Posted on 06/11/2016 6:29:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
Having already done yeomans work stifling economic growth and job creation, President Obama and his Environmental Protection Agency are doubling down again.
The United States created a measly 38,000 new jobs in May: one for every 8,000 Americans. Its labor force participation rate is a horrid 63% meaning 93 million Americans are not working, while 6.4 million more are trying to feed their families on involuntary part-time positions and a fraction of their previous salaries. Manufacturing lost another 20,000 jobs in May, as the economy grew at an almost stagnant 0.8% the first quarter of 2016. Middle class family incomes and net worth continue to slide.
Meanwhile, well-paid federal bureaucrats increasingly regulate our lives, hand down fines and jail terms for some 5,000 federal crimes and 300,000 criminal offenses, and inflict $1.9 trillion in annual regulatory compliance costs on families and businesses, on top of $1.8 trillion in taxes.
EPAs war on coal has already cost thousands of jobs in mines, power plants and dependent businesses. Low oil prices amid a tepid, over-regulated, climate-fixated, crony-corporatist American, European and international economy have already killed thousands of US oil patch jobs.
On June 3 EPA issued a bundle of new rules: methane emission standards for new and modified oil and natural gas drilling, fracking, pipeline and other operations. Under steady environmentalist pressure, it may be only a matter of time before the agency expands the rules to cover older operations and maybe even livestock, rice growing, landfills, sewage treatment plants and other methane-emitting activities.
The agency justifies these new job-killing rules by citing something it calls the social cost of methane, which is patterned after its equally arbitrary, speculative, infinitely malleable social cost of carbon. (Carbon, of course, actually means carbon dioxide the miracle molecule that enables plant growth and makes all life on Earth possible.) Both the SCM and SCC are needed, EPA insists, to prevent dangerous manmade global warming and climate change, which it claims are driven by these two trace gases.
EPAs methane claims are absurd. Methane emissions from US hydraulic fracturing operations have plummeted 79% and from the overall US natural gas sector by 11% since 2005.
Moreover, methane is a tiny 0.00017% of the atmosphere, the equivalent of $1.70 out of $1 million. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 17% of that is from energy production and use; 26% comes from agriculture, landfills and sewage treatment; and the remaining 57% is from natural sources. (Carbon dioxide, the other climate bogeyman, is 0.04% of the atmosphere 400 ppm.)
The United States accounts for a mere 9% of the worlds total manmade methane and just 29% of that is from oil and gas operations that provide 63% of all the energy that powers America. That means US oil and gas account for less than 3% of global manmade methane emissions and thus just 0.000004% of all the methane in Earths atmosphere. Thats equivalent to 4 cents out of $1 million!
EPA insists that this undetectable amount will cause a global climate catastrophe, and forcing the oil industry to spend billions of dollars to reduce its already minimal methane emissions will bring billions in health and environmental benefits via climate change prevention. It says methane is 23 (or 28 or 35) times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and the USA must lead the way. What nonsense.
The atmosphere contains 235 times more carbon dioxide than methane so this ultra-potent greenhouse gas will have only 10-15% of CO2s supposed global warming power. The US petroleum industrys contribution is utterly meaningless, especially compared to the solar, oceanic, cosmic and other powerful natural forces that have driven climate change throughout Earth and human history.
Of course, EPAs shenanigans dont end there.
The agencys social cost of methane calculations rely on arbitrary 2.5, 3 and 5 percent discount rates that supposedly quantify the present value of future regulatory benefits, derived from preventing climate chaos 20, 50 or 100 years from now. The rates yield miraculous compounded benefits up to $1,700 per ton of methane emissions prevented by 2020 to $3,300 per ton by 2050. They could bring up to $550 million in alleged health benefits by 2025 for only $330 million in oil industry costs.
But if EPA had used the 7% discount rate required under Office of Management and Budget guidelines, the supposed benefits would plummet to only $259 per ton by 2020. Naturally, EPA didnt use that rate.
Even more dishonest, as it did for its social cost of carbon, EPAs analysis incorporates virtually every conceivable cost of methane emissions and thus alleged dangerous climate change to agriculture, forestry, water resources, forced migration of people and wildlife, human health and disease, rising sea levels, flooded coastal cities, ecosystems and wetlands harmed by too much or too little rain, et cetera.
