EPA’S CLEAN POWER PLAN HAMMERS REPUBLICANS, SPARES DEMOCRATS

The EPA’s final Clean Power Plan, released on August 3, financially hammers coal-dependent states compared to the Obama Administration’s 2014 draft proposal. Nine months after the loss of Kentucky Democrat Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes and the retirement of West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller, the EPA’s attack on coal country is all about going after Republicans.

After the Democrats aligned with the United Mine Workers in the early 20th Century, “coal-country” counties that stretch through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Southern Indiana, Southern Indiana and Alabama had been some of the most reliably Democrat bastions in the nation. A number of coal-country counties voted Democrat in every Presidential election from 1932 to 2004.

But Democrats suffered huge losses in the region due to Bill Clinton’s regulations and Al Gore’s environmentalism, coupled with cultural issues like gun control. The impact crippled a key Democrat advantage. George Bush’s 2000 victory in West Virginia cost Al Gore the U.S. Presidency.

Barack Obama only lost Knott County, KY by 8 percent in 2008. But his cap and tradeproposal, along with his enthusiasm for EPA regulation of coal-fired plants, caused him to lose the county by 48 percent in 2012.

With hopes of salvaging some of the Democratic base in June 2014, the EPA’s Clean Power Plan proposed rule under the Clean Air Act was unveiled as the centerpiece of the Obama Administration’s strategy to address climate change. The proposal had a complicated set of formulas “explicated” in dense bureaucratese in a series of technical support documentsthat varied dramatically from state to state.

Despite huge criticism from coal-country Democrat Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes and the Republicans about the EPA harming their states, the effect of the proposed “disparate treatment” would have allowed much more moderate enforcement of coal-countryCO2 emissions. According to an analysis by the Brookings Institute of the 2014 proposed EPACO2 emissions reductions, the “states that emitted the most were generally asked to do the least.”

Despite easier proposedCO2 treatment in 2014, Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia incumbent Senate Democrat and chairman of the powerful House Commerce Committee, decided not to run for re-election. Five months after the proposed EPA regulations were released, outstanding Democrat Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes lost by 16 percent against Senate Majority Leader 

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

52%

. Coal-country strength helped give Republicans control of the Senate for the first time since 2006.

The final EPA rule is 1,560 pages of complex typeset. But Brookings finds the basic structure is now much more straightforward:

Basically, the EPA has set carbon emissions standards for two types of plants: for fossil fuel-fired steam generating units, 1305 lbs CO2/MWh, and for stationary combustion turbines, 771 lbs CO2/MWh. Now each state’s target is set by looking at a weighted average of their current (2012) fossil fuel-fired electrical generating units and imposing those emission standards.

Where the EPA came up with its CO2-per-megawatt emission standards is sure to be both legally and politically controversial. It is also interesting that nuclear energy seems almost exempt. But it is Republican-controlled states of Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming that will be financially hammered.

The Democrat-controlled states of California and the Northeast are tasked by the EPA with much smaller CO2 reductions, because they supposedly embraced renewables and natural gas.

Via: Brietbart

Continue Reading....

[VIDEO] 16 states ask Obama admin to put power plant rules on hold

WASHINGTON –  The campaign to stop President Barack Obama's sweeping emissions limits on power plants began taking shape Wednesday, as 16 states asked the government to put the rules on hold while a Senate panel moved to block them.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who is leading the charge against the rules, banded together with 15 other state attorneys general in a letter to Environmental Protection Agency head Gina McCarthy requesting that the agency temporarily suspend the rules while they challenge their legality in court. The letter called for the EPA to respond by Friday.

The EPA and the White House both said they believe the limits are legal and have no plans to put them on hold. But by submitting the formal request anyway, the attorneys general are laying the groundwork to ask the courts to suspend the emissions limits instead.

"These regulations, if allowed to proceed, will do serious harm to West Virginia and the U.S. economy," Morrisey said. "That is why we are taking quick action to bring this process to a halt."

The 16 states and a handful of others are preparing to sue the Obama administration to block the rules permanently by arguing they exceed Obama's authority. Bolstered by a recent Supreme Court ruling against the administration's mercury limits, opponents argued that states shouldn't have to start preparing to comply with a rule that may eventually get thrown out by the courts.

The speedy opposition from the states came two days after Obama unveiled the final version of the rules, which mark the first time the U.S. has ever limited carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. Obama's revised plan mandates a 32 percent cut in emissions nationwide by 2030, compared to 2005 levels — a steeper cut than in his earlier proposal.

Most of the attorneys general signing the letter Wednesday are Republicans. Yet they were joined by Jack Conway of the coal-producing state of Kentucky. Conway and Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear are both Democrats, but have joined the state's Republican leaders in denouncing Obama's power plant limits, which form the centerpiece of his plan to fight climate change.

