Friday, May 25, 2012
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says we face serious
threats to human health, welfare and justice. She’s absolutely right. However,
the crisis is not due to factory or power plant emissions, or supposed effects
of “dangerous manmade global warming.”
The crisis is the result of policies and regulations that
her EPA is imposing in the name of preventing climate change and other
hypothetical and exaggerated environmental problems. It is those government
actions that are severely impacting Americans’ health, welfare, and pursuit of
happiness and justice.
After Congress rejected cap-tax-and-trade, President
Obama said there are “other ways to skin the cat.”
By hyper-regulating carbon dioxide, soot, mercury,
“cross-state air pollution” from sources hundreds of miles away, and other air
and water emissions, EPA intends to force numerous coal-fired power plants to
shut down years before their productive life is over; block the construction of
new coal-fired power plants, because none will be able to slash their carbon
dioxide emissions to half of what average coal-fired plants now emit, without
employing expensive (and nonexistent) CO2 capture and storage technologies; and
sharply reduce emissions from cars, factories, refineries and other facilities,
regardless of the cost.
EPA has also issued 588 pages of rules for hydraulic
fracturing for critically needed oil and natural gas, while the Obama
Administration has vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline and made 95% of all publicly
owned (but government controlled) lands and resources off limits to leasing,
exploration, drilling and mining.
These actions reflect President Obama’s campaign promise
to “bankrupt any company that tries to build a new coal-fired power plant,”
replace hydrocarbons with heavily subsidized solar, wind and biofuel energy,
make energy prices “necessarily skyrocket” – and “fundamentally transform”
America’s constitutional, legal, energy, economic and social structure.
Energy is the lifeblood of our nation’s economy, jobs,
living standards and civil rights progress. Anything that affects energy
availability, reliability and price affects every aspect of our lives. These
diktats put the federal government in charge of our entire economy – and impair
our health and welfare.
Moreover, the anti-hydrocarbon global warming “solutions”
the Obama Administration is imposing will bring no real world benefits – even
assuming carbon dioxide actually drives climate change. That’s largely because
China, India and other developing countries are increasing their use of coal
for electricity generation, and thus their CO2 emissions – far beyond our
ability to reduce US emissions. These nations rightly refuse to sacrifice
economic growth and poverty eradication on the altar of climate alarmism.
Even worse, the health, welfare and environmental justice
benefits that EPA claims will result from its regulations are equally
exaggerated and illusory. They exist only in the same dishonest
computer-generated virtual reality that concocted its alleged climate change, health
and environmental cataclysms, and in junk-science analyses that can only be
described as borderline fraud.
Implementing EPA’s regulatory agenda will inflict severe
economic dislocations and send shock waves through America’s factories,
farmlands and families. Far from improving our health and welfare – they will
make our economy, unemployment, living standards, health and welfare even
worse.
EPA’s new automobile mileage standards alone will result
in thousands of additional serious injuries and deaths every year, as cars are
further downsized to meet its arbitrary 54.5 mpg requirements. Its anti-coal
rulings and anti-fracking attitudes will severely impact electricity
generation, reliability and prices; factory, office and hospital operations and
budgets; American industries’ competitiveness in global markets; employment,
hiring and layoffs; and the well-being of families and entire communities.
Especially for areas that depend on mining and manufacturing – and the 26
states where coal-based power generation keeps electricity rates at half of
what they are in states with the least coal use and toughest renewable energy
mandates—it will be all pain, for no gain.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a White House
letter to House Speaker John Boehner inadvertently acknowledged that EPA alone
is still working on new regulations that the agency itself calculates will
impose $105 billion in additional regulatory burdens and compliance costs. Win
or lose in November, the Administration will likely impose these and other new
rules after the elections. We, our children and grandchildren will pay for them
in countless ways.
Utilities will have to spend $130 billion to retrofit or
replace older coal-fired units, says energy analyst Roger Bezdek – and another
$30 billion a year for operations, maintenance and extra fuel for
energy-intensive scrubbers and other equipment, to generate increasingly
expensive electricity.
Duke Energy’s new $3.3 billion coal gasification and
carbon dioxide capture power plant will increase rates for its Indiana
customers by some 15% the next two years. Hospitals, factories, shopping malls
and school districts will have to pay an extra $150,000 a year in operating
expenses for each million dollars in annual electricity bills. That’s four or
five entry-level jobs that won’t be created or preserved.
Nationwide, 319 coal-fueled power plants totaling 42,895
megawatts (13% of the nation's coal fleet and enough for 40 million homes and
small businesses) are already slated to close, the Sierra Club joyfully
proclaimed. Illinois families and businesses could pay 20% more for electricity
by 2014, the Chicago Tribune reports. Chicago public schools may have to find
an extra $2.7 million a year to keep the lights and heat on and computers
running.
Higher electricity prices will further strain refineries
already struggling with soaring electricity costs and EPA’s sulfur and other
regulations, restrictions on refinery upgrades and construction, constraints on
moving crude oil to East Coast refineries, and other compliance costs – all of
dubious environmental or health benefit. Three East Coast refineries have
already closed, costing thousands of jobs and causing the Department of Energy
to warn that pump prices are likely to soar even higher in Eastern states.
When we include discouraged workers who have given up
looking for jobs and people who have been forced to work fewer hours or at temporary
jobs, our unemployment rate is a whopping 19 percent – and double that for
black and Hispanic young people. America’s labor force participation rate is at
a 30-year low, its 2011 economic growth rate was a dismal 1.7 percent.
Well over a million US workers age 55 and older have now
been out of work for 27 weeks or more. Not only do prospects plummet for
re-employment of older workers. The longer they are unemployed, the more they
are disconnected from society, the further their living standards fall, the
more their physical and emotional well-being deteriorates, and the more likely
they are to die prematurely.
The cumulative effect is that families have even less
money to buy food, pay the rent or mortgage, repair the car or house, save for
college and retirement, take a vacation – and keep people comfortable (and
alive) on frigid winter nights and sweltering summer afternoons. Health and
welfare, family relationships, future prospects and psychological well-being
plummet. Because they spend the highest proportion of their incomes on energy,
poor and minority families suffer disproportionately.
And yet EPA’s regulations, regulatory agenda and
horse-blinder definition of health, welfare and justice ignore these realities
– and ensure that this intolerable situation will only get worse. In fact, the
only welfare EPA’s rules will ensure is the expansion of our welfare rolls, our
unemployment lines and our already record-setting food stamp programs.
Worst of all, our Congress and courts have completely
abdicated their obligations to provide oversight and control of this
dictatorial agency and Obama Administration. If this is the hope, change and
future we can look “forward” to, our nation’s health, well-being and justice
will be bleak, indeed.
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