But it completely ignores every obvious and enormous benefit of using oil and natural gas: generating reliable, affordable electricity for lights, heat, air conditioning, computers, electric vehicles and countless other applications; manufacturing fertilizers, plastics, paints and pharmaceuticals; and even reducing CO2 emissions by replacing coal in electricity generation. EPA also ignores the real, obvious and enormous health impairment from millions more people rendered unemployed, poor and unable to heat their homes.
That is the critical point. But almost as important, the alleged, exaggerated, computer-conjured and illusory benefits from these SCM regulations accrue to the world as a whole while the very real costs are incurred solely by American companies, consumers and taxpayers. EPA doesnt mention that.
And to top it off, the mandated reductions in US methane emissions will be imperceptible amid the worlds enormous and rapidly increasing oil, natural gas and coal production and use. In fact, 59 nations are already planning to build more than 1,200 new coal-fired power plants on top of what they and developed nations are already building.
China, India, Russia and Europe together emit more than five times the methane that the USA does, and the world just set new oil and natural gas consumption records. In fact, the net increase in petroleum consumption was 2.6 times the overall increase in renewable energy use.
Indeed, fossil fuels now account for 79% of total global energy consumption compared to 0.7% for wind and solar energy combined. The much-touted figure of 19% global renewable energy cleverly hides the fact that 68% of that consumption total is wood, animal dung and hydroelectric energy. Even more astounding, wood and dung account for 13 times more energy worldwide than wind and solar combined!
India has said it will not ratify the Paris treaty anytime soon, and will continue using fossil fuels to bring electricity to people and businesses and improve living standards. Meanwhile, renewable energy spending fell 46% in Germany and 21% overall in Europe in 2015 from the previous year.
EPAs SCC and SCM scam underscores the religious dogma that drives the Obama Administrations climate change agenda and ideological determination to end hydrocarbon use in America. Perhaps worse, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has bragged about putting still more coal miners out of work. She has also said she would ban drilling on all onshore and offshore public lands, and regulate fracking into oblivion on state and private lands. Senator Bernie Sanders will almost assuredly push her and the Democratic Party even further to the Left on energy policies.
These policies would put even more Americans out of work, landing them on welfare rolls and forcing them to depend on unsustainable government handouts that increasingly rely on taking more money from an ever-shrinking workforce. Americans would have to get used to the idea of having lights, AC and computers when increasingly expensive electricity is available instead of when we need it. What a depressing future that would be for our children and grandchildren.
I really DO believe the Dems secretly want to kill the US economy. Why? Simply because it makes more people depend on Government and thus shores up their base. It’s been this way for decades, even when they were playing to “the working man”.
Congress has abdicated its responsibility to oversee this agency. The EPA is now setting rules of market behavior that has overstepped its authority. If we could only get this lazy-assed Congress to do their jobs rather than spend all of their time fund raising.
Because the left are suicidal nihilists.
Congress has ignored its responsibility to push back ANYTHING! That is why the long knives are out.
Clinton is due to give a campaign speech on Economics and sure she will assure the country the ever-increasing regulations by Democrat standards is going to create an economy from the middle, out...
I agree. There is no other reasoning for what the Progressives are doing. They are installing the Agenda 21 doctrine and if a bunch of people have to die because of it well the world is overpopulated anyway. Their goal is for the masses to have no AC in summer and barely enough heat in winter.
Those smart meters are not for your health. They are to regulate the amount of electricity you use. At some point unless stopped the average household will be allotted so many KW of electricity per month. When you reach your quots the lights will go out and not come back on til the first of the next month.
Yep...what you said...I had a friend who grew up in Poland in the 50s...the Govt turned the heat ON at a certain time of year and OFF at a certain time of year...regardless of the weather. (I think she lived in some kind of apartments).
Yep they would love to do it here. We are going to be retiring to the mountain retreat soon. Wood stove and battery bank backup. We think the grid will be hacked down at some point but we also fear govt regulation.
Lucky you
In obama’s Marxist state, the only growth industry is government bureaucracy.
How does a smart meter turn off your power? It would need a 200 Amp switch inside.
Georgia Power already has a system to “smart manage” your AC. That means keep it hotter in your house by raising the thermostat remotely. We said no thanx. There is no end to the creative technology to control your energy consumption.
Right, but it can’t shut off your power.
Well no they flip a switch at the main office. The smart meter is a spy app.
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