Since EPA plans to find endangerment on both health and welfare grounds, the Agency could be compelled to establish “primary” (health-based) NAAQS for GHGs. Logically, the standard would be set below current atmospheric levels. Even very stringent emission limitations applied worldwide over a century would likely be insufficient to lower GHG concentrations. Yet the CAA requires EPA to ensure attainment of primary NAAQS within five or at most 10 years—and it forbids EPA to take costs into account. Regulate CO2 under the NAAQS program and there is, in principle, no economic hardship that could not be imposed on the American people.
It’s the new hair shirt in the new environmental religion. And all from unelected bureaucrats.
[Tuesday morning update]
Here’s a place to go to express your concerns.
[Bumped]
This is insane. Do the dems really think they are going to have a prayer of retaining power if they keep this up?
And it gets worse, since Rep. Waxman is inserting a provision in the upcoming climate bill to allow US citizens to sue the government or businesses that fail to do enough to prevent ‘harm’ caused by climate change.
Since China is rapidly expanding it’s ‘carbon footprint’, presumably anyone can sue the US government for failing to do enough to stop China from ‘causing climate change’.
Meanwhile, we can all watch as America sues itself back into the Stone Age.
Folks, relax.
This will not have any broad-brush consequence. Rather, it is a regulatory dagger that our political masters will aim at the heart of ANY business that doesn’t dance to their tune.
Right up until actual daggers are pointed at the hearts of said political masters.
<French knights from Monty Python and the Holy Grail>
“I emit carbon dioxide (and other noxious chemicals) in the government’s general direction!”
</French knights from Monty Python and the Holy Grail>
“Meanwhile, we can all watch as America sues itself back into the Stone Age.”
I would say there is a floor somewhere around the time of Hiram Maxim.
One of the problems will be getting a biased press to accurately report the consequences of any action taken by the EPA. The GOP should get out ahead of this now and trumpet just how expensive the process will be. It would dovetail nicely with the cost of his current programs and lend more credence to the fact he IS trying to put the government in control of huge swaths of the economy.
If Obama doesn’t let the EPA act on it then the environmental (or just mental) left will have been effectively marginalized. Either way, this will be a tear in the fabric of his Superman uniform.
I am going to let the world at large in on a near-secret.
The President can suspend the CWA and the CAA with a stroke of a pen.
If Obama fvcks up enough to warrant a state of emergency by his Republican sucessor, it can be rapidly undone. All it takes are the balls to do it.
Lets hope shit like this can help the Republicans find their balls.
> Lets hope shit like this can help the Republicans find their balls.
Mainstream republicans kill the ones with balls.
Hell, the other day PBS was gushing about how brilliant it was to use the healthcare aspects of climate change to finally impose meaningful greenhouse gas restrictions. Somehow carbon dioxide and water vapor are consider ‘pollutants’ directly harmful to the health and well being of people. It is so dubious that they have to legalese this through with the threats from litigation and healthcare cost saving concerns.
The fastest way to reduce GHG emissions is to kill all livestock and most large herbivores on the planet.
Dave Barry has been warning us about this for 20+ years.
Meh… the fastest way to reduce GHG emissions is to conduct the tests featured in the movie “Fail Safe”.
And then they complain when their party’s grassroots supporters take their balls and go home.
Let’s face it. It’s time to kill everything that breaths. That’ll solve the problem.
Don’t worry, some libs have most likely computed the optimum number of humans that can be allowed to live and not exceed these levels. A few bits and pieces have appeared in the last few months in articles.
You following my thought process?
They don’t want all of us gone, but those who don’t toe the line…it’s a carbon credit thing, ya know, but the form of barter will be breathing human beings.
Scary times are not far off.
The Progressive Left seems to have quite a bit in common with certain other enemies of individual liberty. That whole “convert or die” thing seems popular with both bunches.
Interesting. From the original link, they gave the reason for the EPA’s move:
The scientific analysis also confirms that climate change impacts human health in several ways. Findings from a recent EPA study titled “Assessment of the Impacts of Global Change on Regional U.S. Air Quality: A Synthesis of Climate Change Impacts on Ground-Level Ozone,” for example, suggest that climate change may lead to higher concentrations of ground-level ozone, a harmful pollutant. Additional impacts of climate change include, but are not limited to:
increased drought;
more heavy downpours and flooding;
more frequent and intense heat waves and wildfires;
greater sea level rise;
more intense storms; and
harm to water resources, agriculture, wildlife and ecosystems.
In proposing the finding, Administrator Jackson also took into account the disproportionate impact climate change has on the health of certain segments of the population, such as the poor, the very young, the elderly, those already in poor health, the disabled, those living alone and/or indigenous populations dependent on one or a few resources.
In addition to threatening human health, the analysis finds that climate change also has serious national security implications. Consistent with this proposed finding, in 2007, 11 retired U.S. generals and admirals signed a report from the Center for a New American Security stating that climate change “presents significant national security challenges for the United States.” Escalating violence in destabilized regions can be incited and fomented by an increasing scarcity of resources – including water. This lack of resources, driven by climate change patterns, then drives massive migration to more stabilized regions of the world.
The first thing to note is that the first sentence is wrong. The studies in question “suggest” that’s there’s a link between heat and low altitude ozone production. I assume by “climate change”, they mean global warming. Further some of the supposed “harms” are merely changes, particularly the last point.
