Let the EPA do its job

Opinion: December 10, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Forty years ago last week, a Republican president created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Today, buoyed by last month’s electoral tidal wave, Republicans seem poised to undermine some of the most important initiatives that agency ever has undertaken.

Propelling the wave, one insider recently told the Washington Post, were “people upset with Obama’s regulatory priorities, and in the Midwest at least, those people are upset with the EPA.”

Atop the endangered list are crucially important new rules that would limit emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Those gases fuel climate change.

By some accounts, as many as half of the incoming Republican House members claim that they don’t believe in global warming.

As a result, a bill to block the new regulations is virtually certain to pass early next year.

It isn’t only Republicans who are to blame. Some Senate Democrats, including West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller, have pushed legislation that would delay the new EPA rules for two years. Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill is a co-sponsor of Mr. Rockefeller’s bill.

McCaskill has expressed concern that the new rules would disproportionately affect the states, including Missouri, that get most of their electricity from coal-fired power plants.

Like McCaskill, we would rather see Congress address climate change through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade legislation than have the EPA tackle the issue through rules. But for at least a decade, Congress has failed to act.

Congress should not prevent the EPA from doing its job.