In a letter to the White House Office of Management and Budget, top House Republicans demanded the long-delayed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation for greenhouse gas pollution for very large emitters be killed. House energy committee chair Fred Upton (R-MI), former chair Joe Barton (R-TX), and energy and power subcommittee chair Ed Whitfield (R-KY) asked OMB acting director Jeffrey Zients to stay EPA’s regulation of new and modified power plants that produce more than 100,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide pollution:

We understand that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is currently reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposal to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new and modified power plants through the New Source Performance Standards program. We write to request that you withhold the regulation from issuance. We are concerned about the regulation’s impact on jobs and the economy, and that it will not comply with all applicable Executive Orders, including the President’s Executive Order 13563 and its predecessor, Executive Order 12866.

“Our regulatory system must protect public health, welfare, safety, and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation,” begins Obama’s Executive Order 13563. “It must be based on the best available science.”

The EPA rule is the long-delayed result of a suit brought against the George W. Bush administration by several states in 2003, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 that the EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The Bush White House then blocked the efforts by the EPA to comply with the law, and the Obama administration has slowly rolled out a watered-down rule that won’t reach full implementation until 2016. Scientists have warned that the United States needs to rapidly reduce its carbon pollution no later than 2015 for human civilization to have a reasonable shot at maintaining a safe climate, based on the best available science.

However, in the fantasy world of Upton, Barton, and Whitfield, global warming doesn’t exist — so even the EPA’s soft limits on carbon pollution are a “back door cap-and-trade regime” that will “burden struggling businesses and families,” instead of one of the most important accomplishments of Obama administration to protect public health, welfare, safety, and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation.

Electric utilities are the top contributors this cycle to Upton, Barton, and Whitfield. During this campaign cycle alone, the letter’s authors have received a combined $431,550 from electric power companies.

Download the anti-climate letter from Upton, Barton, and Whitfield to the OMB.

Leading manufacturer:  “The reality is, consumers will see no difference at all. The only difference they’ll see is lower energy bills because we’re creating more efficient incandescent bulbs.”

In a move that could be called anything but conservative, Republican lawmakers are set to bring a bill to the House floor next week that will repeal state and municipal rights to set efficiency standards for light bulbs.  The bill would unravel a piece of federal legislation that was strongly supported by light bulb manufacturers and has spurred innovation in the lighting industry.

The bill, sponsored by Texas Republican Joe Barton, would strip away any “federal, state or local requirement or standard regarding energy efficient lighting” that uses light bulbs containing mercury. In other words, all compact fluorescent bulbs.

Remember, in May, Barton, denied there was any “medical negative” from mercury emitted from coal power plants.  Now he fancies himself a protector of the public from a vastly smaller source of potential mercury poisoning. The reality: There is an extremely small amount of mercury in CFL bulbs. Even after more than 8 hours of exposure to a broken bulb, mercury levels are equal to eating a 6 oz can of tuna.

But that’s not what this is really about.

Barton’s bill targets the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which increases the efficiency of incandescent light bulbs by 27% through 2014. It was a completely non-controversial bill that had bi-partisan support, was strongly supported by light bulb manufacturers (and still is) and was signed into law by George W. Bush.

“When this bill was passed, it was passed by people who knew how to make light bulbs,” says Randall Moorhead, vice president of government affairs at Philips, a leading light bulb producer. “Everyone supported it. And since then, it’s created more choice for consumers – we have two incandescent bulbs on the market that weren’t there before.”

