Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I’ve been discussing cost-benefit analyses lately. The AP has the story of a Federal judge who has just made a most excellent and far-reaching ruling regarding EPA cost-benefit analyses. He said that the EPA has to include the cost of lost jobs in the economic part of the cost-benefit analysis of their proposed coal regulations.
Now, I was shocked, but not surprised, to find out that the EPA did not include such an obvious cost in their analysis. It highlights the problem I’ve pointed out with these speculative looks at the future—the choice of what to include is quite broad, and subject to political winds.
But not including lost jobs? Man, that’s just heartless. Makes me wonder if lost jobs are included in the so-called “Social Cost of Carbon” … but I digress.
So the backstory is, the Federal judge had said that the EPA had to include the cost of lost jobs in their analysis. True to the general lawlessness of the Obama Administration, the EPA simply hadn’t obeyed the judge’s order. So the judge asked why.
Here was the part that set my hair on fire. I thought this was just about the coal regulations. But the head of the EPA, Gina McCarthy, obviously a current spokesmodel for the Peter Principle, said the following:
McCarthy asserted it would take the agency up to two years to devise a methodology to use to try to comply with the earlier ruling
Two years? World War II lasted four years for the US, and these wankers can’t put together a method to value lost jobs in two years? Glad they weren’t in charge back then … that’s just plain obstructionism.
The judge, understandably hit the roof. Among other things he said:
The judge said the EPA is required by law to analyze the economic impact on a continuing basis when enforcing the Clean Air Act and McCarthy’s response “evidences the continued hostility on the part of the EPA to acceptance of the mission established by Congress.”
Bailey ordered the EPA to identify facilities harmed by the regulations during the Obama presidency by July 1. That includes identifying facilities at risk of closure or reductions in employment.
… and …
The judge also set a Dec. 31 deadline for the EPA to provide documentation on how it is continuously evaluating the loss and shifts in employment that may result from administration and enforcement of the Clean Air Act.
The winningest part of this whole thing is that the judge said it doesn’t just apply to the coal rules. It applies to the whole Clean Air Act and by inference all of the EPA’s regulations.
Not only that, but his order specifically applies to any and every facility harmed during the Obama Administration by EPA regulations. Zowie! So there can be no doubt that it extends at least that far and farther.
And this in turn opens the door to overturning a whole host of existing regulations. All that needs to be done is to show that the cost of lost jobs was NOT considered in the EPA finding, and it would have to be reviewed … by the new Administration.
Finally, the judge spoke directly to the heart of the matter, saying:
“EPA does not get to decide whether compliance with (the law) is good policy, or would lead to too many difficulties for the agency,” Bailey wrote. “It is time for the EPA to recognize that Congress makes the law, and EPA must not only enforce the law, it must obey it.”
Good days, my friends, good days. Perhaps the EPA can get back to the actual environmental issues that all of us care about, liberal and conservative alike, the real issues of clean air and clean water.
The AP article is here …
w.
As Always: If you comment, please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE REFERRING TO, so that everyone can understand your precise subject.
They didn’t include lost jobs because they ASSUMED that the “green jobs” would be a net plus despite having zero evidence to back that assumption. Hubris man, just total hubris.
I do not understand this. First, I am certain that human produced CO2 is not affecting our climate, and low cost energy is absolutely needed. And I do think slightly higher CO2 would be beneficial. What I don’t understand is this argument of loss of jobs. We do know that solar and other crackpot methods are expensive because they require lots of labor, have shorter product life, which also requires more labor. So, I don’t see validity in the suggestion that there would be a loss of jobs.
Exactly! Moving from efficient technology to inefficient in this case means a loss of wealth not a loss of jobs. If the government is incapable of doing a simple cost-benefit analysis, it hardly seems competent to calculate the loss of wealth associated with inefficient energy. Watching governments around the world flail through these policy decisions is like watching a dog trying to solve a partial differential equation.
Please take a look at the document entitled “Green Jobs – Rhetoric or Reality”, at the following link:
https://friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=234&page=2
To summarize:
• For every “green” job created, between 2.2 to 6.9 jobs are lost in standard industries due to the cost associated with “green” jobs;
• A great deal of the “green” jobs are temporary – once the facilities are installed the jobs disappear;
• Corruption reign supreme in the renewable sector – the Italian Mafia are a prime example of fraudulently skimming millions of euros from both the Italian government and the EU;
o Ditto Mr. Al Gore and his carbon trading scheme (okay, I added that one – lol);
• And in Germany, the conclusion was that: “We should regard the country’s experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits.”
