By Sandy Liddy Bourne, Heartland Institute

Bloomberg News reported this week that if Sen. Barack Obama is elected president next month, he intends to classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant and order the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate it under the Clean Air Act.

The Bloomberg report, based on an interview with Obama energy advisor Jason Grumet, is the clearest sign yet that Obama is planning a massive expansion of government through EPA that will make a finding of “endangerment” related to CO2 emissions. The Supreme Court last year ruled that CO2 is a pollutant, but President George W. Bush refused to regulate it because he believed setting climate policy for the nation should be the job of Congress, not a huge administrative bureaucracy.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, EPA currently issues permits to 15,000 businesses under the Clean Air Act. If carbon dioxide were declared a dangerous pollutant and regulated under the Clean Art Act, more than 1.2 million new permits would have to be issued. Among those needing permits to stay in business are: 1 million mid- to large-sized buildings, including 10 percent of all churches, 20 percent of all food service businesses, half of the buildings in the lodging industry, and 92,000 health care facilities. 200,000 manufacturing operations.
20,000 large farms. 

The mind boggles at the thought of the construction delays, economic uncertainty, paperwork burdens, and engineering expenses that would surface under this regulatory plan. Obama and EPA staff want to act without the consent of Congress. The mere act of designating CO2 as a dangerous pollutant may well trigger regulatory action under other provisions of the Clearn Air Act--actions that would dwarf the Kyoto Protocol in their scale, scope, and cost. Onerous restrictions on energy use would likely result from EPA action on CO2. We could end up with a program of de-industrialization without Congress ever voting on it.

At time when the financial markets are crashing and a downturn in the economy looms, this plan will end free enterprise as we know it. It is bad for American taxpayers and a blow to democracy. Read full alert here.