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EPA Announces Repeal of Major Obama-Era Carbon Emissions Rule (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source: The Trump administration announced Monday that it would take formal steps to repeal President Barack Obama's signature policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, setting up a bitter fight over the future of America's efforts to tackle global warming. At an event in eastern Kentucky, Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said that his predecessors had departed from regulatory norms in crafting the Clean Power Plan, which was finalized in 2015 and would have pushed states to move away from coal in favor of sources of electricity that produce fewer carbon emissions. The repeal proposal, which will be filed in the Federal Register on Tuesday, fulfills a promise President Trump made to eradicate his predecessor's environmental legacy. Eliminating the Clean Power Plan makes it less likely the United States can fulfill its promise as part of the Paris climate agreement to ratchet down emissions that are warming the planet and contributing to heat waves and sea-level rise. Mr. Trump has vowed to abandon that international accord.
In announcing the repeal, Mr. Pruitt made many of the same arguments that he had made for years to Congress and in lawsuits: that the Obama administration exceeded its legal authority in an effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. (Last year, the Supreme Court blocked the rule from taking effect while courts assessed those lawsuits.) A leaked draft of the repeal proposal asserts that the country would save $33 billion by not complying with the regulation and rejects the health benefits the Obama administration had calculated from the original rule.
In announcing the repeal, Mr. Pruitt made many of the same arguments that he had made for years to Congress and in lawsuits: that the Obama administration exceeded its legal authority in an effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. (Last year, the Supreme Court blocked the rule from taking effect while courts assessed those lawsuits.) A leaked draft of the repeal proposal asserts that the country would save $33 billion by not complying with the regulation and rejects the health benefits the Obama administration had calculated from the original rule.
Clearly, my parents were wrong about comic books... we could've all learned something from the debate between scientists and politicians on the Planet Krypton.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
We should use all of the energy resources at our disposal. Besides these don't appear to be the Paris Treaty agreement rules we're talking about. Everybody takes care of their own problems, and that is why we are going to be fine.
Natural gas killed it. Cheaper, fewer emissions, fewer miners killed. Does't matter what the cheeto in charge wants or legislates, natgas has killed coal.
I remember as a kid dad driving past oil fields burning off natural gas. I couldn't believe it was cheaper to burn it off that to sell it. Still can't, to be honest.
"good things are happening for the rest of the country!"
Facts not in evidence. Care to elaborate as to where? Even coal country doesn't really like coal. They only like it because it's largely the only employer in the area, and people need to eat and support welfare rural areas. Even they know the pollution they spew creates problems downwind.
As to the "rest" of the country, so much for bringing the country together. You burn so you can get rich, while the rest of the country chokes.
When will you drooling idiot Ayn Rand fanboi's get it through your thick heads that there has never been a free market, a free market is a construct which cannot exist and is incapable of solving certain kinds of problems, and that even Adam Smith said such things and that government regulation was necessary to keep it in check?
Humans will lie, cheat, steal, collude, form cartels, bribe and pretty much everything else that they can think of to gain an advantage.
There is no fucking such thing as a free market. Never has been, never will be. It sure as fuck drive anything to it's "natural destination". Sorry, that's wishful thinking and a belief in magic.
The free market is a bullshit lie told to idiotic young Libertarians and other morons. Stop treating it like it's some magical beneficial thing, when it's made up of a bunch of greedy assholes screwing over everyone else ... that doesn't produce optimal results no matter what fairytale version of economics you believe in.
Corporations retain all of the power, because they pay politicians to rig the game. Trump is pandering to his rich cronies, and you think that bullshit is a free market which can achieve optimal outcomes? Then you are really too fucking stupid for your own good.
I'd encourage everyone to actually read the EPA's document as it lays out the ways in which the Clean Power Plan doesn't follow the law on the books.
In short, the Clean Air Act, which Obama used to justify his regulation, authorizes specific ways of regulating pollutants. The regulation here wasn't in line with those authorized approaches, so it was without legal authorization.
Obama COULD HAVE put in place a policy that was actually legal. He didn't, for better or worse, and so his plan was found wanting by the courts before being corrected presently.
As for Trump, we should celebrate the moments where he recognizes the legal constraints of his office. With so many people worried about him being authoritarian, let's encourage these shows of legal restraint.
Perhaps we need a cap on the maximum age of POTUS? This one seems to think like it's 1955.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
If what is being overturned is indeed an overreach, then it should be rolled back. With that being said, each state can and SHOULD do what they feel is right for their state, if that means that they continue down the path of the Obama restrictions, so be it, THAT is what they should be doing, making choices as a state, not being mandated in a way that doesn't fit within the legal boundaries of Federal jurisdiction. Aren't the states supposed to be more autonomous? Why aren't they making better choices so that a higher power doesn't have to step in and mandate?