Justices limit existing EPA global warming rules
MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court today placed limits on the sole Obama administration program already in place to deal with power plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.
The justices said that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks authority in some cases to force companies to evaluate ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This rule applies when a company needs a permit to expand facilities or build new ones that would increase overall pollution. Carbon dioxide is the chief gas linked to global warming.
The decision does not affect EPA proposals for first-time national standards for new and existing power plants. The most recent proposal aims at a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, but won’t take effect for at least another two years.
The outcome also preserves EPA’s authority over facilities that already emit pollutants that the agency regulates other than greenhouse gases. EPA called the decision “a win for our efforts to reduce carbon pollution because it allows EPA, states and other permitting authorities to continue to require carbon pollution limits in permits for the largest pollution sources.”
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, said “EPA is getting almost everything it wanted in this case.” Scalia said the agency wanted to regulate 86 percent of all greenhouse gases emitted from plants nationwide. The agency will be able to regulate 83 percent of the emissions under the ruling, Scalia said. The court voted 7-2 in this portion of the decision, with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas saying they would bar all regulation of greenhouse gases under the permitting program.
Full story: http://www.chicoer.com/breakingnews/ci_26016656/justices-limit-existing-epa-global-warming-rules
Anthony: I would love to be more optimistic, however 60 years’ experience has been a tough taskmaster. Perhaps I can squeeze some optimism in, perhaps about 3%….
It is not the courts job to save us from terrible politicians and bureaucrats. That is our job. If the population is ignorant and naive you can expect worse from the Government.
Can I be a pessimist and still not give up?
The thing to do is have people keep writing books explaining just how the scam has been generated, and who was involved in spreading the science as truth, and remembering just who did what, explaining it to their children so there’s a clear difference between what they are taught by the political and money prostitutes,
and whatever real science they manage to learn in the wake of the current ghetto of scientific literacy foisted on at least a generation or two of young adults, worldwide.
Everyobody needs to just remember who was spreading it, and tell in detail, every single person they know:
who in the main stream media was peddling it a real,
who in the blogosphere was peddling it as real,
who in main stream science said it was real,
and who said it wasn’t.
The main thing is don;t let the current state of believer-dominated blogging and media guide what you’ll read and write about, and talk about with your friends.
Now the true deceivers of this are known it’s important to remember they are nearly all very media savvy and almost all of the scientists involved, are closely aligned with establishing themselves some kind of horn tooters and publicity stunt crackpots in media.
Boycott the people who spread it,
Tell them you’re going to boycott them and why,
and tell every body you see: who and why you will not associate yourself with, because of their teaching that the voodoo was real science.
People have to realize the public got manipulated by the believers in this, the media hacks who tooted it far and wide, the government spamming endless noise disguised as science, to perpetuate the illusion it is warming.
Snuffing peoples’ opinions with the most revolting character assassinations and attempts at it,
Everyone has to recognize just because someone puts on a white lab coat doesn’t mean he’s a scientist. Just because someone puts on the good ol’ boy hayseed act, doesn’t mean they’re not a cynical, cunning political activist, like Gore with his “I’m a preacher” and Obama with his “I don’t have much patience with climate deniers”,
the public is being hit from both sides by scammers and we all need to dig in and make sure before we breathe our last, we have made sure everyone we know, knows what happened to scientific rigor in the United States and the Western world,
and we need to make sure none of those who believed in it are able to leave some kind of name involving respectability for themselves, so as soon as they stop spamming, those associated with spreading truth,
bury them in an avalanche of citizen activists who engage the assassins of science at every meeting; every engagement where we see assumptions of it being real, blog readers and citizens, working citizen scientists, let these liars get out of hand once.
They’re our generation and it’s our responsibility to make sure we buy their books and go through them marking all the fake claims, then donate them to thrift stores and friends.
Do not let the wack tards who hijacked science, hijack it for your kids. They’ll telll you to shut up to your face. Don’t let them do it, remind the people taking up for this that you can go all over the internet, your facebook, your twitter, and you can tweet and post up every evil lie they put up on the internet,
an history can make it’s own recording of these hijackers of scientific discussion and their voodoo.
