The Right v. the EPA

This Real News Network story describes how the EPA is under attack from a very specific group of right wing interests are suing to try to prevent the EPA from acting to implement anti-carbon measures as stipulated in a Supreme Court decision. The intriguing bit is the group one might assume would be most opposed to new standards, the auto industry, is actually supportive.

More at The Real News

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12 comments

  1. shtove

    His voice is too boring.

    Isn’t the issue here about congress trying to prevent judicial review? Like they tried with TARP?

    Sorry, not buying it.

    1. KFritz

      The auto industry has money and time, in the form of R&D, invested in ‘green’ technology and higher MPG. It’s not just PR.

  2. Kochroach

    Koch Industries has been lobbying to prevent the E.P.A. from classifying formaldehyde, which the company produces in great quantities, as a “known carcinogen” in humans.
    Scientists have long known that formaldehyde causes cancer in rats, and several major scientific studies have concluded that formaldehyde causes cancer in human beings, including one published last year by the National Cancer Institute, on whose advisory board Koch sits. The study tracked twenty-five thousand patients for an average of forty years; subjects exposed to higher amounts of formaldehyde had significantly higher rates
    of leukemia. These results helped lead an expert panel within the National Institutes of Health to conclude that formaldehyde should be categorized as a known carcinogen, and be strictly controlled by the government. Corporations have resisted regulations on formaldehyde for decades, however, and Koch Industries has been a large funder of members of Congress who have stymied the E.P.A., requiring it to defer new regulations until more studies are completed. Koch Industries became a major producer of the chemical in 2005, after it bought Georgia-Pacific, the paper and wood-products company, for twenty-one billion dollars. Georgia-Pacific manufactures formaldehyde in its chemical division, and uses it to produce various wood products, such as plywood and laminates. Its annual production capacity for formaldehyde is 2.2 billion pounds. Last December, Traylor Champion, Georgia-Pacific’s vice-president of environmental affairs, sent a formal letter of protest to federal health authorities. He wrote that the company “strongly disagrees” with the N.I.H. panel’s conclusion that formaldehyde should be treated as a known human carcinogen. David Koch did not recuse himself from the National Cancer Advisory Board, or divest himself of company stock, while his company was directly lobbying the government to keep formaldehyde on the market.

    Update:
    June 12th, 2011
    NIH finally handed down a report officially classifying formaldehyde as a carcinogen after Koch left the NIH
    board.

    http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/now-david-koch-gone-nih-cancer-board-

  3. scraping_by

    Sometimes it’s best to ignore the surface and look to the root.

    This isn’t pro-carbon or pro-business, but anti-government. Every time the government improves life as it’s lived, the anti-government terrorists have lost. This was the philosophical basis for conservatives to oppose single payer health care. It works so well no one would fall for this “government is the problem” motto again.

    Using the government to defend ourselves against corporate outrages could turn into a bad habit. Better to gin up the “private good public bad” flock and send them trotting.

  4. Bridget

    Well, gee whiz. If the Obama Administration can’t buy the neutrality of the auto industry on the issue of power plant emissions in return for the misappropriation of billions and billions of TARP funds funneled to benefit of the UAW, then what can they be counted on for?

  5. Max424

    Fuck the EPA! Go corporations! Poison away, me mateys! I say, heat up the globe … and the faster the better!

    I live in Buffalo, and it’s cold up here! Or at least it used to be. For instance, 34 years ago, on the last day of winter, it was -2 degrees. Minus two! And the wind chill factor was a bone chilling -32!

    Oh, how I hate that wind chill factor. Hate it! It makes the cold, double-cold, and the double-cold double-cuts right thru ya.

    So, we Western New Yorkers say, to hell with the cold and wind chill factors! On the last day of this year’s winter, it was 80 degrees. 80 muscle lubing degrees! And let me tell ya, everybody up here is lovin’ it!

    The global ramifications of the tropics inexorably marching north, to places were they shouldn’t probably be? Yeah, we Buffalonians are aware of this problem … on some sub-level.

    But we say fuck it! Ignore the dire nature of modern neo-liberal things! We are wearing shorts, in winter! Shorts!

    We are all Miamians now!

    1. skippy

      You used to be a much less agro, but, you cant shoot them, can’t change their minds, plus the rest of the heard is chewing its cud… whats a body to do?.

      Skippy… cattle prods, salt blocks, sweet feed or a combination there of.

    2. Up the Ante

      In keeping w/the absurd direction of your comment, aren’t you Buffalonians ‘blessed’ by the rapine of the 19th-century buffalo hunters, you know, the fellas that helped you to avoid the Lyme ticks that would have been infesting the buffalo herds that used to lap your shores ?

      Amazing, the Koch-like foresight your 19th-century forebears had, hey ?

  6. Kunst

    The thing that tends to get forgotten is that we, the people, are the government. The economic forces out there that make money by polluting our environment don’t want us to tell them to be responsible. My product is cheaper if I dump my waste chemicals in the stream out back. The damage to your health isn’t my problem, and more importantly isn’t my cost. I cash out quick and you (the people, the country) can deal with the damage I have caused.

    One of the major purposes of government is to protect the population as a whole from the fast-buck artists who don’t care about the long-term damage their profits cause.

  7. American Slave

    “Controls on carbon dioxide? They going to prohibit beathing too?”

    I love that statement. So let me take a piss in you drinking water and then see what you have to say about that. bottom line is when your waste and pollution affects someone else than its wrong.

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