In my opinion, this is lunacy – Obama’s thinking is completely off the rails now. He cites a new energy plan in August, then cripples it from the start with this sort of thinking. – Anthony
From Bloomberg News: Obama to Declare Carbon Dioxide Dangerous Pollutant
Obama to Declare Carbon Dioxide Dangerous Pollutant (Update1)
By Jim Efstathiou Jr. Last Updated: October 16, 2008 09:50 EDT
Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) — Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated should he win the presidential election on Nov. 4, opening the way for new rules on greenhouse gas emissions.
The Democratic senator from Illinois will tell the Environmental Protection Agency that it may use the 1990 Clean Air Act to set emissions limits on power plants and manufacturers, his energy adviser, Jason Grumet, said in an interview. President George W. Bush declined to curb CO2 emissions under the law even after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the government may do so.
If elected, Obama would be the first president to group emissions blamed for global warming into a category of pollutants that includes lead and carbon monoxide. Obama’s rival in the presidential race, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, has not said how he would treat CO2 under the act.
Obama “would initiate those rulemakings,” Grumet said in an Oct. 6 interview in Boston. “He’s not going to insert political judgments to interrupt the recommendations of the scientific efforts.”
Placing heat-trapping pollutants in the same category as ozone may lead to caps on power-plant emissions and force utilities to use the most expensive systems to curb pollution. The move may halt construction plans on as many as half of the 130 proposed new U.S. coal plants.
The president may take action on new rules immediately upon taking office, said David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club. Environment groups including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council will issue a regulatory agenda for the next president that calls for limits on CO2 from industry.
`Hit Ground Running’
“This is what they should do to hit the ground running,” Bookbinder said in an Oct. 10 telephone interview.
Separately, Congress is debating legislation to create an emissions market to address global warming, a solution endorsed by both candidates and utilities such as American Electric Power Co., the biggest U.S. producer of electricity from coal. Congress failed to pass a global-warming bill in June and how long it may take lawmakers to agree on a plan isn’t known.
“We need federal legislation to deal with greenhouse-gas emissions,” said Vicki Arroyo, general counsel for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia. “In the meantime, there is this vacuum. People are eager to get started on this.”
An Obama victory would help clear the deadlock in talks on an international agreement to slow global warming, Rajendra Pachauri, head of a United Nation panel of climate-change scientists, said today in Berlin. Negotiators from almost 200 countries will meet in December in Poznan, Poland, to discuss ways to limit CO2.
`Back in the Game’
“The U.S. has to move quickly domestically so we can get back in the game internationally,” Grumet said. “We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus. So he’ll move quickly.”
Burning coal to generate electricity produces more than a third of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and half the U.S. power supply, according to the Energy Department. Every hour, fossil-fuel combustion generates 3.5 million tons of emissions worldwide, helping create a warming effect that “already threatens our climate,” the Paris-based International Energy Agency said.
The EPA under Bush fought the notion that the Clean Air Act applies to CO2 all the way to the Supreme Court. The law has been used successfully to regulate six pollutants, including sulfur dioxide and ozone. Regulation under the act “could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority,” EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in July. The law “is the wrong tool for the job.”
Proponents of regulation are hoping for better results under a new president. Obama adviser Grumet, executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, said if Congress hasn’t acted in 18 months, about the time it would take to draft rules, the president should.
EPA Authority
“The EPA is obligated to move forward in the absence of Congressional action,” Grumet said. “If there’s no action by Congress in those 18 months, I think any responsible president would want to have the regulatory approach.”
States where coal-fired plants may be affected include Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Montana, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia and Florida.
The alternative, a national cap-and-trade program created by Congress, offers industry more options, said Bruce Braine, a vice president at Columbus, Ohio-based American Electric. The world’s largest cap-and-trade plan for greenhouse gases opened in Europe in 2005.
Under a cap-and-trade program, polluters may keep less- efficient plants running if they offset those emissions with investments in projects that lower pollution, such as wind-energy turbines or systems that destroy methane gas from landfills.
McCain `Not a Fan’
“Those options may still allow me to build new efficient power plants that might not meet a higher standard,” Braine said in an Oct. 9 interview. “That might be a more cost-effective way to approach it.”