Stephen Rasey says:
June 23, 2014 at 1:54 pm
I wish I could share your opinion, but I was absolutely stunned at what the administration was able to do on the last “shutdown”:
1) No money was saved. After all federal employee “missed” salary payments were made up plus overtime, the “shutdown” cost more than just continuing to run things as usual. As a result, there was zero pressure put on the administration and they managed the “shutdown” deliberately to maximize the pain felt by ordinary people so they could blame Republicans.
2) The nation was outraged in 1932 when the Hoover administration used federal troops to clear the Bonus Army out of Washington who wanted an early payment of their promised bonus. 80-some years later there was little outrage with the Obama administration’s US Park Service threatened WWII veterans with arrest for merely wanting to visit “their” memorial while they were still able to do so.
Constitutionally the US House controls federal spending, but practically speaking they do not any more. The administration has learned they can get whatever they want in a spending bill just by threatening a shutdown.
The “endangerment finding” is bad law. We don’t know if GHG’s actually increase the temp, in any measurable way. IF it were shown, that they do increase the global temp, we don’t know if it is an “endangerment”, a “mixture of endangerment and benefits”, or wholly “beneficial”. There is no identifiable person, who is “endangered”, by the release of GHG’s.
Therefore, nobody has standing, to restrict the activity of another person’s release of GHG’s. This is a “theoretical endangerment” that could be used, to restrict any and all activities, that could theoretically endanger some one.
On the subject of laws and government, I just got the following in my email, from Google Calendar. I never got anything from Google Calendar before. Looks like the warmists are trying to step up their game. So here’s a chance to call in and let our elected representatives know that millions of Americans don’t accept the global warming hype and scare tactics being promoted by those with vested interests, that there is insufficient evidence to warrant spending billions of dollars on something that is not a problem in the first place, and that our representatives are supposed to be responsible TO THE PEOPLE.
******
Congressional call-in
If you are concerned about global warming, please take a minute to call your US Representative and Senators on 6/23/14. Let them know it’s time to deal with climate change!
Call the US Capitol switchboard, 202-224-3121, and ask for the office of your Rep and Senators.
Unsure who represents you in Washington? No worries! Go here:
http://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup
If you want to include in your call a specific solution, carbon fee and dividend is a great one! It will:
* Reduce CO2 emissions by 33 percent after 10 years, 52 percent after 20 years.
* In the first 10 years, 2.2 million jobs would be added.
* The refunded carbon tax would add between $80 billion and $90 billion to annual gross domestic product (GDP).
* Because of reduced air pollution, by 2025, 13,000 lives would be saved annually.
Learn more at citizensclimatelobby.org. THANK YOU for making your calls 6/23/14! Together we can save our climate for this and future generations!
WHY CLIMATE CHANGE?
Climate change is already costing us all money – by some estimates over $1 trillion/year – with the long-term potential to cost much more. How? By disrupting weather patterns, challenging ecosystems, increasing food prices, acidifying oceans, adding healthcare costs, raising sea levels, stressing our infrastructure, etc. – and with the path we’re on, it’ll only get worse.
WHY JUNE 23?
I and 700 fellow citizen volunteers from all over the US are planning to meet with the Washington DC offices of all 535 Congressional offices that week to advocate for free-market solutions to global warming, and it would make a huge impact if they hear from their constituents before we go to The Hill!
Political disengagement is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Change in Washington begins with you! Thanks!
PASS IT ON!
When: Mon Jun 23, 2014
Where: Phone call (map)
It should be obvious by now that practically every agency within the Executive branch
should be removed from their control and made independent. Virtually every agency has been corrupted by this administration. The writers of the Constitution had no idea just how unbalanced the system would become, when laws created new Executive agencies and then allowed them to be controlled by Executive orders and by installing their own puppets to run them. The belief that these agencies would be apolitical has been destroyed, I would say.
I know I am the broken record but the only way out of this unconstitutional Federal gov box is to take away the money and then the powers usurped. Close the EPA, IRS and most of the agencies.
20 words that will change the way we live
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/the-28th-amendment.html
* By, ‘buy their books,’ I obviously mean where they can be found cheap, not at full price LoL !
