The Right to Regulate Your Breathing

As expected, the EPA today declared CO₂ a pollutant subject to regulation by the agency under the Clean Air Act. As the WSJ opines, this is a dangerous and undemocratic ruling. It allows the administration to impose regulations through the EPA and existing laws, sidestepping the legislative process.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said yesterday that her ruling that greenhouses gases are dangerous pollutants would "cement 2009's place in history" as the moment when the U.S. began "seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform." She's right that this is an historic decision, though not to her or the White House's credit, and "seizing" is the right term. President Obama isn't about to let a trifle like democratic consent impede his climate agenda.

With cap and trade blown apart in the Senate, the White House has chosen to impose taxes and regulation across the entire economy under clean-air laws that were written decades ago and were never meant to apply to carbon. With this doomsday machine activated, Mr. Obama hopes to accomplish what persuasion and debate among his own party manifestly cannot.

As the editorial reports, this ruling is loaded with political cynicism. As the Cap and Trade bill has stalled, the administration has used this backdoor to impose draconian restrictions on businesses, who, it apparently hopes, will acquiesce to their demands for legislation limiting carbon emissions.

The administration realizes how ridiculous the limits are, as evidenced by its stated intention to raise the barrier from 250 tons per year to 25,000 tons. This is unlikely to survive for long as green groups almost certain to sue to force the EPA to enforce the more restrictive standards. As the law is explicit and clear these challenges have a good chance of succeeding.

For now, this decision moves into the courts, and years if not decades of litigation. Yet the decision really is historic: The White House has opened a Pandora's box that will be difficult to close, that is breathtakingly undemocratic, and that the country, if not liberal politicians, will come to regret.

We will all come to regret this. There is nothing that any of us do that does not in some way involve the release of CO₂. This ruling allows the EPA to literally regulate every single aspect of every single activity engaged in by every single person every single day, including breathing. As if there were any doubt it was dead already, we can chisel today's date on the tombstone of limited government.