Gas prices are approaching $3 per gallon and may go considerably higher. $100 a barrel oil is seen as likely. Obama has choked off some oil production in the Gulf and made us more dependent on foreign oil. The economy is in tatters. Unemployment is at 9.8%. Barack Obama has brought this country to its knees.Now comes the knockout punch.
On April 19 EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson ruled that carbon dioxide, a gas vital to the growth of green plants, is a pollutant. The ruling gave the White House an almost unlimited control of the country and its energy.
Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, signed a so-called endangerment finding, stating that carbon dioxide and five other products of fossil fuel combustion are harmful to both the environment and to human health. As a result, the EPA could begin regulating automotive CO2 emissions as soon as June. The ruling also gives the EPA broad power to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from industry and electric power utilities for the first time.
This ruling is estimated to cost at least $3 billion:
The Environmental Protection Agency said the new rule represented its most consequential effort yet to tackle pollution that contributes to smog and soot that hangs over more than half the country. The rule would cost nearly $3 billion a year, costs that are likely to be passed along to consumers.
“Likely to be passed along to consumers….”
Likely? Ya think? Those WaPo guys really deserve all those Pewlitzers. They’re geniuses.
The $3 billion cost is most likely a gross underestimate. When did the government ever get a fiscal projection right?
That cost is only the beginning.
But industry groups said it will boost power prices and force many older coal-fired power plants to be closed. Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA official who authored the original interstate rule, said it was not clear whether utilities will be able to meet the new standards while still providing affordable and reliable electric power.
The nation’s power need does not diminish- it grows each year. And it is going to hit the US population hard.
The Affordable Power Alliance recently released a study showing the cost impact of the EPA regulations on minority families, who live in these coal-reliant areas of the country. The APA found that, by 2025, the EPA regulations will increase the poverty rate by 20 percent for African-American families and 22 percent for Hispanic families, while decreasing median minority household incomes by as much as $660 per year and leading to hundreds of thousands of jobs lost.
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released a report outlining the impact of the new regulations:
•New standards for commercial and industrial boilers: up to 798,250 jobs at risk;
•New standards for Portland Cement plants: up to 18 cement plants at risk of shutting down, threatening nearly 1,800 direct jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs;
•The Endangerment Finding/Tailoring Rules for Greenhouse Gas Emissions: higher energy costs; jobs moving overseas; severe economic impacts on the poor, the elderly, minorities, and those on fixed incomes; 6.1 million sources subject to EPA control and regulation; and
•The revised National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone: severe restrictions on job creation and business expansion in hundreds of counties nationwide.
The Washington Examiner compiled a list of the effects on small businesses:
Regulatory compliance costs are skyrocketing. According to a Small Business Administration report titled “The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms,” the total cost of complying with federal regulations is $1.1 trillion a year as of 2004. That’s more than $10,000 per household. The cost of regulatory compliance was just $7,000 in 1995 — up 30 percent in less than a decade.
Of that total, environmental regulation is estimated to cost $221 billion a year, second only to a broadly defined category of “economic regulation.”
The SBA also reports that environmental regulation is the leading regulatory expense for businesses with fewer than 20 employees, at $3,296 per worker.
Overall, regulatory costs are 45 percent higher for small businesses than for larger firms, and environmental regulations are the “main cost drivers in determining the severity of the disproportionate impact on small firms,” according to the SBA. Compliance with environmental regulations costs 364 percent more for small firms than large firms.
And what will these new regulations do? Has anyone actually guaranteed what the benefits will be? Well, the EPA has.
Tough new rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency restricting greenhouse gas emissions would reduce the global mean temperature by only 0.006 to 0.0015 of a degree Celsius by the year 2100, according to the EPA’s analysis.
Billions in direct costs. More dependence on foreign oil. Perhaps as many as 1 million jobs lost.
For six thousandths of a degree Celsius.
If you’re tempted to believe anything the Obama administration says about these new rules, think “Obamacare.”
Then they’ll tell that this will be a boon for green technologies like solar panels.
Did you know that nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 more potent a greenhouse gas than is CO2? Did you know that the levels of NF 3 have increased twenty-fold in the last decade?
Why no, you say. Why do you ask?
Because NF3 is used in the manufacture of solar panels.
According to the Scripps Institute; “ the present 5,400 tons in the atmosphere…is on the rise at 11 percent per year” – that will stay there for 700+ years – creates the equivalent warming of all Finland’s CO2 emissions.
According to Lubos, given the fact that the solar panels produce about the same percentage of the global energy as Finland, it is reasonable to guess that the state-of-the-art solar panels that would replace fossil fuels would cause a comparable amount of warming per Joule as fossil fuels.
I’ll bet you neither Barack Obama nor Lisa Jackson know that.
And about that global warming?
It’s stopped. Dead.
Actually, with the exception of 1998 – a ‘blip’ year when temperatures spiked because of a strong ‘El Nino’ effect (the cyclical warming of the southern Pacific that affects weather around the world) – the data on the Met Office’s and CRU’s own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years.
They go up a bit, then down a bit, but those small rises and falls amount to less than their measuring system’s acknowledged margin of error. They have no statistical significance and reveal no evidence of any trend at all.
DADT repeal, DREAM Act, Cap and Trade and now this?
I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. Barack Obama is the Presidential version of Wrong Way Corrigan. It’s as though the patient enters the doctor’s office complaining of chest pains and Dr. Obama inserts breast implants, performs Restylane lip enhancement and injects botox.
The doctor does everything except for what the patient needs because the doctor is eager to make a name for himself.
The patient dies.
Heckuva job, Barry.
It’s a damn shame you can’t sue a President for malpractice.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.