Romney energy adviser Jeff Holmstead tried to cut a sweeping air quality deal with enviros in 2002.
From an E&E TV interview with Bush EPA air chief Jeff Holsmtead:
… So, you know, the frustrating thing for me, again, is when I was at EPA back in 2002, we told the Hill and we told the environmental community, this is an issue, this interstate air transport and mercury is an issue. Let’s do a legislative fix and basically what we were told is unless you are willing to put CO2 on the table, we’re not interested in talking with you about it. So, I mean what I can say pretty definitively is had there been a proper legislative solution back in 2002, we’d have lower emissions now and there would be much more certainty for the industry and for ratepayers. You know, this kind of off-again/on-again kind of regulatory approach is costly for the industry and, therefore, for ratepayers….
Let’s all go back 10 years and dig up what “might have been”. It’s easier than dealing with what did happen and what is here and now. It is completely irrelevant what did not happen in 2002. Only what did happen matters as that is what we are dealing with. Fantasy is not part of science. Unless the climate science group has perfected time travel. Seems they have perfected the 10-years-age blame game.
So, if Romney wins, we will get the same idiocy out of the EPA?
CO2 “on the table” means a tax increase on the low and middle class, actually everyone. There is good evidence that CO2 is not the driver of global temperature. For example, global temperature has been stable or declining since 1998, while CO2 has continued to rise. I just returned from Gray, Tenn. fossil site. There an alligator skull was retrieved, estimate age 1-2M years. So Tenn was a warm as Florida in the geologically recent past.