Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 12/21/2011 3:17:31 PM PST by jazusamo
President Obama and Capitol Hill Republicans broke sharply Wednesday over new EPA power plant pollution rules , underscoring election-season divides about environmental regulation that have spilled onto the campaign trail.
The White House sought to put Obama’s stamp on the new mercury standards for coal-fired power plants while emphasizing that the administration is providing “flexibility” to industry.
In a video posted on the White House website Wednesday, Obama said his administration has had “enough” of efforts to delay clean air rules, noting that 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act mandated limits on mercury pollution from power plants.
“Today, my administration is saying, ‘enough,’” Obama said in the video. “We’re announcing new commonsense, cost-effective standards to dramatically reduce harmful air pollution. Because we’re acting, emissions of mercury and other pollutants, which cause a range of health problems including neurological damage in children, will decrease significantly.”
Obama’s public backing for the regulations stands in stark contrast to his September decision to scuttle EPA’s highly anticipated rules to toughen smog regulations. The move was a major blow to environmental groups, which had pushed for the standards for years.
“This is a good day,” Obama said Wednesday of the rules to cut emissions of mercury, arsenic, acid gas and several other air toxics. “It’s a good day in the fight for clean air. It’s a good day in the fight for healthier communities and it’s a good day for the fight to protect our environment for the generations of Americans still to come.”
But Obama also sought to temper Republican and industry criticism of the regulations. He issued a memorandum Wednesday calling on EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to “address any concerns with respect to electric reliability.”
The memo is a response to critics of the regulations, who have alleged that the the rules will cause so many power plants to shut down that the reliability of the country’s power grid could be compromised.
The Obama administration has pushed back in recent months on allegations that the rules will cause power outages. The Energy Department issued a report earlier this month that said the regulations will not threaten the reliability of the country’s electric grid. The EPA has come to the same conclusion.
Obama’s public support comes during a presidential campaign season in which EPA has been a frequent target of Republicans gunning for Obama’s job.
Many Republican candidates have accused EPA of pursuing an overzealous regulatory agenda on greenhouse gases and other issues. Even former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who has sought to position himself as a relative moderate in the GOP field, has lambasted EPA’s “regulatory reign of terror.”
The new standards drew criticism Wednesday from a number of senior Republicans who echoed coal industry claims about threats to electricity reliability and called the rules overly expensive.
“Under the rules, parts of the country face very real threats of rolling brownouts and blackouts. Most concerning is the tremendous impact this rule will have on low-income families who are struggling just to keep the lights on,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) in a statement.
The House passed legislation earlier this year that mandates a delay of roughly a half-dozen years at least, and forces EPA to soften the rules, but the measure has not advanced in the Senate.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) vowed Wednesday to challenge the rules under the Congressional Review Act, a mid-1990s statute that gives Congress a path to overturn federal rules.
“As Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, I am determined to apply the brakes to President Obama’s runaway regulatory agenda before it wrecks our economy,” Inhofe said in a statement.
Congressional Review Act resolutions cannot be filibustered, but the law is a blunt instrument that in this case would force Congress to nullify — not amend rules that limit dangerous air toxics.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) fell well short of the needed votes in November when he sought to use the law to kill a separate EPA power plant rule.
The long-delayed mercury rules drew strong support from a number of Capitol Hill Democrats on Wednesday.
“Power plants are not only the nation’s largest source of dangerous mercury emissions, but they also pollute the air we breathe with lead, arsenic, chromium, and cyanide,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, noting that the regulations will stem toxics linked to cancer and impaired neurological development in children.
Boxer also touted EPA estimates that the rules will create up to 46,000 short-term construction jobs and 8,000 long-term utility jobs.
EPA estimates that the rule will cost $9.6 billion annually but bring yearly health benefits that reach up to $90 billion.
So Democrats force us to put mercury in our houses in the form of CFC bulbs and then are going to crush our electric grid in the name of cutting mercury emissions. What’s the common thread here? Only one: Turning out the lights in America...
“...new standards mandated by...1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act...”
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What Congress gives, congress can take away.
When will “we the people” wake up?
