Neither the Senate resolutions passed Tuesday to kill the administration’s Clean Power Plan regulating carbon dioxide at new and existing power plants, nor the House combination of those resolutions being discussed, will survive President Obama’s veto. But Republicans (and a few Democrats) are determined to let every American know that they will do all they can to undermine government policy designing to ameliorate and adapt to climate change.
Under the Clean Power Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency aims to cut U.S. CO2 emissions 32 percent by 2030 over 2005 by requiring states to generate plans that for reducing power-plant emissions. That means even more coal-fired power plants will be shut down than have been in the past five years.
Among the supporters of the Senate resolution—introduced under the Congressional Review Act—were three conservative Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who has argued that the EPA must find a “path forward for coal.” Attorneys general for those three states and 23 others are also suing in federal court over the Clean Power Plan, lawsuits that are as likely to fail as the seven previous ones have done.
The veto-doomed congressional resolutions would permanently prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating CO2 as a pollutant, something the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the agency is required to do under the Clean Air Act.
Rep. Ed Whitfield, the chairman of the House Energy and Power Subcommittee, who introduced the House resolutions, stated:
“An EPA takeover of the electricity sector is a recipe for higher bills, reduced reliability, and job losses,” Whitfield said. “These resolutions stand up for ratepayers, jobs, and affordable energy in Kentucky and throughout the country.”
This is hogwash. But it’s the kind that gets widely accepted. A report released in April that looks at the plan out to 2040 notes that the Clean Power Plan would increase employment by 273,000 new jobs. Most of those gains would come in the first 10 years of the plans. Right now, solar energy, for example, provides more jobs than coal mining—142,698 versus 89,838. In 2014, the renewables industry overall employed more than 700,000 Americans. The EPA also forecasts that the Clean Power Plan will save $155 billion in electricity costs between 2020 and 2030. Expressed another way, that’s $85 a year in savings per family. Finally, while reliability obviously matters a great deal, arguing that a switch from fossil fuels to renewables means an end to reliable electricity is true only if the increase in solar, wind and geothermal is done thoughtlessly.
In debate Tuesday, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a leader of climate hawks in the Senate, said the purpose of the resolutions wasn’t actually to kill the Clean Power Plan since even Republicans challenged by climate math can count how many votes it takes to override a veto. Instead, the resolutions were meant “To send a signal to the big coal interests, the big oil interests, the Koch brothers, the Tea Partiers, ‘We’re with ya.' [...] The American people aren’t ‘with ya.’”
Indeed, true. A poll last summer found 70 percent of Americans want their governors to do as the EPA says and develop state plans to implement the emissions reductions mandated under the Clean Power Plan.
Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, another climate hawk, said the resolutions had an added purpose. They were “designed to create confusion, to kick up dust, and to raise the possibility that the American government does not stand behind the Clean Power Plan as we go into the final throes of the Paris climate talks.”
No matter whether their motives are based on malignance or ignorance, the lawmakers who passed these resolutions of denial—and who seek to do the same in the House—have one big problem. All their bogus posturing and boot-licking of the fossil-fuel industry can do nothing to stop climate change itself nor weaken the impacts of the changes that are becoming ever more evident to rank-and-file Americans.