Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., have introduced legislation to block EPA from regulating GHG emissions for two years, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Rahall, joined by Reps. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., and Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he was "dead-set against the EPA's plowing ahead on its own with new regulations." EPA responded to the proposal by contrasting it with a resolution from Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, that would challenge EPA's endangerment finding for GHG emissions. The agency said Rockefeller's bill "does not attempt to overturn or deny the scientific fact that unchecked greenhouse gas pollution threatens the well-being of the American people," the Washington Post reported.
The Journal said the challenge from Rockefeller and Rahall was just one prong of dissent about energy policies. In another instance, the newspaper noted, American Electric Power CEO Michael Morris declared the "idiocy of Yucca Mountain" being cancelled as a nuclear waste repository and said "there has to be a reaction" by utilities to the move by DOE. In another criticism of Obama administration energy policies, some Senate Democrats called for the suspension of a grant program for renewable developers because it could aid Chinese makers of wind turbines that were to be installed in Texas.
Frank O'Donnell, who heads Clean Air Watch, told the Washington Post the Obama administration has made so many concessions that it is "backpedaling faster than a quarterback in the NFL. It's as if the Obama administration is running scared from a Congress controlled by the Democrats. The more concessions they make, the fiercer the opposition seems to be."
- Related stories also appeared in New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Dow Jones Newswires via the Wall Street Journal, Greenwire via the New York Times, Reuters, Washington Post blog.