So many of the comments remind me incontinent Liberals. They are worried that Trumps nominees are not breathing fire and how they disagree with him. Who is working for whom? Now! Put clean pants on!
Willis E .
You are the type of bloke I would love to take on a remote camping/fishing trip here where I live in Far North Queensland Aus, on Cape York. Just so I can pick the hell out of your brains over a few days of eating, fishing, drinking and kicking back in nature in all it’s glory.
I have followed this fiasco of climate change mantra and the apparent downfall of modern science over the last decade or more with a sense of dread at times due to the seeming corruption of both the Science and the Politics which has somehow become an intertwined monster on a global scale.
There are very few people who are able to cut through all the crap and misinformation on this subject with such clarity, and are able to use such concise information in the way that you do in simple layman’s terms, and yet you distil the needed understanding of Science in an understandable, unconvoluted and plain use of English to any subject at hand so that even I can understand it.
Thankyou for just being there first off and sharing your opinion and knowledge, but also thankyou for taking a stand and doing what is right. Science itself needs people such as you to reinforce what Science really is, Questioning and posing alternatives, Questioning and THINKING, and I might add Questioning and INFORMING.
____________________________________________________________________________________
When the Facts or Truths of Science become distorted beyond all recognition and venture into the realm of science fiction, we all know there is a problem.
It would seem though that this fact has left the building so to speak, and no longer applies so long as the politics of science reign supreme and the science of politics reciprocates.
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Ever caught a Barramundi on a hand line Willis, or tasted one cooked over an open fire of drift wood on a beach with no one else there except for you and your friends over a thousand miles from nowhere ? Fresh black lipped oysters and Crayfish straight off the reef and a few shots of 90% home brew vodka to wash them down with while waiting for the next bite on the set line and watching for Croc’s around a camp fire.
My bet is that you know what that feels like anyway, but that most don’t have clue about that feeling at all. And most not having known it are willing to give it all away to some Dot/Gov regulation as it doesn’t really apply to them at all at this point in time and even if it did….. It doesn’t really matter at all to that class of people at all.
Like who would ever want to go camping at all anyway…right ? There are bugs and snakes and that sort of shit out there in the wilds right ?
If I said my name was Willis, would you take me? That sound great, mate!
I wonder if this judge would have made this ruling if he didn’t know that Trump was going to be the President.
There does appear to be some adjustment of jurisprudence in this development. Oddly enough the talk around here is about how good it would be to rebuild the govt agencies and eliminate redundancies in the bureaucratic sector.
The case was originally decided in October, before the results of the election. The EPA’s delaying tactic just came to light in their response to the Judge’s order from October. Looks like he would have ruled the same no matter what.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/01/federal-judge-denounces-epa-as-rogue-agency.php
“McCarthy asserted it would take the agency up to two years to devise a methodology to use to try to comply with the earlier ruling”. Which means we are crap at doing our jobs.
Isn’t EPA cost/benefit analysis one of those “baselines of facts” that Obama just said we need to agree on so the left and right don’t talk past each other? Surely the left will agree that cost/benefit analysis cannot ignore certain facts if they don’t fit their leftist narrative, and instead cost/benefit analysis need to include all costs to be a thorough and complete baseline of facts.
All indicative of the “transparency” of his administration.
I had an professor friend who always said “Clear as mud”.
Like an interrogation room window, the transparency only goes one way.
How to remove /recall members of congress.
http://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/ee067ba0-db71-4394-9a37-453316aeb453.pdf
I would like to see a cost benefit analysis of the EPA.
Yes indeed! It would probably raise Leonard Nimoy’s right eyebrow.
I nominate a new logo for the Climate Change Alarmist Industry
Global Smarming
If the shoe fits, then eat it!
Speaking of winning, Willis, Have you noticed how close Anthony is to 300,000,000 hits?
The EPA works against the interest of the public and is an economic black hole . It’s days are numbered
and they know it . After next week …. Gina who ???? Who cares ?
