How "Big Environment" Gets Bigger

This strange relationship goes well beyond the Environmental Defense Fund. Indeed, several environmental groups that have received millions in EPA grants regularly file suit against that same agency. A dozen green groups were responsible for more than 3,000 suits against the EPA and other government agencies over the past decade, according to a study by the Wyoming-based Budd-Falen Law Offices.

The EPA even tacitly encourages such suits, going so far as to pay for and promote a "Citizen's Guide" that, among other things, explains how to sue the agency under "citizen suit" provisions in environmental laws. The guide's author — the Environmental Law Institute — has received $9.9 million in EPA grants over the past decade.

The above from Investor's Business Daily.

I have received emails and comments from people who disagree with my characterization of World Wildlife Fund, Environmental Defense Fund, etc., as "Big Environment." These are huge groups with vast resources. Worse, there is an incestuous relationship between the government's Environmental Protection Agency and Big Environment.

EPA hands the Big Environment groups money to sue EPA to enact some sort of environmental regulation that would never pass Congress. EPA goes around Congress to enact the regulation and says, "we had to, we were sued." It is a perversion of the democratic process.

This has gone on for years under both Democrat and Republican administrations. It needs to stop.


Hat tip: Instapundit.