McCain hasn’t said how he would approach CO2 regulation under the Clean Air Act. McCain adviser and former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey said Oct. 6 that new rules may conflict with Congressional efforts. Policy adviser Rebecca Jensen Tallent said in August that McCain prefers a bill debated by Congress rather than regulations “established through one agency where one secretary is getting to make a lot of decisions.”
“He is not as big of a fan of standards-based approaches,” Arroyo said. “The Supreme Court thinks it’s clear that there is greenhouse-gas authority under the Clean Air Act. To take that off the table probably wouldn’t be very wise.”
More Efficient Technologies
How new regulations would affect the proposed U.S. coal plants depends on how they are written, said Bill Fang, climate issue director for the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington-based lobbying group for utilities. About half of the proposed plants plan to use technologies that are 20 percent more efficient than conventional coal burners.
“Several states have denied the applicability of the Clean Air Act to coal permits,” Fang said in an Oct. 10 interview.
In June, a court in Georgia stopped construction of the 1,200- megawatt Longleaf power plant, a $2 billion project, because developer Dynegy Inc. failed to consider cleaner technology.
An appeals board within the EPA is considering a challenge from the Sierra Club to Deseret Power Electric Cooperative‘s air permit for its 110-megawatt Bonanza coal plant in Utah on grounds that it failed to require controls on CO2. One megawatt is enough to power about 800 typical U.S. homes.
“Industry has woken up to the fact that a new progressive administration could move quickly to make the United States a leader rather than a laggard,” said Bruce Nilles, director of the group’s national coal campaign.
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I guess I’m a little tired of the comment or line of thought, “corporations don’t pay taxes,” or their fair share of them.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/63131-exxon-s-2007-tax-bill-30-billion
I’m not wealthy, which means I must be stupid.
Increased taxes also impact the price of the product. Taxes certainly don’t have anything to do with however you choose to define the word “fair”. That additional cost, which is what a business will see as a cost of doing business, is passed on to the consumer. A vicious cycle, and it’s a bad one. Our tax code isn’t progressive – it’s regressive.
People in our country (the US) have forgotten that “we have the right to equal opportunity, but not equal results.” (I love that Milton Friedman line – which is who I borrowed that from)
David Gladstone,
“End times stories as in Revelations, were overwrites of Dead Sea Scroll materials, originally anti Roman, pro Israel.”
The variations of the scrolls and the bible are less than two percent, and not a single teaching or doctrine of the Bible we have is altered. Rather than posing a threat to the Christian faith, the Dead Sea Scrolls have, in fact, provided convincing support for the genuineness of God’s revelation as given to us in the Bible.
“Once the Christians got through with them, the were anti Israel. Such is the nature of religion.”
Yea – those Christians with their messed up religion and hopes of ‘Peace on earth’ and ‘Goodwill towards manind’. Awful.
David apparently isn’t aware that most Chrisitians support Israel. Such is the nature of ignorance.
Reply: I allowed this post, but I want to stop this from opening up a discussion of religion on this site. That’s it, no more posts on the subject please. No winners no losers, quothe the moderator, no more. ~ charles the moderator
AndyW,
A good article in the New York Times today tying the “financial mess” to the Democrats.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19cisneros.html?hp
How exactly is having all three branches of government under Democratic control going to help?
Charles the moderator,
[snip]
But I understand why [….then please accept it ~ charles the moderator]
How about Anthony posting a discussion about the shifting of the earths magnetic poles?
Mr. Patrick Henry,
“How exactly is having all three branches of government under Democratic control going to help?”
It won’t. It will weaken this country, which by default, leads us on the path towards global socialism. Total democrat control is by no means intended on keeping America the best and strongest nation on earth. Liberal philosophy… “We just want people to like us.” If we throw our convictions out the window, maybe they will? I feel bad for all the veterans who fought and died to help keep this nation the most prosperous on earth. Kiss that goodbye. You can take that to the global bank.
Evan, 401k plans are exempt from capital gains taxes or cuts in those taxes.
Aren’t they subject to tax when they are realized? They are not tax free, just tax deferred.
After the first sell off of stocks to avoid taxes, revenues tank to below what they were when the taxes were in place. Why? Studies don’t have definitive answers on this. But the economy does not increase.
If business pay lower taxes it affects the cost/supply/demand curve. Costs go down and therefore it is more profitable to cut the price (increased sales more than make up for the cut in price).
As for cap gains, look at what happened when Clinton cut them and when Bush cut them. In both cases there was both a longterm increase in productivity AND revenue.
