Bi-Partisan Congressional Measures to Stop EPA Power Grab on Greenhouse Gas Regulation Could Prevent Energy Prices Increases, Job Losses, and Constitutional Crisis

(March 28, 2011, Washington, DC)—The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation is keeping an eye on Sen. Mitch McConnell’s amendment to a small-business technology bill expected to come to a vote this week. The amendment would prohibit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHG) to prevent alleged dangerous manmade global warming. The amendment is identical to bills pending in the House and Senate with bipartisan sponsorship by a combined 116 members of Congress.

According to Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, National Spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance, “The bi-partisan support for these measures reveals the sense of Congress that EPA’s regulating carbon dioxide threatens the Constitutional separation of powers.”

Following the failure of cap-and-trade legislation in the last Congress after the scientific case for dangerous manmade global warming collapsed, the Administration turned to the EPA to do what Congress refused to do. It thus put unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of enforcing the most intrusive regulations ever imposed on the American economy.

“The potential damage from EPA regulation of carbon dioxide emissions is enormous,” Beisner said. “Energy prices would skyrocket, driving up costs for food, shelter, transportation, and everything else consumers need. Businesses would face dramatic permitting costs, and employment would plummet. Those are bad enough in themselves, but the most frightful effect would be that the power of an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy would multiply exponentially.”

America’s poor especially need protection from EPA GHG regulation, Beisner explained. “Since the poor, who spend a higher percentage of their income on energy than others, will be hurt more by rising energy costs, the large price increases that would follow amount to a regressive tax—hurting most of all the people who can least afford it.”

The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation (www.CornwallAlliance.org) is a national network of clergy, theologians, ministry leaders, scientists, economists, and policy experts dedicated to pursuing economic development for the poor and balanced, Biblical stewardship of the environment. It is the leading voice for the evangelical perspective on environmental stewardship and economic development. Over 500 people—including hundreds of pastors, theologians, college presidents, scientists, economists, and policy experts—have signed Cornwall’s Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, and thousands are studying Cornwall’s new video series Resisting the Green Dragon and its accompanying book Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death.

 

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