WASHINGTON
– U.S.
Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee, and James Lankford (R-OK) introduced the Transparency and Honesty
in Energy Regulations Act, a bill to prohibit the federal government from
using the flawed social cost of carbon, social cost of methane, social cost of
nitrous oxide, or the social cost of any other greenhouse gas metrics in the
rulemaking process.
“The
social cost of carbon is an arbitrary and inconsistent metric. It is being used
to justify the Biden Administration’s radical climate agenda and has already
been changed multiple times, causing major changes in the already cumbersome
permitting process. The metrics have become a silver bullet for fringe
environmentalist groups and their friends in the administration seeking to stop
energy development projects and implement overbearing regulations. The
Transparency and Honesty in Energy Regulation Act bars the federal government
from using these analyses so projects are not held hostage by activist
bureaucrats in Washington. The legislation also requires a report to Congress
on the use of social cost of carbon and its related entities in order to
provide additional insight into the rules and regulations promulgated by the
Biden administration using these secret, capricious measurements,” said
Senator Cramer.
“Oklahomans
want clean air, land, and water. But the ‘social cost of carbon’ was created
without transparency for the public or the industries it impacts. It has no
basis in reality,” said Senator Lankford. “The social cost of carbon has
a big impact on every Oklahoma family and their pocketbook since it is used to
justify many parts of Democrats’ illegitimate, progressive climate-change
scheme that increases the cost of gasoline, electricity, and other goods. The
Supreme Court recently determined in West Virginia v. EPA that the EPA may not
cap greenhouse gas emissions because Congress did not provide the agency with
that authority. In the same way, the social cost of carbon metric is clearly
outside the scope of EPA’s regulatory authority, and our bill ensures they stop
using it.”
These
social cost of greenhouse gas metrics are theoretical measurements to try to
put a price or economic impact on emissions. The measurement theories have been
used in the federal government to determine the economic impact of potential
federal regulations, even though they are unscientific and can result in more
burdensome regulations. The Transparency and Honesty in Energy Regulations
Act would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of
Energy, the Interior Department, the Council on Environmental Quality, the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Department of the Treasury, the US
Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of
Health and Human Services from using the social cost of carbon, social cost of
methane, and social cost of nitrous oxide as rationales for their regulations.
Senators
Cramer and Lankford were joined in introducing the bill by Senators Shelley
Moore Capito (R-WV), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Hoeven (R-ND),
Steve Daines (R-MT), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), John Barrasso (R-WY), John Cornyn
(R-TX), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-KS), and Jim Risch (R-ID).
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Originally Appeared Here