If he were rational, Jonah Goldberg might find reasons to support the United States’ decision to join the Human Rights Council. As it is, he thinks that Environmental Protection Agency is trying to control the air that you breathe (carbon dioxide, is, after all, a greenhouse gas!). I think that answers that question.
With such scaremongering a transparent ruse, Goldberg next turns to petty mockery: the EPA regulates cow flatulence! Ha! And can you imagine EPA bureaucrats having sex? Ha!
But the primary “substantive” criticism that Goldberg levies on the EPA is that the agency, a department of the executive branch mandated to regulate greenhouse gases according to science, is not democratic enough. (If the reality of climate change were put to a democratic vote, rather than the findings of objective science, he might, unfortunately, have more success in denying the phenomenon.) Goldberg’s gripe is that the EPA is abiding by a Supreme Court decision permitting it to regulate greenhouse gases do its job. Better were the days when the agency’s head could just refuse to open an email telling him that greenhouse gases were bad for the environment.
For the record, the current EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, has stressed that she prefers to address the greenhouse gas issue through Congress, not by EPA fiat, as Goldberg contends. So for now, you’re free to breathe in as much delicious “carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride” as you’d like.
(image from flickr user dave_7 under a Creative Commons license)