Several reports of late reveal that new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency will cause utility providers to shut down a number of coal-fired power plants. It is time to expose the history of the thuggish tactics utilized by the EPA in promoting a “green” energy agenda, specifically during the Clinton/Gore administration.

A press release from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dated November 3, 1999 reported:

“U.S. SUES ELECTRIC UTILITIES IN UNPRECEDENTED ACTION TO ENFORCE THE CLEAN AIR ACT”.  The release states that “seven separate suits allege that the electric utility companies — American Electric Power, Cinergy, FirstEnergy, Illinois Power, Southern Indiana Gas & Electric Company, Southern Company, Tampa Electric Company — or their subsidiaries, and the TVA, violated the Clean Air Act by making major modifications to many of their plants without installing the equipment required to control smog, acid rain and soot.”

In Florida, Tampa Electric Company (TECO) was the first utility in the country to reach a settlement agreement with the EPA and the Department of Justice.  Under the terms of the settlement agreement, as outlined in a statement from then EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner, Tampa Electric Company agreed to pay $3.5 million in civil penalties, along with another “$10 million for environmentally beneficial projects designed to mitigate the impact of their pollution.”  The entire Consent Decree can be viewed here.  A visit to Tampa Electric Company’s website contains a declaration that in 1999 they were the “first utility in the nation to develop a plan with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address its coal-fired utility initiative.” When questioned about the connection between Tampa Electric Company’s website statement regarding their cooperation with the EPA and the announced settlement with the EPA and DOJ, a source inside the industry replied “Do you mean did they hold a gun to their head?  Absolutely!”

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My eye-opening experience with Enron revealed to my surprise just how it is that certain interests actually drive Big Green, and make otherwise inconceivable policy ideas into threats and often even reality. The revelation was such that it left me shaking my head in wonder as to how the (now suddenly) obvious, at least seeing how it escapes the interest of at least the establishment press cheerleading the same agenda: when you rob Peter to pay Paul, you are guaranteed the enthusiastic support of Paul.

In fact — as I learned regarding Enron’s and BP’s pet projects, “carbon cap-and-trade” and related ‘green jobs’ schemes all designed to make uneconomic investments in windmills etc. pay off — sometimes the entire enterprise is Paul’s idea.

So it is that we see with deep pocketed gents now scrambling to protect their bets on uneconomic investments and rent-seeking schemes, by supporting the campaign to defeat Proposition 23 in California. Prop 23 would delay California’s climatically meaningless but economically suicidal state-level adoption of Kyoto agenda, called AB 32. Oddly, there is no condemnation of these bags of money being thrown at killing a ballot initiative, despite the opprobrium heaped upon those few who have dared venture in to help the “Yes” campaign.

This is a shame, for the question Cui bono? is so readily answered simply by scanning the growing list of those digging deep to make sure the ‘green’ gravy train of wealth transfers isn’t derailed (regardless of the fairly obvious economic consequences if they are successful, which in a rational world would be of great interest to a watchdog press).

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Six taxpayers filed a lawsuit this week to invalidate an executive order issued by Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire. The taxpayers believe—with good reason—that the governor violated the doctrine of separation of powers by snatching a failed bill out of the legislative process and issuing it in the form of an executive order. They are being represented by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, an Olympia-based government watchdog group.

Last year, after the Washington state legislature failed to pass a climate change bill championed by the governor, she took matters into her own hands by issuing an executive order directing the Departments of Ecology and Transportation to take action to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions and increase transportation and fuel-conservation options. At a press conference, Gov. Gregoire stressed that the executive order was intended to replace her failed legislation. “What we’ve done in the executive order is everything that was in that final bill—plus. Plus. There’s more in the executive order than what was in the final bill that did not pass the Legislature,” she told reporters.

It gives one pause to consider that Governor Gregoire should record herself talking for vetting purposes prior to making such admissions in public.

There are strong parallels in this case to what is happening on a national scale. President Obama’s drilling ban end-run around the law, for example, which has signaled his administration’s strategy to push through certain policies notwithstanding any legal restrictions. Or the passage of the so-called “health care reform” bill, which was rammed through in a suspect reconciliation process designed to bypass opposition. Or the arguably abusive use of signing statements by President Bush to tell agencies to ignore certain provisions of bills he disagreed with—1,200 times. President Obama intends to continue the practice, though he claims he will “act with caution and restraint, based only on interpretations of the Constitution that are well-founded.” I’m sure we’ll all sleep  better at night.

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With the passing of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, the defining narrative among politicos will — after a few hours’ decorum — emerge as does Byrd = Kennedy? That is to say that, while so many West Virginians would never vote against Byrd, now that he’s gone there are plenty of the same Blue State voters who would vote against a non-Byrd Democrat in this Age of Obama.

