This weekly newsletter, focused on environmental issues, highlights relevant analysis done by the John Locke Foundation and other think tanks, as well as items in the news.
1. EPA about to drown the economy in red tape and compliance costs for little or no benefit
A new study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation examines the deluge of new regulations about to be promulgated by the Environmental Protection. These regulations will impose massive new costs on industry and state and local governments, with the upshot being that the miniscule health benefits will not come anywhere near offsetting the costs. But of course, nothing the EPA does is subject to a cost/benefit test. In fact, it is part of the EPA’s regulation-making process to ignore costs at all costs. And these regulations are about to rain down upon the economy all at once.
As the TPPF study notes:
Never in its 40-year history has EPA simultaneously promulgated so many major environmental rules characterized by converging effective dates, massive compliance costs, and mandates exceeding existing technological controls. Nor has EPA before relied on such speculative, manipulated science to justify this most aggressive regulatory agenda to date.
And as the report concludes:
EPA, under the Obama administration, is churning out new rules unprecedented in speed, number, scope, stringency and costs. Yet the new rules have marginal, if indeed measurable at all, health benefits. Nor are they supported by credible science. The National Academy of Science and the EPA’s own scientific advisory panels have sharply criticized regulations they see as framed on the basis of weak, manipulated scientific evidence.
2. Sea levels decline at a rate of 5mm per year
I’m not sure how this escaped me when the data came out in September but since the myth of sea level rise continues and the information was not widely reported, the news is still news. The latest satellite data is showing a two-year-long decline in sea levels at a rate of 5 mm per year. Real Science.com shows the decline graphically. This is one promise Obama has kept.
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