You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Home Front: Culture Wars
EPA Wants To Go 'Full Sauron' Over America
2011-12-19
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to change how it analyzes problems and makes decisions, in a way that will give it vastly expanded power to regulate businesses, communities and ecosystems in the name of “sustainable development,” the centerpiece of a global United Nations conference slated for Rio de Janeiro next June.

Its aim: how to integrate sustainability “as one of the key drivers within the regulatory responsibilities of EPA.” The panel who wrote the study declares part of its job to be “providing guidance to EPA on how it might implement its existing statutory authority to contribute more fully to a more sustainable-development trajectory for the United States.”

It is already known in EPA circles as the “Green Book,” and is frequently compared by insiders to the “Red Book,” a study on using risk management techniques to guide evaluation of carcinogenic chemicals that the agency touts as the basis of its overall approach to environmental issues for the past 30 years.

At the time that the “Green Book” study was commissioned, in August, 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson termed it “the next phase of environmental protection,” and asserted that it will be “fundamental to the future of the EPA.”

Jackson compared the new approach, it would articulate to “the difference between treating disease and pursuing wellness.” It was, she said, “a new opportunity to show how environmentally protective and sustainable we can be,” and would affect “every aspect” of EPA’s work.

According to the study itself, the adoption of the new “sustainability framework” will make the EPA more “anticipatory” in its approach to environmental issues, broaden its focus to include both social and economic as well as environmental “pillars,” and “strengthen EPA as an organization and a leader in the nation’s progress toward a sustainable future.”

Whatever EPA does with its suggestions, the study emphasizes, will be “discretionary.” But the study urges EPA to “create a new culture among all EPA employees,” and hire an array of new experts in order to bring the sustainability focus to every corner of the agency and its operations. Changes will move faster “as EPA’s intentions and goals in sustainability become clear to employees,” the study says.
They apparently want to 'take totalitarianism to the next level'. They are so bold that they are giving statements that are 'trans-fascist'.
Posted by:Anonymoose

#20  Jerry Pournelle's "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" at work.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2011-12-19 23:47  

#19  similar to our State Dept. Start from scratch
Posted by: Frank G   2011-12-19 22:02  

#18  Not saying that we don't need an agency to protect the environment. I just think that the EPA - this EPA as it is now - is too cancerous with politics and psuedo-scientist and career political advocates (I won't call them environmentalist - deep down they care as much for the environment as NOW cares about women - which is zip.
Might be easier (and cheaper) to simply shoot this one and start another.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2011-12-19 21:30  

#17  Why stop going pre-Space Govt-Order "Full Sauron" wid only America???

* CHINA DAILY FORUM > OPEC: VENEZUELA OIL RESERVES TOP SAUDI ARABIA - 296.5BILYUHN BARRELS.

* SAME [related = older Artic] > US GEOLOGICAL SERVICE: ORINOCO OIL RESERVES TOP 513.0BILYUHN BARRELS.

The Global is strong wid the Sauron!
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2011-12-19 21:20  

#16  D *** NG IT, AMERICA = AMERIKA, SUPPORT YOUR FUTURE SPACE COLONY + SPACE SOCIALIST GOVT-ORDER!
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2011-12-19 21:13  

#15  Not to defend the current EPA, but bigjim-CA is right. Fifty years ago, pollution was rampant. I went to college in Cleveland, where the Cuyahoga River was so polluted it caught fire.
Admittedly, many of these problems were "solved" when the factories were closed, and the jobs moved overseas.
The problem, as many have stated, is mission creep. As the original problems were solved, the regulators looked around for other things to regulate. Thus, they have decided that CO2 is a pollutant that must be regulated. Dust from farms is a pollutant that must be regulated. And on and on.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia   2011-12-19 20:25  

#14  Statism gone rampant! What bigjim-CA said. Also get rid of the ideologues who people EPA; the people who make a religion of radical environmentalism. Better to replace them with the hard science types; people who follow some real scientific process rather than a pseudo process where the data is made up to support a political view.
Posted by: JohnQC   2011-12-19 18:02  

#13  

Just cut the funding.
AND cut the power and the internet connections, take their GSA cars and padlock the loading docks.
They will eventually go home when they get cold and hungry.

The EPA regional offices throughout the United States are officed in swank, very expensive digs like this high rise office building in Dallas. Government goons who make up the Socialist elite "are to be pampered", to be treated a class above the nativee. They are to get the highest pay, the best threads, the fanciest restaurant like the 4 star ones at street level of this Dallas high rise where they occupy 1 to 2 floors at least with the finest view of the skyline.

Much like communist East Europe where fast lanes were disgnated for use strictly by party officials, the same encentive package is being applied by the Obama adminstration to his brown shirts.

You think this is extravagant for the regional EPA in Dallas, you should see the crib for the TSA in Dallas - and the Federal Reserve...
Posted by: Chetch Unomoth2003   2011-12-19 17:15  

#12  And amongst those charges that caused the revolution: He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
Posted by: OldSpook   2011-12-19 15:43  

#11  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Posted by: OldSpook   2011-12-19 15:41  

#10  As William Buckley said, every organization that does not start out avowedly right wing always becomes left wing over time. The EPA has been captured by the progressives and has gone full Stockholm syndrome.

The EPA could stand to lose half to two-thirds of its budget and personnel; that would get it back to monitoring industry the way bigjim-CA notes.
Posted by: Steve White   2011-12-19 14:39  

#9  Yeah - Vampires start as real people too - but nevertheless they have to be put down hard.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2011-12-19 14:22  

#8  The EPA was created for a reason, industry cannot be trusted to be good stewards of the environment. It has morphed into a beast and needs to be limited to its original purpose, it has experienced mission creep.
Posted by: bigjim-CA   2011-12-19 13:53  

#7  How many Divisions does the EPA command again?

(Of course under Obama - they just might have more than a few...)
Posted by: CrazyFool   2011-12-19 12:51  

#6  Just cut the funding.

AND cut the power and the internet connections, take their GSA cars and padlock the loading docks.

They will eventually go home when they get cold and hungry.

I just worry they might all flock to Californicate like a swarm of locust and take roost there to continue their nutty Gia, Earth First, World Liberation, Greenpeace idiocy.
Posted by: Bill Clinton   2011-12-19 12:46  

#5   Although abolishing the act and the agency is politically impossible Why not?
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2011-12-19 12:01  

#4  Now you know how Obama will bypass congress.
Posted by: DarthVader   2011-12-19 11:07  

#3  Sadly the existing law as amended (original NEPA act was signed by Nixon), has a lot of Utopian and authoritarian language. Although abolishing the act and the agency is politically impossible, it wouldn't be too difficult to put some 'brakes' on the authority of the agency.

"little red book" type policies by Administrator Jackson give Congress a good incentive to get this done

Posted by: Lord Garth   2011-12-19 10:42  

#2  This agency has to be killed and soon. Killed and a stake driven through its facist little heart. Then tear down its headquarters and salt the earth it sat on.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2011-12-19 10:33  

#1  This is sort of mind boggling. From the historical point of view, it is like they are referencing everything from German Nazism and Italian fascism, to Soviet and even Chinese dialectic.

"Little Red Book"? Are they kidding? WTF is wrong with these people?
Posted by: Anonymoose   2011-12-19 10:29  

00:00