The rules of engagement on climate and energy issues are well established. If you take issue with any of the statistics cited by various “experts” on climate science, you are a climate change denier. If you point to long term trends stretching back through several ice ages and raise questions, you are a denier. If you question the efficacy of sinking massive amounts of money and subtracting vast quantities of energy from the available pool to achieve a minimal percentage change while the planet’s worst polluters continue with their practices unabated, you are a denier.

Ken Blackwell, writing at the Washington Times, seems to have had enough of the status quo in the name calling department and has coined a term for those on the other side of the fence. The energy deniers.

In 2015, the “Energy Deniers” in the White House, the EPA, and the U.S. Senate are out in force. Our misguided President, along with Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, are elbowing each other for face time in front of network TV cameras to announce plans to deny the Keystone XL Pipeline, deny access to vast energy resources on federal lands, and deny our potential energy and manufacturing renaissance. And, they’ll do it all by imposing unnecessary and costly new environmental regulations that will surely raise energy prices for all of us while reducing energy production.

Against the backdrop of Sen. Schumer saying we should deny the Keystone Pipeline because it supposedly doesn’t create jobs, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers’ clarion call for a costly new national carbon tax, we now learn of a new move by the White House and the EPA to impose another strict round of environmental regulations that will only drive up the price of energy in the U.S.

This latest move by EPA will have a harmful impact on countless American workers, small businesses, and energy consumers who desperately need affordable energy to make ends meet.

The latest move in question here is the much publicized plan to begin treating methane as the next bogyman of climate change. This, of course, opened the door to new opportunities for taxes and regulation (two of the Obama White House’s favorite obsessions) which will discourage the use of evil fossil fuels and save the world for genetically engineered unicorns.

David Limbaugh, writing for our colleagues at Town Hall, brings this into focus.

His regulations will dramatically cut methane emissions over the next decade.

Based on his record in office and his continuing with these new regulations, it’s hard to tell whether he’s more motivated by his allegiance to environmental cultism or a visceral aversion to business. Or perhaps those interests are so interlocked that we needn’t quibble over which is dominant on Obama’s priority list.

Obama’s fellow pseudo-scientists, convinced that methane — the primary component of natural gas — traps heat in the atmosphere even more than carbon dioxide, are determined to target it to prevent global warming, I mean climate change. The regulations will require the oil and gas industry (which leftist enviro-wackos regard as double evil because they are both “big awl” and “big bidness”) to cut methane emissions by between 40 and 45 percent by 2025.

But not to worry; the implementation and monitoring of these draconian regulations will be quarterbacked by the power-mad, self-righteous and unaccountable Environmental Protection Agency. What could go wrong?

Indeed, what could go wrong with the EPA’s steady hand on the tiller of this brilliant new strategy? Very soon my friends, the long awaited promises will come true. The rise of the oceans will slow and begin to recede. The massively polluting governments of places such as China and India will see the error of their ways, give up on the foolish idea of outperforming us on the economic front and slash their emissions as well as their profitability. Then we’ll all sit down together for a huge feast of turkey shaped tofu.

It’s a brave new world, citizens. You can just feel it in the air. But to be in the safe side, take up knitting, purchase a few sheep and begin making extra blankets. Oh… and you might want to stock up on candles before the prices skyrocket.