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No, the Barton apology hasn’t happened (yet), but otherwise the Yellowstone River oil spill is déjà vu all over again:

1. Warnings of danger ignored :  “Exxon had briefly shut the pipeline in May after local officials expressed concern about the pipeline’s safety, but determined that the level at which it was buried in the river bed—five to eight feet deep—was safe enough, and promptly resumed operations.”
2. Large spill in pristine area :  “An ExxonMobil pipeline that runs under the Yellowstone River near Laurel, Mont. ruptured near midnight Friday and leaked hundreds of barrels of oil into the river, contaminating riverbanks and flooding fields for miles.”
3. Big Oil misleads public about speed of response :  “Exxon initially gave conflicting information about how long it took to shut off the valves on the leaking pipeline, saying to the public that it took about 30 minutes when in fact it took 49.”
4. Public uninformed about health consequences :  Rancher “Nilson said she and some of her family members breathed pungent vapors in the days after the spill, and now they’re concerned about the pollution’s impact on their groundwater. Nilson said she has been kept in the dark about the health effects of the oil and whether officials are monitoring health effects.”

And let’s not forget the tragically ironic link of this spill to extreme weather, as Naomi Klein reminds us in this must-read LA Times op-ed:

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A year ago today, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who has received $1.5 million in career campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, faced public outrage when he apologized to BP – who only two months earlier had been responsible for the worst environmental disaster in US history.  The Deepwater Horizon tragedy was still spewing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and devastated local economies, yet Barton found it necessary to extend a personal apology to the oil giant:

I am ashamed of what happened at the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation would be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown – in this case a $20 billion dollar shakedown…So I’m only speaking for myself, I’m not speaking for anybody else. But I apologize.

Watch it again:

While Republicans distanced themselves from the comments at the time, GOP treatment of the oil industry since the disaster in the Gulf has been reminiscent of an amnesiac. A year after the spill, the New Orleans’ Times Picayune reported that Congress has failed to act:

A year after the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, Congress has done virtually nothing to address the issues raised by the oil spill — from industry liability limits, to regulatory reform, to coastal restoration, to broader issues of energy policy.

Instead of addressing safety concerns that came out of the disaster in the Gulf, the Republicans ramped up their “oil above all” plans to do whatever would benefit the oil companies. Just this year, the House GOP has taken 13 votes that would directly benefit Big Oil, three of which maintained billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies and royalty relief for oil companies. Barton even defended these subsidies, arguing that “if you put so many disincentives against any U.S. manufacturing or production company, or oil and gas exploration company, they’ll go out of business.”

And just yesterday, House Republicans voted to slash funding for the agency tasked with patrolling oil markets to prevent market manipulation and corruption.

Even further, Republicans pushed bills that would short circuit the review  process essential to prevent future blow outs  and force sweeping new drilling in sensitive areas, which would “undercut” the administration’s ability to respond to or prevent future disasters and have no effect on gas prices.  All this flies in the face of recommendations of the President’s National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, which stated unequivocally in its report that laws for spill prevention and response need to be improved before drilling is expanded.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) said that the House’s package of bills “reflects a pre-spill mentality of speed over safety…We need to review the lessons from the BP spill, not lessen safety review.” And BOEMRE director Michael Bromwich, who oversees off shore drilling permitting and safety,  lashed out against H.R. 1229, the House-passed bill that “requires that the Interior Department act on offshore drilling permit requests within 30 days. The bill allows two 15-day extensions, but it specifies that permit would be deemed approved if the Interior Department does not act within 60 days.” Bromwich called the bill a “suicide pact:”

Well, that’s sort of a suicide pact, where we’re going to go in, we’re going to be forced to do lease sales with inadequate environmental analysis and we’ll be enjoined from those lease sales. Who wins then? Nobody.

But those votes don’t come cheap. BP celebrated the year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster by doling out campaign contributions to Republicans and Republican leadership (and one Democrat.) So far this year, oil and gas companies have contributed a whopping $2 million in campaign donations to Republicans, compared to $250,000 to Democrats.

One  year ago Friday, Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) said it is “a tragedy of the first proportion” that BP agreed to Obama’s request to set up a $20 billion fund to compensate Americans for the devastation they wrought on the Gulf of Mexico by their recklessness — and then he apologized to BP CEO Hayward!

Desperate Republican leaders quickly forced Barton to retract the apology (see “Who’s sorry now?“).  But a few days later, the following tweet appeared from Barton:

It was quickly removed and then Barton’s press secretary fell on his sword to protect his boss.

