Texas Conservatives Battle EPA

And now for the next installment of:

The Peter Morrison Report:

Summary of this week's report:

There's some good news this week for Texas conservatives - Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott, and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples are defying the feds, who are trying to saddle Texas with burdensome regulations in the name of fighting global warming, which is nothing but a hoax being perpetrated to stifle the economy and erode our freedoms.

Full report after the jump...
Sometimes it seems as if there's never any good news for Texas conservatives, and the endless litany of backsliding and betrayal on the part of our politicians can be downright discouraging.  That goes with the territory, of course.  Politicians these days find it much easier to play to the liberal media than to stick with their principles and remember why we elected them.  Fortunately, that's not the case this week - three Texas leaders are actually showing some backbone and are taking a stand to resist political correctness and federal encroachments on our state sovereignty.

Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott, and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for declaring carbon dioxide (CO2) a dangerous pollutant.  If the EPA has its way and this ruling stands, the consequences for the Texas economy will be enormous.  Our oil industry may not be as robust as it once was, but it's still big business in Texas, and the EPA's action will take a huge toll on it, even as our nation is desperate for domestically produced gas and oil.  It's estimated that thousands of jobs could be lost, along with substantial tax revenue, all because of the misplaced fear over "man made global warming." 

Governor Perry made it clear that it's not only the oil industry that's at risk: "When the EPA recently declared carbon dioxide a toxic substance," he said, "they put countless businesses, farms, even large churches in their cross hairs."  The EPA's threats are even more outrageous in light of the fact that Texas has made substantial progress in reducing pollution without any federal abuse of state sovereignty.  We have our own state office for dealing with pollution - the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and even the EPA admits that TCEQ has done a good job at reducing carbon dioxide and ozone levels.  That's not enough for the power hungry DC bureaucrats, and they're actually claiming the right to usurp this state function and take over the TCEQ if Texas doesn't bow to their demands.

This isn't just an overzealous federal government trying to reduce pollution; it has nothing to do with concern for the environment at all.  The ultimate goal is government control over every aspect of the economy and even our personal lives, and concern for the environment is simply a ruse.  Decades ago radical socialists realized that they were never going to make any headway in America by being honest about their goal of a totalitarian central government and would have to pursue their agenda by other means. The environmental movement was chosen as one of the most promising paths to gradually turning America into a socialist country. Environmentalism and "global warming" hysteria have always been driven by far left-wingers, and that's no coincidence.

One of the biggest milestones on this path occurred in 1997, when the "global warming" hoax was just beginning to gain traction. That's when the Clinton administration signed America on to the Kyoto Protocol, which requires countries to fight "global warming" by taking stringent measures toward "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would minimize dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." (Anthropogenic means caused by man's activities, as opposed to naturally occurring.)  It's precisely because of the Kyoto Protocol that the EPA is now going after Texas industries.  Many people believe the sole purpose of the Kyoto agreement was to stifle free enterprise and capitalism, and there are some good reasons to think they may be right.

If that wasn't the case, then it's a mystery why countries like India and Communist China are exempt from adhering to the Kyoto standards.  China is now the worst polluting country in the world, by far, yet it's exempt from these burdensome standards that are supposedly aimed at reducing pollution across the planet.  That's because the agreement unfairly targeted developed countries - America, England, Japan, Germany and most European nations.  The argument was that these prosperous nations, all of which have capitalist economies, had caused more pollution than "developing" countries, so we would have to make far more radical reductions in
CO2 than these "developing" countries.  Somehow Communist China was given a pass, even though they were one of the world's largest economies even in 1997.  Meanwhile, freedom loving nations are being forced to crack down on business and industry while China and India can pollute all they want.

It's outright hypocrisy, and it's clear that it's being done to punish Western countries, and move them toward socialism in the name of cleaning up the planet.  Now the EPA wants to start enforcing the Kyoto Protocol in Texas, to reduce greenhouse gases.  This nonsense has got to stop.  The "global warming crisis" is nothing but a hoax, and that's becoming clearer all the time.  It seems every day we read about a new scandal concerning lies, evasions, distortions, faked research results and obfuscation being employed to spread this leftist propaganda.  Not long ago we had Climate Gate and the leaked emails, and just last week one of the top "global warming experts" in the world admitted that  there hasn't been any significant warming since 1995, and that the planet may well have been warmer in the Middle Ages than it is now. 

It's clear that the leftist propaganda about man-made "global warming" is nothing but a house of cards, and it's quickly collapsing under the weight of the evidence.  It's outrageous that the EPA wants to burden the Texas economy with draconian regulations even as the whole theory behind them being necessary is being discredited.  Governor Perry, Attorney General Abbott, and Agriculture Commissioner Staples are right to defy this power grab, and stand up in the federal courts for the sovereign rights of the Lone Star State, and we need to show our gratitude.  I encourage everyone to let these men know how much we appreciate them bringing this lawsuit, and opposing Obama's plans to foist socialism down our throats under the ruse of concern for the environment.

Governor Rick Perry
Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428
Phone: (512) 463-2000
Fax: (512) 463-1849
Email: http://www.governor.state.tx.us/contact/


Attorney General Greg Abbott
Office of the Attorney General
PO Box 12548
Austin, TX 78711-2548
Phone: (512) 463-2100
Fax: (512) 475-2994
Email: greg.abbott@oag.state.tx.us


Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples
Texas Dept. of Agriculture
P.O. Box 12847
Austin TX 78711
Phone: (512) 463-7476
Fax: (888) 223-8861
Email:  pub.info@TexasAgriculture.gov


Sources:

http://www.texasinsider.org/?p=22001

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123894530

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/if_at_first_you_dont_s eceed_sue_the_epa_texas_guv.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol#Ratification_process

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Aston ishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised. html


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