So goes the lateest theory. If the fracters are going to extract extreme profits, then the fracters ought to be Taxed on it.
No time, like a Windfall. The new gold-rush called "Saudi-America" is just raking it in, NG record-breaking production targets all show.
Study: We Can Cut Carbon Pollution One Third By Closing ‘Carbon Loophole’ Through The Clean Air Act
by Whitney Allen, Climate Guest Blogger, thinkprogress.org -- Dec 6, 2012
After four years of congressional stalemate on efforts to slash carbon pollution responsible for climate change, the Natural Resources Defense Council released a road map to cleaner electricity this week that relies on existing executive authority rather than Congress.
NRDC’s new report describes how the Obama Administration can make substantial cuts in carbon pollution from existing power plants, which are the single largest source of carbon pollution in the U.S. Its strategy would employ Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, which gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to “set state specific carbon emission rates that reflect the diversity of the nation’s electricity sector and fuel mix.”
[...]
Under the NRDC proposal, states would develop a compliance strategy most appropriate for their mix of electricity generation, as long it achieves pollution reductions. They can develop state policy options that improve the efficiency of current plants, incentivize energy efficiency, shift production to lower-pollution natural gas plants and/or zero-emitting wind or solar generation.
NRDC estimates that its plan would cut carbon emissions by 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 34 percent by 2025. The accompanying reduction of other power plant pollutants would also save 3,600 lives and prevent nearly 1.2 million asthma attacks in 2020 alone.
[...]
Watch this segment to get the "cut to the chase" gist of the argument:
Carbon emissions drop despite fossil fuel boom
Up with Chris Hayes -- Dec 8, 2012
link to video
Of course, the whole "fracking" show was thought-provoking, as per usual:
Saturday’s guests (Dec. 8): How fracking has transformed our economy, the resurgence of oil and gas production, the future of renewable energy
by Katherine Guthrie, Up with Chris Hayes -- 12/07/2012
As they said in that clip, it's long past time for a cohesive, integrated, far-sighted National Energy Policy, one that will transition us to a Renewal Energy Economy at some foreseeable point.
We need to use the "hammer of Carbon profits" to extract the funding needed to build the infrastructure for carbon-free renewal energy sources we will need in the future.
And it's best to strike while the extraction drills are hot, as they say.
The NRDC is saying that NOW is the time for EPA to flex its regulatory muscles. If you don't use them, you're going to lose them.
Closing the Power Plant Carbon Pollution Loophole: Smart Ways the Clean Air Act Can Clean Up America’s Biggest Climate Polluters (pdf)
NRDC REPORT -- R: 12-11-A -- December 2012
Authors: Daniel A. Lashof, Starla Yeh, David Doniger, Sheryl Carter, Laurie Johnson
Natural Resources Defense Council
Chapter 1: Executive Summary
Power plants in the United States released almost 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2011, more than any other source of this dangerous heat-trapping pollutant. The Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for setting standards to reduce these emissions. This report describes and analyzes a flexible and highly cost-effective approach to setting power plant carbon pollution standards that would clean up and modernize America’s aging electric power system.
In April 2012, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the Carbon Pollution Standard for new power plants under Section 111(b) of the Clean Air Act (the Act). The proposed standard states that each new plant will need to meet a specified emission rate performance standard of 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) per megawatt-hour (lbs/MWh) of electricity produced. New coal plants would have the option to time-average emission rates over the first 30 years of operation for added compliance flexibility. The proposal marks the first uniform national limits on carbon dioxide emissions from new fossil fuel–fired electric power plants and is a critical step forward. [...]
NRDC has conducted an analysis of how CO2 pollution standards for existing fossil fuel–fired power plants under Section 111(d) could affect the power sector, emissions levels, and electricity costs for consumers. The policy proposal set forth in this report will decrease levels of CO2 emissions and encourage the power sector’s transition to cleaner, lower-emitting generation with increased deployment of both supply- and demand-side energy efficiency. NRDC proposes that EPA set state-specific performance standards for existing power plants, using national average emission rate benchmarks and the state-specific generation mix in a baseline period to produce state average fossil fuel emission rate standards. Each of these standards -- called an “emission guideline” under EPA’s Section 111(d) regulations -- would serve as a template for acceptable state plans, a yardstick to evaluate alternative plans that states may propose, and an advance notice of the federal plan that EPA must issue if states do not submit approvable plans.
[...]
But, but ...
Congress would NEVER go for it, not in a million years!
Well, the EPA does NOT need the approval of an oil-bought Congress, when it already has the SCOTUS Authority instead, to regulate away ... the Carbon problem, as it so executes ...
Lest we forget ...
Environmentalists hail Supreme Court ruling on carbon
by Linda Greenhouse, nytimes.com -- April 3, 2007
WASHINGTON --The new ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on carbon dioxide emissions is a strong rebuke to the Bush administration, which has maintained that it does not have the right to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and that even if it did, it would not use the authority.
[...]
The court further ruled that the agency could not sidestep its authority to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change unless it could provide a scientific basis for its refusal.
Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the only way the agency could "avoid taking further action" now is "if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change" or provides a good explanation why it cannot or will not find out whether they do.
[...]
Following its discussion of standing, the majority made short work of the agency's threshold argument that the Clean Air Act simply did not authorize it to regulate greenhouse gases, because carbon dioxide and the other gases were not "air pollutants" within the meaning of the law.
"The statutory text forecloses EPA's reading," Stevens said, adding that "greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act's capacious definition of air pollutant."
[...]
SOOO, we have the Economic Tools to
disincentive Fossils Fuels in the long run;
Now if we can just light that fire ... before those executive feet, grow cold or weary of the epic clean-energy struggle, before us.