by Fred L. Smith, Jr.
April 16, 2008

April 16, 2008

The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, D. C., 20500

Dear President Bush:

The undersigned organizations write to share our concerns over reports that your administration is considering further mandatory measures intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We understand that you have become aware of the regulatory nightmare that will almost certainly ensue from any one of several litigation strategies involving the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. We believe these concerns are well-founded.

However, it must be understood that the central purpose of those who filed the Massachusetts versus EPA case and those who proposed the listing of the polar bear is precisely to create that regulatory nightmare to pressure you and the Congress into adopting Kyoto-style cap-and-trade policy. Their implicit demand is, “Give us cap-and-trade, or we’ll wreak havoc on the economy through litigation.”

This is legislative extortion, and it is not how public policy should be made in the United States. Rewarding such bullying tactics would set a dangerous precedent.

Enacting further mandatory limits on emissions would be especially unwise at this time, as the U.S. economy totters on recession and consumer confidence sags from rising food and energy prices. Moreover, your policies are working. Since the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997, U. S. emissions have increased more slowly in percentage terms than have emissions in the European Union, Canada, and Japan. In 2006, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions declined. Also, Canada, Japan, and most European countries are not on track to meet their Kyoto targets. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Kyoto process, with its built-in momentum for ever more unrealistic emission reduction targets, is economically ruinous and, hence, politically unsustainable.

We congratulate EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson for issuing an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR). The ANPR will allow the administration and the friends of affordable energy and economic growth to educate the public about the potentially economy-wrecking repercussions of recent and ongoing litigation under the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and NEPA.

But we think it would be a terrible blunder to squander the educational opportunity that the ANPR offers by reversing course and endorsing mandatory emission limits—a policy Congress has never approved on its own merits.

Proposing mandatory emission limits would demoralize those who have worked so hard to promote climate policies based on scientific knowledge, economic realities, and technological feasibility. The real choice is not between energy rationing and regulatory chaos. Rather, the real choice is between regulatory chaos and legislation that fixes the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act so that pro-Kyoto litigation groups cannot use those statutes for a purpose that Congress never intended—to dictate climate and energy policy for the nation.

There is no political necessity to let your fiercest critics frame the terms of debate so that they get what they have unsuccessfully sought for the past ten years—a Kyoto-type energy rationing system. You can win this battle by sponsoring a clean bill to prevent the nation’s environmental laws from being used to spawn regulatory chaos. The pro-Kyoto faction in Congress may oppose such a bill, but if they do so, they will also take ownership of and responsibility for any regulatory excess that their litigation group allies succeed in producing.

For these reasons, we urge you not to abandon the prudent and successful course you have followed during the past seven years. Rather, we believe you should use the ANPR comment period to educate the public and Congress about the regulatory perils that recent and ongoing litigation have created, the urgent need to solve that threat, and the inadmissibility of using the threat to extort policy concessions that would also be harmful to the American people.

Sincerely,

Fred L. Smith, Jr.
President
Myron Ebell
Director of Global Warming and Energy Policy
Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow
Competitive Enterprise Institute

Grover Norquist
President
Americans for Tax Reform

Paul M. Weyrich
National Chairman
Coalitions for America

Hon. Roy Innis
National Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Niger Innis
National Spokesperson
Congress of Racial Equality

Hon. Malcolm Wallop
Chairman and Founder
Frontiers of Freedom

Amy Ridenour
President
David Ridenour
Vice President
National Center for Public Policy Research

Matt Kibbe
President and CEO
Freedom Works

Tom Schatz
President
Citizens Against Government Waste

Tim Phillips
President
Americans for Prosperity

Alan B. Smith
Acting Executive Director
American Legislative Exchange Council

Jim Martin
President
60 Plus Association

Larry Hart
Director of Government Affairs
American Conservative Union

George Landrith
Co-Chair
American Environmental Coalition

Craig Rucker
Executive Director
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

H. Sterling Burnett
Senior Fellow
National Center for Policy Analysis

Mark Chmura
Executive Director
Americans for the Preservation of Liberty

Kelsey Zahourek
Executive Director
Property Rights Alliance

William Greene
President
RightMarch.com

Richard W. C. Falknor
Chairman
Maryland Center-Right Coalition

Gregory Cohen
President and CEO
American Highway Users Alliance

Doug Bandow
Vice President for Policy
Citizen Outreach

Paul Chesser
Climate Strategies Watch

Fred Grau
Executive Director
Take Back Pennsylvania

Andrew Langer
President
Institute for Liberty