Although the most serious threat to Obama's power plant rules is in the courts, lawmakers in Congress are also pursuing legislative means to stop them. The first vote came Wednesday in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where a bill blocking the rules passed the GOP-controlled panel by a voice vote — but not without a bit of drama.

Over the protests of boycotting Democrats, the Senate GOP-controlled panel approved legislation designed to block the Obama administration from implementing the tough new standards.

Democrats walked out of the committee meeting in protest of a separate bill about pesticides, arguing it should have been the subject of a fact-finding hearing. Lacking the necessary quorum for a vote, Republican Chairman Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma reconvened the meeting in a lunchroom just off the Senate floor, where the aroma of a just-completed GOP lunch was still wafting in the air.

The voice vote approving the bill sends it to the full Senate, where a filibuster battle awaits. Obama has vowed to veto any such legislation, and Republicans have yet to prove they can muster the votes to override his veto.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading.....

[VIDEO] New Nuclear Power Seen as Big Winner in Obama’s Clean Power Plan

The Obama administration gave the struggling U.S. nuclear industry a glimmer of hope this week by allowing new reactors to count more toward meeting federal emissions limits.

States can take more credit for carbon-free electricity to be generated by nuclear power plants that are still under construction as they work to comply with emissions-reduction targets set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The boost for new nuclear was outlined in the Obama administration’s final Clean Power Plan released Monday.

Under last year’s draft of the plan, the yet-to-be completed reactors were counted as existing units that wouldn’t be fully credited for carbon reductions generated in the future after they had started operating. The nuclear power industry complained that amounted to a penalty on the plants and made state targets harder to achieve.

“We tend to view new rules as potentially the first bit of good news for the struggling nuclear industry,” Julien Dumoulin-Smith, an analyst for UBS, wrote on Monday in a research note.

Nuclear operators are facing high maintenance and clean-up costs, as well as competition from cheap natural-gas fueled power plants and low-cost wind and solar generation. About 10 percent of the nation’s nuclear output may retire early because of low energy prices, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

The question of waste disposal also hangs over the industry as efforts to establish a federal repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have stalled.

Existing Reactors

The Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based trade group, said it was “pleased” that the EPA recognized that nuclear plants under construction “should count toward compliance when they are operating.”

Marvin Fertel, president of the nuclear trade group, said by e-mail that the industry was disappointed that existing reactors won’t get credit for their carbon-reduction value, given that some are at risk of early retirement.

New reactor projects, the first in decades, have been plagued by delays and cost increases.

Beneficiaries of the rule changes would include Southern Co. and Scana Corp., which are building new reactors in Georgia and South Carolina, respectively. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which is building a reactor at its Watts Bar facility near Spring City, Tennessee, would also get a boost.

“Nuclear facilities will be credited because it’s new, zero-carbon generation that will be credited as part of a compliance strategy,” said U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “That’s entirely consistent and appropriate.”

Via: Bloomberg

Continue Reading....

WH Anticipates 'A Difficult Transition' to 'Clean Power'

(

CNSNews.com) - President Obama will unveil the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan on Monday, imposing stricter-than-expected carbon dioxide limits on the states.

"There's no doubt that this is going to be a difficult transition," Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday. "But it's a transition that is clearly in the best interests of our economy, it's clearly in the best interest of the health of children all across the country, and it's in the best interests of the planet."

Earnest said he thinks the EPA Clean Power Plan "is the culmination of what the president talked about in 2007 and 2008."

Even before he became president, Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to wean the nation off coal.

"If somebody wants to build a coal fired plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted," Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008.

He added later in the same interview, “Under my plan -- electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Rates may skyrocket, but the White House insists customers' bills will come down -- likely because people won't be able to afford as much electricity.

"If we actually make progress in investing in this clean energy, what we're actually going to do, we're actually going to lower costs for consumers," Earnest said on Monday.

The new rules take effect in 2022, and states must meet the carbon dioxide reduction targets -- a 32 percent reduction from 2005 levels -- by 2030. Obama's proposed rule last year called for a 30 percent cut.

"We're going to take the most important, substantial step that our country's every taken to reduce the causes of climate change," Earnest said on Monday. "And what we're going to do, we're going scale back the carbon pollution that our power generators are currently allowed to spew into the atmosphere."

"For too long, we've seen Washington, D.C., putting off and delaying action, serious action, to fight the causes of climate change. And we've seen special interests mobilize to try to fight any effort to do that. And I have no doubt that special interests in Washington, D.C., are going to squeal -- as are the politicians who are in their pocket.

"But the fact of the matter is, these rules are going to do something to finally confront the causes of climate change, it's actually going to have significant benefits for public heatlth, particularly children with asthma, and it's going to accelerate the progress that we've made already in transitioining to a clean energy economy."

