WEST VIRGINIA RECORD

One good thing you can say about tyranny is that it gives its victims an opportunity to assert their humanity.

Not many seize that opportunity. Most buckle under and learn to tolerate their oppression. They assent to being treated as less than human.

Once in a while, though, someone stands up and declares, “No more. I’m not a servant or a child. I’m a human being.”

That courageous act may embolden others, and pretty soon you have the makings of a full-scale revolution. Next thing you know, the tyrant’s toppled and everyone wonders why they were ever frightened of the pathetic wretch.

The Environmental Protection Agency can be such a tyrant. For decades, its overbearing bureaucrats too often have succeeded in over-regulating America’s energy producers into submission.

But the EPA’s days of domination may be numbered. One by one, more and more of our greatest energy generators are fighting back, reasserting their right to discover, develop, and distribute energy resources free from unreasonable regulation.Watching them wage their legal battles, which they frequently are winning lately, makes us proud.

Back in August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, concluding that the EPA had exceeded its “statutory authority.”
It was the second judicial slapdown of EPA overreaching in less than a month, the fourth in recent memory.

Now a coalition of oil and natural gas associations is suing the agency in D.C. Circuit Court, charging that the EPA’s recently promulgated air regulations are unfair.

“The new rules and regulations were not based on data representing smaller, independent producers, and they will be disproportionately impacted as a result of the EPA’s rush to judgment,” the group’s counsel said in a press release, explaining that “the EPA promulgated a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to wells based on an industry-wide average.”

Will the associations win the case? We don’t know. The important thing is, they’re fighting back.