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Why You Should Mourn Implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement
Townhall.com ^ | April 7, 2016 | Calvin Beisner

Posted on 04/07/2016 8:06:22 AM PDT by Kaslin

The climate agreement reached in Paris last December will become effective on Earth Day, (Friday, April 22) with a ceremony at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

We’ll all hear of heroic world leaders who joined together in Paris to ensure the planet’s survival. The Obama administration will try to enforce the agreement (which meets all the legal criteria of a treaty though the President chooses not to call it that to evade Senate disapproval) by imposing the Environmental Protection Agency’s controversial “Clean Power Plan” (CPP), which aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants by 32% by 2030, and other onerous regulations that will drive up utility rates.

What we won’t hear much about are the Americans harmed by the rising energy prices the policies cause.

The higher rates will affect all Americans, but the impoverished and working poor will suffer most. Many already experience “energy poverty,” in which a household spends 10 percent or more of its income on household energy costs (excluding gasoline and other transportation-related costs). Many others will be driven into it.

A study by scholars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that a policy imposing a CO2 tax or cap-and-trade regime (and the CPP allows states to use either or both) would impose higher costs nationwide. States that currently get more energy from fossil fuels would face smaller increases, and those that currently get less would face larger increases.

The lower you push CO2 emissions, the more expensive it is to generate electricity. Not surprisingly, richer people can afford more expensive things than poorer people. That includes energy. Consequently, the poorer you are, the less likely you are to choose more expensive energy sources.

Richer states, like the Pacific Coast, New England, and New York (which averaged $46,954 per capita in income in 2012, one-tenth more than the national average), have already pushed their CO2 emissions down somewhat. Poorer states, like South Central States, Texas, and Mountain States (which averaged $36,854 per capita in income, 14% lower than the national average and more than a fifth lower than those richer states), have not.

Because the poor spend a higher percentage of their incomes on energy in the first place, an increase in energy prices—which implementation of the CPP and the Paris climate agreement would cause—will cause disproportionately heavy harm to them, ironically functioning as if it were a regressive tax.

Consider examples from a few states, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency:

Data for these and twelve other states are summarized in the Cornwall Alliance’s A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor 2014.”

To comprehend the impact of EPA’s proposed new rule on America’s poorest, just imagine what it would be like to have to spend three-fourths of your household income on energy, leaving only one-fourth for food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health care, education, and everything else combined.

That’s why we should mourn, not celebrate, implementation of the Paris climate agreement on Earth Day.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: climatechange; energyandenvironment; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; paris

1 posted on 04/07/2016 8:06:22 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
Why You Should Mourn Fight Implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement
2 posted on 04/07/2016 8:12:46 AM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: Kaslin

New president should dissolve the EPA sending these worthless bureaucrats wandering through the world seeking meaningful employment. Then let the states do the job as they have the same apparatus in place. When they get out of hand it’s up to the voters in that state to take action.


3 posted on 04/07/2016 8:18:09 AM PDT by HomerBohn (Liberals and slinkies: they're good for nothing, but you smile as you shove them down the stairs.)
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To: Kaslin
There are two opinions regarding climate change agreements and their effect on the US economy.

1.) The US is being punished by the NWO for their success and dominance over the last 70 years by the redistribution of American wealth to the third world.

2.) A golden economic opportunity for America by forcing it to develop and perfect renewable energy technology, giving the US a decisive competitive advantage for the future.

I ask rhetorically where for the truth lay?

4 posted on 04/07/2016 8:18:37 AM PDT by buckalfa (I am feeling much better now.)
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To: HomerBohn

I agree


5 posted on 04/07/2016 8:22:02 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed theThe l ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: Kaslin

When did the Senate ratify this treaty?


6 posted on 04/07/2016 8:26:07 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: PGR88

They idn’t.
It should be challenged at every level.


7 posted on 04/07/2016 8:32:31 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (Baseball players, gangsters and musicians are remembered. But journalists are forgotten.)
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To: Kaslin

Just another attempt by the Obama Admin to transfer American dollars to people who didn’t earn them. This Admin has been determined to send our wealth to as many other nations as they can before, they are booted in Jan, 2017. I pray that Hillary/Bernie/Joe won’t be replacing Obama in the WH, so we can stop this hemorrhaging of our wealth to others.


8 posted on 04/07/2016 8:33:01 AM PDT by originalbuckeye ("In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell)
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To: Kaslin
The higher rates will affect all Americans, but the impoverished and working poor will suffer most.

The whole man-made global warming industry is a scam and a hoax to begin with, but naturally, all these liberal, tyrannical, marxist fixes hurt the poor the most.

*SPIT*

9 posted on 04/07/2016 8:53:52 AM PDT by PROCON
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To: buckalfa

There is no man made climate change. There is absolutely no global warming. There is no definition that is measurable for the concept of “Climate Change. The entire scam is to get your property . Resist strongly at every turn.


10 posted on 04/07/2016 9:09:20 AM PDT by WENDLE (I guess)
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To: Kaslin; 11B40; A Balrog of Morgoth; A message; ACelt; Aeronaut; AFPhys; AlexW; alrea; ...
DOOMAGE!

Global Warming PING!

You have been pinged because of your interest in environmentalism, alarmist wackos, mainstream media doomsday hype, and other issues pertaining to global warming.

Freep-mail me to get on or off: Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to all note-worthy threads on global warming.

Global Warming on Free Republic here, here and here

Latest from Global Warming News Site

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11 posted on 04/08/2016 5:10:35 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Stick a fork in America; she's done.)
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