Another reason why Democratic Administrations matter:
WASHINGTON — In the strongest action ever taken in the United States to combat climate change, President Obama will unveil on Monday a set of environmental regulations devised to sharply cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s power plants and ultimately transform America’s electricity industry.
The rules are the final, tougher versions of proposed regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency announced in 2012 and 2014. If they withstand the expected legal challenges, the regulations will set in motion sweeping policy changes that could shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants, freeze construction of new coal plants and create a boom in the production of wind and solar power and other renewable energy sources.
The official White House announcement of the President's Clean Power Plan is
here. From the press release:
We have a moral obligation to leave our children a planet that’s not polluted or damaged. The effects of climate change are already being felt across the nation. In the past three decades, the percentage of Americans with asthma has more than doubled, and climate change is putting those Americans at greater risk of landing in the hospital. Extreme weather events – from more severe droughts and wildfires in the West to record heat waves – and sea level rise are hitting communities across the country. In fact, 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred in the first 15 years of this century and last year was the warmest year ever. The most vulnerable among us – including children, older adults, people with heart or lung disease, and people living in poverty – are most at risk from the impacts of climate change. Taking action now is critical.
The power of the Executive to regulate industries that have the capacity to poison our land, air and water may well be the single most far-reaching consequence of any Presidential election. This is an inherent power which does not depend on the mercurial sensibilities and whims of a fickle, distracted, and money-corrupted Congress. The energy industry, perhaps embodied best by Charles and David Koch, has contributed the vast majority of its political resources to
buying off the Republican Party for the sole purpose of preventing such regulation:
Led by the oil and gas industry, this sector regularly pumps the vast majority of its campaign contributions into Republican coffers. Even as other traditionally GOP-inclined industries have shifted somewhat to the left, this sector has remained rock-solid red.
Since the 1990 election cycle, interests from this sector have contributed more than two-thirds of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates. Another big contributor in this sector - and another big GOP supporter - is the electric utilities industry. Less generous, but even more partisan, is the mining industry.
For every dollar it spends buying our Senators and Congressmen, the oil and gas also industry receives
a 10,000% return in energy subsidies, permitting them to continue mining, drilling and exploring every inch of land for more fossil fuels to extract and burn. Given the vast resources of these companies and their ability to spread the wealth around it is not surprising that a collective body such as the US Congress is unable muster the necessary efforts to curtail the wanton explosion of pollutants and carbon emissions that these industries generate. The only entity with the power to do that is the Executive, through the Administrative Rulemaking process. Absent that Executive Power the country would be at the mercy of, and under the complete domination of, the oil and gas companies. That is why Koch industries, Exxon, and all of the rest pour such efforts into their attempt to buy the U.S. Presidency. The consequences of that attempt literally could not be more dire, and the need to address the problem could not be more immediate, as we now are beginning to see the stark evidence of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions in our daily lives, before our eyes, from season to season, year to year:
“Climate change is not a problem for another generation, not anymore,” Mr. Obama said in a video posted on Facebook at midnight Saturday. He called the new rules “the biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken to combat climate change.”
The most aggressive of the regulations requires the nation’s existing power plants to cut emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, an increase from the 30 percent target proposed in the draft regulation.
That new rule also demands that power plants use more renewable sources of energy like wind and solar power. While the proposed rule would have allowed states to lower emissions by transitioning from plants fired by coal to plants fired by natural gas, which produces about half the carbon pollution of coal, the final rule is intended to push electric utilities to invest more quickly in renewable sources, raising to 28 percent from 22 percent the share of generating capacity that would come from such sources.
As the
Times article notes, the Final proposed Rule is stronger than prior drafts (although
permitting additional time for compliance), a fact certain to generate a fresh round of vituperation from the industry and its proxies in the Republican Party:
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, has started an unusual pre-emptive campaign against the rules, asking governors to refuse to comply. Attorneys general from more than a dozen states are preparing legal challenges against the plan. Experts estimate that as many as 25 states will join in a suit against the rules and that the disputes will end up before the Supreme Court.
Leading the legal charge are states like Wyoming and West Virginia with economies that depend heavily on coal mining or cheap coal-fired electricity. Emissions from coal-fired power plants are the nation’s single largest source of carbon pollution, and lawmakers who oppose the rules have denounced them as a “war on coal.”
Despite the vehement opposition of the fossil fuel industry,
hundreds of businesses including corporate giants such as Nestle, Ebay, General Mills, Unilever, Staples and Levi-Strauss have backed the President's proposals. Notably absent from any arguments you will hear in opposition to the rules is any concern or even acknowledgement of the devastating impact the unchecked and unregulated emissions of such plants would have on the environment, our future, or the world our children will grow up in:
Climate scientists warn that rising greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly moving the planet toward a global atmospheric temperature increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the point past which the world will be locked into a future of rising sea levels, more devastating storms and droughts, and shortages of food and water. Mr. Obama’s new rules alone will not be enough to stave off that future. But experts say that if the rules are combined with similar action from the world’s other major economies, as well as additional action by the next American president, emissions could level off enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
The reality is that if the next President is Republican, the oil and gas industry will see to it that these rules are reversed, that their industries will continue to belch excessive greenhouse gases and other pollutants into our atmosphere, and that the planet will continue to warm at levels out of control, with all of the consequences that come with it.
Fossil-fuel based power plants are America's single largest source of CO2 emissions (greenhouse gases). On Saturday, at midnight, the Administration posted the following video on Facebook: