The American Pundit

With cap-and-tax looming on the horizon in the U.S. Senate, how long before we start seeing environmental police here in the states? You know, all in the name of “saving the environment”. Freedom is usually taken away in the name of some supposedly good cause. Just look at this cute polar bear while we infringe on your basic rights.

The agency is creating a unit of about 50 auditors and inspectors, complete with warrant cards and the power to search company premises to enforce the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), which comes into effect next year.

Decked out in green jackets, the enforcers will be able to demand access to company property, view power meters, call up electricity and gas bills and examine carbon-trading records for an estimated 6,000 British businesses. Ed Mitchell, head of business performance and regulation at the Environment Agency, said the squad would help to bring emissions under control. “Climate change and CO2 are the world’s biggest issues right now. The Carbon Reduction Commitment is one of the ways in which Britain is responding.”

The formation of the green police overcomes a psychological hurdle in the battle against climate change. Ministers have long recognised the need to have new categories of taxes and criminal offences for CO2 emissions, but fear a repetition of the fuel tax protests in 2000 when lorry drivers blockaded refineries.

The central unit, based in Warrington, Cheshire, can call on the agency’s national network of hundreds of pollution inspectors, many of whom will soon be trained in CO2 monitoring.

It will also be able to demand energy bills from utilities without the companies under investigation knowing they are being watched.

I sometimes question as to whether the Brits know that 1984 was a warning and not an instruction manual.

With the cap-and-tax legislation before Congress, putting government-mandated caps on the release of carbon emissions by companies, we’re only a few steps away from our own form of the EnviroCops. Chances are that President Obama would implement the concept here immediately if he could. But Democrats will find a way in the future, perhaps guilting Americans into giving up rights to privacy by showing them a polar bear adrift on a chunk of ice. Or maybe, with their control of 60 votes in the Senate, they’ll just pass it without even attempting justification.

Now is the time to stop this insanity. Michelle Malkin has the numbers to call to help put a halt to the cap-and-tax gateway legislation. Call like your basic rights and freedoms depend on stopping this legislation. They just might.

Thanks to Ed Morrissey.