Our new civil duty is to educate since voting doesn’t matter

I had sent a message to my dear hometown district representative Congressman Patrick McHenry about supporting EPA’s desire to regulate CO2 emissions (it was through one of the generic action alert messages of one of the many interest groups I belong to, so I don’t have the original message). He his GOP, so he didn’t agree with me. This is his response:

Dear Ms. Mckinley:

Thank you for contacting my office regarding the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recent enactment of rules aimed at regulating carbon emissions. I appreciate having the benefit of your thoughts.

As you may know, the EPA unilaterally decided to begin regulating the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted by businesses such as hospitals, small businesses, schools and even houses of worship. While I care about our environment, I believe the EPA’s plan places burdensome mandates on North Carolina businesses, schools and the overall energy sector, which would threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs and dramatically increase the cost of living for nearly all North Carolinians.

I will not support the Administration’s policies that advance behavior modification by way of taxation or excessive regulation.

To protect jobs and fortify our energy security, Congress should be working to develop additional power plants and industrial facilities, not shutting them down. We are woefully unprepared to meet our nation’s growing energy demands, yet these regulations will do nothing but kill jobs – many of them in North Carolina – thus making energy costs higher for millions of Americans.

Furthermore, with a national unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent, the absolute last thing American families need is to be burdened with skyrocketing utility bills. As your Representative in Congress, I will fight to develop our full spectrum of energy resources, and not impose job-killing regulations on America’s energy producers.

As any legislation that deals with EPA regulations works its way through the 112^th Congress, I will give it my full consideration should it come to a vote.

Although we may not agree on this issue, I hope that we will find common ground in the future. Thank you again for contacting my office. It is my honor to serve as your United States Congressman. Your suggestions are always welcome, and if ever I may be of service, please do not hesitate to call me.

Sincerely,

Patrick McHenry

Member of Congress

PTM/

And this my subsequent response:

With all due respect, the only common ground we can agree on is that you care about putting money in your pocket and securing your own job, but not that of your constituents.  Also, you only seem interested in protecting the interests of the fossil fuel industry instead of the citizens you are purportedly in office to represent.  Your “care for the environment” is a hoax as transparent and fraudulent as bottled water.

By stripping the EPA of the little power it has now to regulate and to create further regulations (which should be read as PROTECTIONS), you are allowing corporations to continue externalizing the true cost of their business to the American public.  We are the ones who have to pay with our health, safety, livelihood, and environment so that private industry can continue to make record profits from an unsustainable system.

Let me explain what I mean, as you probably buy into the ideology of “clean coal”, which is only industry propaganda at its finest.  Coal and natural gas are nonrenewable resources, which means we will run out at some point.  We have already used up the easiest sources; now we have to use methods such as mountain top removal and hydraulic fracturing to get at the hard-to-reach sources.  Both of these methods place extreme burdens on the health and economy of the American people.  Mountains are useless when they are leveled for a temporary mining operation.  Instead, the mountain could accommodate a wind farm that provides a sustainable source of clean energy.  Wind energy ensures safe jobs indefinitely into the future; whereas coal mining is hazardous to the employees, who risk illness, injury, and even death (49 days is the longest period the American coal mining industry has gone without a fatality.  In 2007, 69 people DIED while 12 THOUSAND were injured, and that excludes how many people suffer every year from coal-related illnesses like black lung and asthma).  Also, coal mining is becoming more mechanized and requiring fewer workers every year (705,000 miners in 1923; 140,000 in 1970; 70,000 in 2003).  Jobs are already being lost.  Another terrible side effect of mountain top removal is the filling in of headwater streams and rivers with rubble and sediments that are technically toxic waste.  This has drastic repercussions on the health of the watershed, which is an invaluable natural resource to both the environment and people everywhere, including those employed by industry and government alike.  Local water treatment facilities also assume the burden (cost) of treating the polluted water.  As we know mountain top removal is essentially an unregulated business: a prime example that industries cannot be allowed to regulate themselves as they only serve their own interests, which is primarily short-term profit.  The true costs are externalized to us.  Yet another example that industry cannot be trusted to self-regulate.  We all know that a mountain can never be restored to its original state after it has been blown to smithereens.  Mountain top removal operations are legally supposed to restore the site after the operation has ceased, but the vast majority does not.  Even if they do, the result is not a highly diverse temperate forest resembling what once stood, but a flat, open field hiding an ugly truth.  Our mountains and our environment belong to the people; thus we should be the ones profiting from our resources, not some business.

Also, as a side note, your plan to exploit the oil shale in North Carolina is, in a word, absurd.  It is more logical and responsible to take the money and resources that would go into executing this abominable plan and invest it in renewable energy sources now.  Please, stop postponing the inevitable.

All of the aforementioned examples include pollution every step of the way.  Just in case you were not aware, pollution makes people acutely and/or chronically ill, which can be fatal.  Everyone is at risk, including your fellow North Carolinians and yourself.  Sick people are not as productive; therefore businesses are also not as productive.  Sick people also place a huge burden on the health care infrastructure.  Thus, curbing pollution will actually improve our economy.  It will also improve because of the scientists, engineers, and other laborers needed to research, invent, manufacture, install, and maintain the best available technology to diminish pollution.  So you see, you will be encouraging the growth of entrepreneurship and innovation instead of stifling it to maintain the status quo for the short-term benefit of one industry.  If you want to see the benefits of regulating air quality, please take a look at EPA’s recent study – “The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act from 1990 to 2020”.  The regulation of air pollutants under this act has cost us around $65 billion, but the benefits are around $2 TRILLION.  Sounds like a great way to save money, doesn’t it?  So yes, regulation does pay off: “The economy as a whole is also stronger with 1990 Clean Air Act Amendment programs as cleaner air leads to better health and productivity for American workers and less money spent on health care to treat air pollution-related health problems. (http://www.epa.gov/air/sect812/feb11/fullreport.pdf )

Now the reason we need taxation on businesses more than ever is so that they, instead of the American people, can pay for the cost of their business.  Stop protecting them and start protecting the people you are supposed to be representing.  It is us who you should be serving; protecting your people is YOUR JOB.  Currently, because you are not doing YOUR JOB, unregulated industries continue to make record profits while we continue to go into debt just to keep a roof over our head and food on the table.

Utility rates have and always will be increasing.  Even as we replace appliances with more energy efficient ones and cut back on electricity use in other ways (thus collectively decreasing the demand and therefore burden on our utility companies), the utility companies still complain and say they need to increase rates.  That is why our energy bills are staying the same, even though we are using less energy.  The companies profit without having to do anything.  If you are worried about everything you say you are, like “high energy costs”  and “job loss”, and really want “to fight to develop our full spectrum of energy resources”, then you will allow these regulations.  This will encourage the development of sustainable, renewable energy sources which will create hundreds of thousands of jobs from research, manufacturing, infrastructure development, installation, and maintenance.  Other nations already see this as the future and are doing everything they can to develop these sources.  We are losing this global race and will not have a chance of catching up if we do not act now.

As my final point, we both know that you are not worried about losing hundreds of thousands of jobs.  You are a part of the GOP, and your current budget cut proposals threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs.  Quit the act you are putting on and actually be responsible for taking care of your duties and fellow people as a representative of North Carolina.