President Obama Can't Wait for Congress

Too many lobbyists representing hundreds of special interests groups fill the halls of our capital persuading our legislators to act in ways good for them but not for us. The Congress will never really legislate in favor of policies that are 100% environmentally beneficial unless there is something in it that helps with their next reelection.  Global warming is too far advanced for President Obama to diplomatically persuade Congress to act quickly.  He needs to light a bonfire underneath their seats or rush ahead and let them catch up.

Proposing limits for greenhouse gas emissions and ambient air quality standard regulations are two specific examples where the EPA is moving like molasses in wintertime and should be moving like lighting. The problem, as previously stated, lies both with Congress’s special interest saturated legislative behavior and President Obama’s overly diplomatic relationship with Congress.  We deserve action now not after environmental disasters become irreversible.

Regulations limiting, not just proposing, greenhouse gas emissions need to be put into law now. Its not good enough for the EPA to simply declare that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare.  Industries that provide energy using “dirty sources” need limitations on the amount of greenhouse gasses they produce.  They need regulations since they will not do this on their own.

In 1997 the EPA created ambient air quality standards for fine particulate matter, soot. Soot causes illnesses costing billions in health care expenditures and approximately 20,000 annual deaths. Its very simple, the less soot, the less illness. Most soot comes from coal fired power plants.  Ambient air quality standards are not good enough, we need regulations to protect us. The EPA is literally giving these plants a license to  murder.  Another frustrating and seemingly malicious facet of this dilemma is allowing more new coal fired plants to be approved under these worthless standards as opposed to having them be approved under strict regulations. It appears as if the EPA is giving these “dirty” plants an unfair advantage over new green clean technology by allowing them to slide in without health protective regulations. 

President Obama shouldn’t let the Congress empowered EPA to work directly against our health and directly for the seemingly impervious lobbyist protected “dirty” energy producers. Clean green technology doesn’t stand a chance if our country continues to be controlled by special interest groups that let the obscenely rich get richer and the rest of us get stuck with higher health care costs and irreversible lung cancer.  We need to make the death of the Bush administration create a environmentally healthy “birth” for us.