[VIDEO] Obama Addresses (GOP) Critics of Clean Power Plan: 'If You Care About Low-Income Minority Communities...'

(CNSNews.com) - "No challenge poses a greater threat to our future and future generations than a changing climate," President Obama said Monday in a speech announcing his plan to achieve a 32-percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by the year 2030.

He spent about a third of his speech refuting critics and "cynics who say it cannot be done."

And he managed to sneak in a plug for Obamacare while he was at it:

"Today, an African American child is more than twice as likely to be hospitalized from asthma. A Latino child is 40 percent more likely to die from asthma. So if you care about low-income minority communities, start protecting the air that they breathe, and stop trying to rob them of health care.

"And you could also expand Medicaid in your states, by the way," the president said, prompting laughter.

The Democrats' Affordable Care Act required the states to expand their Medicaid programs to cover people at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level. But two years later, in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court said the decision to expand Medicaid programs must be left to the individual states; the federal government could not compel such expansion. To date, 20 states still have not expanded their Medicaid programs.

Although President Obama did not name the critics of his Clean Power Plan on Monday, he clearly was addressing Republicans.

"We've hear the same stale arguments before," he said. "Every time America has made progress, it's been despite these kinds of claims. Whenever America sets clear rules and smarter standards for our air, our water, our children's health, we get the same scary stories about killing jobs and businesses and freedom."

Obama then told a story about arriving in Los Angeles for college as an 18-year-old, in late August.

"I was moving from Hawaii. And I got to the campus, and I decided I had a lot of pent-up energy, and I wanted to take a run, and after about five minutes, suddenly, I had this weird feeling like I couldn't breathe. And the reason was, back in 1979, Los Angeles still was so full of smog that there were days where people who were vulnerable just could not go outside, and they were fairly frequent."

He got personal again at the end of his speech:

"I don't want my grandkids not to be able to swim in Hawaii or not to be able to climb a mountain and see glacier because we didn't do something about it. I don't want millions of people's lives disrupted and this world more dangerous because we didn't do something about it. That'd be shameful of us.

"This is our moment to get this right and leave something better for our kids. Let's make most of that opportunity."

At Monday's White House briefing, spokesman Josh Earnest said the Clean Power Plan will prompt states and individual utilities to "ramp up their investments in efficiency, ramp up their investments in renewable energy, which is cheaper to produce than energy that's produced by coal, and making those kinds of investments will lead to savings in the utility bills of customers down the line, and that is what we're focused on, both in terms of saving consumers money but also a whole set of benefits that are associated with shifting to renewable energy or the use of less energy."

President Obama refuted critics who "claim that this plan will cost you money, even though this plan, the analysis shows, will ultimately save the average American nearly $85 a year on their energy bills."

Via: CNS News

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Kerry Tells China: ‘Because of Climate Change in U.S. We Are Ending Any Funding’ of ‘Coal-Fired Power’

Secretary of State John Kerry and PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on May 16, 2015. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

(CNSNews.com) - At a joint press conference in Beijing yesterday with People’s Republic of China Foreign Minister Wang Yi, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Obama administration intends to cooperate closely with the PRC leading into a U.N. climate conference in Paris in December and that the U.S. is “ending any funding” of coal-fired power projects.

President Barack Obama's fiscal 2016 budget proposal calls for increasing taxes on the coal industry by $4.252 billion from 2016-2025 while providing "refundable" tax credits to "renewable" energy projects such as solar and wind power facilities.

“There are three key meetings that we are all working on together to prepare for in order to build success,” said Kerry. “One is the Security and Economic Dialogue that will take place in June in Washington. Two is the summit between President Xi and President Obama to take place in September. And three is the global meeting that we are working on together regarding climate change in Paris in December.”

“The United States and China are also cooperating more closely than ever to address climate change, one of the greatest threats facing our planet today,” said Kerry. “Last fall, our respective presidents came together to announce our countries’ greenhouse gas commitments, the reductions, and we continue to call on other nations around the world to set their own ambitious targets. And we agreed this morning that as we get closer to the UN Climate Conference in Paris later this year, the United States and China, the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters, will elevate our cooperation and coordination so that we can reach the kind of global agreement that we will need to ultimately address this threat.”

“Because of climate change in the United States, we are ending any funding – public money – that funds coal-fired power projects because of their impact on the climate,” said Kerry. “And we encourage China and other countries to do the same.”

“We need to continue to strengthen our communication and coordination on climate change to jointly ensure the success of the upcoming climate conference in Paris later this year,” said the U.S. secretary of state. “Meanwhile, we need to also work together to advance our bilateral practical cooperation on climate change.”

