In the April 5 edition, there was an interesting response written to a story I wrote on the Environmental Protection Agency. Writer Alex Simmons challenged the authenticity of my remarks as well as the nature for which I made them.

In his response, Simmons mentions the debate on the EPA as something serious, needed and even handed. It is not. The discussion before congress was on the regulatory power of the EPA, but the discussion amongst pseudo-conservatives was to entirely strip the agency of funding.

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In the April 5 edition, there was an interesting response written to a story I wrote on the Environmental Protection Agency. Writer Alex Simmons challenged the authenticity of my remarks as well as the nature for which I made them.

In his response, Simmons mentions the debate on the EPA as something serious, needed and even handed. It is not. The discussion before congress was on the regulatory power of the EPA, but the discussion amongst pseudo-conservatives was to entirely strip the agency of funding.

Don’t rely on me, rely on the facts: this past Friday, House-Republicans passed a partisan bill called the Poe-Carter Amendment, which would cut funding from the EPA’s regulatory ability by about $3 billion. This cut goes beyond the mere regulation of greenhouse emissions. The bill severs the agency’s regulatory power, influence and purpose. Several other bills have also been introduced that would further cripple the EPA. And we’re supposed to believe there couldn’t possibly be a heavily funded ulterior motive?

NASA, the National Academy of Science, the Pentagon and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with countless well-sourced science organizations all over the world have warned for years about the dangers of CO2 emissions. Anthropogenic Global Warming is an unequivocal truth. Instead of having a serious debate on the precautions we must take, we instead have ridiculously uninformed, well-funded politicians who find it easier to deny science than to accept it. The natural world unfortunately does not have the funding of corporate lobbyists and so we are left with stone-age debates in congressional hearings.

The debate has been muddied to the point that it is no longer over the science, which is fully documented against Republican rhetoric, but instead about misleading the public into believing any regulation will destroy jobs. This is unfounded, and a message that is funded by corporations.

The EPA is charged with the duty of writing and enforcing laws that have been passed by congress. In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA was required to determine if CO2 emissions endanger the public health or welfare. The countless scientific evidence of the dangers of CO2 have been reported for years, and under the Clean Air Act of 1970, the agency is required to regulate emissions that pose a threat to the health or welfare of the citizens of the United States. Regulations are based on research conducted by the aforementioned scientific organizations.

If Republicans were so concerned about the law of the land it would be very easy to challenge any EPA federal regulations within the court of law. They don’t do this, because they they’ll lose. Instead of placing this debate in the hands of the experts, they instead resort to stripping the organization by the hands of non-experts. It is the most disgusting of political minutia and it’s obvious that this discussion is not over greenhouse emissions or the rule of law. It is instead over corporations’ ability to go unregulated.

Ignorance is the state of being uneducated and uninformed. In a civil society we cannot allow ignorance to rule congress or our political processes. As long as we do; money, not facts or science, will rule our government as it always has. 

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