As the Associated Press noted, it will be up to Obama's successor to implement the EPA's Clean Energy Plan. The AP also reported that the Obama administration estimated the emissions limits will cost $8.4 billion annually by 2030.

The actual price won't be clear until states decide how they'll reach their targets. But people in the energy industry said the stricter limits make Obama's mandate even more burdensome, costly and difficult to achieve.

Via: CNS News

Continue Reading....

BUSINESS Report: EPA Broke The Law To Push CO2 Regulations

A new report by a government watchdog group claims the EPA broke federal law by secretly colluding with environmental activists to push the Obama administration’s global warming agenda, and urges the agency to go back to the drawing board on its pending carbon dioxide rule.

A report by the Environment & Energy Legal Institute unveils “records showing illegal activities by EPA staff, colluding with certain environmental group lobbyists to draft EPA’s greenhouse gas (GHG) rules behind the scenes and outside of public view.”

“These emails, which EPA forced us to litigate to obtain, prove beyond any doubt that EPA conducted its campaign to impose the global warming agenda unlawfully, making the rules themselves unlawful,” Chris Horner, an E&E Legal senior attorney, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Horner says the EPA’s rules are unlawful because they were made in collusion with environmental groups, effectively shutting out the public from the process and violating federal law. E&E Legal says the Clean Power Plan and other agency rules were written with an “unalterably closed mind” because it revolved around pushing an anti-fossil fuel agenda.

E&E Legal’s latest report builds off one the group released last year which produced emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request showing coordination between environmentalists and EPA officials. This included emails between environmentalists and EPA employees discussing the Keystone XL pipeline and the technological feasibility of clean coal technology.

Now E&E Legal says FOIA records show “the influence on EPA by pressure groups, the same groups from which EPA obtained numerous senior officials.” These activists were instrumental in crafting the EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” — which regulates carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.

The EPA is expected to finalize the Clean Power Plan as early as Monday, and the White house said it would be “stronger” than the proposed rule that was published last year. Already states have sued to get the rule struck down by the courts, and Republicans are urging governors not to enforce it.

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading....

Driving policies through fraud and fear-mongering

Propaganda tactics employed by the Environmental Protection and its activist allies increasingly employ emotion as a primary media tool. Mothers and children pose on the US Capitol steps, waving signs that claim they are fighting for clean air and their children’s health. Images of these “lovable lobbyists” for EPA’s Clean Power Plan and other rules are intentionally heart-tugging. 

It is maternal instinct versus scientific facts; emotions versus informed debate. If EPA issues dire warnings, that is all these moms need to hear. Indeed, it is hard to overcome such pleadings with cold facts alone.

The well-orchestrated “do something” demonstrations enable politicians and agencies to devise and implement new legislation and regulations. It is much like physicians who succumb to patients’ “do something” demands by prescribing antibiotics for common colds. It is a useless, if not dangerous practice.

The public’s general fear of anything labeled a chemical, or requiring some comfort with numbers, is a powerful psychological tool for alarmists. In-the-street TV interviews showing

fearful reactions to di-hydrogen monoxide represent but one example. The scary-sounding chemical, of course, is H2O: ordinary water.

If the air is hazy, even from natural sources like pine trees, many people automatically assume it is injurious to their health, even if the “pollution” levels are perfectly safe. The dose makes the poison. It’s even worse for invisible toxins. The linear no-threshold mindset now governs virtually all government toxicology programs.

The attitude assumes there is no safe limit. Any and all substances in any amount may be injurious to health, until proven otherwise.  Forgone possible health or economic benefits from the demonized substances are not considered. Economist Julian Simon coined the term “false bad news” to describe how activists, regulators and the media make innocuous substances sound harmful, when they target something and set-out to ban it. 

These crusaders ignore impartial and even convincing scientific rebuttals, since they specialize in publicizing bad news and perpetuating their own prejudiced agendas. Hollywood celebrities and politicians have become pseudo-authoritative fonts of pseudo-scientific knowledge for the media-obsessed public. Actors should be the least believable, as they make a career by pretending to be what they are not and regurgitating words written for them by others. But somehow they become star experts. Many career politicians are little better.

Via: Canada Free Press

Continue Reading....

Mike Pence, Indiana governor, says he’ll defy Obama’s carbon regulations

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence discusses the legislative session that ended the day before during a news conference at the Statehouse in Indianapolis, in this April 30, 2015, file photo. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said Wednesday he will not comply with the Obama administration’s proposal to limit carbon emissions from existing power plants, the centerpiece of the president’s climate-change agenda.

In a letter to President Obama, Mr. Pence demanded that major changes be made to the plan. If those changes are not made, the governor said his state will defy the Environmental Protection Agency regulations, formally known as the Clean Power Plan.