Via: CNS News

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The EPA Coal Tour

A “listening tour” that is bypassing coal-producing and -consuming areas.

This week bureaucrats from the Environmental Protection Administration have embarked on a “Listening Tour” of eleven cities to solicit feedback on their on-going campaign to shut down the nation’s coal industry.

The cities they will be visiting over the next two weeks are: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, Chicago, Lenexa, KS, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, and Seattle. Do you notice anything unusual about those cities? They are all outside the nation’s coal consuming and producing regions. Only two cities — Denver and Lenexa — get more than half their electricity from coal and most don’t have a coal plant within 50 miles. The entire West Coast consumes less than 1 percent of the nation’s coal as opposed to 35 percent consumed in the Industrial Belt stretching from Detroit to Birmingham, represented here only by one city, Chicago.

What the EPA is “listening” for, of course, is adulation from urban elites who don’t know anything about energy but are happy to hear about how the federal bureaucrats are dealing with the world-threatening catastrophe of global warming. Here’s how the cities on the list get their electricity:

• Boston. Coal accounts for only 3 percent of Massachusetts’ electricity, 6 percent of New England’s. The Brayton Point Coal Station, 50 miles south of Boston, largest of six remaining plants in the region, will close in 2017 because of the EPA regulations. In July, Scientific Americanreported that coal has become “virtually extinct in New England.”
• New York. New York City gets none of its power from coal. The closest coal plant on the New York grid is in Watertown, 320 miles to the north, near the Canadian border.
• Philadelphia. All the coal plants in the Philadelphia area have been closed down. Electricity now comes from natural gas and nuclear. Pennsylvania’s remaining coal plants are in the Pittsburgh region.

Via: American Spectator

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The Daily Bulletin - October 29, 2013 - Coal and Oil Report

TODAY’S TAKEAWAY: COAL STATES RALLY AGAINST THE EPA

The push-back from coal states will come today as coal miners descend on Washington for a“Count on Coal” rally at the Capital. Thousands are expected to participate. Meanwhile, coal state representatives – including a few Democrats – are sending letters to President Obama and EPA officials calling the new regulations “job killers.” There’s a bit of dissent elsewhere as well. Elias Hinckley, writing on The Energy Collective, points out that investing in power plants is a long-term project and the uncertain environment endangers the coal industry. Peter Glaser, an energy and environment attorney in Washington, writing in The Hill, points out that the EPA may be getting a little ahead of the technology by making everyithing but carbon capture-and-storage illegal.  And the Minot Daily News says EPA may be doing more harm than good.  Meanwhile, EPA officials embarked on a victory lap around the country this week, visiting 11 major cities to get feedback on its new campaign – but carefully avoiding coal country in the process.

GOOD THINGS COMING IN NORTH DAKOTA?

The revelation that flaring of gas in the Bakken has moved the United States back up in the top ranks of gas wasters has been a recent embarrassment. But William Tucker, on Fuel Freedom, finds that good things may be in the works. A lawsuit filed last week by property owners claiming that they are losing royalties may prove a spur to getting the oil drillers to act. Moreover, there appears to be new technology coming down the line. “Gas Technologies, a Michigan company, has just developed a conversion device that sits on the back of a trailer and can be hauled from well to well. ‘We have a patented process that reduces capital costs up to 70%,’ said CEO Walter Breidenstein. ‘If we’re using free flare gas, we can reduce the cost of producing methanol another 40-5%.’ Other companies are working on similar technologies for converting natural gas to methanol on-site. . . . Of course, Walter Breidenstein will probably find that flared gas will not be offered for free. Those Bakken property owners still want their royalties. But the North Dakota lawsuit proves a spur for on-site methanol conversion and great opportunity to highlight the role methanol could play in our transportation economy.”You know what they say, every crisis presents an opportunity.

Via: Real Clear Energy

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Rules that could 'kill'? Safety, cost concerns over EPA's new coal regs

New clean-energy rules pushed through by the Obama administration are raising concerns that they could cripple the coal industry -- and may require power plants to use technology so risky that even the president's former top energy official once warned it could "kill."

The EPA, by Friday, is expected to release a new proposal to set the first-ever carbon dioxide limits for new power plants. 

To meet those emissions caps, power plants would likely have to use what is known as "carbon-capture technology," which involves burying the carbon underground. 

The technology, which is still under development, remains expensive and not commercially available. But there are lingering safety risks. 

