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States Set to Sue the U.S. Over Greenhouse Gases
dnormant writes to tell us The New York Times is reporting that more than a dozen states are gearing up to sue the Bush administration for holding up efforts to regulate automobile emissions. "The move comes as New York and other Northeastern states are stepping up their push for tougher regulation of greenhouse gases as part of their continuing opposition to President Bush's policies. On Wednesday, Gov. Eliot Spitzer's administration is to issue regulations requiring power plants to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions, part of a broader plan among 10 Northeastern states, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, to move beyond federal regulators in Washington and regulate such emissions on their own."
My work here is dung.
Rivers in most states eventually flow into a different state, too, but that doesn't mean that states can't restrict or ban water pollution. The CO2 can be defined a pollutant as soon as it leaves the vehicle, while it is still wholly contained within the state of the car (or power plant or factory) that emitted it.
Now if they tried to apply this ruling to vehicles merely crossing through their state, as opposed to those registered to drivers in that state, with state license plates, then yes, I agree that the courts could intervene. Pretty soon belching trucks from Mexico will be all over the US, and I bet there's nothing any state can do about those.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Oh yes, this is sure to work. Get a few legislators in a minority of states to sue the president's administration. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this! This is a stunt, and a ridiculous one at that. Why not put energy into doing something real instad of wasting time like this? It won't even get people on the side of the activists...people who agree with the suit are already driving hybrids and eating out of their back garden, people who don't aren't going to even care.
Now, bear with me since I'm not from the US and as such I'm probably biased as well as unfamiliar with some things. But having said that I cannot help wonder.. Whenever I see some detectives on TV or talk to friends who happen to be American I'm always confronted with the issue of the states. To me the closest thing resembleing this are Germanies "Bunds" (Bundesrepubliek Deutschland).
:-)
If I'm not mistaken you can have different laws across states. One state can have a more closer or looser regulation on gun control. And ofcourse this is also fed by the classic car chases where the culprit races to the state border and once he gets across he's basicly home free. So different states, different laws, different approaches on how to run things.
Now having said that I cannot help wonder here. If you're so worried about the environment why don't you simply put your efforts into "cleaning up" your particular state instead of (more easily ofcourse) blaming it all on one man and start the (to me:) typical selfish American approach of sueing? To me this looks like the classic example of "I wasn't hired to do that" and so you also don't take any responsibility for your own actions and instead start blaming others over it. Like that woman in the McDonalds; appearantly she wasn't aware that coffee should be hot and as such McDonalds was responsible when the stupid -censored- spilled her coffee. How was she supposed to know coffee would be hot?
I'm not a fan of the Bush administration at all. To me this is the worst president the US has ever got and it saddens me that so many people don't even seem to realize this (yet?). Still, I think you're going too far by simply blaming everything, including your own shortcomings, on him. There is a difference (to me) between "Bush threatens the free world" (which, IMO, holds much truth) or "Bush ate my hamster" (I could be mistaken but iirc he isn't visiting Europe... or is he?!!)
If the cost of energy increases, consumers have a greater incentive to conserve. It happens all the time with gasoline prices: when the price rises, people drive less and buy more fuel efficient autos.
You could argue that consumers aren't currently paying for the total cost of energy anyway, since the government is often responsible for cleaning up pollution.
What part of the country do you live in that has competition for power? Everywhere I have ever lived (including on Long Island, to remain ontopic), if there was going to be Nukeclear, solar, or wind power (barring personal power generators), it would have to come from the same provider already polluting.
First of all, companies will maximize profits. When they have to build a new plant, they will build the one that provides what they need for the cheapest amount even if they can supposedly pass on the added expense to the consumer. The problem is that as rates go up, people will use less electricity from the grid (whether by running air conditioners less or buying rooftop solar for homes or businesses), and reduce the profit of the companies.
Second, with sanctioned monopolies, they often cannot raise prices without showing the government that it is necessary, and choosing the build expensive plants when they could be building cheaper ones is not going to convince people that they are trying to keep costs down.
Finally, you're not looking at the electricity industry correctly because demand for electricity peaks based on the time of year and the time of day. Plants with low variable costs always operate whenever they can while plants with high variable costs only operate when there is high demand. By taxing pollution, they are raising the variable costs of plants based on the pollution they generate. This means that plants that pollute more will have to charge more and therefore be on less. Furthermore, this will mean that the return on investment will be lower for high-pollution plants and so in the long run more low-pollution plants will be built.
While the federal government routinely, and with the blessing of the Supreme court, passes laws that blatantly violate the commerce clause ...
Logical error. The government does not pass laws that violate the commerce clause if the Supreme court says they don't. That's how our government works.
Besides, I think you need to read up on Massachusetts vs. EPA. This suit is probably going to be very similar considering that it was over much the same thing. MS v. EPA was an attempt to force the government to perform its duties to regulate CO2 emissions as a pollutant in absence of Congressional instruction to or not to do so.
The new lawsuit will be a similar attempt to compel the EPA to perform its mandated duties to grant CA and other states permission to create stricter regulations than the Congressionally mandated minimums. The EPA has dragged its feet for years in signing off on this, claiming that they didn't think they had the authority to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act. Fortunately, MS v. EPA has cleared that up.
Assuming that the SCOTUS doesn't decide to reverse itself unexpectedly or attempt to wiggle out under jurisdictional issues such as interfering with the powers of the executive or such as the doctrine against getting involved in political decisions, it's probably a slam dunk case.
Then again, I'm not as familiar with the CAA as I'd like to be. The decision might be a discretionary power of the EPA at which point the SCOTUS would simply pass the buck.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
because of those dinks down in the big city
Those "dinks'" tax dollars are carrying you. Upstate receives a lot more in benefits than you pay out in taxes. And the laws regarding the makeup of the legislature insure that each upstater gets more of a voice in state politics than each city dweller.
* Businesses are large consumers of energy, and they definitely consider power costs when they decide where to locate. Excessive power costs can prevent power company growth.
* As populations grow, outlying townships/suburbs/whatever will decide to incorporate. At that point they could choose instead of that power company, to form a municipal power company or join a co-op.
* The city can decide to dump the power company and form a municipal power utility. I am not sure how this works legally, but my community has put this to a vote a few times over the years.
* Additional plants are being built all the time, at which point profit margin comparisons come into play. The more you charge to cover expenses, the less you can take for profit because there is an upper limit to how much you can charge before there is a human cost and the community fights back.
A huge portion of Alberta's carbon consumption comes from burning gas to heat water and extract oil from tar sands. I heard some rumours of research on using nuke power to supply the heat for the tar sands project but I guess our equivalent of the DoE has been reluctant to give the go ahead. The oil companies involved in tar sands projects also aren't too keen on the idea because natural gas is a heck of a lot cheaper to burn compared to running nuke thermal plants.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Thus, the cost of power goes up, the pollution doesn't go down. Thus, the "Everyone else" keep paying for it anyway. Where are the free market republicans when you need them? When the price of a service or good goes up, people will buy less of it. Energy consumption is not magically different.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Reuters would seem to disagree with your second statement; ranking the US as the fifth highest per capita emissions. I'd have no problem believing that the US has the highest total emissions, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
http://www.reutersinteractive.com/CarbonNews/73074
BTW, thanks for raising the quality of this thread.
A One that isn't cold, is scarcely a One at all.
For one, junkscience.com is run by a non-scientist who used to do it-isn't-so-bad-for-you PR for tobacco companies. Many of the basic facts and theories used are accurate, but the conclusions drawn are misleading unless you've just had an actual class in the stuff and can see just what he's scientifically leaving out.
As to the prize? Carnivals offer "prizes" too. I'm sure you win them all the time.
Let's see what else you point to:
A "petition" which turns out to be a list of names, without and indication of where these people got their degrees, where they are currently working, and if they have any actual peer-reviewed (ie other scientists) papers published.
There isn't any indication of how to get on this list, or if you get paid money to allow your name to be used, but there is an interesting disclaimer at the bottom:
But nowhere on the site do I see any indication of where they actually receive their money from. Perhaps they are self-funding, since the top-level portion of the site is a link farm, with searches on "females" and "nuclear bomb shelters". If I don't just go to the top domain page, I find out this is sponsored by "Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine". Maybe someone can tell me if they are reputable.But oh, even better!
It seems like 1/3 are MD. I like how they don't explicitly note BS degreed people. So apparently, if I could figure out how, I could join this esteemed list. Even though in my 4 years of undergrad physics, I never once took a class that had anything to do with climate or weather. And I'm sorry, but having a physics degree doesn't give me instant knowledge of even "the summary for policymakers" section of the UN's climate report, the IPCC, or even guarantee I've read it.The "problem" you cite (individual states forcing higher standards on the country as a whole) is actually a blessing. California's hard-assed energy efficiency requirements have made all sorts of big appliances more energy efficient (and I defy you to show that they've added significantly to the cost of your fridge).
