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Congress Votes to Scrap Obama's Clean Power Plan (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes with news that the House voted 242-180 to repeal the EPA's Clean Power Plan, and 235-188 to block EPA rules governing emissions from new power plants. Science reports: "Congress has voted, largely along party lines, to block a centerpiece of President Barack Obama's climate change agenda. The votes are largely symbolic, however, because Obama plans to veto the bills. Still, Congressional Republicans, and a few Democrats, say they want to send a message to global leaders who are meeting this week to negotiate a new climate agreement that the majority of U.S. lawmakers may not agree with any deal."
See the thing is, we've had a country for about 240 years. And in all of those years, Congress has passed lots and lots of bills, many of which were signed into law by the president at the time.
Most of those laws never expire, and most of those laws are supposed to be executed by the executive branch, but more importantly, most of those bills delegate lots of the details about how to execute the laws to the executive branch. That's generally how laws are written everywhere.
So, in this case, as in pretty much every other case when dealing with executive orders, the president isn't just making up laws, he is changing how the executive branch will execute laws in ways that were delegated to him by congress. It - whatever it is - is perfectly legal because past congresses and past presidents made it legal (and a court has never ruled it unconstitutional). If the current congress doesn't like it, they should pass a bill to clarify the law so as to restrict the president's ability to interpret it in a way they do not like. Of course, as is built into our system of checks and balances, they have to pass that law with a supermajority that is immune to the current president's veto or get a sympathetic president elected for their attempt to mean anything.
That system works fine so long as unrelated items aren't put into bills that have to be introduced periodically, such as bills to fund the government or raise the debt ceiling. Congress could have chosen to attach this to the continuing funding resolution or the debt ceiling bill, and told the president to sign it or the government would shut down and the country would default on its debts, and then maybe an unsympathetic president would sign the bill. Of course that could also make it harder for those congresspeople to be reelected.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
India is moving away from coal and oil???? citation please. They have said they plan to TRIPLE emmisions as they invest heavily in coal and oil as they need cheap power to fuel their economic growth.
If they are symbolic bills, then all we'll get here is bullshit discussion about AGW or worse, politics. Must be a slow news day (well, other than the bigger-than-average daily shooting in San Bernardino)
Kind of like the gazillion attempts to eliminate Obamacare. Convince the nutcases that elected them that they are standing strong and resolute in the face of science and the Kenyan terror baby.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This did get legislative approval, and executive approval, and has not met with judicial disapproval.
More than just "not disapproval"-- it met with a decision by the Supreme Court that the EPA had to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency 2007.
So, yes: all three branches.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
One of the ways the Federal Government encourages development of technologies is by passing regulations like this. They passed regulations on sulfur dioxide emissions to reduce acid rain and all the businesses were screaming about how much it was going to cost them yet a few years later they developed new technologies that allowed them to reduce the emissions at less cost than the original government estimate. Sometime technological development just needs a good kick in the butt like regulations to get moving.
Congress through the acts that created the EPA and in the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, etc. have set out general principles for the EPA to follow and delegating the details of implementing those principles to the Executive Branch and EPA. It's completely constitutional to delegate rule making such as this.
SCOTUS has said that the EPA has authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the acts of Congress. If Congress wants to change things they have to pass a new act and get the President to not veto it.
Sometimes I think when we do something about these sorts of problems then the younger people coming up who didn't personally experience the problem tend to dismiss it as a problem. Having grown up in the 1950's and 1960's I'm well aware of how much air and water pollution was around back then and how much cleaner they are now but to someone born after 1980 it's not a real thing.
The same thing happens with the anti-vaxxers. My parents grew up in a world almost without vaccination and they weren't all that common when I was young. I had measles, rubella, chicken pox and whooping cough growing up and I knew people who were disabled by polio. The polio vaccine didn't come out until I was 6 years old and I remember how excited my parents were about it. But many of the anti-vaxxers grew up in a world where almost nobody got those diseases (because they'd been vaccinated) so they don't think it's that important.
I don't know what you can do about that because what you read in the history books doesn't seem that real since you didn't experience it yourself.
Because they hate us and want us to die.
No, they don't. They believe that the world is going to come to an end, and God is going to come down and take them all Home, and nothing we did here will really matter; the Earth is just here for us to use up and who cares what happens to it afterwards? So far as they're all concerned the sooner it all comes to an End the better, they think there's a Heaven waiting for them where everything will be wonderful. Of course they're all idiots and will destroy our REAL home unless we reign them in.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!