Steven Chu, who served until recently as President Obama's energy secretary, cautioned in a 2007 talk sponsored by the Berkeley Lab in California that the process could be dangerous and bring legal challenges -- as well as additional costs -- for the companies involved. 

Though he said the carbon would be stable in the long-term, the chief concern would be that in its initial state "as a big bubble of gas," it might leak to the surface. He seemed to describe those concerns as legitimate. 

Via: Fox News

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Sen.Manchin Says Obama's Coal Policy's Beating The Crap Out His State (Too Late Joe You Helped To Elect Him)

West Virginia knew what it was doing when it overwhelmingly voted against President Obama in the recent election, they were trying to save their jobs. The number two coal mining state in the country knew that the President's energy policy has a goal of killing the coal industry. Well not everybody in the state knew. West Virginia Democratic Senator Manchin woke up this morning and realized that the president he helped to elect is anti-Coal.

Manchin exploded over the Obama administration’s anti-coal policies during a senate hearing today. 

We’re getting the living crap beaten out of us, there has been nothing more beat up than coal.

Manchin voiced his frustrations with rules put forward by Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency which have made it more costly and difficult for coal plants and coal mines to operate. 

They just beat the living daylights out of little West Virginia, but they sure like what we produce,” Manchin added. “We could do it a lot better if we had a government working with us as a partner. 

Manchin’s remarks were made while questioning Ron Binz, Obama’s nominee to head up the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates electric grids, gas pipelines, natural gas export terminals and hydroelectric power plants.

Hopefully come election time, West Virginia voters will remember that Joe Manchin helped to elect the guy who put them out of business.  Especially when one considers it is about to get much, much, worse.

This week, the EPA is expected to finally release its New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), which will set emissions standards not just for the construction of future power plants, but for existing ones also.

Via: The Lid

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Democrats Launch Pro-Coal Group

A handful of Democrats with ties to coal industry lobbyists have created a new group with the purpose of emphasizing the importance of the fuel sources among the party, which is increasingly hostile to coal power.

The CoalBlue Project launched shortly after President Barack Obama rolled out a new climate plan that observers say will devastate the coal industry.

The group says it will “advocate[e] within the Democratic Party for policies that recognize coal as an essential part of the transition to cleaner fuels, are supportive of the development and deployment of clean coal technologies, and include sustainable coal as an equal partner in the mix of future sustainable fuels.”

CoalBlue members include Democratic politicians from coal-heavy states such as West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, according to a Friday report from the Huffington Post.

Some staffers for the group also have ties to lobbying firms that work on behalf of the industry.

[Secretary Stefan] Bailey was a congressional staffer for nine years, working for [Rep. Nick] Rahall [(D., W. Va.)] and former Sen. Evan Bayh (D., Ind.). He is now a director at the government relations firm Prime Policy Group, whose lobbying clients include energy companies such as Duke Energy, the largest electric utility in the U.S. Bailey said that he’s working with CoalBlue as a volunteer, and that the group is not affiliated with his firm.

CoalBlue Project president Jon Wood is the former vice president of government and external affairs for Alpha Natural Resources, one of the largest coal producers in the U.S. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wood is still a registered lobbyist for Alpha. He worked previously for the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.).

It is unclear whether the effort will be able to sway the White House, given its position that, as one White House climate adviser put it, “a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.”

Via: WFB

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In the Energy Debate between Palin and Obama...Obama Lost

You  know we can't just drill our way to lower gas prices. If we're going to take control of our energy future, and can start avoiding these annual gas price spikes that happen every year when the economy starts getting better, world demand starts increasing, turmoil in the Middle East or some other parts of the world, if we're going to stop being at the mercy of these world events, then we need a sustained, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy - oil, gas, wind, solar, and nuclear, and biofuels, and more.

President Obama made these remarks in February of 2012 at the University of Miami.  The President was criticizing the longstanding argument of political rival Sarah Palin, who urges the nation to "drill, baby, drill."

Palin expounded on these sentiments in 2010:

Although the Left chooses to mock the mantra of "drill, baby, drill," and they ignorantly argue against the facts pertaining to the need for America to responsibly develop her domestic supply of natural resources, surely they can't argue the national security implications of relying on foreign countries to extract supplies that America desperately needs for industry, jobs, and security. Some of the countries we're now reliant upon and will soon be beholden to can easily use energy and mineral supplies as a weapon against us.

