Guest post By Alan Caruba
The Environmental Protection Agency is using its power to advance the objective of the environmental movement to deny Americans access to the energy that sustains the nation’s economy and is using the greatest hoax ever perpetrated, global warming—now called “climate change”—to achieve that goal.
“This standard isn’t the once-and-for-all solution to our environmental challenge,” said Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, “but it is an important commonsense step toward tackling the ongoing and very real threat of climate change and protecting the future for generations to come. It will enhance the lives of our children and our children’s children.”
This is a boldfaced lie. Its newest rule is based on the debasement of science that is characterized and embodied in the global warming hoax. It will deprive America of the energy it requires to function.
Since the 1980s the Greens have been telling everyone that carbon dioxide was causing global warming—now called climate change—and warning that CO2 emissions were going to kill everyone in the world if they weren’t dramatically reduced. The ball was put in motion with the United Nations 1997 Kyoto Protocols when many nations agreed to this absurd idea and carried forward by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ever since.
The Environmental Protection Agency was created to clean the nation’s air and water where it was deemed that a hazard existed. Like most noble ideas and most Congressional mandates, the initial language was vague enough to be interpreted to mean anything those in charge wanted it to mean. Add in the global warming hoax and you have the means to destroy the nation.
Now it means that the source of fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States is being systematically put out of business and please do not act surprised; that’s exactly what Barack Obama said he intended to do if elected President.
This is evil writ large.
Shutting down utilities that use coal, an energy source the U.S. has in such abundance that it could provide electricity for the next hundreds of years, and ensuring that no new ones are built fits in perfectly with all the Green pipedreams about “renewable” energy. Solar and wind presently provide about two percent of the nation’s electricity and, without government subsidies and mandates requiring their use, they would not exist at all.
How stupid is it to not build more nuclear power plants when this form of power doesn’t emit anything but energy?
How stupid is it not to use coal when the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal?
How stupid is it to begin to find reasons to regulate and thwart fracking, the technology to access trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that has been in use for decades?
How stupid is it to cover miles of land, far from any urban center, with hundreds of solar panels or huge, ugly wind turbines that kill thousands of birds every year?
The sun does not shine all the time, nor does the wind blow all the time. In the event of overcast skies or a day without wind, traditional plants—those using coal, gas, nuclear or generating hydroelectric power—have to be maintained as a backup. Take away the coal-fired plants and there were be huge gap in the national grid.
Darkness will descend and Americans will begin to live with blackouts and brownouts that will undermine every aspect of our lives. It’s bad enough when a town or even a city briefly loses power because of a storm, but imagine that occurring on a regular basis because there just aren’t enough utilities generating power!
What kind of people stand by idly while its own government conspires to take away the primary source of energy that everything else depends upon? The answer? You. The answer is the many elected politicians that have done little to rein in a rogue government agency intent on undermining the nation by denying it the ability to generate power with the least expensive source of electricity, coal.
The EPA, an unelected bureaucracy, has just ensured that all Americans, industries, small businesses, and individuals will begin pay far more for electrical power.
Richard J. Trzupek, the author of “Regulators Run Wild” and an environment policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, said of the new rule, “With around 50,000 megawatts of coal-fired power set to be forcibly retired in the next few years—thanks to the draconian policies of Obama’s EPA—this rule ensures that no new modern, efficient coal fired power plants will be built to fill the gap.”
In a triumph of crony capitalism, Trzupek notes that “The big winner will be Obama’s good friend, GE Chairman Jeff Immelt. Since solar and wind cannot fill a 50,000 megawatt baseload gap, the only way to ensure continued reliability of the grid is to build a lot of natural gas-fired plants quickly. And who is the biggest supplier of natural gas-fired combustion engines? GE of course.”
If you think that environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, among many others, are seeking to “protect” the Earth, you are seriously mistaken. They have been among the leading opponents of coal and they have had allies in Congress such as the Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, (D-NV) who has said “Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick.”
NO! Coal provides the engine of our nation’s electrical power and oil provides the energy that fuels our transportation and is the basis for countless products that enhance and improve our lives every day.
We are witnessing the destruction of the nation by the environmental movement and the EPA has just provided you with the most dramatic example of that plan.
The real problem is “Big Coal” hasn’t ponied up enough money to the Obama campaign, the Democrat party or the PACs that support both.
Give them enough “green” and suddenly coal will become Obama’s favorite energy source. Let them get in a bidding war with solar and wind.
