The Environmental Protection Agency continues to pursue job-killing measures, reports the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The latest EPA endeavor involves revoking the Clean Water Act permit from the coal mine in Logan County, West Virginia — a measure expected to decrease investment in energy projects and destroy jobs.
Competitive Enterprise Institute energy policy expert William Yeatman explains,
The EPA’s rationale for revoking the Clean Water Act permit for the Spruce Fork Mine is to protect an insect that lives for a day, and which isn’t even an endangered species.
In this difficult economy, it is outrageous that the EPA would trade jobs for bugs, just so it can appease the President’s environmental base.
In December 2008, EnvironmentalLeader.com reported that approximately 10 percent of President Obama’s stimulus plan included “green initiatives,” much to the delight of Obama’s environmental base:
The stimulus plan would spend about a half-trillion dollars over two years on tax-rebate and an array of green projects, such as building renewable energy plants and installing smart meters that allow consumers to reap benefits from using electricity at off-peak hours.
Unfortunately, most green initiatives have proven to fail, both environmentally and socially, such as the ethanol tax subsidies.
Likewise, Spain’s experiences with the creation of “green jobs” shows that for every “green job” created, two jobs are lost.
Yet that has not stopped Obama or the Environmental Protect Agency from pursuing jobs-killing green efforts.
CEI’s energy policy expert William Yeatman continues,
Worse still, the EPA’s ill-conceived bug protections threaten virtually all economic development. In order to crack down on the Spruce Fork Mine, the EPA had to manufacture a new “pollutant”-salinity. The problem is that any surface disturbance can increase salinity in nearby streams. As a result, environmental pressure groups and NIMBY [Not In My Back Yard] activists have a powerful new weapon with which they can stifle job creation.
It’s not as if environmental groups needed a new weapon to stifle job creation. In December, the National Center for Policy Analysis reported that the EPA “is moving blindly ahead with new regulations that will increase dramatically the energy costs of U.S. industries, reducing their competitiveness and profitability and making it less likely they will hire.”
A study conducted by the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI indicates that the new regulations will destroy an estimated 7.3 million jobs nationwide while simultaneously adding $1 trillion annually in new regulatory costs beginning in the year 2020.
According to Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment,
EPA’s revocation of an already-granted permit for an operating mine is only the latest outrageous step in the Obama administration’s campaign to scare away investment and destroy jobs in America’s energy industries. Who is going to invest in a new energy product if a permit can be yanked after the project is fully permitted and the investments have been made?