The very first sentence in the very first article of the Constitution says: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Neither the EPA nor any of the alphabet soup of federal agencies are mentioned. And nowhere does the Constitution authorize congress to delegate those legislative powers. Yet the EPA passes rules/regulations that carry the force of law. Failure to comply will result in legal action and possibly severe penalties. That sounds a lot like a law. In other words it is flagrantly unconstitutional. So we now have a government where laws are not written by our elected representative in congress but by unelected federal bureaucrats. That’s not the Republican form of government the founders created. It’s more like an oligarchy. We the people are no longer represented. The best way to fix this is to elect only people who will steadfastly support the Constitution. A congress of such people would vote to defund the EPA and enact new laws that throttle all federal agencies and prevent them from overstepping their bounds.
@M Simon
You may, but it would help if you not notice a lot of other things in combination.
Joseph Murphy says:
June 23, 2014 at 2:06 pm
“It is not the courts job to save us from terrible politicians and bureaucrats. That is our job.”
========
Yes, if this were fifty years ago and we were in a democracy. How is that possible now when half the people are dependent on government for a job or a handout. We have no “job” in the current system except to consume products and services and supply trigger fingers for the only super power. When the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency and all the economic chickens have come home to roost, then the experiment will be officially over. Republics can be toppled with gradualism; just takes time.
“albertalad on June 23, 2014 at 11:57 am
As a Canadian, our Prime Minister does not have imperial power of this magnitude.”
The fact the congress and senate can veto the president’s bills would seem to indicate the US limits executive power more than Canada. Also we still have a queen so let’s not throw stones from our glass house.
Carbon dioxide is an odorless, tasteless, transparent gas that is absolutely mandatory for all life on earth. Change to its current level has no significant effect on climate. Calling it pollution is scientific incompetence. Calling it carbon makes it sound more ominous and distracts from attending to real atmospheric pollutants from coal such as particulates, mercury, NOX and sulfur (The US uses precipitators to remove these real pollutants. The Chinese… not so much).
Two drivers have been identified that explain measured average global temperatures since before 1900 with 95% correlation and credible values back to 1610.
The drivers and a graph of what they predict are given at
http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com/
CO2 change is not one of the drivers.
Bill says:
June 23, 2014 at 2:35 pm
From your Google Calendar SPAM:
That’s four out of four demonstrably false claims in one email. Batting 1000 as we say on this side of the pond.
Google is indeed the new Evil Empire. Even Gary Trudeau (AKA Doonesbury) has figured that out .
“Don’t be Google” … “Perfect! Sounds ethical but doesn’t overpromise”.
Yes Indeed.
I will be happy when 97 % of jurists and 97 % of politicians are impeached, tried for treason, and executed.
Then again, I am not a denier. I am a climate Infidel!
I’m with Anthony: it’s a start. Perhaps bigger than anyone things, believing the “idiot meter” percentages quoted.
It limits the EPA’s power a great deal in that they cannot keep moving the bar every time they want to stymie power companies and force social change by making energy expensive. That’s a big deal no matter what they “got”. Secondly, the courts rule based on legal precedents and evidence presented, not so much the science, which we know—if the alarmists and politicians will not admit it—is far from settled. While this ruling is hardly a repudiation of how the Alarmists and the Green Lobby have abused the Precautionary Principle, it should be viewed as an important inroad against the ability of the whomever presently has control of the machinery of government to use it to try to coerce society by re-interpreting the Clean Air Act in some twisted fashion.
Did anyone truly expect a total sea change? Sweeping reform from SCOTUS? Maybe they’d seen the error of their ways and would declare that contrary to a previous ruling, no, CO2 is NOT a pollutant?
SCOTUS decisions are most often incremental changes to existing law. The fact that they did not cave totally to the Administration should be seen as very encouraging—given examples like the incredible decision in Kelo v. City of New London.
No one swallows an elephant whole. Gotta start with the first bite.
Until this decision, the EPA admitted no limits at all on their power to re-interpret the Law. This is a start, and we haven’t had time to analyze and figure all the probable and possible implications, yet.
^^ Oops. spellllling: “…than anyone thinks…”
Chris Magnuson says:
“…Boycott the people who spread it,
Tell them you’re going to boycott them and why,
“and tell every body you see: who and why you will not associate yourself with, because of their teaching that the voodoo was real science. …”
Agree! Don’t promote this nonsense by voluntarily associating in anyway with those who promulgate it.
