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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.
But more importantly:
Fuck you.
Trump is the symptom. You are the problem.
We don't think we're better. We know it.
What's next? Penalize solar and wind and other renewables? Tax people who already have solar panels on their houses and businesses? All so some ass-backwards, mostly dead already coal industry can hang on for a while longer? When will this insanity end?
That lump is the cancer that they got from coal plants' particulate emissions
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
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
What is the alternative when you have an openly hostile legislature? Obama did what he could. He should have pushed harder and louder for a bill but ultimately that wasn't going to happen since anti-science agendas have ruled the GOP for quite some time.
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.
Bullshit
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
If everybody takes care of their own problems and nobody takes care of everybody's problems, then everybody dies. See: Tragedy of the commons.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If a president doesn't have the backing of the rest of the country, well maybe that's good or bad on any particular issue, but it's reality. He can't legally just dictate policy on his own.
I don't think Obama broke any laws. He simply did his best to get an important and necessary job done, in the face of opposition from the reality-challenged knuckle-draggers who think that shouting bullshit loud enough and long enough turns it into truth. In this case, that meant getting creative with the legislative framework. I'm sure he would like to have put his initiative on a more solid footing; but his opposition cared more about tearing him down than about exercising actual leadership, so he had little choice.
(And maybe, just maybe, he might want to reconsider his own position in the process if he finds himself so out of touch with the general perception)
Ummm, that would be a follower you just described. POTUS is supposed to be a leader; you know, the person who sees what others don't yet see, and makes decisions, (even unpopular ones), based on logic, evidence, and science, for the long-term good of all concerned.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Devoid of ideas of his own trump just wants to repeal everything that Obama did, whether it is good, bad or indifferent
there are only 76,000 coal industry workers in the country.
that's not just miners, but everyone in the industry: office workers, sales staff, equipment mechanics, etc.
actual miners are only 50k.
its a dying industry. destroying the environment for the sake of an industry smaller than the year round ski tourism industry is hardly sound economic policy. there is not and never was a war on coal. coal was killed by free market forces, not governmental ones.
advancing coal industry objectives is a detriment to the economy and the public health.
advancing green energy industry is both a much larger economic stimulus (employing more than 10x as many people), its also better for the public health and as a result less of a drain on future economy as fewer people will be sickened by the pollution from burning coal.
there is no reason to favor the coal industry.
not in economic terms, not in labor terms, and not in terms related to public health.
the ONLY reasons to favor the coal industry is out of some misguided left/right partisan stupidity, or being one of their paid shills.
both of which apply to Pruitt.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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?