After Gutenberg

jcwinnie

And, as Brad Johnson reports for Think Progress, according to Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)Green House Gases are not pollutants.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) defended the “Dirty Air Act,” her attempt to overturn the EPA’s greenhouse gas endangerment finding. Murkowski introduced her resolution to overturn the Supreme Court-mandated decision yesterday, with three Democratic and thirty-five Republican co-sponsors. Climate activists have dubbed Senate Joint Resolution 26 the “Dirty Air Act” for its unprecedented attempt to roll back the Clean Air Act. “A vote for the Murkowski resolution, the Center for Biological Diversity’s Kierán Suckling said, “is a vote to gut the Clean Air Act and do nothing about global warming.” Murkowski called this label “wildly inaccurate”:

I’d also like to address a rather creative claim that has been made that somehow I’m trying to gut the Clean Air Act or subvert it into a “Dirty Air Act.” I have to admit that when I first saw this it actually made me laugh because it is so wildly inaccurate. Neither my previous amendment nor this resolution would have any affect on pollution standards and controls. Neither would change a single word of the current statute. My resolution would simply prevent the massive, unwarranted expansion of this statute by halting EPA’s efforts to use it to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, a purpose for which it was never intended and a role that it simply cannot fulfill without serious and detrimental consequences.

Watch it:

Murkowski’s claim that her resolution would not “have any affect on pollution standards and controls” is false.

Murkowski’s previous amendment to block regulation of stationary-source pollution, which she first proposed last September, was written by polluter lobbyists who used to be top officials in the Bush Environmental Protection Agency, where they blocked the scientific finding that global warming pollution threatens the health and welfare of the American people. Her new resolution is even more radical, attempting to overturn the entire endangerment finding that greenhouse gases threaten the public health and welfare. As Sen. Murkowski herself admitted: “In April 2007, the Supreme Court declared, in the case of Massachusetts v. EPA, that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act.”

Murkowski’s official policy is that “climate change is a real threat that must be addressed”:

Our climate is changing, and the impacts are real. Villages in my home state of Alaska are literally falling into the sea because of climate-related erosion. To me, climate change is not just an abstract threat, looming on the horizon – it’s something that’s already here. The question is not whether we should reduce emissions, but how we should reduce them. [9/23/09]

The confluence of high oil prices this past summer and a desire to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions has certainly and justifiably promoted the interest in and development of renewable and alternative forms of energy – from more mature technologies like wind and solar to greater awareness of the potential for geothermal, biomass, and ocean and tidal energy – along with greater energy efficiency and conservation measures. [6/2/09]

The very existence of the Alaska Native way of life is threatened by the impacts of recent climate changes. [2009]

Murkowski — who has admitted that greenhouse gas emissions are “harmful” and a “real threat” — is now trying to do the dirty work for her pollution industry contributors, now that George W. Bush’s polluter lackeys are no longer in control of the White House.