Reid-Gardner coal-fired generating plant near Moapa, Nevada.

Reid-Gardner coal-fired generating plant near Moapa, Nevada.

Whether it’s the costliest regulation in history or the coal-killing power plant rules (that Obama’s law professor says raise “constitutional questions”), it’s clear that the CIA isn’t the only government agency engaged in torture. At least the CIA isn’t torturing Americans.

In a sucker punch against the EPA, the American Energy Alliance, a fossil fuel shill tied to the billionaire Koch Bros., published a short blog post along with a made-for-AEA cartoon with the same message:The cartoon shows a copy of a so-called EPA Torture Report, the implication being that regulations are killing jobs, crushing businesses and raising energy prices and that this is as bad, even worse, that what the CIA did in secret prisons and the Guantánamo Bay military prison.

Shameless and deeply offense propaganda on the AEA's part. But given where much of its funding comes from, not a bit surprising.

Emily Atkin at ThinkProgress pointed out:



There is reason to doubt the dramatic monetary and job losses predicted by the American Energy Alliance and other industry groups as a result of the proposed EPA regulations. For one, both regulations are in proposed stages, meaning the final rules could look drastically different than they are now. For another, industry groups have been vastly overestimating the cost of environmental regulations like these since the EPA first began issuing regulation of this kind. […] The EPA predicts substantial environmental and public health benefits as a result of both the ozone and carbon regulations. For the strictest ozone standard, the EPA predicts savings of up to $38 billion annually in 2025 for a standard of 65 parts per billion, savings derived from prevented illnesses, missed sick days, and other problems triggered by smog. For the carbon rule, the EPA estimates public health and climate benefits worth an estimated $55 billion to $93 billion per year in 2030.

It takes an immense amount of chutzpah to claim those results come anywhere near torture.