Mark McIntosh

There has been a flurry of activity in the past few weeks over EPA’s threat to regulate green house gas emissions through the Clean Air Act. Two weeks ago, a group of eight Democratic senators lead by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson pleading that they slow the pace on any regulatory program that would cap carbon emissions. In response, Jackson expressed little sympathy for both the senators’ concerns and the potential economic harm to their constituents by outlining an enforcement effort that she claims will begin in 2011. (more)

In the president’s State of the Union speech and subsequent 2011 proposed budget, he threw his environmental community supporters a significant curve ball by proposing a significant increase in financial incentives to build more nuclear power plants. The mere mention of nuclear power during the speech was a thinly veiled attempt to bring Republicans on board to support his presently unpopular cap-and-trade proposal languishing in the Senate. The question is whether Republicans can and should trust that the president is sincere on this issue. (more)