I don’t follow West Virginia politics closely but assume their version of Scott Brown would be Rep. Shelley Moore Capito. His or her identity, as well as whether the same phenomenon would play out, likely depend on if the election is held this fall, vs. 2012: there are some murky legal issues to sort through involving how long a placeholder would hold the seat. Still I’m pretty sure it will be someone staunchly anti-cap-and-trade (in both parties, in fact; the last West Virginia politician to show insufficient zeal against the scheme, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D), recently lost in a primary).

Cap-and-trade of course is the vehicle by which the president vowed to cause your electricity prices to “necessarily skyrocket” as part of his effort to “bankrupt” the coal industry and anyone who sought to continue burning coal for that one-half of our electricity that it provides. Incidentally, today’s Wall Street Journal also notes how Obama’s anti-coal jihad just cost about 1,000 jobs in Wisconsin; West Virginia needs no such reminders yet as they pile up they also cannot help but be relevant.

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One way or the other, one of us is going to go down. President Obama, by insisting that he will go to the mat on his “green jobs” agenda, which is simply central planning with a coat of green paint, indicates he will risk his presidency on getting the cap-and-trade, gas tax and windmill mandate through the Senate (with a stranglehold on domestic energy production to boot), then through the House again on a conferenced bill.

If he succeeds he will have doomed us; if he fails, politically the effort will have finally, fully exposed him for what he is: a Power Grabbing Statist whose economics are recklessly dogmatic while at the same time ignoring those societies he claims are his model.

Obama reminded us how as a candidate he set out what he called a set of principles, which he acknowledged were passed by the House, in a vote almost precisely one year ago today.

Here is what he said then about cap-and-trade, which the House passed. This discussion occurred in the apparent context of how to mount his and his team’s big-ticket agenda items:

“The problem is, can you get the American people to say this is really important, and force their representatives to do the right thing. That requires mobilizing a citizenry…And climate change is a great example.”

You got it: this is the community organizer, refusing to allow a crisis to go to waste, but instead seeking to use it to do what he’s trying to do.

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This week, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will host a press conference announcing the fifth reinvention of “cap-and-trade” global warming legislation since 2003, the “American Power Act”. Call it the American Power Grab Act, instead, for reasons that will become obvious momentarily.

The orchestrated spectacle, with a cast expected to be in the dozens and which all involved appear convinced will persuade you of the justness of their cause, is in fact a manifestation of all that is wrong with Washington and what Americans have become increasingly enraged by.

At this press conference, Sens. Kerry and Lieberman have both already indicated, they will insist that their scheme isn’t “cap-and-trade” because they aren’t going to use that term this time around. Kerry has even said that “this is not an environment bill.” It seems that the public aren’t buying that argument, either, so it’s really about whatever appeals to you. Just not what it was about the previous four times they’ve tried to slip this Power Grab past you. Except I’ve seen a copy of the bill. Yes it is cap-and-trade. And worse.

For this latest effort to hide an enormous tax and wealth transfer — a unilateral move that guarantees jobs will be shipped to China, India, Philippines, Mexico and elsewhere — – these lawmakers will be surrounded by numerous representatives of Big Green. That includes not just the wealthy pressure group industry but many among “Big Business”, numerous of whom are the benefactors enabling those pressure group chiefs’ huge salaries and vast PR budgets to scare you into accepting an agenda that uses the state to, oddly enough, enrich these same companies. Huh.

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This story in E&EM News PM (subscription required), “Murkowski floats plan to force Senate vote on cap and trade next week”, is spectacular.

Here are the money lines, all noting Sen. Murkowski’s clever plan to simply call the Left on their rhetoric and posing about the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill S. 1733, a bill that was marked up in the Environment and Public Works Committee in a somber yet urgent November affair, reporting it to the Senate floor and, oh yes, the Copenhagen conference:

“‘Boxer-Kerry is a non-starter, and the amendment — if that’s what it said — it would expose that,’ said Murkowski spokesman Robert Dillon. ‘We obviously don’t want to pass the bill; we’re confident that it would fail.’ Holding a vote on the Kerry-Boxer bill would ’show the sense of the Senate, where it is,’ Dillon said….

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As President Obama jets off to Denmark for the UN’s climate conference, I hope he will take some time as he flies over the Atlantic Ocean to revisit the science that led him to this trip.

The EPA sure didn’t.

Last week, unelected officials at the EPA abruptly put an end to honest debate by unilaterally declaring carbon dioxide a “harmful substance” and putting themselves in position to begin regulating emissions from every business and farm in America.

In making this rash decision, they have relied heavily upon findings by climate-change scientists that have been subsequently discredited by the scientists’ own e-mails, which indicate data manipulation and the exile of fellow researchers who didn’t agree with the group’s accepted, foregone conclusions.

As governor of a state that will be unfairly and dramatically impacted by the EPA’s ill-informed decision – one that will cost each Texas family $1,136 annually in higher costs and eliminate as many as 400,000 Texas jobs – this is simply unacceptable.

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Over at ICECAP.us Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo has posted an item on a “Russian Bombshell” highly relevant to the ClimateGate scandal. The Russian media first posted the story and now some Brits are loving it.