But that's not the way it would play out in this case. At least when it comes to the transportation sector, the states involved in the suit want to jack up the CAFE standards for their own states. CAFE standards describe properties of the auto fleet as a whole, not individual cars. Car companies wouldn't have to build a separate, more fuel efficient Hummer for California; they simply wouldn't be able to sell as many Hummers in California (as a proportion of the overall fleet). The real expenses come when manufacturers are forced to have two separate manufacturing processes for a given product, which is why so many just give up and make all their products according to the most stringent standards. Instead, these laws give them the option of complying by increasing the number of smaller cars they sell in California, which wouldn't require any change to any individual car or manufacturing process.
You seem to be forgetting that, the last time CAFE standards were raised, American auto manufacturers threw a hissy fit, claiming that the new regs were huge burdens and would put them out of business. If anything, 1980-1984 (the years when the CAFE standards went into effect, and started ratcheting up) marked the recovery of the American auto industry from the doldrums of the 1970's. Our country has fuel efficiency standards that are half those of the EU or Japan, and lower than China's. Raising the standards would help our car companies compete in some huge foreign markets.Pop quiz: Which logical fallacy are you committing here? Just because one of the purposes of X is to do Y, that doesn't mean that X can't have other purposes. The Office of the Attorney General is tasked with conducting the legal affairs of its government. Nothing requires that an AG office to have a "consumer rights" justification for every suit they bring.
Here's how it went down: in the last round of litigation, these states looked at the laws governing the EPA, which gave them the job of controlling the emission of pollutants. The EPA claimed that CO2 was not a pollutant, so they didn't have to regulate it, and could forbid state governments from regulating it as well. The states' position was that CO2 was clearly a pollutant, and that the EPA needed to grant the states a waiver to regulate it if they weren't going to do it themselves.
The Supreme Court sided with the states. Despite this, the EPA has been dragging its heels on actually issuing the waivers the states need. So the states are taking them back to court.
This is where your "analysis" of "the proper way to get the EPA to change its guidelines" falls down. The states aren't trying to force a change in the EPA's guidelines; they're simply asking the EPA to enforce the law as it exists now. If it weren't for the ability to bring suits exactly like this, there would be almost no way to compel the executive branch to follow the laws of the legislative branch. According to your "proper" system, the only way to effect change at the EPA is to have the legislators change the EPA's guidelines. But how does that help when the EPA isn't living up to existing guidelines?
Your rule against "the government suing the government" is senseless.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Despite whatever you might believe, or whatever hyperbolic excesses might or might not have been uttered by B-list celebrities, acid rain was a serious problem. You seem to think that, because the world still stands, and because fresh-faced children are still able to skip through meadows covered with wildflowers, that the danger of acid rain was illusory.
But the reason you don't hear such doom and gloom over acid rain these days is because we started regulating sulfur dioxide emissions. SO2 is actually one of the big regulatory success stories, and good evidence that such regulations don't significantly harm industry. When the regulations were being proposed, the energy lobby claimed it would cost industry $1200 for each ton of SO2 prevented. It turned out to be closer to $100.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Municipal owned utilities, such as in Austin and San Antonio, were exempt from deregulation and they tend to have the lowest consumer retail power prices in the state.
Without the 2nd Amendment, the others are just suggestions.
"yeah, the red states have been relying on that philosophy for decades. Funny thing, though, hasn't really worked overall. "
Are you kidding, the past 10-20 years has seen growth in the south far out pace growth in the north both in terms of population and wealth.
In 1971 NY had 41 Electoral votes the about the same same as the sum total (42) of GA (12), NC (13), AL (9), SC (8). In 2004 NY had 31 compared to 47 for the four states listed above.
of the kids in my family (7) 4 moved away from NY for better employment opportunities (in NY if you don't live down state your in trouble). Thw moved to the south TX / SC, one moved west CA, and one moved the the mid west MN.
"The funny thing is you're going to suffer, too. I wonder how much you're going to be complaining about limiting pollution when it reaches you."
No the way this will affect him is because when auto makers start making changes for higher emission standards in the NE they are not going to make a second set of cars for the south.. He will have to buy the same, more expensive, vehicle that you do..