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The Columbus Dispatch...
Brown draws fire from some environmentalists
Sunday, March 6, 2011

Some environmentalists were unhappy with Sen. Sherrod Brown after he urged President Barack Obama last week to consider the economic harm to major industries before issuing regulations to control so-called greenhouse gases thought to cause global warming.

By doing so, the Ohio Democrat seemed to move even closer to the position held by former Republican Sen. George V. Voinovich, that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should consider the economic damage of anti-pollution regulations.

“For a long time, Sen. Brown has tried to walk a tightrope on this issue,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a Washington organization that champions tough environmental laws. “It’s unfortunate that he seems to have fallen off - and landed in former Sen. Voinovich’s lap.”

Franz Matzner, climate and air legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, said, “There were some good things in the letter, and there are things we strongly disagree with in the letter.”

Brown insisted that “my position hasn’t changed at all. I want us to find a way to reduce carbon emissions, and we have to do it in a way that doesn’t cost jobs.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the 1970 Clean Air Act permits the EPA to impose new regulations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, generated in large part by industry and coal-fired utility power plants.

Teresa McHugh, the Midwest regional representative for the Sierra Club, said Brown’s letter “focuses on one piece of environmental regulation,” and that she did not “believe the letter places Sen. Brown in the same position that Sen. Voinovich was in.”

Read it at the Columbus Dispatch


 
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