Republican opposition to C02 regulations gain steam

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama’s Republican foes on Tuesday rejected a measure that would accept global warming as “unequivocal” and allow regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee sank the amendment along party lines, while Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell introduced an amendment in the other chamber that would also put the brakes on Environmental Protection Agency rules.

Republicans consider such climate change regulations onerous and warn they would be a drag on the US economic recovery, and the battle against them has been a priority for conservatives who have wrested the majority in the House of Representatives away from Democrats.

If ranking Democrat Henry Waxman’s House amendment had been approved it would have put Congress on record that it “accepts EPA finding that ‘warming of the climate is unequivocal'” and would have allowed EPA, under the Clean Air Act, to introduce regulations on greenhouse gases emissions in order to address climate change.

Waxman accused Republicans of burying their collective head in the sand.

“Scientists are virtually certain that climate is warming,” he said. “Pretending problems aren’t real doesn’t make them go away.”

EPA began new steps toward CO2 regulation in January, as Congress failed to agree on the issue in 2010, but Republicans have insisted they would move quickly to curb the regulations.

“There’s an old adage that says when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Today, America finds itself in an economic hole dug deeper and deeper amid excessive federal spending and costly regulations,” committee chairman Fred Upton said in a statement.

“If we allow the Environmental Protection Agency to ignore the will of Congress and move forward with its global warming regulatory agenda, I believe this economic hole will only crater further.”

Upton warned that EPA regulations could cause a further rise in oil prices — already under pressure in part because of unrest in Libya.

House Democrat Ed Markey blasted the Republican’s “arbitrary rejection of scientific fact.”

“With this bill, pollution levels will rise. Oil imports will rise. Temperatures will rise,” he said.

In the Senate, McConnell said the Obama administration’s sought to add “yet another burdensome, job-destroying regulation through the back door.

“We’ll have a vote on whether at a time of rising gas prices and growing concern about the scope of government, we should allow the White House to impose new energy regulations through the EPA,” he said.

Adoption of the measure will be more difficult in the Senate which remains under Democrat control, although some Democrats from coal-producing states are inclined to prevent EPA regulations.