Michigan Congressman attacks EPA, ignores constituents

Fred Upton, the newly-named chairman of the House Commerce and Energy Committee, was once a moderate Republican on climate issues. He supported measures to reduce the risk of global warming.

But after receiving a $20,000 donation from the climate-change-denying-fossil-fuel-billionaire Koch brothers, Upton now wants to strip the EPA of its Supreme Court-mandated power to regulate CO2 emissions.

But all that's old news. What's interesting, as reported in the Kalamazoo Gazette, is that two separate polls of Michigan voters, one taken state-wide, and one a poll in Upton's district, found that fully two-thirds of Michigan voters supported the EPA's right to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. 

But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by his thick-headedness. Last December Upton wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (with a Koch brothers lobbyist) in which he declared the EPA's right to regulate CO2 emissions "unconstitutional" — even after the Supreme Court in 2007 not only affirmed the EPA's right to regulate atmospheric pollutants, including CO2, but rebuked the agency for its inaction. 

In other words, don't bring up the facts to Fred Upton — he's not interested.