Mitt Romney

Clean Air

Romney wants to block the EPA from limiting carbon pollution:

Romney said it’s a “mistake” to have EPA regulate carbon emissions. According to Politico: “Mitt Romney says he doesn’t think carbon pollution threatens human health and would not green-light EPA climate regulations if he were in the White House…"I think we may have made a mistake," Romney said Thursday in response to a voter's question about EPA regulating air pollution from coal plants under the Clean Air Act. "We have made a mistake is what I believe, in saying that the EPA should regulate carbon emissions. I don’t think that was the intent of the original legislation, and I don’t think carbon is a pollutant in the sense of harming our bodies.’” [Politico, 7/18/11]

Romney: EPA “Irresponsibly” declared carbon pollution “poses risks to human health.” In an op-ed in Foster’s Daily Democrat (NH), Romney wrote: “Irresponsibly, the EPA declared carbon dioxide, the same carbon dioxide that humans exhale, to be a ‘pollutant’ that poses risks to human health. As a result, the EPA is now issuing regulations under the Clean Air Act that will produce the same sort of economic devastation that Congress had wisely rejected.” [Romney op-ed, Foster’s Daily Democrat, 8/27/11]

Romney: “Out of control” EPA is a tool Obama is using “to crush the private enterprise system.”  The Hill reported: “GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney says he’s heard from oil-industry executives who were happier under President George W. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency — and Romney’s promising to rein in the EPA if he wins the White House. … ‘I think the EPA has gotten completely out of control for a very simple reason: It is a tool in the hands of the president to crush the private enterprise system, to crush our ability to have energy, whether it's oil, gas, coal, nuclear,’ Romney said.” [The Hill, 12/5/11]