Deregulate the Regulators!

Before we delve into this smoldering heap of nonsense from today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn, The Boston Globe, let's take a moment to acknowledge how soul-suckingly terrible the people in New England have it. It's cold until May, the urban planning in Boston makes a Rio De Janeiro slum look like the Eastern Bloc, and high school kids can't stop saying "wicked hardcore" (pron. hahd-cowa) in a way that would even piss off Will Hunting.

Still, the harshness of the brutal New England landscape does not exempt them from my scorn. Get your proverbial house in order, Boston Globe, because this was just feeble.

PRESERVE EPA'S RIGHT TO REGULATE by Boston Globe Editorial Board 

IF US SENATOR Scott Brown is at all concerned about global warming, 

For what it’s worth, I’m more concerned about the epidemic of minotaur-on-minotaur violence than global warming. 

he should firmly oppose an effort by fellow Republican 

This is like [Yankee third baseman] A-Rod earnestly taking the advice of [Red Sox Manager] Terry Francona to bat lefty. (If you don’t understand from the context alone that the Yankees and Red Sox are rivals, it’s time to start watching more ESPN.)

Lisa Murkowski to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to regulate greenhouse gases. 

I’m just going to look at this in the most simplistic way. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases can be regulated. Humans exhale carbon dioxide as part of the respiratory process. The Globe concludes: the EPA should, by extension, have the authority to regulate your breathing. The EPA is noted for being more efficient than lungs.

The agency has that power under the federal Clean Air Act, according to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling. 

…which overturned two lower court rulings with a skimpy 5-4 decision. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just saying that a single man tipped the scales of the entire judicial system. Thank you very much, Justice Kennedy.

The case they’re referring to is Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy, by the way.

And while EPA mandates aren’t the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 

Dismantling the entire industrial infrastructure of Western Civilization is! Huzzah!

the threat that the agency will require emission permits for every major smokestack in America has fueled support in Congress for a gentler cap-and-trade system, 

The gentler and kinder EPA would just say: “Well sure, we’re amputating a couple limbs. Be glad we’re not euthanizing you.”

which would use market mechanisms to achieve the same goal. 

As always, giving the congress an excuse to root around in the free market is like giving a toddler a big bucket full of Legos. It’s far more likely to try to eat them than to create anything worthwhile. Toddlers neither ingest nor digest plastic well.

But Murkowski, who hails from oil-rich Alaska, 

Implied mathematical proof:

Oil=evil

Alaska=oil

Murkowski=Alaska

Murkowski=evil 

QED.

Sadly, evil does not follow the Transitive Property, which really ruins my idea for a party game: “Six Degrees of Evil Kevin Bacon.”

wants to take the pressure off by weakening the EPA. 

Lisa Murkowski wants to club the EPA like a baby seal and sell tiny little EPA pelts on the black market so she can finance her efforts to harvest the tears of children.

Since some Democratic senators from oil and coal states may support Murkowski’s effort, the focus will be on Republicans like Brown, who has yet to declare a position. 

When everybody was declaring positions in the Senate, Dick Durbin said “reverse cowgirl” and everyone got too grossed out to continue.

Brown promised voters a common-sense approach to problem solving, 

More importantly, he promised to fight tooth and nail against the Obama agenda.

and it is clearly a problem when the United States, with 5 percent of the world’s population, continues to emit more than 20 percent of all greenhouse gases. 

I don’t see any problem with that at all. Actually, I think the incongruence of our consumption with that of the rest of the world is a good thing.

And even if Brown has qualms about the cap-and-trade legislation that passed the House last year 

How could he not?

or the broader energy bill now pending in the Senate, 

Which is more intellectually grating than Saw III. I’d make a more modern Saw reference, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch any sequels after Saw III was so impossibly bad. (Oddly, I never saw Saw 1 or 2, so I have no frame of reference for the deterioration of the franchise.)

there are good reasons for him to oppose Murkowski’s measure. 

Name one...one that doesn't involve her literally or metaphorically clubbing baby seals.

During his campaign, Brown acknowledged the need to avoid forcing future generations to clean up after today’s environmental messes. 

I’m way more concerned with our financial messes. Even if expanding the regulation of energy producers were the greatest idea on the planet, does anyone left of John McCain have the guts to say “we can’t afford it?”

Without the threat of EPA intervention, Congress loses any incentive to come up with a better option. 

There’s a kernel of a revolutionary idea here. If the “threat of EPA [Executive Branch] intervention” forces responsible governance by the Congress, (Legislative Branch) then the competition between two separate entities incentivizes responsible behavior. Just for shits and giggles, let’s replace the EPA with, oh, say the “green energy” sector, and let’s replace the Congress with, for the sake of argument, Big Oil. That’s what I call an energy policy!