On the EPA regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act:

A growing number of state regulators are urging the Obama administration to slow the rollout of proposed federal rules curbing industrial greenhouse-gas emissions, saying the administration's approach could overwhelm them with paperwork, delay construction projects and undercut their own efforts to fight climate change...Regulators from around the U.S., including Kansas, Pennsylvania, Florida and California, are calling on the EPA to go slowly with its new rules, and in some cases warning that they lack funding to regulate some of the new emissions sources that would be covered.

In a Dec. 24 letter to the EPA, the California Energy Commission, which oversees energy policy in the state, said the EPA's proposal "will likely retard, rather than facilitate," reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions from its electricity sector. Because California, which has been a leader among states in pursuing its own emissions efforts, plans to require electric utilities to use more renewable power than they do currently, the state needs new natural-gas-fired power plants to provide back-up power when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. Most of those new plants aren't subject to the EPA permit process but will require permits under the EPA's proposal, the state says.

"We are gravely concerned that EPA's current proposal will likely create a huge administrative burden," said Melissa Jones...

And about California's emissions efforts and their effects:

Could Californians finally be serious about turning around their sputtering economy? One hopeful sign is a ballot initiative that would repeal the Golden State's version of a cap-and-trade carbon tax.  This feel-good law to reduce the state's carbon footprint was enacted with great hoopla by the Democratic legislature and Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006 when the state's economy was growing and the jobless rate was 5%. The law requires that starting in 2012 the state must ratchet down its carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The politicians and green lobbies told voters this energy tax would create jobs—the same fairy tale many in Washington are repeating today.

Now the jobless rate is 12.3%, 2.25 million Californians are unemployed, and the state government is broke...No matter what one thinks of climate science, it makes little sense for an individual state to unilaterally impose major new tax and regulatory costs on its own industries. The impact of California's gesture on global temperatures will be infinitesimal, but the economic impact will make the state even less attractive to start or expand a business.

A 2009 study by economists at the California State University at Sacramento and commissioned by the California Small Business Roundtable found that the implementation costs "could easily exceed $100 billion" and that the program would raise the cost of living by $3,857 per household each year by 2020. So much for the free green lunch...Meanwhile, a new study commissioned by the Governor's Office of Small Business Advocacy estimates that the direct cost of current California regulation is $175 billion, or nearly twice the size of the state general fund budget and about $134,000 per small business each year. The Golden State already has the second most business-unfriendly regulatory climate in the nation, after New Jersey and before the cap-and-trade law.