In 2011, in an interview with the CBS affiliate WTKR in Hampton Roads, Virginia, the president contradicted his own remarks suggesting that oil prices cannot be lowered by arguing:

Via: American Thinker

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Oil and gas production just keep falling under President Obama

President Obama certainly knows how to talk a good game when it comes to energy policy; to the low-information layman, “all of the above” sounds like a superficially excellent plan. Work on green energy development, but keep the traditional fuel production comin’ — it’s the best of both worlds, right? Except that that’s not what the Obama administration has done at all. While the feds have poured billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars into picking economic winners and losers in the clean-energy field, Obama’s EPA/Energy/Interior team have waged a regulatory war on the coal industry and only allowed for relatively scant permitting for drilling projects.

Obama & Co. are big fans of taking credit for the increase in oil production that’s taking place on the domestic scene right now, but the credit is actually due to permits issued under President Bush (one of the few things he’s unwilling to credit to the “previous administration,” heh) and increased production on private and state lands. As Daniel Kishdetailed in USNews yesterday, the Energy Information Administration recently released itsAnnual Energy Review 2011, and it demonstrates just how much Obama’s policy isn’t so much “all of the above” as “nothing from below”:

In reality, data shows that oil and gas production is actually falling on federal lands. Offshore oil production was the lowest since 2008, and natural gas production on federal lands was the lowest since 2003. Coal production on federal lands has fallen as well. Coal production was the lowest since 2006. Energy Information Administration also reports that 2011 had the highest average price for gasoline in U.S. history, and 2009-2011 has seen the highest average real electricity prices since the early 1990s.

(Read Full Article)

Via: CA Political Review

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Obama to Coal Miners: “McDonalds is Hiring!”

Obama, the first President in history to declare war on the coal industry and who vowed to put the industry out of business, was curiously confident that every union coal miner would vote for him in the upcoming Presidential election—despite the fact that in doing so, they were putting themselves out of a job.

And Hugh Betcha, Ace Reporter and winner of MSNBC’s “Most Honest Reporter in America” award, 2012 was there. Hugh, the Head of the Stoos Views Media Conglomerate Natural Resources Bureau, and old friend of the President, and a reporter who enjoys special access to all branches of government, pulled no punches. As Obama sneaked his daily Marlboro inside the Oval Office, Hugh inquired of the President as to his chances of retaining the union coal miners’ vote in the upcoming election.

“Didn’t you promise to bankrupt the coal mining industry after you were elected President?” Hugh asked.

“Well, yes I did suggest that if you planned to start a coal fired energy plant in America you would find it hard to obtain a license or, if you did, you could not afford the cost of the EPA regulations we have imposed on the coal industry,” the President responded.

“You mean the extra scrubbers you are requiring of each coal fired plant—which will cost the industry over $180 billion in the next twenty years and is designed to put them all out of business?”
“Yes, we want to clean up this dirty industry and clean the air above our country.”

“Well, what about the dirty air wafting over the United States from China—where they are building a coal fired energy plant once a week and have no regulations?” Hugh asked pointedly.

“I cannot control what the Chinese do of course and since we owe them trillions we are not in much of a position to argue with them. The best I can do is put our own coal industry out of business and thereby clean the air—if only briefly until the Chinese smog drifts over.”

Via Canada Free Press

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Report: More than 200 coal-fired generators slated for shutdown

Within the next three to five years, more than 200 coal-fired electric generating units will be shut down across 25 states due to EPA regulations and factors including cheap natural gas, according to a new report by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).

“This is further evidence that EPA is waging a war on coal, and a war on affordable electricity prices and jobs. EPA continues to ignore the damage that its new regulations are causing to the U.S. economy and to states that depend on coal for jobs and affordable electricity,” said Mike Duncan, president and CEO of ACCCE, in a statement.

However, ACCCE notes that EPA policies may have played a role more than 4,800 megawatts of announced closures not included on in their report which would bring total shutdowns to 241 coal generator in 30 states — more than 36,000 MW of electric generation or 11 percent of the U.S. coal fleet.

The most affected states include Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina, which will see a combined 103 coal-fired generators shut down.

“Actually our utility rates are higher and the impact is such that it’s going to interfere with the quality of life that a lot of individuals have in my community,” said John McNeil, mayor of Red Springs, N.C., in an ACCCE video — one of the heavily affected states.

According to ACCCE, coal provides more than half of North Carolina’s power. Poorer areas, like Red Springs, where a number of residents are on fixed income or live below the poverty line, are adversely affected by higher electricity bills because they eat up a greater portion of their income.

“During my lifetime, Red Springs has gone through some fairly significant changes. We don’t have the large textile plants which provide employments opportunities for many people. We’ve just shifted away,” said John Roberts of John’s Fuel Service, also in Red Springs.

Via: The Daily Caller

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