Consider: Obama has one of the largest carbon footprints in the world. He casually jumps in a helicopter for a flight over to Andrews AFB to jump on a jumbo jet to take a cross country flight, where he schedules a brief official event to avoid reimbursing the government, then heads off to fundraisers and/or a couple rounds of golf. His flight includes a backup jumbo jet and several military fighter jets. Yet…
(NY Times) The Obama administration on Monday announced its plan to start regulating planet-warming pollution from airplanes, setting off a battle between environmentalists and the airline industry.
The plan to curb airplane emissions comes as President Obama looks to strengthen his climate change legacy with new policies in the waning months of his administration. The airline rules would be among the final pieces of his sweeping and contentious second-term climate agenda, which has included rules to rein in greenhouse pollution from cars, trucks and power plants, and his role in forging last year’s Paris agreement committing nearly 200 countries to take action to reduce emissions that are warming the planet.
The Environmental Protection Agency released the aviation plan, known as an “endangerment finding,†which concludes that the planet-warming pollution produced by airplanes endangers human health by contributing to climate change. The endangerment finding does not include the details of a regulation, but it sets off a legal requirement under the Clean Air Act for the E.P.A. to establish a rule. (snip)
The announcement did not include a timetable for releasing the rule, but people tracking the administration’s climate change policies said it was possible that the E.P.A. could release a draft rule by early January, most likely making it Mr. Obama’s last climate action. However, the next administration would have the authority to rewrite the draft rule.
Huh. So, the rule will wait till Obama is almost out of office, when people won’t have the opportunity to say “say, what about your own “carbon emissions”, Mr. Obama?”
Of course, as the airline industry points out, they’re already at the cutting edge, and the technology doesn’t exist now to implement whatever is coming. Rules will also hurt American airplane companies, who have to compete against foreign companies who have no such rules. They’ll also certainly harm average Americans, as the costs for air travel will go up, affecting business travel, personal travel, and costs of goods shipped via airplane.