While they are cleaning EPA house they need to take their guns away too . Armed PO’d EPA employees
not a great idea .
Does the USA really need on average 400 EPA people per State when individual States already have their own environmental protection agencies ? This absurd waste of tax payer money is bad enough but throw in the outright contempt of the law and the EPA needs to be fired .
The EPA have made themselves into something what would normally be impossible – turkeys waiting for Christmas, in January.
Sadly the BS at the EPA doesn’t surprise me on bit. Last job I had before retirement almost drove me nuts, I was doing acquisition support for a military agency, acquiring things that cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to build and procure. These people, our military civil service customers, were just plain lazy and incompetent. For example, there were program documents that had to be written, and allegedly followed. Engineering management plans that laid out the program, who was responsible for what, how many design reviews were needed, who did them, how to review and document the results, who was responsible for creating teams to handle problems, etc. These documents were required in order to get continuing funding after the items were procured to keep the programs alive for maintenance and such. Think they did them before the program was over, or if they happened to, that they followed them? Nah, that’s crazy talk, why would they want a document that meant there was a procedure they had to follow or, gasp, to actually have to do work on! They wanted to write the documents that told them how to do the program after it was over.
And they weren’t even ideological, just lazy and stupid, imagine how much worse if they had an ideological agenda like the EPA does. I’m glad to be rid of it all, I used to grit my teeth driving to work and during the day and all the way home. And I wonder why I had headaches all the time.
I am not shocked at all that the EPA did not count lost jobs in their cost/benefit analysis. The Progress-Left loves humanity but hates humans. The Progressive-Left has all these great ideas that will save humanity and make the world a perfect place, but anybodies who get in their way gets rubbed out like vermin.
I don’t understand how they claim to have analyzed costs and benefits without taking facility closures and job losses into account? That’s just taking benefits into account and not costs. That’s a bit absurd.
Willis: Apparently only two statutes require the use of benefit/cost analysis, and there are 23 that explicitly prohibit it. This Table shows the list. By the way, the “center for progressive reform”, staffed by professors, and funded by Soros’s Open Society, has advised the Obama Administration from the gitgo on avoiding it–because using such tools holds justice hostage to the economy. They appear to have been advising him to run the country using the pen and phone too.
Without some net benefits analysis of some sort, and I like B/C analysis as much as any other, it is not possible to determine if public monies are purchasing value.
Oops. I got the slash on the closing anchor tag backward….
Lost jobs due to the EPA is only 1/2 the story. The other part is the jobs protected by the EPA. Most climate “science” jobs are either directly or indirectly due to the EPA and like-minded government agencies and politicians. For every coal job lost we should also require the firing of a climate scientist.
How to Discuss Global Warming with a “Climate Alarmist.” Scientific Talking Points to Win the Debate.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/03/how-to-discuss-global-warming-with-a-liberal-the-smoking-gun-files/
The EPA blatantly igores the clear wording of the law. They should be shut down and any needed functions transferred to the States. The text of the judgment discussed here is available at http://www.jurist.org/paperchase/EPA%20coal%20order.pdf .
No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Most EPA functions are well outside the realm of climate garbage.
But it is sad to see that the #1 strategic goal of 2016 was climate change
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-11/documents/epa_fy_2016_afr_2.pdf
Sadly there is an explicit or implicit bleed of climate change in some of the other goals.
Note those dullards in Congress assumed that job loss was the most important criterium. I doubt they ever conceived the evil of a mainstream political party, actually bolstered overwhelmingly by the press and government employees, that have actual disdain and total disregard for private employment or job loss. Nor did they anticipate that national politicians, such as the current administration and Ms Clinton, enjoy the loss of employment by Americans who do not share the personal ambitions of Obama and Clinton. Revel in it. The current head of the EPA is one such sociopath.
Michael J. – It’s all bathwather. To give another example, read how the EPA is conducting human experiments on inhalation of small particles, even though they clam there is no safe level of inhalation (https://epahumantesting.com/the-most-toxic-substance-on-earth/). They are lawless and should be disbanded. Their climate path to increased lawless activism is only one of their terrible activities.
Holy smokes, this isn’t just a home run for getting EPA climate fanatical extremism under control. This judge is knocking the leather off the ball and sending it on a trip around the world.
the real issues of clean air and clean water. yep.