Judge Orders EPA to Consider Job Loss

In EPA rebuke, judge orders quick evaluation on coal jobs

A judge has ordered federal regulators to quickly evaluate how many power plant and coal mining jobs are lost because of air pollution regulations.

U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey in Wheeling made the ruling after reviewing a response from outgoing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy.

McCarthy had responded to the judge's previous order in a lawsuit brought against her by Murray Energy Corp. that the EPA must start doing an analysis that it hadn't done in decades.

According to Wednesday's order, McCarthy asserted it would take the agency up to two years to devise a methodology to use to try to comply with the earlier ruling.

"This response is wholly insufficient, unacceptable, and unnecessary," Bailey wrote.

And in two year, you would find they had not done a thing about it, and they would request another two years. As Willis Eschenbach quips "Two years? World War II lasted four years for the US, and these wankers can’t put together a method to value lost jobs in two years? Glad they weren’t in charge back then …  that’s just plain obstructionism."

The judge said the EPA is required by law to analyze the economic impact on a continuing basis when enforcing the Clean Air Act and McCarthy's response "evidences the continued hostility on the part of the EPA to acceptance of the mission established by Congress."

Bailey ordered the EPA to identify facilities harmed by the regulations during the Obama presidency by July 1. That includes identifying facilities at risk of closure or reductions in employment.

The EPA had contended that analyzing job loss won't change global energy trends.

The judge also set a Dec. 31 deadline for the EPA to provide documentation on how it is continuously evaluating the loss and shifts in employment that may result from administration and enforcement of the Clean Air Act.

The quick answer is that they haven't. EPA doesn't want to consider job losses in it's analyses, but if your force them to do it, they'll come up with some gobble-de-gook projects of job gains from unicorn farts and rainbows wind and solar power. Right now, now, every industry being impacted by EPA regs ought to challenge them on this basis, since as Willis also notes:

The winningest part of this whole thing is that the judge said it doesn’t just apply to the coal rules. It applies to the whole Clean Air Act and by inference all of the EPA’s regulations.

Not only that, but his order specifically applies to any and every facility harmed during the Obama Administration by EPA regulations. Zowie! So there can be no doubt that it extends at least that far and farther.

As I see it, all such regulations should be  taken out of effect until the effects on jobs is considered. One hopes the incoming Trump administration is paying attention.