We expected there to be a contest in Congress this year over global warming and Obama/Chu's "cap-and-trade" bill limiting carbon dioxide emissions. Of
course, government cannot impose sweeping new controls on our lives without extensive public debate and a vote in Congress that must gain the support
of a clear majority of the representatives of the people.
But it just did!
It was done by the decree of executive agency bureaucrats, without an opportunity for public debate or a legislative vote.
The EPA can simply create those controls on its own, without needing to consult the people's representatives.
Ayn Rand warned that environmentalists constituted an "Anti-Industrial Revolution," but the term "revolution" implied popular support.
Instead, this is an anti-industrial coup, a seizure of power by a small elite who seek to bypass the institutions and procedures of legitimate
government.
This happened through a usurpation of legislative power by the other two branches of government: the courts and the regulatory agencies of the
executive branch.
A 2007 Supreme Court ruling required the EPA to regard carbon dioxide as a potential "airborne pollutant" under the 1990 Clean Air Act (I doubt
Congress intended in 1990 to regulate carbon dioxide.)
The EPA (an executive agency) released its report last year setting the foundation to plan out and implement a scheme for regulating carbon dioxide
emissions, coordinating the actions of dozens of regulatory agencies.
It was called "Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act."
Congress long ago ceded a large part of its legislative power to the executive branch by passing laws like the Clean Air Act, which set vague goals
such as "fighting air pollution" and then gave executive-branch regulatory agencies the power to make "rules" for the implementation of those goals.
Having surrendered that power, Congress may never get it back. Last year, one of Barack Obama's advisors described the candidate's plans for pursuing
carbon dioxide regulation when he took office.
Obama, Browner and Chu are essentially telling Congress to write the legislation they want, or else they will simply enact it by decree.
What happened to representative government and the separation of powers?
Barack Obama is proposing to govern, not in the manner of an American president, but in the manner traditionally sought by leftist strongmen like Hugo
Chavez.
When global warming regulations are imposed — and given the legal framework of EPA's "finding," they are now inevitable — their ultimate cause
will be decades of dishonest cultural propaganda condemning industrial civilization as a scourge to be eliminated. But the immediate cause for this
massive new extension of government power is the structure of existing executive-branch power: the all-encompassing reach of the regulatory agencies,
and the vast power already surrendered to them by Congress.
This is the shape of the current danger to liberty: our economic freedom is being taken away by regulatory decree, with public debate and
congressional votes declared irrelevant ahead of time. It proves the adage that freedom is indivisible — that attempts to take away our economic
freedom always begin and end with an attack on our political freedom.
jewishworldreview.com
(visit the link for the full news article)






