“Of course you realize, this means war!” – Bugs
War has been declared in the New York court system over global warming regulation.
Indeck Corinth L.P., which operates the Corinth Generating Station, an electric power plant in Corinth, NY, sued New York stateon January 29, 2009 claiming that the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the Northeast U.S. is illegal.
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Rhode Island have signed on to the RGGI agreement. You can read more about it here at: http://www.rggi.org/home
This is the simple view of RGGI from their website:
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is the first mandatory, market-based effort in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ten Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states will cap and then reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector 10% by 2018.
States will sell emission allowances through auctions and invest proceeds in consumer benefits: energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other clean energy technologies. RGGI will spur innovation in the clean energy economy and create green jobs in each state.
Indeck Corinth claims that New York’s involvement with RGGI does the following:
- Is ultra vires and violates the state constitution;
- Imposes an impermissible tax not authorized by the state legislature;
- Is arbitrary and capricious as implemented by New York;
- Is pre-epmted by state and federal regulations;
- Violates the Compact Clause of the U.S. Constitution; and
- Violates Indeck Corinth’s due process and equal protection rights
See Indeck Corinth’s legal complaint. (PDF)
Indeck Corinth and New York State are now arguing over the venue for the suit. Indeck Corinth wants the suit heard in Saratoga County where it is a major employer. New York wants the suit heard in Albany County where it has home field advantage.
This will be watched intensely by many on both sides of the energy -versus- environment issue.
h/t to Junkscience.com
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Oh what fun we have in store. The sweet stench of litigation. Nothing smells better to a crusty old lawyer.
No doubt this will be overcome by over-arching Federal legislation imposing even greater charges on electricity generators and rendering otiose what New York and others seek to do. Whether a legal challenge could be mounted to any such Federal legislation is far beyond my knowledge, although it seems unlikely. Nonetheless I will enjoy the show while it lasts.
All people need to know about Cap & Trade or any other Carbon Tax is that it will cause Electricity Rates to Skyrocket.
Obama: “Cap & Trade Will Cause Electricity Rates To Skyrocket”
Lets hope they win this case.
It’s too bad that the complaint doesn’t seem to raise a factual challenge to the AGW nonsense underlying all these anti-carbon boondoggles. If it had the case might have finally brought Gore and Hansen et al to place where they had to stand up to a real cross examination.
“mandatory, market-based”
I know what those two terms mean, but together they are meaningless.
I’m in agreement with the posters here. FatBigot echos my feelings: “Oh what fun we have in store.”
If by hook or by crook Messers Hansen, Gore, Mann, et al. could be lassoed into the inevitable depositions, it would be almost more fun than a mortal being could endure!
But I would be willing to risk it.
We New England citizens have a bad habit of making our situations worse. Not everybody, just a significant majority are easily stampeded into these boondoggles. It’s already expensive to live here so what do we do as our economy gets bad? We make it worse. Bizarre.
Smokey,
Hmmmm… “crook Messers Hansen, Gore, Mann”.
An excellent title for that trio… they HAVE made a crooked mess of things, haven’t they?
Mike
People like to bash attorneys. But…in the most important hour….they can turn out to be your best friend.
But I want that big bully that everyone bashes….on my side…in the day of reckoning….if he is on the side of truth.
So if the battle is not fought in the august halls of the university and the science labs….and if it takes LITIGATION to call on the carpet the likes of the Gore-Holdren-Hansen axis of evil…then so be it.
Give em HELL!!
Chris
Norfolk, VA
Gary (18:48:46) :
Could be worse, we could be in California. 🙂
This just in:
Unfortunately, I can’t make it. Sigh. Apparently this is not an address to NH’s legislature, there is no mention of it in either the House or Senate calendars.
Federal Regulations will win the day, the RGGI and WCI both were about to run into federal oversight via the EPA anyways.
BC is a member of the WCI and US Federal regulation will save us from participating, thanks USA for electing a environmentalist while we defeated all three running in our Federal Election!
That Said
Here in BC we have the ICE (Innovative Clean Energy) levy on our CO2 free Hydro Electric power to combat climate change. How is that for a tax grab? A fee on clean renewable energy to fund clean renewable energy.
Rob Bateman…..Mr. Troublemaker…..you live out there [Cali is a small state LOL]…..you’d better be there.
😉
Chris
“World Renowned Climate Scientist, Dr. James Hansen” ???
*ahem* Let me clear my …hmgmgmgmgm….throat: “What?!!!” Does that term “world renowed” mean famous or infamous?
Enter P.T. Barnum…for those of us who are old enough to remember snake oil and showmen…
Okay…snip me for being sarcastic.
James. Please retire before another blizzard surrounds the Dakotas and you discover the global sea ice is just fine.
Reply: ¿por qué? ~ carlos the moderator
I’m working on that day. Yeah, it’s a big state, and a 6 hour drive to Concord.
Let Mr. Hansen show his face up here, and the music of a brutal cold wind.
Cap & Trade is a disaster for the US economy, and a death sentence for Calif. in particular.
After Sacramento’s latest rounds of gas taxes, income taxes and sales taxes, this is a back breaker.
Our two Senators are hopelessly washed away with the hogwash of AGW.
There is only 1 way to fight this thing, and that is take it to the Supreme Court.
