Snort. Guffaw. Chortle. Listen carefully to Mr. Obama’s speech and you realize he spent plenty of it on carbon controls. He just used a different vocabulary. If the president can’t get carbon restrictions via cap and trade, he’ll get them instead with his new proposal for a “clean energy” standard. Clean energy, after all, sounds better to the public ear, and he might just be able to lure, or snooker, some Republicans into going along.

“….cap and trade by another name. Consider: The goal of cap and trade is to impose crushing taxes on fossil fuels—oil, coal, natural gas—thereby forcing utilities to switch to costly renewables. Under Mr. Obama’s new proposal, the government skips the tax part and outright requires the use of costly renewables. The result is the same: dramatically higher energy prices, from carbon-free sources.

(Obama will) lure Republicans into negotiations, then cement their support with lavish energy pork for their home-state nuclear, clean-coal, wind, biofuels and solar projects. As a bonus, the plan gives cover to nervous coal state Democrats….The GOP has spent some long, sometimes uncomfortable, years explaining the perils of cap and trade. Yet they risk getting the same policy, all because they’ve yet to find the moxy to resist the “clean energy” drumbeat.

Awful as the catastrophe has been, however, life without oil would be far, far worse. Americans consume oil not because they are “addicted’’ to it, but because it enriches their lives, making possible prosperity, comfort, and mobility that would have been all but unimaginable just a few generations ago. Almost by definition, an addiction is something one is healthier without. But oil-based energy improves human health and reduces poverty — it makes life longer, safer, and better. Addictions debase life. Oil improves and expands it.

Someday there may be an energy source that is as abundant, efficient, clean, and economically viable as oil. But nothing today fits that bill — certainly not biofuels, wind farms, or solar power. Besides, it isn’t only energy products that we get from petroleum. Crude oil refining also makes possible plastics, synthetic fibers, lubricants, waxes, asphalt. “Other products made from petroleum,’’ notes the US Energy Information Administration, “include ink, crayons, bubble gum, dishwashing liquids, deodorant, eyeglasses, CDs and DVDs, tires, ammonia, [and] heart valves.’’ The United States consumes more than 300 billion gallons of oil per year, nearly two-thirds of it imported. There is no denying the drawbacks associated with oil, but its advantages are equally undeniable. American wealth, progress, and autonomy — the most dynamic and productive economy in history — would be impossible without it. What we have isn’t an addiction, but a blessing.

The Clean Air Act directs EPA to identify and regulate pollutants that damage air quality. Lead is an air quality contaminant, so it fits perfectly within the statutory framework. However, search the Clean Air Act from top to bottom, and you will not find any Title, section, or subsection on global climate change, nor will you find the terms “greenhouse gas” and “greenhouse effect.” Just because EPA has authority to regulate lead as an air quality contaminant, it does not follow that EPA has authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

[...] a thing may be an “air pollutant” even if it does not degrade air quality. As Justice Scalia quipped in dissent, given the majority’s reading, “It follows that everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies as an ‘air pollutant.’” Indeed, if anything emitted into or entering the ambient air is an “air pollutant,” then even absolutely clean, pollution-free air is an “air pollutant” the moment it moves or circulates.

Members of Congress, however, have a duty to exercise their own judgment to determine what the law means. They cannot automatically defer to the Court’s interpretation without Congress ceasing to be an independent and co-equal branch. A doctrine of judicial infallibility is as alien to our Constitution as is a doctrine of bureaucratic supremacy.

The importance of the vote on S.J.Res.26 is difficult to exaggerate. Nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional system of separated powers and democratic accountability hangs in the balance.

1. Productive economies run on energy. We are a major producer and user of coal; cap-and-trade would be doubly hard on Virginia and must be defeated.
2. High taxes dampen economic activity. Virginia must become a low tax state.
3. We must fight the soon-to-be federally proposed VAT tax, where each step of the productive process is taxed. I can’t think of a better way than VAT to force productive jobs to go elsewhere.

Sen. Murkowski negotiated an agreement with Sen. Reid last night to extend the privilege status of her disapproval resolution until June 10. The vote on whether the EPA should regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act is now expected to occur that Thursday. The disapproval resolution needs 51 votes to pass the Senate. There are 41 cosponsors to the resolution, including Sen. Murkowski.

As of now, there are numerous legal challenges to the endangerment finding and CO2 regulations that have reasonable prospects of prevailing. Senators Casey and Carper’s effort could be seen as a self-interested effort to politically insulate themselves from economically destructive CO2 regulations, and Majority Leader Harry Reid has signaled that he intends to take up their effort. If successful, they may effectively kill legal challenges to the endangerment finding, handing radical greens inside and outside the administration something that otherwise would have likely eluded them, Majority Leader Reid, and even Speaker Pelosi — their biggest global “warming” regulatory win ever, to the detriment of the entire American economy, including small businesses.

California, that former land of opportunity, was one of the first states to pass its own version of “cap and trade” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In 2007 when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the law, called AB-32, he said it would propel California into an economy-expanding, green job future. Well, a new study by the state’s own auditing agency—its version of the Congressional Budget Office—has burst that green bubble. The study released May 13 concludes that “California’s economy at large will likely be adversely affected in the near term by implementing climate-related policies that are not adopted elsewhere.” While the long-term economic costs are “unknown,” the study finds that AB-32 will raise energy prices, “causing the prices of goods and services to rise; lowering business profits; and reducing production, income and jobs.”

So if we do the math and divide the $846 billion by the estimated one hundred-nine million households in America the ultimate burden of this bill is an average of $7761.00 per household per year.  The CBO estimated the lost jobs as a result of this bill will be in the millions nation wide; and you thought 9.9% unemployment was bad.