The long and the short of it is best summarized by the Telegraph’s James Dellingpole: “What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock.”

That is, we have yet further evidence that the data is being cooked to make the long-running claim of an increase in global temperatures, and now to diminish the apparent cooling of said temps. As the gang at EU referendum tout, “it is in Soviet Union that the CRU, NOAA, NASA show the greatest warming.”

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Kim Strassel writes, in “The EPA’s Carbon Bomb Fizzles” in the Wall Street Journal, with typical insight that:

“President Obama, having failed to get climate legislation, didn’t want to show up to the Copenhagen climate talks with a big, fat nothing. So the EPA pulled the pin. In doing so, it exploded its own threat.”

Far from alarm, the feeling sweeping through many quarters of the Democratic Congress is relief. Voters know cap-and-trade is Washington code for painful new energy taxes. With a recession on, the subject has become poisonous in congressional districts. Blue Dogs and swing-state senators watched in alarm as local Democrats in the recent Virginia and New Jersey elections were pounded on the issue, and lost their seats.

But now? Hurrah! It’s the administration’s problem! No one can say Washington isn’t doing something; the EPA has it under control. The agency’s move gives Congress a further excuse not to act.”

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Over at the Weekly Standard, the always impressive Steven Hayward has a good summation of where we are in Climate Gate:

Slowly and mostly unnoticed by the major news media, the air has been going out of the global warming balloon. Global temperatures stopped rising a few years ago, much to the dismay of the climate campaigners. The U.N.’s upcoming Copenhagen conference–which was supposed to yield a binding greenhouse gas emissions reduction treaty as a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol–collapsed weeks in advance and remains on life support pending Obama’s magical intervention. Cap and trade legislation is stalled on Capitol Hill. Recent opinion polls from Gallup, Pew, Rasmussen, ABC/Washington Post, and other pollsters all find a dramatic decline in public belief in human-caused global warming. The climate campaigners continue to insist this is because they have a “communications” problem, but after Al Gore’s Nobel Prize/Academy Award double play, millions of dollars in paid advertising, and the relentless doom-mongering from the media echo chamber and the political class, this excuse is preposterous. And now the climate campaign is having its Emperor’s New Clothes moment.

In mid-November a large cache of emails and technical documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Britain were made available on a number of Internet file-servers for download by the public–either the work of a hacker or a leak from a whistleblower on the inside. The emails–more than 1,000 of them–reveal a small cabal of scientists who, in the words of MIT’s Michael Schrage, engaged in “malice, mischief and Machiavellian maneuverings.” In an ironic twist, one of the frequent correspondents in this long e‑trail (University of Arizona scientist Jonathan Overpeck) warned several of his colleagues in September, “Please write all emails as though they will be made public.” Small wonder why. It’s being called Climategate, but more than one wit is calling them “the CRUtape Letters.”

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The Chamber of Commerce recently bowed to pressure from big member companies which have crafted schemes to pick your pocket under cap-and-trade, and cravenly pleaded for some form of global warming legislation. It defended this with the argument distilled as “we merely restated our position. A different way.” So it is with Congress, in a fashion, with its controversial Sec. 707 identically stuck in both the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer bills.

Some on Team Liberty insist there’s nothing to see here, because you’ll notice that the language says the President “shall” exercise “existing statutory authority”. QED. My former CEI colleague Jonathan Adler adopts Ed Morrissey’s position posted on Hot Air, phrasing it on Volokh:

“The above provision grants no new powers to the federal government, let alone the President. Zero. Zilch. Rather, it directs the President to have agencies use “existing statutory authority” to ensure greater greenhouse gas emission reductions.  In other words, it requires the President to ensure that agencies are using all the tools Congress has already delegated to them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — tools that such agencies could use even if the section is not triggered — and demands the President “submit to Congress” a request for additional authorities the President believes are necessary to ensure greater emission reductions.  Moreover, insofar as this provision constrains the Executive Branch’s discretion over what emission-reduction measures it wants to take, it actually reduces executive authority.”

That first part is true.

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James Sensnbrenner (R-WI), Ranking Republican on the House’s Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming (really), issued a warning last week about Kyoto II. The proposal is being tugged by that vast majority of the world, rejecting its constraints, but demanding, at present count, $140 billion per year from U.S. taxpayers in atonement for past, present and future damage from weather which our government now says is our fault.  It includes this gem from leading Kyoto free-rider (in perpetuity), major greenhouse gas emitter India:

India’s government says that the West owes billions of dollars to developing nations to compensate for climate change. In its submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Indian government argued that this funding should be a legal obligation that ‘cannot be subject to decisions of developed country governments or legislatures.

Oh, dear. Re-read that demand. Such an entanglement would, of course, be problematic. Barring further surprises from the current Supreme Court, we have to assume it surely would be found unconstitutional. For example, from Jeremy Rabkin’s recent talk to Hillsdale College reprinted in the July/August Imprimis:

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