Richard Burr votes to let Tennessee pollute North Carolina mountains

Why is Senator Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) working to protect North Carolina mountains and air quality, while Senator Burr (R-Duke Energy) is voting to protect corporate polluters?

Remarks by Senator Whitehouse:

"It seems fairly recently that this summer I came to the floor to commend the Environmental Protection Agency for finalizing what we call the cross-state air pollution rule which limits the out-of-state pollution that one state can dump into the wind currents to drop on other states. My state, Rhode Island, this is particularly important to. Nearly a decade after the EPA began working to address this problem of interstate air pollution, we finally had a path forward that is sensible and protective of public health. That was then. This is now. Today, Senator Paul of Kentucky proposes to halt this progress to undo that rule, put away congressional review act resolution. That resolution would, one, void the cross-state air pollution rule, and, two, bar EPA permanently from ever writing a substantially similar rule. This means that EPA could never use the clean air act to create a cost-effective pollution trading program to address upwind pollution."

Wrong-headed choices by Richard Burr don't much surprise me anymore, but his vote to prevent the EPA from doing one of its most important jobs is unconscionable. And just to be clear, no other state is upwind of North Carolina. There is only upside for our state in having the EPA involved in reducing interstate pollution.

Richard Burr didn't vote to protect North Carolina mountains, so who did he vote to protect?