Posted on 09/24/2011 9:26:48 PM PDT by Nachum
This article is a few days old, but it is worth a mention nonetheless. Susan Kraemer at CleanTechnica can barely contain her excitement at the prospect of environmental regulations. In an article titled "Obama's EPA Cues 130 Billion Race to Cut Pollution By 2015", she reports that the EPA will shut down 20 percent of coal plants through the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. (Snip) The EPA will shut down an estimated 20% of the nation’s coal plants through the ground-level ozone rule (the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) ) through cap and trade that is about to be implemented in
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
What will the 'smart-meters' do? They've already installed mine.
West Virginia's main industry is coal. They will get to vote for a new governor in two weeks in a special election. It will give us an opportunity to see whether they are insane enough to continue going Dem.
The purpose of smart meters is to allow the power company to remotely turn off your air conditioner during consumption spikes. They also allow measurement of electrical usage on an hour-by-hour basis so that they can set different rates for peak versus off-peak consumption.
RC. your thinking that we have any need or use for the EPA is silly.
I can tell you that since I was a boy, America, state by state and town by town has been moving in the right direction, to clean up water, air, and soil.
But local governments have been doing it responsibly.
your solution-—that these issues need to be handled at a federal level by unaccountable bureaucrats is mistaken. The EPA, Like the Department of Education, has always been redundant and injurious.
Manchin should man up and switch sides
I have worked with the EPA since their inception in the 70’s. I am in CA and trust me, we had environmental protections prior to the EPA, though I’ll admit that in many states it was sketchy. I agree with you that we can’t live sans such protections and I don’t have a concept of federally mandated minimums, but I have watched both the EPA and many states go to unneeded extremes over the years.
Yes this is absolute insanity that has got to be stopped.
Hey, Obama -- women, children and minorities will be hit the hardest. There's no way to exempt them from rolling blackouts.
I agree. Having outlived their usefulness 20 years ago, they now resort to inventing demons that they need to conquer. Global warming, lead paint, mercury - the list of potential poisons is endless, as is the potential budget of this rogue, overbearing agency.
Absolutely right on the mark post.
My remarks were supposed to address “This Just In’s” post.
The EPA should be a minor agency giving advice and assistance to state environmental agencies, and nothing more. Big government always becomes a greater evil than what it is there to take care of. The EPA is a good place to start ending federal tyranny.
The politicians have prevented, in most instances, a marketplace solution from even being allowed to come into existence.
The EPA is a purely political machine hell bent on destroying Capitalism. Don't fall into the trap thinking that without the EPA, pollution would overwhelm our land.
My electric meter measures electrical usage on an hour-by-hour basis; saves me a pile of money.
It does not have the ability to remotely turn-off my air conditioner.
Nobody in their right mind wants polluted air or soil or water.
OTOH, when “pollution” includes dust from forest roads, and at the same time, oils on said roads to control dust...and is now moving to “control” dust from plowing a farmer's field, and all without any, let alone reasonable, cost-benefit criteria allowed...
When cities and counties are FINED by the feds for “pollution violations” due to smoke from forest fires the feds ordered to be allowed to burn ‘for habitat enhancement’...
Yes, I lived in the era when raw sewerage was ignorantly and shamefully dumped in San Francisco Bay; now, to perpetuate a bureaucracy, TERTIARY treatment plants must be built to satisfy ever more stringent RULES said bureaucrats decide are mandated by the original laws...
It boils down to, “how clean is clean?”
The answer is, “never clean enough, if it means loss, rather than growth, of the regulator's power and budget.”
Thanks to the EPA, we have CO^2 listed as a pollutant; we have landfills built and contained in such a manner that the contents are unable to effectively biodegrade, other than the anaerobically rotting, methane (”1600 times worse than CO^2” according to the same people) producing wet garbage...
Like the Russians discovered about the Communist state, bureaucracies do not wither away “when their job is done”; they find ways to expand and perpetuate themselves, until killed.
If your state doesn't want to enforce its environmental regulations, that is a job for the citizenry.
This is not to say we shouldn't have such laws a Clean Air Act, etc; but that we should not have a huge federal agency “overseeing” it. There are enough federal law enforcement agencies and federal courts to take care of interstate violations; and state courts and legislatures to sue through, or enact/change laws to force state or local jurisdictions to prevent “raw sewage and toxic sludge being dumped in the field across the street from my well.”
We are already importing coal from our enemy.. so why not become more dependent on them?...What a worse trade deficit and more unemployment ...there are always all those green jobs
“...I don’t want raw sewage and toxic sludge being dumped in the field across the street from my well...”
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Your State of Ohio can deal with that better, quicker, and more efficiently than the feds in Washington.
Residential customers may have an array of smart-meter options. They might range from simple devices that provide a color-coded light signal to curtail power during peak hours to sophisticated ones that tie in major appliances so that customers could volunteer to allow Peco to remotely manage their use during peak hours.PECO give you a discount of a few bucks a month in exchange for ceding control of your major appliances to them.
Gee, I wonder what the mood of voters will be in 2012 when as a result of Obama energy policies they are shivering in their darkened homes, can hardly afford to buy food and millions more are unemployed?
I recall seeing something like that in Vermont (Rutland) about 25 years ago.
I think the utility could send an “Off” command to the electric baseboard heating system, but the occupant could override if they desired (at great cost - 20 cents per kwh vs 3 cents normally).
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