Big Coal deserves the best government they can buy, and the Team Obama is just the guys to sell it to them.
By the way they’re into climate extremism now-
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/global-warming-linked-to-extreme-weather/story-e6frfku0-1226313607746
You like this little catch-all?
“The 594-page IPCC report blames the scale of recent and future disasters on a combination of man-made climate change, population shifts and poverty”.
Slippery little weasels aint they?
LazyTeenager says:
March 29, 2012 at 4:34 am
Now it means that the source of fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States is being systematically put out of business
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And being replaced by gas powered power stations because gas is cheap.
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Looking forward to those L.T. (Lazy Teenager) natural gas powerplants. Let the fracking begin!!!
Let us discuss the Obama administration’s actions!!!! This is so typical of the left — we are supposed to DISCUSS their ACTIONS. They ACT and we, afterwards, are confined to discussing their actions. They take and then they say — LIKE RESPONSIBLE PEOPLE LETS SIT DOWN AND DISCUSS THIS!!!!. Then they take more and again call those who object unreasonable because they refuse to hold a civil conversation about their ACTIONS.
The left, meaning the Democratic Party. has been stifling energy production in this country for over 30 years. In the past thirty years how much drilling has not been done that could have been done? How many pipelines have not been built? How much coal, how much nuclear, how much gas is unavailable today because they stifled such projects in the past?
They act — and then they demand that like reasonable people we discuss their actions??? There comes a time when reasonable people pick up pitchforks.
On the topic of the “science” of global warming.
Going from town to town, shouting from the back of a wagon, the snakeoil saleman is a constantly moving target.
The “science” of global warming, or whatever it is called today, really consists of nothing but numerous ever changing “big” declarations (I will not dignfy such by calling any such a theory or hypothesis) — shouted from the back of a wagon. When one declaration loses it selling value the “science” moves on. No matter what specific words are used the underlying pitch is always the same — buy this medicine or you are all going to die!
The point real scientists must understand is that a snakeoil salesman has no interest in science whatsoever. He is interested in sales. It does not matter if the snakeoil salemans has degrees and teaches at a university — he is still a snakeoil saleman. You better realize that if you are going to debate such people. You may trunce such on the scinece but lose the audience.
LazyTeenager says:
March 29, 2012 at 4:31 am
systematically put out of business and please do not act surprised; that’s exactly what Barack Obama said he intended to do if elected President.
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If Alan can’t point to an Obama quote which actually says this I am calling lie again.
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LT:
Is this what you are looking for?
LazyTeenager:
Your post at March 29, 2012 at 4:34 am is plain wrong. It says;
“Now it means that the source of fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States is being systematically put out of business
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And being replaced by gas powered power stations because gas is cheap.”
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No!
Firstly, the use of new coal-fired plants and nuclear plants is prevented by the same rulings which are closing the old ones.
Secondly, you clearly have no idea why different technologies have advantages and disadvantages which encourage use of more than one technology for power generation. The following are some examples.
Coal and nuclear are good for baseload supply because they are large so each supplies a large output (e.g. the efficiency of a coal-fired PF plant increases with increased plant size while the reliability of the plant reduces with increased size. So, the optimum plant size is a balance between efficiency and reliability and, at present, this optimum is over 2 GWe output).
Combined cycle gas turbine plants can be built as smaller units so are most effective for peak load matching.
A power station is constructed to operate for decades.
Fuel cost is trivial for a nuclear plant, is significant for a coal-fired plant, and is the major coat for a gas-fired plant.
Forecasting fuel costs decades in the future is not possible. But variation in fuel costs provides a risk to future electricity cost. This risk is negligible for nuclear plant, low for coal-fired plant, and very high for gas-fired plant. Indeed, this risk is enhanced by the high variability of gas prices relative to coal prices.
A balance of used technologies minimises risk of future high electricity prices and price fluctuations.
There are several other relevant considerations but the above is sufficient to show the lack of understanding displayed by your assertion.
The important consideration is that the market would ensure the used the most efficient and effective balance of power generation technologies but ‘greens’ do not want efficiency and effectiveness so they are destroying the market options by use of legislations.
Richard
You nailed their modus operandi very well Eugene. They are a constantly moving target but what can nail them is their flawed policy actions, which always end up a complete disaster both economically and socially. That just leads them to slip away and try the next hair-brained scheme in order to keep the punters in a perpetual state of restless motion. We need to nail them down with their own hypocrisy and demand they take the first baby steps of their new world order.