However, a very important point missed in your comment, and everyone else’s, is that it is Government Enforcers that make all the words spewed in the vast amount of legislation on the climate-related issue (and all others) more than ignorable, and the media hype along with it. Without the Enforcers, government politicians would be powerless; governments are coercion-based, every single one of them. So first and primary, it is the Enforcers who need to be recipients of negative Social Preferencing – NO voluntary association of any kind. When there are few individuals willing to take these jobs to initiate physical force on orders from higher up (or even without them) because most people will not associate with them if they do, Governments will be virtually toothless.
Government is the problem and will remain the “thorn” that it is in the lives of most people – those not part of or friends of the “leadership” – as long as it is accepted as necessary for social order. However, changing that paradigm is a slow process for the majority of people since they cannot currently conceive of any other way a society can be fashioned.
A new way of thinking is based on Social Meta-Needs, those environmental conditions of interaction that can exist within human society and stably self-order it so that each individual can gain all goods and services needed to optimally increase his lifetime happiness. The foundation for social meta-needs is shown to be a redefined ‘ethical egoism’ as the necessary purpose of any individual’s life. Public social preferencing becomes the ultimate arbiter of individual action and effector of a social order of maximal liberty.
http://selfsip.org/fundamentals/socialmetaneeds.html for full understanding via a studied read, including links.
“Can anyone tell me how does a US president acquire such absolute power”
Nixon, that’s how. It is all about the acceptance of the EPA and its powers in the first place. It is not really the POTUS that has the power, it is the EPA. It is above ‘parliament’. It is the mix of decision making ability AND the power to enforce it that creates a tyrant. The shape is unimportant. It doesn’t have to be invested in one personage.
“Limited government” is an oxymoron. The Founders meant well, but they created a monster. The Environment, Global Warming, National Security, Terrorism…plus a monopoly on the use of force and the will to use it. What more do they need. Not to worry; it is all for our own good.
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” George Washington
According to EPA sites the US is responsible for 19% of the global CO2 emissions.
According to EPA sites electric generation accounts for 38% of US CO2 emissions.
A reduction of 30% in CO2 from US electric generation will reduce global CO2 emissions by 2.2%. (.19*.38*.30=0.0217) Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
As I understand it the EPA reg limits power plants to 1,100 pounds of CO2 per MWh of output. Back of the envelope I came up w/ about 600 for a typical CCPP, 1,100 for simple, and 2,200 for typical coal. Now in all fairness shouldn’t cars/trucks/trains/planes be limited to some equivalent pounds CO2 per Hph?
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
Small potatoes, but it is a start. We must repeal the applicable laws and replace EPA with a small, chartered, and limited agency with direct Congressional oversight, not executive power.
Here comes the pitch….
Climate policies could lift global GDP by $2.6 trillion/year – World Bank
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/06/24/world-bank-climate-change-idINKBN0EZ00L20140624
(Reuters) – Global economic output could rise by as much as an additional $2.6 trillion a year, or 2.2 percent, by 2030 if government policies improve energy efficiency, waste management and public transport, according to a World Bank report released on Tuesday.
The report, produced with philanthropic group ClimateWorks Foundation, analysed the benefits of ambitious policies to cut emissions from transport, industrial and building sectors as well as from waste and cooking fuels in Brazil, China, India, Mexico, the United States and the European Union.
It found a shift to low-carbon transport and improved energy efficiency in factories, buildings and appliances could increase global growth in gross domestic product (GDP) by an extra $1.8 trillion, or 1.5 percent, a year by 2030.
If financing and technology investment increased, global GDP could grow by an additional $2.6 trillion, or 2.2 percent, a year by 2030, the World Bank said.
Climate policies could also avert at least 94,000 premature deaths a year from pollution-related diseases by 2030, improve crop productivity and prevent around 8.5 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases being emitted – the same as taking around 2 billion cars off the road.
For example, if China deployed 70 million low-carbon cook stoves, it could avoid around 1 million premature deaths from pollution and reap almost $11 billion in economic benefits, the report showed.
“These interventions should seem like no-brainers to governments around the world,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim told reporters on a conference call.
“The report removes another false barrier, another false argument not to take action against climate change,” he added.