Tax cuts don’t work–if taxes are too low in the first place. But when taxes are too high, cuts increase both productivity and revenues. Reagan cut taxes by over half and by 1988 per capita revenues were up 18% including both inflation and population growth.
It is fashionable to attribute reduction in revenues from 2001 to 2003 to the Bush tax cuts. The facts are thus: Bush cut the top rate from 39.6% to 38.6% (a 2.6% drop). Revenues dropped 22%. To blame Bush, you have to show me how a 2.6% cut resulted in a 22% loss.
2003 (the year of the cap gains cut) was the year it all turned around.
During 2006, the top rate was cut to 35% (a 7% cut). There was a 27% increase in revenues.
(By “revenues”, I mean federal income tax, incl. capital gains.)
Who said that tax breaks for the middle income folks is bad. Bush happily gave them a significant tax break, but they don’t know it due to the spin and lies.
After the “tax cuts for the rich”, the rich paid a higher PERCENT of revenue than the MC or poor.
Including tax credits: In 2003 the richest 1% paid 33% of revenue. Last year it was 40%. (The poorest 50% paid 2.9% and the poorest 40% paid 0%).
That confirms the basic premises behind the Laffer Curve.
A Uk band called the ‘Smiths’ brought out a ditty entitled ‘Meat is Murder’
Maybe they had an agenda!
If so, they hesitated too much! They went one link, at least, too few IMO.
The First link they wimped out at, was the Vegetable connection ‘twixt the ambulant calorie-providers and their food-chain buddies- the Carbon sinking Troglodytes!
In simple carbon-cycle skeptient eugenics it is unarguable that Plants begat the catastrophe that we find ourselves in today.
They should have sung ‘Plants are Genocidal- and Fully Oxygenated Carbon is the spawn of the Devil’
Not sure about how well that scans though?
The US will end up with energy independence.
As long as the wind is blowing and the sun is shining….
[…] weblogs ICECAP and Watts Up With That have alerted us to the plan to list carbon dioxide as a pollutant by the EPA where they report on […]
[…] weblogs ICECAP and Watts Up With That have alerted us to the plan to list carbon dioxide as a pollutant by the EPA where they report on […]
From the opinion section of this morning’s WSJ:
Obama’s Carbon Ultimatum
The coming offer you won’t be able to refuse.
Liberals pretend that only President Bush is preventing the U.S. from adopting some global warming “solution.” But occasionally their mask slips. As Barack Obama’s energy adviser has now made clear, the would-be President intends to blackmail — or rather, greenmail — Congress into falling in line with his climate agenda.
Jason Grumet is currently executive director of an outfit called the National Commission on Energy Policy and one of Mr. Obama’s key policy aides. In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency “would initiate those rulemakings” that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that “in the absence of Congressional action” 18 months after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.
Well, well. For years, Democrats — including Senator Obama — have been howling about the “politicization” of the EPA, which has nominally been part of the Bush Administration. The complaint has been that the White House blocked EPA bureaucrats from making the so-called “endangerment finding” on carbon. Now it turns out that a President Obama would himself wield such a finding as a political bludgeon. He plans to issue an ultimatum to Congress: Either impose new taxes and limits on carbon that he finds amenable, or the EPA carbon police will be let loose to ravage the countryside.
The EPA hasn’t made a secret of how it would like to centrally plan the U.S. economy under the 1970 Clean Air Act. In a blueprint released in July, the agency didn’t exactly say it’d collectivize the farms — but pretty close, down to the “grass clippings.” The EPA would monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of “lawn and garden equipment” as well as everything with an engine, like cars, planes and boats. Eco-bureaucrats envision thousands of other emissions limits on all types of energy. Coal-fired power and other fossil fuels would be ruled out of existence, while all other prices would rise as the huge economic costs of the new regime were passed down the energy chain to consumers.
These costs would far exceed the burden of a straight carbon tax or cap-and-trade system enacted by Congress, because the Clean Air Act was never written to apply to carbon and other greenhouse gases. It’s like trying to do brain surgery with a butter knife. Mr. Obama wants to move ahead anyway because he knows that the costs of any carbon program will be high. He knows, too, that Congress — even with strongly Democratic majorities — might still balk at supporting tax increases on their constituents, even if it is done in the name of global warming.