I live very close to a coal powered 550MW power plant. No one has ever complained about mercury, arsenic, acid gas or anything from it. The bass in the cooling lake are huge, and the Fish and Game commission has not banned anyone from eating the fish. The plant lands are deer factories, and bald eagles nest here in winter. I saw one just last week, and I saw 5 head of deer a few minutes ago.
The plant has had precipitators to remove fly ash, and is in the process of installing scrubbers even though they use Powder River coal which is very low in sulfur. They didn't need scrubbers till the enviros began to whine and cry for them.
The federal bureaucracy has become a leviathan that is now a direct threat to each and every one of us. It needs to be dissolved and rebuilt from the ground up, IMO.
The enviro nutjobs getting the backing of Dems years back has cost us huge amounts and with a president like Obama these continued pathetic regulations will bankrupt not only many companies but many people and possibly the country.
Don’t forget to shut down the DOE. They’ve failed at their main task, plus what did the country do for energy before the DOE?
Question: Does the coal that is under the Escalante National Monument in Utah of the type and quality that would generate fewer of these emissions?
When Clinton locked up access to that resurce early in his term, the excuse given then was that so much pristine wilderness would be destroyed by strip mining, that the entire character of the region would be destroyed.
Actually it was to provide a large campaign contributor monopoly marketing rights to coal from Indonesia (remember Lippo Group?) by locking up its only competing source here in the US.
The EPA exists at the pleasure of Congress.
When the EPA exercises tyrannical powers, it does so with the approval of Congress.
But, by all means, reelect your present Congressman and Senators.
(not directed at jazusamo)
But not today! Not even 30 years ago!
I just can't see how those independent GOV run agencies could come
to any other conclusion under this administration.
Agreed, they’re lying through their teeth, IMO.
That pic reminds me of being raised in an orange grove area in Southern Calif. In the colder parts of winter they’d put the smudge pots in operation and the soot from them was a mess, fortunately the cold spells in the area were few.
“...coal that is under the Escalante National Monument in Utah...”
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Here is an old thread on the subject of the LOW SULFUR coal that Clinton put off limits.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/724170/posts
Perhaps when voters go to the polls in November they should have recent memories of rolling blackouts, sitting in sweltering homes because they cannot afford to cool them and more job layoffs as businesses are hit by higher electric costs.
I believe that’s a pretty fair possibility. Electric rates are already very high in parts of the country, this move will increase those rates.
You are talking about California and it doesn’t seem to have changed the voters minds. In fact they keep voting for more of it.
That’s the brilliance of this strategy. When these and various other regulations go into full force and effect (after the end of Obama’s second term but inevitably even if he doesn’t win in 2012), the price of electricity necessarily will skyrocket even as availability drops dramatically. This restriction in electric supply will intensify the already escalating unemployment and accelerate economic decline of our country.
Meanwhile, the prices of goods and services—or at least those still legal and available in the private economy (not healthcare, which will be outlawed except as big government may ration it)—must soar to compensate for the increased cost of inputs. Concomitant with this economic collapse, taxes must soar to repay the federal debt and to support the burgeoning welfare classes, increasingly billionaire bankers and others already affluent who can afford to bribe politicians for favors.
In consequence of these restrictions, the legions of unemployed Americans and even many families lucky enough to avoid work necessarily will drop or lose their electrical services, concentrating their remaining purchasing power (if any) on such necessities as sustenance, shacks, and blankets (to the extent allowed by law). Even those who can afford electricity—especially if they are comprise a majority still—will go on rolling blackouts. For example, if you live in a middle-class neighborhood in Texas, you might get electricity during the summer only on Mondays and Thursdays between 1 am and 4 am only if the ambient temperature is less than 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
And here’s the brilliance of this regime: those toxic compact fluorescent lamps, made in China, won’t work without electricity. So most families will get rid of them or never buy them. See how this great policy will reduce mercury exposure!
The Obama Administration already will have subjected the healthcare sector and then will conquer the energy sector, thus vanquishing the two otherwise most likely engines of economic growth in the coming decades. The technology sector will shrink but announce new products (if still legal) to help those who can afford them to adapt to the new austerities. Then, I fear, Big Government intensifies its attacks against the Church, which already have begun.
These assertions of too-high mercury, lead, and arsenic emissions need more back up that what I’ve seen anywhere, especially for a ruling that will result in a double digit percentage increase in electricity costs.
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