Sat, Jun 12, 2010 page7

• Senate rejects curb on rules for emissions

  ‘HEADS IN THE SAND’ The 53-47 vote put an end to a Republican-led effort to restrain the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions

  • AP
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  In a boost for the US president on global warming, the Senate on Thursday rejected a challenge to rules aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other big polluters.

  The defeated resolution would have denied the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to move ahead with the rules, crafted under the federal Clean Air Act. With US President Barack Obama’s broader clean energy legislation struggling to gain a foothold in the Senate, the vote took on greater significance as a signal of where lawmakers stand on dealing with climate change.

  “If ever there was a vote to find out whose side you are on, this is it,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat and chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

  The vote was 53-47 to stop the Senate from moving forward on the Republican-led effort to restrain the EPA.

  Republicans, and the six Democrats who voted with them to advance the resolution, said Congress, not bureaucrats, should be in charge of writing climate change policy. They said the EPA rules would drive up energy costs and kill jobs.

  However, Democrats, referring frequently to the Gulf oil spill, said it made no sense to undermine efforts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions and reduce dependence on oil and other fossil fuels.

  The effort to block the rules “is an attempt to bury our heads in the sand and ignore reality,” said Senator Tom Udall, a Democrat.

  The White House earlier this week issued a veto threat, saying the resolution would block efforts to cut pollution that threatens Americans’ health and well-being.

  The EPA crafted standards on greenhouse gas emissions by big polluters after the Supreme Court ruled that those emissions could be considered a danger to human health and thus could be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The rules are to go into effect in January.

  The poor chances of the anti-EPA measure overcoming a veto and becoming law did not deter fierce debate.

  Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the new regulations a “blatant power grab by the administration and the EPA.” With a broad energy bill unlikely to pass this year “the administration has shifted course and is now trying to get done through the back door what they haven’t been able to get done through the front door,” he said.

  However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, called the blocking measure, “a great big gift to big oil” that would “increase pollution, increase our dependence on foreign oil and stall our efforts to create jobs” in clean energy.

  White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Thursday that he anticipated the Senate taking up a broader energy bill in the next several weeks “and hopefully we can get something done before Congress adjourns this year.”

  The sponsor of Thursday’s resolution, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of oil-rich Alaska, said her intent was to protect the authority of Congress, not the interests of the oil industry.

  “It should be up to us to set the policy of this country, not unelected bureaucrats within an agency,” she said.

  Her Democratic allies used similar arguments.

  “The regulatory approach is the wrong way to promote renewable energy and clean energy jobs in Arkansas and the rest of the country,” said Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, who faces a difficult re-­election campaign this summer.
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