Mercury pollution from power plants is a national problem that requires a national response.
Ozone is something that we most definitely have to regulate. It's a very important thing to regulate.
Way back in 2000, the EPA was poised, and, in fact, had drafted a rule, to specially regulate pollution - water pollution and other types of pollution - from power plants, but the energy industry pushed back pretty significantly.
The Environmental Protection Agency rarely follows up prosecuting coal companies and their fellow polluters, even when the evidence is clear-cut that they are dumping and poisoning entire towns near their projects, and the state regulators are even worse.
When it comes to the environment and global warming from emissions, it has to be dealt with in one of two ways - preemptive regulations, which I don't agree with, or with private property principles. Nobody has the right to pollute their neighbors' air or water or land.
What we know is that the environmental movement had a series of dazzling victories in the late '60s and in the '70s where the whole legal framework for responding to pollution and to protecting wildlife came into law. It was just victory after victory after victory. And these were what came to be called 'command-and-control' pieces of legislation.
Those who believe that our economic competitiveness is contingent upon continued environmental pollution should be consigned to live in the proximity of the pollution—preferably in a confined space.
Ordinary Americans can't pollute for free. You can't dump your trash on the sidewalk or throw all your refuse into your neighbor's yard. I don't understand why corporate polluters should be allowed to dump megatons of carbon, the most dangerous pollution in the history of the world, into our thin shell of an atmosphere, and not pay a penny to do it.
Too many members of Congress seem willing to give corporate polluters, many of whom happen to be major political donors, a free pass to poison the air.
We need to block dirty diesels getting public money - no question there.
