Posted on 09/30/2009 2:50:59 PM PDT by reaganaut1
The Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposed rule Wednesday to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions from thousands of power plants and large industrial facilities.
The proposed rule would require polluters to install the best available technology to capture greenhouse gases whenever a new plant is opened or significantly changed. The rule applies to any industrial plant that emits at least 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year.
When the rule is final, the EPA said operators of as many 14,000 sources of pollution would have to get additional permits.
The proposal, long anticipated and highly controversial, marks the first government move toward controlling the emissions blamed for the warming of the planet from stationary sources. The E.P.A. has already proposed an ambitious program to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, expected to take effect early next year.
Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, announced the proposal on the same day that Senators John F. Kerry and Barbara Boxer introduced sweeping climate change and energy legislation. While that bill faces a highly uncertain fate in the Senate, the Obama administration signaled its intention to move forward on global warming with or without a Congressional mandate.
Ms. Jackson, citing her authority under the Clean Air Act, said the new rule would apply only to facilities emitting 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year or more. That would exempt virtually all small businesses and farms and cover only the largest power plants, refineries and large-scale factories.
“By using the power and authority of the Clean Air Act,” Ms. Jackson said in a statement Wednesday afternoon, “we can begin reducing emissions from the nation’s largest greenhouse gas emitting facilities without placing an undue burden on the businesses that make up the vast majority of our economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Here’s hoping the space aliens come back to get him and carry him off before then! Otherwise, I’m not sure we’re going to last three and a half years...
Video! we need video! You tube expose this madness.
END PRODUCTION AMERICA
If the above is true, let the lawsuits begin. If the environmental whackos can tie up our right of self-sufficiency for energy and productivity for years (nuke plants, clean coal, water for guppies rather water for farmers in CA for examples), why don't we do the same on the hundreds (thousands?) of regulations that We The People deem unConstitutional?
Of course, it will take huge sums of money. Still, we should be looking at funding the appropriate law centers, while the "Marches" continue on DC, district and state offices, and MSM, and working towards booting out RINOS. Sort of a (3) prong attack!
This is already in motion, folks.
I work for a large chemical manufacturing company. The EPA is requiring us to put automated measurement and reporting capability for a host of GHG’s, including Co2 and methane.
This is going to cost us 10’s of millions of $$$s to implement and has to be fully implemented by 2011.
Measuring something is the first step to controlling (or taxing) that something...
We’re gonna run outta toes, but the nose awaits.
Green job = Carbon police!
Congress is there to protect the czars and bureaucrats for us.
Exactly. Which means, of course, that the regs will actually INCREASE CO2 production, either because the same material production is done overseas (where environmental regs are less stringent, energy production is less efficient, and energy costs for shipping must be added in) or because the work is done in smaller factories that are less efficient.
You can't even -- truthfully -- call it an "unintended consequence," since the consequence is entirely and rationally predictable. Which just goes to illustrate that the intention of these regs is NOT to improve the environment, but rather to further stateism: to increase the size and power of government.
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