Readers React: The EPA and climate change

Benjamin Zycher ignores the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act was upheld during the Bush administration, and the Obama administration’s proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions gives red states the most flexibility. (“Obama and the EPA: It’s about rewarding friends and punishing enemies,” Opinion, June 9)

Zycher makes the egregious mistake of citing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce study, which depended on a higher percentage reduction (42% below 2005 levels instead of the 30% proposed) and ignored the employment gains from transitioning to cleaner sources of energy and retrofitting plants.

Julian Carmona, Los Angeles

Zycher makes clear that what the EPA is proposing to do to our nation’s coal plants will have no positive benefits on future global temperatures, but does pose serious negative impacts on our pocketbooks. He notes that President Obama’s tactics could backfire if future conservative administrations try to do the same thing.

This was exactly what I was thinking. When we sit idly by and allow Obama to use the EPA to sidestep the separation of powers, which gives only Congress the authority to establish new carbon taxes, we are entering into very dangerous territory.

What is to keep future conservative administrations from undoing these mandates and requiring something as ridiculously extreme in the opposite direction? Wouldn’t it be ironic if liberals had no recourse but to use the same arguments conservatives are using now?

Randall Berry, Anaheim

I have little patience for Zycher’s criticism of the EPA’s proposal.

Until he and others constructively join the conversation by proposing solutions of their own for adapting to the effects of climate change and mitigating the carbon emissions that produce it, I have but one choice: to support the EPA’s proposal.

Frank Colcord, La Crescenta