“If your administration proceeds to finalize the Clean Power Plan, and the final rule has not demonstrably and significantly improved from the proposed rule, Indiana will not comply. Our state will also reserve the right to use any legal means available to block the rule from being implemented,” Mr. Pence said in the letter. “Energy policy should promote the safe, environmentally responsible stewardship of our natural resources with the goal of reliable, affordable energy. Your approach to energy policy places environmental concerns above all others.”

The final version of the Clean Power Plan is expected to be released in August. It would dramatically limit carbon emissions from power plants, and the EPA estimates overall U.S. carbon emissions would fall dramatically as a result of the plan.

The agency also admits that the amount of American energy generated by coal would fall by 25 percent after the plan is implemented.

Energy companies and a coalition of states already have challenged the plan in court, but the lawsuit was deemed premature and ultimately was dismissed. Opponents have vowed to file new lawsuits after the final plan is unveiled.

Via Washington Times

Continue Reading.....

EPA Chief: Just Trust Us On Climate Science

DON'T THINK SO!!!!!!

Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, speaks at the Center for American Progress' 2014 Making Progress Policy Conference in Washington Nov. 19, 2014. (REUTERS/Gary Cameron)

Americans are just going to have to trust the EPA’s 44 years of experience dealing with environmental issues when it comes to figuring out ways to cope with man-made global warming, says the agency’s chief.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told Big Think in an interview that while there are limits to how much the federal government can do for issues like global warming, the public needs to trust how the EPA translates the “complicated” science into real-life actions.

“Well I think we all have to recognize the strengths and limitations of government action,” McCarthy said. “But here’s what I think we can do at the federal level more effectively. We can speak to the science because it’s complicated and we do a lot of research and we do a lot of translation of the science into what it means for people so that the decisions can be made on the basis of real science and on the basis of a real technical understanding.”

“That’s how it has worked in EPA’s career for 44 years at EPA is we’ve listened to the science and the law and we have let solutions take off in the marketplace which is where the cheapest, most effective always win,” McCarthy said. “That’s why EPA can move environmental standards forward so effectively and grow jobs at the same time.”

The EPA is on the verge of finalizing rules limiting CO2 emissions from power plants as part of President Barack Obama’s climate agenda. Republicans and industrial lobbies have opposed the rules, saying they will be costly and do nothing to stem warming.

McCarthy, however, has continually argued the EPA’s so-called “Clean Power Plan” will send a signal to the world the U.S. is serious about dealing with global warming and spur innovation in green technology.

“Now what you really want to do at the national level is send long-term signals,” McCarthy said. “And those signals go to people in markets because the best thing EPA and other regulatory agencies need to do is set standards based on what we think the science tells us, the law tells us and what’s achievable.”

“It’s like being in a race and the federal government, you know, says what direction to run and they shoot the starting gun, but the ones in the race become the businesses, the entrepreneurs, the people who are driving new technologies,” she said.

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading.....

The EPA Myth of “Clean Power”

There are many things I do not like about the Environmental Protection Agency, but what angers me most are the lies that stream forth from it to justify programs that have no basis in fact or science, and which threaten the economy.

Currently, its “Clean Power” plan is generating its latest and most duplicitous Administer, Gina McCarthy, to go around saying that it will not be costly, nor cost jobs. “Clean Power” is the name given to the EPA policy to reduce overall U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. It is requiring each state to cut its emissions by varying amounts using a baseline established by the EPA.

Simply said, there is no need whatever to reduce CO2 emissions. Carbon dioxide is not “a pollutant” as the EPA claims. It is, along with oxygen for all living creatures, vital to the growth of all vegetation. The more CO2 the better crops yields will occur, healthier forests, and greener lawns. From a purely scientific point of view, it is absurd to reduce emissions.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal on April 22,Kenneth C. Hill, Director of the Tennessee Regulatory Authority, said “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) set off a firestorm when he advised states not to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. Yet that advice isn’t as radical as his detractors make it sound. As a state public utilities commissioner who deals with the effects of federal regulations on a regular basis, I also recommend that states not comply.”

Noting its final due date in June, that refusal would impose a Federal Implementation Plan on states “that risks even greater harm,” said Hill. “But the problem for the EPA is that the federal government lacks the legal authority under either the Constitution or the Clean Air Act to enforce most of the regulation’s ‘building blocks’ without states’ acquiescence.”

As this is being written there is are two joined cases before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, State of West Virginia v EPA and Murray Energy v EPA. They are a challenge to President Obama’s “War on Coal” and the EPA efforts to regulate its use. Fifteen states, along with select coal companies, have sued for an “extraordinary whit” to prevent the EPA from promulgating the new carbon regulations found it the Clean Power plan.

Via: Canada Free Press

Continue Reading....