How so? Hoist them on their own petard and demand of every Left Green leader that spouts the CO2 snake-oi,l that forthwith they announce that no publicly paid official will remain airconditioned on their watch, just like in our grandparents’ day, all for the sake of the grandkiddies of course. This we demand as a shining example to all those who toil in the great outdoors and under the tin rooves of our factories and workshops. First people first and the taxeaters most removed from natur’es vicissitudes in their airconditioned offices and vehicles will be the ones to set the standard for us all. We demand this sacrifice from the loudest and most concerned and we demand it now for the sake of the future generation. How can they possibly refuse their pressing moral obligation.
What do we want from you concerned graduazzi and movers and shakers?
No publicly paid official to be airconditioned any longer! Show us your true environmental credentials now!
On second thoughts airconditioned is a very inadequate term for our moral leadership. We hereby demand of them that none of them remain ‘climate controlled’ any longer. Let’s GETUP them all with their moral obligation. Twitter, email, facebook, youtube or whatever let’s keep them all to their natural lofty commanding heights.
Ken McMurtrie says:
March 29, 2012 at 3:50 am
nuclear would be better left alone until we develop safer systems.
AP1000 Document –
http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/AP1000_Plant_Description.pdf
Predicted core damage frequency of 2.4E-07/yr is well below the 1E-05/yr requirement, and
frequency of significant release of 1.95E-08/yr is well below the 1E-06/yr requirement.
Is 100 times safer ‘good enough’?
Lisa Jackson, Enviro-mouthpiece for the current socialist administration speaks for all these hippocrates. If they’re really worried about our children and grandchildren than stop borrowing a TRILLION dollars per year to piss away now. They’re not worried about the future. This is a right-now power grab. The Earth and it’s children be damned.
Like most noble ideas and most Congressional mandates, the initial language was vague enough to be interpreted to mean anything those in charge wanted it to mean.
If the Constitution can be reinterpreted to mean whatever someone wants it to mean (think Commerce Clause and Welfare Clause) then it’s no surprise that the EPA mandate can be reinterpreted to mean whatever someone wants it to mean.
What kind of people stand by idly while its own government conspires to take away the primary source of energy that everything else depends upon? The answer? You.
True. As long as people have power they won’t pay any attention to what’s going on. But people want their power on and once the blackouts start they will scream bloody murder. There is evidence to support this.
Back in the early 2000’s in California there were rolling blackouts and there was an immediate outcry. New power plants were approved and built in a short time. Politicians saw that the public was not going to put up with blackouts which meant they would be out of a job if something wasn’t done.
Sometime back in the 1980’s during a series of large storms there were many power outages near the coast of Northern California caused by falling trees. The outcry was large enough for the CPUC to force PG&E to institute a tree trimming program.
Just last year in my area there were several power outages during relatively minor snow events (up to 8″) again caused by falling tree branches. Complaints got PG&E to do more trimming and upgrade their breaker system so one fallen tree branch didn’t take out the entire area.
I’ll bet there has been work done to improve the power grid after last years east coast snow storms.
People take the power for granted until it’s not there and then and only then they’ll scream. They will vote out the idiots in government going along with the green agenda but unfortunately it won’t happen until we reach a crisis. Most people have such busy lives that they never consider issues like no power until there is no power.
Unfortunately, it’s not hyperbole. The oft-reported aims of this President, his Energy Secretary, and his Science Advisor, are to destroy the carbon-based-fuel industries: coal, oil, and yes, even natural gas (look how they are ramping up efforts to halt fracking). What is the point? The only logical answer is that their real aim is to destroy the economy of the United States, forcing us to turn to some kind of ‘global governance’, a drab and dreary World Soviet where “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are kicked into the trash heap of forgotten dreams.
By the way, Fredb, it’s not ‘legislation’; it’s regulation, a rampant abuse of too-vague authority granted to the EPA when it was created back in the ’70s.
/Mr Lynn
Antony Watts and others (as well as the CRU e-mails themselves) have shown the 2007 IPCC report to be a biased, improperly reviewed document at best, certainly not something on which to base public policy. Yesterday I had to look up a regulation on the EPA web page. Going to the EPA home page I see under “Popular Topics” “Climate Change”. Since the EPA’s far-reaching regulations governing greenhouse gases went into effect this week I figured I would see what they were feeding the public as their justification for these regulations.
