HoodaThunk?

(Fascinating update down at the bottom: Apparently they’re questioning the thought that greenhouse gases and global warming links have been sufficiently proven!)

There’s no cover for the Obama administration now. They know full well that what critics of the President’s cap-and-trade fiasco are saying is true. We know they know because they’re saying so in their internal memo’s. Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air points us to this Jake Tapper report at ABC:

Advice in an Obama administration interagency review memo to the Environmental Protection Agency warns that government regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act (CAA) will hurt the economy, and questions whether such a “precautionary” move would too expansively open up the door for government regulation.

“Making the decision to regulate CO2 under the CAA for the first time is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S. economy, including small businesses and small communities,” says one comment in the memo, which was officially sent by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

To say nothing of the fact that attempting to do any such thing without the cooperation of other highly industrial nations like India and China will do little good, it’s kicking the American economy while it’s down. As Morrissey says:

This memo destroys the argument made by Obama often over the last two years that cap-and-trade would wind up being an economic boon.  Obama had argued that a renewed emphasis on green energy production would be akin to landing on the moon, a big government program that boosted employment in pursuit of an ambitious goal.  The difference between the two is that the space program didn’t impose massive burdens on the airline industry to pay for it, or on the auto industry, or Amtrak.

Indeed.

Update: The Hill has also reported this memo but mentioned something ABC did not:

An EPA finding last month that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health rests on dubious assumptions and could have negative economic impacts, a memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) warned.

The memo has no listed author but is marked “Deliberative–Attorney Client Privilege.” A spokesman for OMB told Dow Jones Newswires that the brief is a “conglomeration of counsel we’ve received from various agencies” about the EPA finding, the conclusions of which would trigger regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The author(s) of the memo suggest the EPA did not thoroughly examine the relationship between greenhouse gases and human health.

Emphasis mine. The memo goes on to note that the EPA made its finding based on alleged harm resulting from substances that “have no demonstrated direct health effects” and that these allegations, “scientific data that purports to conclusively establish” that harm, come from outside the EPA as opposed to any research and conclusions the agency reached on its own.

Sounds like that Gore consensus isn’t so much a consensus, doesn’t it?