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."

Comments

Re:One problem with this plan

[E 99]

Free CO2 in the air is gonna cost somebody a lot of money someday. Collecting a fixed amount for it at the time of origination is a way of containing the risk, since climate change is liable to be more expensive and less predictable.

No. No it's not. If America proves to be stupid enough to fall for this crap, then we deserve what we get -- which is the end of our superpower status. Currently there is still more freedom and rationality in America than in China, but the trend looks better for China in the long term. I think I might have to switch host countries down the road.

Re:One problem with this plan

[sumdumass]

Looking at the greatest threat to our super power status right now, I would have to say that a severe reduction on fossil fuel reliance would benefit us greatly in the global superpower sense

No, we have enough fossil fuel to last us for quite some time. We can supply our own needs for several hundred years. We can even go without importing it from the middle east or even from any country off this continent. We would however have to tel the tree huggers to kiss it and drill in the areas that are protected right now as well as use our high sulfur coals.

If we have an renaissance of green tech in America two important things will happen: 1. We will have a new major tech export, reestablishing the strength of the dollar. Most people don't want the dollar to regain strength. A low dollar basically means an elevated currency exchange for other countries meaning our exports are cheaper and more affordable in those countries. Which means we will start exporting products instead of jobs. It is all part of the free trade economics that Clinton was a big supporter of. We benifit in the long run, but eventually the dollars even out and we can freely move products to other countries as they can do the same and sell these products at the same costs. The EU will see a crash in about 5-10 years similar to the Asian and Mexican markets in the 90's with the Euro coming down to about the same levels as we have.

2. When oil loses it's supremacy then Middle Eastern countries will be economically and politically powerless until they transform into more globally harmonious cultures.

Actually, this is more likely to need a large scale war before this happens. we are dealing with religious fanatics who are creating the problems in the middle east. They don't give up because they can't sell oil. It will mean that we don't need to interact with the countries hostile to us. Unfortunately, that also means that when their economy's collapse, they will be looking to invade their neighbors that we find more friendly so we will have the war anyways. (we won't just disassociate with the entire middle east, we have interests there long before oil and will have interest long after oil.)

All I have to say is that I hope that the power companies will be smart enough to keep the extra charges separated from the regular charges so the public knows who and why their electric bills skyrocketed. I'm willing to bet that people will cross party lines at the ballot booth when gas prices are already are soaking up most discretionary income of working families and now they will have to fork over a decent portion of what is left to the power companies because their elected officials didn't think anyone would find out. And I'm already envisioning the campaign commercials claiming that if the costs of the "law suite" against our own government by governments where spent on developing cheaper cleaner sources of energy, the problem would have been fixed by now.