'Weed whack' EPA regulations? Not so fast

'Weed whacker'?! What a terrible analogy! Everybody knows no-string lawn trimmers are superior. Romney obviously doesn't know his way around a man's yard.

Ironically, many of the U.S. environmental regulations that the GOP says are "strangling business" stretch back to Richard Nixon and George Bush, Sr.  

Anyway, if elected, could Romney fulfill his promise to take a "weed whacker" to President Obama's newer regulations on coal and other industries?  Not so fast:

But even if he's elected, Romney couldn't just snap his fingers and get rid of those regulations. His EPA appointees would have to propose rule changes, give the public time to comment on them, and present detailed scientific and legal justifications to prove that undoing or weakening the rules make sense.

"I think that will certainly be done. But it's not something that can be done overnight," says Jeff Holmstead, an industry lawyer who headed EPA's air pollution programs under the second President Bush.

Even if Romney were to undo the regulations, there would be another hurdle: Environmental groups surely would sue. Lawsuits from environmental groups effectively blocked the second President Bush's EPA from weakening some clean air rules.

"If you take a hard right turn on an environmental rule — or for that matter, a hard left turn — you've got strict constructionist judges who are going to say no, and they're on the federal courts today," says Kevin Book, director of ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington-based energy consulting firm.

Book says the federal judges who oversee EPA rules most likely would prevent big changes, regardless of who wins the election.

So if Romney can't keep his campaign promise then what could he do?  The classic GOP approach to regulatory (non-)enforcement:

"A President Romney could starve the agencies of money needed to enforce existing public health safeguards — in effect, take the environmental cop off the beat," says Dan Weiss, a volunteer adviser to the Obama campaign and a fellow at the action fund for the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

Voila, problem solved, right?  Well, it means firms would still be breaking the law, they just wouldn't get caught.  But that's all that matters to Big Business and Republicans, I suppose.

On The Campaign Trail, Regulations Dominate The Environmental Debate

By Elizabeth Shogren

October 14, 2012 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/Qi2JQ7

Try EPA's new greenhouse gas data tool!

This tool from the good folks at the EPA is kind of neat. It allows you to see what enterprises are emitting the most greenhouse gases in your area, whether it's carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) or others.

So it lets me see, for example, that the biggest polluter near me in my home state is a coal-fired Duke Energy power plant spitting out 4,117,452 metric tons (MT) of carbon dioxide, 10,219 MT of methane and 21,942 MT of nitrous oxide a year.

Using their handy-dandy equivalencies calculator, I can see that amount of greenhouse gas equals the amount emitted by 1.98 million passenger vehicles a year, or the CO2 emitted by consuming 23.5 million barrels of oil.

EPA ghgdata

URL: http://www.ccdsupport.com/confluence/display/ghgp/Home