You need 2/3 of the states' legislators to amend the constitution. None of the powers to regulate the environment are legal - constitutionally speaking. That's why regulatory bodies don't use the court system. They have their own courts where they are judge, jury and executioner and that is a very dangerous precedent. We do need environmental protection but you have to ask yourself if the interests of the EPA are at all aligned with the interests of people who want to stop polluting? They generally aren't. The lawyers working there are just doing what's best for themselves personally. There is also the issue of the EPA's financiers using the agency to combat innovate energy sources. Right now, there is a full-on-war against any type of alternative energy source. Anything that comes out is defiant of federal regulations in one way or another. I would rather live in a world where we have clean energy than have the government control energy. Government will only do what is most profitable for themselves. Markets tend to sway in the way of what is more profitable for the consumer.
"We do need environmental protection..." So there it is, you're somewhere between the extremes, too. The devil is in the details.
There are other ways to get protection without government. I like to liken the EPA's relationship to big oil like the FDAs to big-pharma. the FDA has an incestuous relationship to big pharma, which subsidizes 1500 FDA employees , many of whom are former big pharma employees and hold stock options in big pharma companies. Big Pharma are publicly traded corporations, who like tobacco companies have one mandate, increase profits for share holders. There is no money in curing people but there is a fortune is treating people cradle to grave, vaccine to insulin and heart meds. Only a revolution will fix this, and only informed people will act .
Of course not. There are some things the Federal Government is the only entity capable of accomplishing. But these responsibilities are very limited - foreign policy, issuing of debt, military, immigration, etc.
I didn't think so. So there it is, you're somewhere between the extremes, too. The devil is in the details.
No true Libertarians are against protecting the environment - that's just something you naive lefties throw around to make us look bad. What we disagree on is the method in which those regulations are put in place and enforced.