The Patriot Post® · Melting Glacier National Park?

The power to tax may be the power to destroy, but the power to regulate is equally dangerous. This week, Barack Obama stood in front of a receding glacier in Alaska to once again raise the specter of catastrophic climate change. His real agenda, of course, is to push for more environmental regulations that are already killing jobs, crushing industry and hurting hardworking families.

Speaking in Alaska to the Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic, Obama warned, “If [current] trend lines continue the way they are, there’s not going to be a nation on this earth that’s not going to be impacted negatively. … More drought, more floods, rising sea levels, greater migration, more refuges, more scarcity, more conflict.”

This, of course, according to indisputably settled science. Or not.

For example, The New York Times editorialized on Obama’s trip to Alaska this week in a piece titled “Mr. Obama’s Urgent Arctic Message.” It was accompanied by a photo of Margerie Glacier, ostensibly to demonstrate the magnitude of the state’s receding ice. One small problem: That particular glacier isn’t receding at all. Writing for the National Park Service, Dr. Daniel E. Lawson says Margerie Glacier “has been advancing about 30 feet per year for the past couple of decades.” To be clear, other glaciers are melting. But for a newspaper that prides itself in supposed journalistic integrity, you’d think it would research basic information.

But never mind all that. After renaming America’s tallest mountain, Obama staged photo ops with glaciers to herald imminent global demise and sophomorically ridiculed those who disagree with him for being “on their own shrinking island.”

In truth, “very substantial disagreement about climate change” exists, according to Judith Curry, professor at Georgia Institute for Technology and a participant in the International Panel on Climate Change and National Academy of Sciences. In fact, data from both the UN and the U.S. fails to show higher frequency of extreme weather including floods, tornadoes and drought. People just think these things happen more because of the 24-hour news cycle.

Nevertheless, Obama cries endangered wolf, and here comes his EPA, ready with a slew of new regulations to save the planet. Just what will his plans accomplish? Well, aside from regulating the coal industry towards extinction, upping the ranks of the unemployed, and reducing overall income levels, not much.

In fact, according to EPA modeling, Obama’s Clean Power Plan would avert rising global temperatures by a minuscule 0.02 degrees Celsius.

But we all know this was never about global warming; it’s always been about control. Obama doesn’t want to grow glaciers so much as he wants to put the federal government in every backyard in America.

And he’s doing just that, the law be melted. This past weekend, the EPA implemented new regulations related to the Clean Water Act that pretty much give the federal government control over every pool of water in the country. Astoundingly (or not, given this administration), the EPA went ahead with these rules even though a federal judge had already suspended them in 13 states. But in Obama’s fundamentally transformed America, who cares what the law says?

We’re already seeing what happens when the EPA is truly unleashed. One farmer in Wyoming is facing $16 million in federal fines for building a small dam across a tiny creek on his property — despite the fact that he obtained all necessary state permits. As Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw so eloquently notes, “Because the creek feeds into the Green River the EPA seems to feel that they hold jurisdiction over it, though calling that stream ‘navigable waters’ would require expanding the definition of ‘boats’ to include ‘galoshes.’ Also, the ‘dam’ in question was composed of sand, gravel, clay and concrete blocks, which the agency decided met the criteria for ‘pollutants.’ (Aside from the cinder blocks, those materials are also locally known as ‘the ground.’)”

None of this is surprising in the least. From day one, Obama has disregarded law, ignored facts and ridiculed the American people to push his agenda. And his overreach is making Americans crave a return to Rule of Law.

Indeed, in an op-ed this week in National Review, Senator and Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio laid out where every presidential contender should stand on this and every issue: “The Constitution grants very specific powers to the federal government, and if something isn’t on that list, it falls under the purview of the states. So when I take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, I am going to take that oath very seriously — and that will include allowing the states to control their own energy futures.”

Well said, but watch out, Senator. Pretty soon your speech will be dubbed carbon emissions — ripe for EPA regulation.