse gas regulations are permitted under the Clean Air Act.

When the Clean Air Act was passed 40 years ago lawmakers had no intention that it be applied to greenhouse gas emissions. Many members of Congress involved in the debate over the legislation have stated this repeatedly.

Congress should vote now to stop EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Then Congress can debate how to handle this issue.

Here’s what’s at stake:

· First, the preservation of the right of Congress to be the nation’s lawmaking body. If federal agencies are allowed to impose regulations never authorized by Congress in the case of greenhouse gases, they can do the same in other areas. The president would then gain enormous power and Congress would lose it. This poses a danger to the separation of powers that has preserved our liberties and prevented too much power from being concentrated in the hands of the president, regardless of political party, throughout our history.

· Second, the health of our economy and millions of jobs. Greenhouse gas limitations may sound good – a supposed way to fight global climate change – but in reality they will destroy jobs, weaken our nation’s manufacturing base, and result in America importing more and exporting less. They will also be ineffective and simply drive U.S. industries and the jobs they support to nations like China and India, where the industries will emit greenhouse gases into the common atmosphere every nation on Earth shares. Greenhouse gas emissions in Hong Kong and New Delhi have the same impact on our environment as emissions in Houston and New York, meaning the shift of emissions from the U.S. to other nations would have zero environmental benefit.

America’s petroleum refiners and petrochemical companies are high-tech manufacturers that provide jobs for more than 2 million Americans directly and indirectly, make modern life possible and strengthen our economic and national security. While we’ve been demonized by some as part of America’s energy and environmental problems, we’re really a big part of the solution.

For well over 100 years, we have transformed crude oil into useful everyday products. Along the way we have continually enhanced technology. We have created new, more efficient and environmentally friendly products while providing the American consumer with fuels and other goods that drive the nation’s economic engine.

While EPA today is focused on emissions of greenhouse gases – predominantly carbon dioxide, which every person emits every time we exhale – NPRA member companies have made significant investments to enhance air quality and reduce traditional air pollutants.

For example, fuels manufacturers alone have spent nearly $50 billion to remove sulfur from gasoline and diesel fuel and to provide reformulated gasoline. Overall, total emissions of the six principal air pollutants in the United States have been reduced by 54 percent since 1980 and our nation’s citizens have experienced a two decade-long drop in ozone levels across the country.

We recognize that opinions differ on what course the United States should take to deal with greenhouse gas emissions. Those opinions should be aired and debated in the House and Senate, so our elected representatives can decide this important issue.

In order to deal with the jumble of carbon legislation and regulation jeopardizing the nation right now, Congress should start by passing an amendment to the Clean Air Act (CAA) that explicitly limits its application to the air pollutants for which it was originally intended.

When Congress reauthorized the act in 1990, lawmakers considered granting EPA authority over greenhouse gases. The House-Senate conference committee deliberately removed Senate language under Title VII, which would have endowed the agency with authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA that regulators had authority under Section 2 to classify CO2 a pollutant stemmed from political correctness and a poorly handled legal argument by the Bush Administration.

Due to the extent of the court’s delegated power (jurisdiction over not just cars and factories, but commercial buildings, small businesses, and churches), this authority gives an unelected cabal of regulators de facto authority over our economy and energy policy. The stakes are high. And the 112th Congress should act to protect the public from such gross overreach. Indeed, some of EPA’s recent proposals show clearly that its leadership is pursuing an ideological agenda with little to no regard for the economic consequences.

The agency’s proposed national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) revisions and stationery source rules would effectively halt new major construction for equivocal environmental benefits.

American innovators, business leaders, and public officials have already and will continue to improve technologies and processes to increase efficiency and reduce growth in CO2 emissions. The U.S. can export these measures to mitigate global emissions as other countries continue to grow. Since the developing world represents a major source of future CO2 emissions, those regions also offer the best sites for cost-effective reductions.

Our current state of technology -- combined with our need for abundant, affordable energy for economic growth and the fact that no commercially viable low or zero emission alternatives to fossil energy exist right now -- means that we will continue to rely on traditional fuels for decades to come. Given those realities, efforts to mandate absolute reductions in emissions (an Obama Administration goal) will have widespread deleterious effects on job and wealth creation.

Congress needs to undertake a careful and comprehensive re-examination of CAA that includes a determination of what tools are appropriate for the current state of air pollution. Many provisions that may have made sense in 1970 are no longer appropriate. Because of the tremendous progress that has been made, air quality is better than it has ever been. Pollution levels are so low that incremental reductions come at a very high cost.

Unlike the current law, costs should be able to be taken into consideration in setting pollution levels and an independent assessment of the economic impacts of proposed actions should be mandatory. Lawmakers also need to devolve more authority to the states. With very low levels of pollution, states are in the best position to determine the best way to balance potential reductions, the means for achieving them, and the impacts on their economies.