BISMARCK, N.D. -- Republican Gov. John Hoeven and Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., are promising to fight Environmental Protection Agency regulation of carbon dioxide emissions, although an environmental group welcomes the idea.
Putting federal regulators in charge of restricting carbon dioxide would force manufacturing jobs out of the country and "would put some very significant and real costs on industry across the board," Hoeven said.
Hoeven and Pomeroy said Congress, not the EPA, should be in charge of regulating carbon dioxide, a gas that is blamed for global warming.
Pomeroy opposed a climate bill that was approved by the U.S. House last June because of what he called its "unrealistic emission-reduction targets" and its advocacy of a so-called cap-and-trade system for regulating emissions.
Giving the EPA authority to act if Congress does not is "exactly the wrong way to go," Pomeroy said.
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The agency this week declared carbon dioxide was a health threat, a prerequisite for the agency to regulate emissions under federal clean-air laws.
Marie Hoff, chairwoman of the Dakota Resource Council, a Dickinson-based environmental group, on Wednesday praised the EPA's move, calling carbon dioxide pollution "one of the most urgent human health issues facing us today."
"Every year the window of opportunity to prevent catastrophic climate change grows smaller," Hoff said. "The good news for North Dakota is that we have the clean wind energy that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stimulate our economy at the same time."
Two members of the state's regulatory Public Service Commission, Brian Kalk and Kevin Cramer, criticized the EPA's move. Cramer said he believed President Barack Obama was using the specter of EPA regulation to force Congress into approving climate regulations.
"He is paving the way for Congress to do something bad to us so that the EPA doesn't do something worse," Cramer said.
The Public Service Commission regulates coal mining, pipelines, wind turbines and other aspects of western North Dakota's energy industry.
Coal mining, electric power generation, and oil and natural gas production are pillars of North Dakota's economy, said Kalk, who believes EPA regulation of carbon dioxide emissions would "threaten our entire energy future."