So I click the “Climate Change” tab, then under that, “Science” then “State of Knowledge”. Here is that link:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/stateofknowledge.html
They cite one reference: IPCC 2007
Policy Guy says:
March 28, 2012 at 8:06 pm
Natural gas will become the new demon once coal is curtailed.
Watch, its already happening.
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Any workable source of energy will be demonized.
Now that Lisa Jackson has delivered a death blow to the coal industry, she’s now off to Paris to take part in Agenda 21 planning.
Her press release:
Doesn’t matter R or D, it all goes the same way in the end. Neither side of the aisle will do anything to dismantle the monster the EPA has become. Some will talk, yes, but in the end, it’s just posturing.
As for the EPA actually carrying through on this – I say, bring it on. I’m fully prepared to live without the grid. Most of the EPA supporters, however, are not. (They THINK they are, but they’ve never really considered the ramifications – at least, none have who I’ve ever talked to).
Policy Guy says:
March 28, 2012 at 8:06 pm
With due respect Anthony,
The environmental community has for at least a dozen years, held natural gas suspect, as a fossil derived product…..
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It is Boiling the frog a slow process of striping away our access to energy and therefore access to a decent life one at a time.
What many people do not realize is that the stranglehold on energy and therefore the stranglehold on the USA economy started a long, long time ago with killing the Dream of Nuclear Power. The Thorium Aircraft Reactor Experiment (1954) was scuttled despite the fact the reactor itself was successful. Not only successful but much safer as a domestic power source. Various reasons are given, like it did not produce fuel for bombs but that did not have any bearing on its usefulness as an incredible power source. Do not tell me the Navy or Air Force could not see the advantage of a plane or ship that did not need to dock to refuel. The strategic advantage would be huge.
Then there was the mass hysteria over the atom bomb for decades followed by Japan’s radiation scare. A scare that was hugely overblown by the Mass Media Propaganda machine just as Thorium was catching the eye of the environmentalists. If Thorium was pursued in the first place there would have been no scare and we would have had cheap “CO2 and pollution free” electrical power for the last half a century. However visible pollutions and atom bombs has been a really great stick to beat the public with have they not? The EPA was “born in the wake of elevated concern about environmental pollution, EPA was established on December 2, 1970.”
Thorium would have been cheap because much of the cost of nuclear is not in the reactor itself but in the lawsuits, protests and regulatory burden. The big question one must ask is WHO BENEFITS? And the answer is the same as it is this time, nuclear powers competitors ~ OIL, natural gas…. It is no coincidence that Maurice Strong worked in Saudi Arabia for a Rockefeller company, Caltex, in 1953 That Strong is listed as a trustee in Annual Report – 1974 – Rockefeller Foundation It is no coincidence that Greenpeace gets large chunks of cash from the Rockefeller foundations or that I saw the help wanted ads in the Boston Global for nuclear protesters paying $10/hr.
If you do not know who Maurice Strong is by now I suggest you start researching him because he is one of the keys to this mess. His name pops up in connection to CAGW, environmentalism, the world Bank, the Rockefellers, the United Nations and several scandals.
A Quick on what happened to Nuclear:
The only energy problems this administration is trying to “solve” are problems of their own making. The US has an over-abundance of coal, oil and natural gas that are not being tapped to their fullest potential. This is the “energy problem” of which you speak, one of the administration’s own making, and deliberately so.
Sorry Fred, he’s exactly right. I take it you don’t listen to NPR. If you exposed yourself to it for just 20-30 minutes a day you’d know he may actually be understating the case. That no new coal electric power plants will ever again be built in this country is a very clearly stated goal. That’s not surmise, that’s a direct quote. That existing coal generation will be regulated out of operation as swiftly as possible is not hyperbole. Again, that’s a quote.
Michael D Smith says:
March 28, 2012 at 8:37 pm
GE again. Quite possibly the worst company on the planet. The cause of, and solution to, virtually every major was-a-non-problem we face. The true face of the enemy within. It is sickening what has happened to this once great company, and what it is doing to this once great country.
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And Obama named the GE CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, as his top Economic Adviser heading the “Council on Jobs and Competitiveness” Big American firms have cut around 3 million jobs over the last decade and GE is leading the pack. GE, under Immelt, GE has shipped tens of thousands of jobs out of the United States. And now GE has announced that it “is moving the headquarters of its 115-year-old X-ray business to Beijing”.
The last GE factory in the U.S. making light bulbs closed September 2011. The new CFL light bulbs was supposed to create “green jobs” However CFLs, are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China. So much for Obama’s GREEN JOBS. The USA has lost 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since 2000.
