I’m still not that concerned with Obama’s climate change plan: there is a low probability that it will actually be implemented. There will be too many lawsuits filed and fought. Republican led states, and perhaps energy states with Democrat leadership, will blow the regulations off. A GOP president starting in 2017 will roll the regs back to zero. And if the Democrats get blown out in 2014, much as happened in Australia in 2012 and 2013 to Labor, which was solely due to their climate change policies, Democrats will be squeamish as Obama’s final term winds down. That said, how bad would Obama’s plan be?
(CFACT) Supported by nothing but assumptions, faulty computer models and outright falsifications of what is actually happening on our planet, President Obama, his Environmental Protection Agency and their allies have issued more economy-crushing rules that they say will prevent dangerous manmade climate change.
Under the latest EPA regulatory onslaught (645 pages of new rules, released June 2), by 2030 states must slash carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired electricity generating plants by 30% below 2005 levels.
The new rules supposedly give states “flexibility†in deciding how to meet the mandates. However, many will have little choice but to impose costly cap-tax-and-trade regimes like the ones Congress has wisely and repeatedly refused to enact. Others will be forced to close perfectly good, highly reliable coal-fueled power plants that currently provide affordable electricity for millions of families, factories, hospitals, schools and businesses. The adverse impacts will be enormous.
The rules will further hobble a U.S. economy that actually shrank by 1% during the first quarter of 2014, following a pathetic 1.9% total annual growth in 2013. They are on top of $1.9 trillion per year (one-eighth of our total economy) that businesses and families already pay to comply with federal rules.
A U.S. Chamber of Commerce study calculates that the new regulations will cost our economy another $51 billion annually, result in 224,000 more lost jobs every year, and cost every American household $3,400 per year in higher prices for energy, food and other necessities. Poor, middle class and minority families – and those already dependent on unemployment and welfare – will be impacted worst. Those in a dozen states that depend on coal to generate 30-95% of their electricity will be hit especially hard.
Replacing coal with cleaner alternatives is a worthy goal. And not because of CO2, but actual pollutants. But, there has to be a viable energy source to replace it with, to avoid disruption and high costs. Obama’s plan doesn’t bother with that.
Millions of Americans will endure lower quality of life and be unable to heat or cool their homes properly, pay their rent or mortgage, or save for college and retirement. They will suffer from greater stress, worse sleep deprivation, higher incidences of depression and alcohol, drug, spousal and child abuse, and more heart attacks and strokes. As Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) points out, “A lot of people on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum are going to die.†EPA ignores all of this.
Of course they do. And, of course, neither Obama nor EPA head Gina McCarthy are willing to reduce their own “carbon footprints”.
It also ignores the fact that, based to the agency’s own data, shutting down every coal-fired power plant in the USA would reduce the alleged increase in global temperatures by a mere 0.05 degrees F by 2100!
So, essentially, this would have zero effect on the climate, while destroying the economy, killing jobs, and killing citizens.
Contrary to model predictions and assertions by the White House, average global temperatures have not risen in almost 18 years. We have now gone over eight years without a category 3-5 hurricane hitting the United States – the longest such period in over a century. Tornadoes are at a multi-decade low. Droughts are no more frequent or intense than since 1900. There were fewer than half as many forest fires last year as during the 1960s and 1970s. Sea levels rose just eight inches over the last 130 years and are currently rising at barely seven inches per century. There’s still ice on Lake Superior – in June!
Of course, Warmists like Obama will tell us this will happen in the future, despite a 95% failure of climate models. And let’s jump into my Normal Meme: if Warmists were so darned concerned, they would start by taking measures within their own lives to reduce, and even eradicate, their own “carbon footprints”. Yet, they don’t. That should tell you all you need to know about their belief sets.
Read: Obama’s “Carbon” Plan: Killing Jobs, Costing Americans Money »
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