Governor Perry sent a letter to Congressional leadership and the Texas delegation asking them to strip the EPA of the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, which they were told to do by the Supreme Court in 2007’s Massachusetts v. EPA.
Governor Perry needs to check his facts a little more carefully.
He stated in the letter “Texas is aggressively seeking its future in in alternative energy through incentives and innovation, not mandates and overreaching regulation.” Gov Perry is correct, in one sense– we have cut our CO2 emissions as a state, but the primary driver of those cuts was the expansion of wind energy that created thousands of new jobs. And how did we accomplish that? Through a Renewable Portfolio Standard, or, a fancy term meaning a government mandate.
What Perry should be doing is begging the Federal government to impose a nationwide RPS, which would mean renewable resource poor states would come to Texas to buy our renewable energy the same way they’ve counted on us for our oil and gas in the past.
Further, Perry tries to induce fear by saying EPA regulation would affect “every small business, farm, rancher and family” when the EPA earlier this week said they would only begin regulating tailpipe emissions this year, moving on to power plants which emit more than 100,000 tons of CO2 within the next 2-3 years, then on to other facilities which emit more than 75,000 tons (large facilities like cement kilns or refineries). This would never affect any small business or church or school…. unless, of course, you go to Carbon Burnin’ High, home of the Flaming Smokestacks!
Governor Perry needs to focus more on bringing these clean energy jobs to Texas and a little less to railing against “the Man” in DC.