March 28, 2012 at 10:29 pmwikeroy says:
March 28, 2012 at 11:03 pm
Curaba has a point. Just look here;
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/lisa_p_jackson_epa_administrator_fulfilling_the_un_mission.html
They are trying to enforce a global green governance. Controlled by the green morons, who just demand that “someone else” fix it.
Basically it is the feminine brain demanding that the masculine brain fixes a 100% risk-free society.
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I resemble that remark!
Len says:
March 28, 2012 at 11:18 pm
How sad, a leftist, incompetent president supported by leftist,incompetent Democrats in the Senate and both propped up by a far left media are leading us down the road to destruction, all in the name of saving our environment….
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That is another lie told by the media to keep the progressive/socialists from seeing what is actually happening. Obama is a Globalist and the economic mess in the USA and EU has been driven by the wishes of multi-national corporations from the start. National loyalty is not in their vocabulary. The want uniform laws and no pesky national borders that interfere with business. They see the USA and the EU as having labor costs that are way too high. Environmental regs are great for killing your competition when YOUR MEN are running the bureaucracies though. For example Obama appointed heads of the EPA and the USDA that have ties to Monsanto when the left was clamoring for the appointment of a much loved University Prof. (A whole long ramble on my take of what is actually happening with references in this comment.)
Obama appointed Mr.William Daley from JP Morgan Chase (Occupy Wall Street cough, cough) as White House Chief of Staff. In 1993, he served as Special Counsel to President Clinton on issues relating to the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) WTO and the entry of China into the WTO. He was also Clinton’s Secretary of Commerce.
Obama appointed Gene Sperling as Director of the National Economic Council. In Clinton’s admin. Sperling successfully negotiated and concluded the China-World Trade Organization agreement in Beijing. He was principal negotiator on the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The Act repealed the Glass-Stegall Act allowing banks, securities firms and insurance companies to merge. Part of what cause the “TOO Big To Fail” Bank bailout.
Obama appointed Lawrence H. Summers as Director of the National Economic Council (NEC) from 2009-2011. Summers was Chief Economist of the World Bank .
Obama appointed CEO of GE Jeffrey Immelt to chair of his new Council on Competitiveness and Jobs.
This article gives a glimpse into the mind set of global businesmen.
RockyRoad says:
March 29, 2012 at 6:02 am
There’s always the serious contention that Obama isn’t and has never been a big fan of the Constitution, even though he’s supposedly a Constitutional Professor —
Obie was an adjunct who taught a class on one aspect of Constitutional law. According to the U of C, it was school policy to refer to anyone teaching a class as “professor.”
Name me just one thing the government has required that individuals must purchase in the past–just one. (And no, the requirement the infant government made on people go buy guns doesn’t count, for that applies to those in the militia.)
Half-credit — a militiaman wasn’t *required* to purchase a firearm, merely to carry (and use) one in the common defense.
Since the days of the Plymouth Colony, all able-bodied males between the ages of 17 and (usually) 45 were required by law to be members of the militia. Since most families owned just a single firearm and having two or more “military-aged males” in a family wasn’t uncommon, the individual colonies established armories as a repository for state-purchased weapons and powder — in a muster, militiamen who didn’t own a personal weapon were required to report to the armory to receive a firearm and an individual issue of powder and ball. The militiaman was expected to maintain his weapon in good condition and he had the option to either return it to the armory after the emergency was over, or purchase it from the state at a reduced “fair wear” price.
Naturally, each colony preferred that its militiamen own their firearms, because that reduced the expense involved in storing and maintaining weapons in the armories.
Ken McMurtrie says:
March 29, 2012 at 3:50 am
…. nuclear would be better left alone until we develop safer systems. (IMHO)
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The safer system is almost ready if we can manage to kick DOE and EPA in the rump. Energy Secretary Steve Chu has said he’s a big fan of small nuclear reactor technology… So he is half way there.
Frequently Asked Questions about Thorium: http://energyfromthorium.com/faq/
Physics Forums.com Discussion: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=358038
Thorium powered car (Concept) http://www.txchnologist.com/2011/the-thorium-laser-the-completely-plausible-idea-for-nuclear-cars
@Bill Tuttle says: March 29, 2012 at 12:11 pm
A state government can require you to buy something (as long as that requirement does not violate that state’s constitution, of course). The federal government, with enumerated and limited powers, cannot.
This is why RomneyCare is legal and ObamaCare is not.