RUSH: The EPA put out a memo. It’s an Obama administration memo. This memo admits that CO2 is not a pollutant. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. This memo alludes to the fact that there is no proof. Somebody in the Obama administration really goofed up.
Now, you haven’t heard about this, you had to have seen C-SPAN to know about this, but this memo is out there that CO2 is not a pollutant, that there’s no evidence that CO2 is leading to the warming of the planet. There is a memo that pretty much debunks everything environmental wackos and global warming people are putting out, and it came from the Obama administration. And what’s interesting about it is that the EPA was just given the authority by the Supreme Court to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. So the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had a hearing on the proposed fiscal 2010 budget for the EPA. Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, had a conversation with the EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson. Now, Barrasso opened and he said this.
BARRASSO: In a memo that I received this morning, and it’s marked ‘deliberative attorney-client privilege,’ nine pages, you are mentioned on every page of this memo, it is a White House memo, counsel in this administration repeatedly, repeatedly questions the lack of scientific support that you have for this proposed finding. It’s here. Nine pages. This is a smoking gun saying that your findings were political, not scientific. Here, page two. There’s concern that the EPA is making a finding based on harm from substances that have no demonstrated direct health effects such as respiratory or toxic effects.
RUSH: Folks, do you understand what you’re hearing? This is a Republican Senator from Wyoming talking to the Obama EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, saying White House counsel’s put together a memo saying everything about CO2 is a myth, that there was no science in the formulation of this, that it was pure politics. He then said this to her.
BARRASSO: Making the decision to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act for the first time is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the US economy, including small businesses and small communities. How do you square that when you say, ‘I don’t want any overriding effect on the economy or small businesses,’ but this own internal document marked deliberative attorney-client privilege says everything you’re proposing is going to have serious economic consequences for our businesses in this nation. Would you like to comment?
RUSH: Lisa Jackson. Here’s her answer. It says the memo is basically only somebody’s opinion.
JACKSON: The Supreme Court ruled two years ago that EPA owed the American people a determination as to whether greenhouse gases, either in whole or individually, endanger public health and welfare. We reviewed the science of it; we went through interagency review through the White House, so again I’m not sure what that document may say. It’s deliberative, so obviously it’s people’s opinions.
RUSH: It’s people’s opinions in the Obama White House. CO2 not a pollutant. CO2 can’t be said to be raising — all of this is speculative, that it has all been arrived at politically, not with science. That treating CO2 as a pollutant, which is the precursor, by the way, to Obama’s cap-and-trade, somebody put this together in the White House, and this has to be a huge leak, attorney-client privilege. I mean, whoever put this to paper has seriously undermined the cause. Of course, without C-SPAN or me telling you this you wouldn’t know about it, I’m sorry. Nobody knows this. She says, ‘Well, it’s just somebody’s opinion.’ And then she went on and added this.
JACKSON: I have said over and over, as has the president, that we do understand that there are costs to the economy of addressing global warming emissions and that the best way to address them is through a gradual move to a market-based program like cap and trade. Under the Clean Air Act have the potential to regulate all those sources you talk about now for other contaminates — schools and hospitals and farms and Dunkin Donuts, and we don’t because we use — we — we make regulations smartly to address the threats in the best way possible and with an eye towards understanding that we don’t want to unduly affect those who can least afford to pay. So I do believe that the regulatory process allows us the opportunity to make those decisions and to do it, but we’re not at that point yet.
RUSH: She didn’t answer the question. She did not answer the question in any way, shape, manner, or form. She said, nah, this is somebody’s opinion, precursor to cap-and-trade, then she throws in this business that they’re not going to tax people who can least afford to pay it. But the dirty little secret is that that’s who always gets hurt with liberalism. That’s who always gets hurt, the people who can least afford it. The little guy either loses his job, increased taxes or what have you. But there you’ve heard it, this memo is out, attorney-client privilege from the White House, the Obama White House, and just to paraphrase what Barrasso said, it’s nine pages, Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator mentioned on every page, the memo questions the lack of scientific support for the finding that CO2 is a pollutant. It’s a smoking gun memo saying that the findings were political, not scientific.
On page two, quote, ‘There is concern that the EPA is making a finding based on harm from substances that have no demonstrated, direct health effects such as respiratory or toxic effects. Making the decision to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act for the first time is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the economy, small business, small communities.’ Obama administration’s own memo, own lawyers. I don’t know how this got out, and I don’t know how Senator Barrasso from Wyoming got it, but he put it to Lisa Jackson. This is, again, not a surprise to me because we exhale CO2. If it were a poison it wouldn’t be part of the way we stay alive.