As for Mr. Geitners statement, he hasn’t scientific clue #1. You can hand all the incentives, penalties and edicts down you want to. It won’t make one bit of difference. All energy on Earth comes from 2 sources: Stellar Fusion and Gravitational.
Even Fission comes from elements forged in a Nova, as normal fusion in stars stops at Iron. Winds shift. Biomass need photosyntehtis (and they wan’t to suck all the CO2 out of the atmostphere!), solar needs expensive investment and location, hyrdro needs rainfall from water evaporated by the Sun, and finally, fossil fuels are ancient biomass.
No Exit. Use the reserves we have wisely.
Energy Conservation is the only answer.
No taxation without representation, and our represetatives are not listening.
Start the recalls.
It’s the Sun, stupid.
AGW Cap & Trade is a speeding bus going the wrong way of the freeway.
mandatory, market-based?
Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
Since when is something market-based if actions taken are done so at the point of a gun?
Maybe the power companies should close down their generators due to not being competitive with the subsidised green energy alternatives. Then let’s see how the public reacts and how many of these bureaucrats retain their jobs.
World Renowned Climate Scientist, Dr. James Hansen” ??? *ahem* Let me clear my …hmgmgmgmgm….throat: “What?!!!” Does that term “world renowed” mean famous or infamous?
…More like world renowned “ASTRONOMER” at best. But that is a side issue. Or is it??
How is the world’s leading “authority” on climate change….the person that effectively controls the IPCC data….an astronomer???
Should give one pause…..BIG pause…..
Rob….love that troublemaker aspect. Keep it going….
They are not thinking any of this through.
We all know what Hansen’s is after: He said it loud and clear.
Shut down all the coal plants in the US.
All of them.
It could not have come at a worse time.
The Sun, out to lunch, will throw it’s monkeywrench into alternative energy.
It’s okay to dump industrial waste in New York, but don’t you dare breathe out any CO2.
You might feed a tree or a tomato.
John Trigge (20:45:53) : hey darn it what i want to say…..
get some cahunies and shut it down for 3 days…. just enough to run out of gasoline, food, and get the riots started.
They just have no clue as to what they are f–n with not one iota….
God save us!
Newsletter from my (coal-fired) power company: Costs are up because of 200 megawatts of wind generation added, which requires addition of more coal-fired capacity for back up, because “the wind doesn’t alway blow”. Not only will they have to deal with Cap and Trade taxes, but also have to maintain dual facilities even if they convert partially to renewables. The cost of energy is shortly going to be beyond what our economy or we consumers can bear. The Corinth litigation is probably going to take 10 years. I don’t think we have the time to wait.
All you need to know about cap and trade is this: General Electric owns CBS and some movie studios and has been pimping AGW and C&T to the public, and lobbying congressmen, hoping to force electric rates up nationwide.
GE is producing all the generators for T Boone Pickens’ giant windfarms.
Neither GE nor Pickens wants to pay for the massive expansion in the Grid needed to handle a massive increase in electric capacity coming from windfarms in remote areas, so they are also lobbying congress to charter a “Green Bank”, funded with $70 billion tax dollars, that will finance the grid expansions that GE and Pickens will profit off of.
Pickens of course is a Peak Oiler while GE is an AGW alarmist. Despite IPCC projections requiring we burn 10 times more oil over the 21st century than the peak oilers claim is in the ground, Pickens, GE, and the Club of Rome that created both mutually contradictory theories dont have any problem believing two impossible things at the same time, so long as they get us to pay for it.
Is it true that Obama intends to get 900 Billion in Cap and Trade taxes to offset his Super Budget ?. If so, there is no hope of any introduction of commonsense into the AGW hysteria. Indeed, it is even more likely that the politicans will stick with it and ride the scam all the way down – they think that they are committed – I wish they were and in a padded cell.
Here in WI it is a common thing for the enviros to jack up the power companies on just about every little decision. The greenies have gained millions in slush funds for their efforts, and forced all kinds of silly and horribly expensive stuff on the power companies, all under the threat of litigating endlessly over every possible detail. They are quite successful at it.
Personally I think that a RICO extortion suit would slow them down a little, and is quite fitting. What they are doing is nothing less than an organized extortion ring, and should be treated as such, feel-good cause or not. The suit would be a slam dunk, and damages would be monumental. We might even get an inch closer to a sane energy policy.
Barring a positive outcome, I would like to see at least one power company give notice that,
“We have come to the decision that the easiest way to comply with the government mandated 20% CO2 reductions was to disconnect known environmental/AGW groups and their supporters from power company service. Subsequently the CO2 targets will be met by the people that wanted them, and it will be done with no cost to the balance of our our customers.”
Energy=Prosperity
Tax=To Impede
Tax energy=Impede prosperity
RJB
“Mike Bryant (18:51:49) :
Smokey,
Hmmmm… “crook Messers Hansen, Gore, Mann”.
An excellent title for that trio… they HAVE made a crooked mess of things, haven’t they?
Mike”
Axis of Evil?
Hey…someone had to say it…it was just hanging there, like a chad.
JimB
“KimW (23:00:41) :
Is it true that Obama intends to get 900 Billion in Cap and Trade taxes to offset his Super Budget ?. If so, there is no hope of any introduction of commonsense into the AGW hysteria. Indeed, it is even more likely that the politicans will stick with it and ride the scam all the way down – they think that they are committed – I wish they were and in a padded cell.”
Yes, that is true….discussion in the Pielke post on this.
JimB