WARNING: Air Is Hazardous To Your Health!

No, this is (sadly) not a joke or satire. The EPA has now ruled that carbon dioxide is a dangerous substance that needs to be regulated:

The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people’s health and must be regulated, signaling that the Obama administration is prepared to contain global warming without congressional action if necessary. …

Under a Supreme Court ruling, the so-called endangerment finding is needed before the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases released from power plants, factories and automobiles under the federal Clean Air Act.

Hot Air says:

Don’t kid yourself into thinking the EPA doesn’t understand the scope of its power. By classifying CO2 and methane (among other so-called greenhouse gases, it can inject itself into just about every industry in the US. Energy production will be its primary target, but the EPA has also gone after coal mining on the basis of the Clean Water Act; it will certainly not be shy about using this new authority to kill coal mining altogether. It will also impact agriculture, especially dairies and cattle ranching, as well as transportation. The entire manufacturing sector will have to answer for its output.

While the EPA says the timing of its announcement is purely coincidental, it appears to be just another stunt to give Barack Obama something that he can boast about at the Copenhagen climate change conference.

Heritage expands on what this would mean:

Since 85 percent of the U.S. economy runs on fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide, imposing a cost on CO2 is equivalent to placing an economy-wide tax on energy use. The kind of industrial-strength EPA red tape that the agency could enforce in the name of global warming would result in millions of dollars in compliance costs. These are unnecessary costs that businesses will inevitably pass on to the American consumer, slow economic growth and kill jobs.

Increased regulations and red tape will stifle that innovation by reducing the amount of resources that can be invested efficiently. They will have disruptive impacts on the economy and on living standards that will ripple throughout the country to reduce the earth’s temperature a few tenths of a degree.

The bottom line is that the EPA is essentially blackmailing Congress, saying that if they can't (or won't) pass cap-n-tax, the EPA will enact the same sort of suffocating, economy-busting regulations on its own. Of course, given that Barack Obama appointed the people running the EPA, it's all on his shoulders, anyway. It is interesting to note that the Obama administration correctly names this thing:

The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn't move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a "command-and-control" role over the process in a way that could hurt business.

The warning, from a top White House economic official who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity, came on the eve of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's address to the international conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Sure brings home this commentary by Ace of Spades to the debate:

Trees and other plant life who thrive on CO2 Could not be reached for comment.

This announcement has been in the pipeline ever since Obama took office but the timing is clearly intended to give Mr. World something to talk about when he drops by the Climate Scam Summit in Copenhagen in a few weeks.

In addition to the international credibility He hopes it will buy, this announcement is the Sword of Damocles He wants to hang over Congress to get them to pass Cap and Destroy...."Unless you destroy the economy with legislation, I'll do even more damage by regulation."

Heck of a government we've got here.

Yeah, no kidding! And remember, all this hubbub is because the EPA is declaring AIR to be dangerous to your health! The same air that plants would all perish without, and the same air that you exhale with every breath.

It's ludicrous to do this, especially given the well documented failures of such legislation around the world, and given that we now know the whole reason for enacting cap-n-tax (climate change) is a fraud and a hoax. The fact that the unelected EPA is holding Congress hostage to do severe damage to our economy in the name of a hoax should prompt massive outcry from the American people, demanding sanity and common sense.

There's my two cents.