You can watch the original jaw-dropping remarks by Barton (GOBP-TX) in this video from the House hearing, which makes perfectly clear that Barton meant every last word he said:

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Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) — who famously apologized to BP after the disastrous spill in the Gulf — now thinks that the term “Big Oil” is mean to the oil industry. Yesterday, executives from the Big Five oil companies testified before the Senate Finance Committee to defend their taxpayer funded subsidies in an often contentious hearing. In defense of the Big Oil executives, Barton told a C-SPAN interviewer that the media shouldn’t use the phrase “Big Oil” because it’s “upsetting”:

First of all, I don’t think it should be a pejorative. We’ve got this mentality on the liberal side of our political debate: Big Oil, Big Insurance, big this, big that. We compete in a global economy, and the biggest company, Exxon Mobil, is only the fifth largest oil company overall, because the other four are run by governments. It should be something of a badge of honor that we still have companies that can compete internationally. It’s a little upsetting that we try at the beginning to make it a pejorative.

Watch it:

Contrary to Barton’s statement, “big” is an undeniably understated way to describe the industry – from its profits, to its campaign contributions and even its mistakes.  For eight years in a row, Exxon Mobil was listed by Fortune 500 as the most profitable company in America. Combined, the Big Five Oil companies raked in over $32 billion in profits in just the first three months in 2011. The Big Five oil companies make more than one trillion dollars in revenues every year. And over the past decade, those same Big Five oil companies made a combined $900 billion. Since 1990, the oil and gas industry has spent more $270 million in congressional campaign contributions, and in 2010 alone, spent $145 million on lobbying.

Perhaps the only thing that’s not big about Big Oil is its tax rate. A Center for American Progress analysis revealed that from 2008–2010, ExxonMobil’s effective federal tax rate came in at 17.6 percent, less than the average American’s federal rate in 2007. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that an ExxonMobil spokesman“conceded that the company had a net federal income tax credit of $156 million in 2009.” Yet the American taxpayers subsidize these companies with $4 billion in tax breaks every year. Read more

At a congressional hearing on Friday designed to lay the groundwork for an effort to delay critical EPA toxic pollution standards, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) claimed that reducing emissions of toxic mercury, sulfur dioxide and soot would not bring health benefits. Though conceding he is “not a medical doctor,” Barton offered the “hypothesis” that EPA estimates of the benefits of its proposed air toxics rule are “pulled out of the thin air” because there is no “medical negative” to the pollution:

To actually cause poisoning or a premature death you have to get a large concentration of mercury into the body. I’m not a medical doctor, but my hypothesis is that’s not going to happen! You’re not going to get enough mercury exposure or SO2 exposure or even particulate matter exposure! I think the EPA numbers are pulled out of the thin air!

Watch it:

The new power plant toxics rule will put over 30,000 people to work upgrading plants to dramatically reduce toxic mercury and other chemicals that cause neurological damage to fetuses and babies. Those upgrades will also cut enough particulate pollution to prevent as many as 17,000 premature deaths, 11,000 heart attacks, 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms, 11,000 cases of acute bronchitis among children, 12,000 emergency room visits and hospital admissions and 850,000 days of work missed due to illness.

Barton blasted the testimony of NRDC Clean Air Director John Walke, asserting “you’re not having the medical negative” from mercury, sulfur dioxide, or particular matter pollution.

He even argued enforcement of the air toxics rule would hurt Rep. John Dingell’s (D-MI) city of Detroit, where nearly one in three children have asthma, and where one power plant alone emits 1,235 pounds of mercury every year.

Barton denied decades of science and the experience of anyone who has ever lived downwind of a polluting facility, noting the factory and plant owners on the panel didn’t know of any workers inside their plants that have gotten sick from the pollution.

“I guess he forgot that the people most in risk of getting poisoned — babies — don’t work in factories,” Clean Air Watch’s Frank O’Donnell responded. “This is pretty appalling stuff, since Barton and colleagues will probably soon be voting on legislation to delay toxic pollution cleanup.”

Transcript: Read more