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Google Joins Apple in Condemning the Repeal of the Clean Power Plan (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google filed a public comment today criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to roll back the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era policy that aims to cut power plant pollution. With its comment, Google joins Apple in arguing that keeping the policy is a good deal for the US. Google's comment, which it shared with The Verge, lays out what it called a strong economic case for the Clean Power Plan.It says that the plan would encourage utilities and companies like Google to keep investing in renewable energy -- which Google says is getting cheaper, is desired by both consumers and investors, and is a good source of jobs.
If it is really that important it should be passed as a law. This is the issue with executive orders and regulations. Then next guy can just undo it. Perhaps previous administrations should have focused more on compromised laws and less on orders and regulations.
The repeal of this measure has nothing to do with the environment, economy or jobs. Slowing or stopping the cost reductions in clean energy is what this is about. Robert E. Murray, the chief executive of Murray Energy, the owner of the largest number of coal fired plants in the country, is a long time personal friend of Trump. The fact that clean energy has been getting cheaper every year is killing his company whose margins are getting cut every year. This has nothing to do with anything other than improving Trump's friends bottom line; everything else is irrelevant.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
If it is really that important it should be passed as a law. This is the issue with executive orders and regulations. Then next guy can just undo it. Perhaps previous administrations should have focused more on compromised laws and less on orders and regulations.
Executive Orders are abused more by each successive President. They're completely out of hand in the Obama/Trump era. I really think there needs to be some soul-searching and perhaps an amendment to the constitution. They're not supposed to be used as work-arounds when the President can't get a law passed that he wants. They are supposed to be for use executively not legislatively. Both Obama and Trump have abused executive orders and used them for things it was not designed to do.
We need to rein in on abuses, close down loopholes, and put checks and balances on executive orders.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
They say the plan shouldn't be rolled back because then companies would not be encouraged to use renewables.
But are Apple and Google going to cease using renewable power sources? No. Nor will lots of other companies.
They also claim it's getting cheaper - great! Then obviously that alone would be a driving factor toward companies seeking renewable energy.
So what does this rollback really hurt?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You are confusing Trump and Obama. Obama abused E.O.s because he couldn't get them passed by Congress. Trump is abusing them because he has the attention span of gnat and needs instant gratification so he can bellow at his base about all the wonderful things he's doing to America.
I think that looking at executive orders will not really solve anything. The abuse of orders is not the problem, they are the result of the problem.
And that problem is that to much power is given to one person in a 'win all' election system. That system only looks at the winner and you automagically roll into a bi-party system, even if that means your policy disagrees with 75% of the population.
The only way to go is to look how you can reinstate a multy party system. The problem there is that many people believe that some dudes 250 or so years ago can not be wrong, no matter what. Once you realize that what they have put in place was designed to be changed, you can start doing that.
It would mean that a lot of people who now have power have to give up that power. In many other countries that was done by a a lot of blood.
The USofA has a second amendement to throw people out if the people do not like them. It is right there that it says that if the system does not work, kill them. (Yeah, those guns are for killing, not for hunting so you can feed the people at the picket lines)
There have been countries where changes have been a lot less bloody and even peacefull. So that is an option as well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Breathing clean air is an aesthetic choice?
OK, clearly you can't help thinking with and talking through your bottom hole, but maybe you should stop trying to breath through it?
Or try harder, by sealing all other orifices on your body with super glue?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
That's not a problem with a clean power plan. That's just life. If you invest in anything, you'd better be prepared to have the floor fall out under it, because you can't go back and change your forecast and not invest.
Unless you've been under a rock, or think that a vast majority of scientists are somehow plotting together to make up some huge carbon-footprint global-warming conspiracy theory, it really doesn't work both ways. Economic problems will be the least of our concerns if we render this pale blue dot largely uninhabitable.
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
At issue is the ability for local utility to provide means to connect sources that reduce CO2 emissions. While some companies do indeed generate on-site power, they also rely on local utility to also provide any additional energy. Some locations provide the means to determine the source of power delivered to the site. Now obviously the local utility doesn't come out and hook Apple up to a wind farm or anything, but it is more along the lines of, "You used x kWh of power, so we generated x kWh of power from a clean source."
At any rate, since that's totally getting off rails here, the entire point is that cities and what-not have an administration cost to maintain those kinds of services and delivery. With the plan being rolled back, the fear (be it a real one or one that doesn't materialize) is that cities will offer less of these services and in turn Apple or Google will have to generate 100% power on-site (not possible) or have questionable sources (which was sort of questionable to begin with but less so questionable with the plan in place, I don't know it seems like a lot of marketing grey area here) to their energy needs.
There's other things at stake here like investment credits and regulation on CO2 emissions, but reading the statement it seems (to me at least, but take my word with a grain of salt) that availability is the thing that they're trying to hammer home here.
Getting cheaper isn't the only factor in choosing energy. Reliability also goes a long way. Something can be super cheap, but if it only delivers power for 40% of the day, then there's extra cost in having a setup that switches seamlessly from one to the other.
I honestly think the plan to begin with was good intentions but poorly executed since it totally circumvented Congressional approval. I grow tired of Presidents acting like they're kings of the nation and that rings true for our current and former Presidents. But at the same time I can't act surprised, Congress has slowly gifted large tracts of power to the executive so that they can play the blame game come reelection...
I'm going off on a tangent here. My apologies. At any rate, it seems availability is the issue here. They wish to secure the option to purchase green energy from local utilities. For where they're at, I don't think that they'll ever have to worry about not having the option, but whatever.
And where, exactly, does it say "if the system does not work, kill them". I've managed to miss that every time I've read the Constitution....
That's because it is elsewhere, not in the Constitution.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
They're completely out of hand in the Obama/Trump era.
The Obama era? You mean the Obama who has cast the lowest number of executive orders per year since Grover Cleveland in 1889? Is that the Obama era you're talking about?
And as much as we like to heap shit on Trump, he's got a long way to go before he gets to the level of Carter. Actually he's got a long way to go to get to the level of T. Roosevelt to Carter, as in the first 80 years of last century.
Well, he hasn't managed to control the judiciary, but if the republicans keep appointing people who can't do the most basic judicial functions, including knowing the vocabulary of judges, then they may get there. Those appointments of completely unqualified people will destroy the judiciary.