President Barack Obama is using the EPA to push a cap-and-trade program that he could not get through Congress, the Heritage Foundation’s Nicolas Loris tells
Newsmax TV’s "America’s Forum."
"President Obama said there's more than one way to skin a cat, and he's using the EPA to effectively implement the regulatory equivalent of cap and trade by regulating new power plants, as well as implementing regulations on existing power plants, and that was the big target for cap and trade," Loris said.
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Cap and trade is the term for allowing companies to emit pollutants by buying and selling
greenhouse gas emission allowances.
Loris said the new regulations will result in "massive energy attacks that will ripple through the economy, increase direct energy prices … prices for all the goods and services we pay."
Jobs and economic growth will be left in the path of destruction while the new regulations "won’t make a dent" in global temperatures.
"You're talking about all economic pain and no real environmental benefit or temperature mitigation as a result of these changes and these regulations," Loris predicted.
Phasing out coal would eliminate some 600,000 jobs by 2023, more than half of them in manufacturing, and the cost to the economy would be $1.3 trillion, according to Loris. And all for "no temperature benefit."
"So even if you think we're headed toward catastrophic warming, which the climate science really suggests that we're not, but even if you do believe that, these regulations aren't going to make a difference," he said. "You're talking about a few tenths of a degree Celsius change by the end of the century. So again this is all pain and no gain with these regulations."
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