Climate-change politics don’t break cleanly along partisan lines. The burden of a carbon clampdown will fall disproportionately on some states over others, especially the 25 interior states that get more than 50% of their electricity from coal. Rustbelt manufacturing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania will get hit hard too. Once President Bush leaves office, the coastal Democrats pushing hardest for a climate change program might find their colleagues splitting off, especially after they vote for a huge tax increase on incomes.
Thus Messrs. Obama and Grumet want to invoke a political deus ex machina driven by a faulty interpretation of the Clean Air Act to force Congress’s hand. Mr. Obama and Democrats can then tell Americans that Congress must act to tax and regulate carbon to save the country from even worse bureaucratic consequences. It’s Mr. Obama’s version of Jack Benny’s old “your money or your life” routine, but without the punch line.
The strategy is most notable for what it says about the climate-change lobby and its new standard bearer. Supposedly global warming is the transcendent challenge of the age, but Mr. Obama evidently doesn’t believe he’ll be able to convince his own party to do something about it without a bureaucratic ultimatum. Mr. Grumet justified it this way: “The U.S. has to move quickly domestically . . . We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus.”
Normally a democracy reaches consensus through political debate and persuasion, but apparently for Mr. Obama that option is merely a nuisance. It’s another example of “change” you’ll be given no choice but to believe in.
hmccard, thanks for the propagandist insertion. It’s pure nonsense, but a great illustration of how the unintelligent and gullible are so easily duped by clever wording. In other words, rather than make any profound point, you have only illustrated why we should have no expectation that the masses will display the rational thinking that could prevent the impending social and economic disaster that AGW policies will bring.
First and foremost, AGW does not happen in the tropics. No single scientific assessment including those by the IPCC has ever claimed observable warming in the tropics. Furthermore, think about what is claimed. Somebody made a model to predict temperatures in the tropics, and it worked. Guess what, so did I, and I’m going to run it for you right now :
Beep! Boop! Bop!….High of 85 Low of 75 all year.
Done! And I bet my model proves true over a 95% confidence interval too.
See this is one of those “plants” that the disinformation campaign committed to selling us on AGW puts out there. Some loose assertion about working climate models, so that the unintelligent like you, wholly incapable of reading more than the headlines or applying your limited reasoning skills, make the simplistic extrapolation that this validates all climate models. It’s propaganda, specifically contrived to dupe simple dumb-dumbs like yourself who give in to it willingly.
It is this same logic that makes humans willingly support LAWS that make their own breathing illegal pollution. Similar half science, half lie propaganda has led to a nation of willing ignorants, believing that a naturally occurring gaseous component of our atmosphere, and the fuel used by plants to produce the oxygen we breathe, is somehow a poisonous pollutant.
It seems all but decided that Obama will with the upcoming election. What does this mean? Well, a majority vote for Obama, would indicate that the majority of grown adult citizens are willing to be active participants to their own duping. That such easily verifiable lies like these take root so broadly, is the sad evidence that we are already a lost cause.
Ready for the apocalypse everyone…?!
The Sierra Club’s (and others) self-serving and sanguine reading of the law, and all of the above cheering from the peanut gallery, and the macho chest beating from the candidate not withstanding. a President has no legal authority to unilaterally declare CO2 a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. It would be nice if Obama, as President, had at least a little knowledge of such things.
As an aside, the Supreme Court’s musing aside, it’s highly unlikely that the EPA can declare CO2 a pollutant without Congress’ law making. (Though the misnomer used above, “carbon” probably can, as in soot and particulates.)
Questioning the American Bolshevik views
1. Is wealth redistribution taking money from stockholders and redistributing it to those who don’t pay taxes?
2. Is it more important to make sure that illegal votes are not disenfranchised or making sure that groups like ACORN do not nullify honest votes.
3. Would premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq grand jihadists a victory and make all of our accomplishments, money spent and lives lost a big waist?
4. Can this country afford to grant socialist Democrats total control of the government and allow them to sacrifice our safety by cutting the military budget by 25%?
Now comes the big question. How do we stop socialism from ruining our lives?
The answer is simple. Don’t vote American Bolsheviks into power and boycott the socialist propaganda media into bankruptcy.
Cybercorrespondent
cybercorrespondent@gmail.com
[…] or so Bush Executive Orders he wants to overturn. I’m totally down with most – particularly listing CO2 as an air pollutant, which will empower the EPA to significantly reduce carbon emissions without new […]