Moving on, “disproportionate impact” doesn’t seem a useful criteria. For any significant change there will be groups that are affected more by the change than others. I simply don’t see the relevance of that criteria.
Finally, the Center for a New American Security is a think tank aligned with the Obama administration, apparently much like the Project for the New American Century was aligned with the Bush administration. Apparently, several Obama appointees have come from this think tank. I find it interesting that the center is both supplying people and justifications for the Obama administration.
I tell you what is going to happen. There has been some new technology in getting natural gas to come out of “tight” shale rocks by some kind of fracturing or whatever. It looks to be making natural gas more abundant and much lower in price than in recent years.
People are talking $3.60 per MBTU of natural gas. To me that translates to 4 cents/kWHr “at the bus bar” or 8 cents/kWHr retail. Those kinds of prices will bury anything else — supercritical steam plant coal, nuclear.
What we are going to do is to continue the process of replacing the share of coal electricity with natural gas electricity, and we are going to put the lipstick of a bunch of windmills as makeup to make that pig look like environmental progress. Throwing in the bucks to build the Potemkin windmills, 10-12 cents/kWHr retail will remain sustainable.
MG Wrote:
“… Rather, it is a regulatory dagger that our political masters will aim at the heart of ANY business that doesn’t dance to their tune. …”
How very Soviet of them. And goes with the theory that they’re not so much blanket hostile to big business as hostile to any potential power base not in their pocket.
Aristocrats, be they elective or hereditary, have been jealous of the power of merchants and bankers ever since the latter became major players at least 500 years ago (or so).
“The fastest way to reduce GHG emissions is to kill all livestock and most large herbivores on the planet.”
I’ll see you and raise you one better. We have to bulldoze over all the wetlands! Imagine all the global warming gas emissions that spew from wetlands: carbon dioxide, methane, and the dreaded water vapor. Save the Earth! Nuke the wetlands!
I tell you what is going to happen. There has been some new technology in getting natural gas to come out of “tight” shale rocks by some kind of fracturing or whatever. It looks to be making natural gas more abundant and much lower in price than in recent years.
Paul, I have only one question here. Are the people who claim to have this technology at this price point actually right? Personally, I doubt it. There’s been decades of claims about magic energy technologies from cold fusion to 300 mile per gallon carberators.
Instead, there’s been steady development of more efficicent energy generating technologies: more efficient and less polluting fossil fuel generators, improved and safer nuclear plant designs, steady improvement in solar power generation, and of course, windmills. I think the slow and steady improvements are going to win this race.
The Waxman-Markey bill would curtail the EPA’s authority to regulate CO2. The message to climate change deniers and coal-state senators is simple: we can address GHG emissions the easy way, or the hard way. It’s up to them.
“Jim Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 5:12 am
The Waxman-Markey bill would curtail the EPA’s authority to regulate CO2. The message to climate change deniers and coal-state senators is simple: we can address GHG emissions the easy way, or the hard way. It’s up to them.”
Gee Jim, and to wonder why we accuse leftists of jack booted thuggery.
He is partially right.
I see Haliburton trucks full of liquid nitrogen on the read all the time going to frac shale.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fracing+shale+marcellus&btnG=Search
Gee Jim, and to wonder why we accuse leftists of jack booted thuggery..
Umm, is it because you are so blinded by hysteria and self-pity that you can’t tell the difference between the lawful actions of a legitimate, popularly elected government and those of violent criminals? Or is it something else?
> the lawful actions of a legitimate, popularly elected government and those of violent criminals?
Does Jim really believe that a “legitimate, popularly elected government” can’t act in a violent and criminal fashion? (I seem to remember many folks arguing that Bush acted in a violent and criminal fashion yet his too was a legitimate and popularly elected government”.)
Sure, they’re not breaking the law, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not criminals.
Hitler’s Third Reich was a “legitimate, popularly-elected government.” Just because the mob is big enough doesn’t make its thuggery any more legitimate.
As I just noted in reply to Jim in another thread, we allegedly have a Constitution that sets forth the (limited) powers of the federal government, even denying electoral majorities some things they may want.
Subordinating the rule of law to popular passion whipped up by politicians and their lap dogs in media? Isn’t there a word for that?
Karl:
I am not talkin’ cold-fusion trash.
The word in financial circles is $3.60/MBTU (wholesale) natural gas this coming winter, and it is technology driven. Fracturing or horizontal drilling or whatever is not new stuff, but apparently the runup in natural gas and other energy prices has brought a lot of people trying to get more gas.
We go through these cycles of fuel price runup, investment in recovery, big talk about renewables, a slump in fuel prices, and renewables conveniently forgotten, and I am telling you there are signs of the continuance of this cycle.
On the reading comprehension front, note the words “lawful actions.” Does anyone think it’s violently criminal for the EPA to regulate gases that harm human health? Does anyone think it’s violently criminal for Congress to pass Waxman-Markey? Where, exactly, are the jack boots?
On the hysteria front, Rand warms immediately to the Hilter analogy. The problem with equating cap-and-trade to genocidal violence is that it doesn’t give you much room to escalate the rhetoric when Obama proposes something even scarier, like universal pre-k funding.
Does anyone think it’s violently criminal for the EPA to regulate gases that harm human health? Does anyone think it’s violently criminal for Congress to pass Waxman-Markey? Where, exactly, are the jack boots?
The jack boots come when people don’t obey the law.
The problem with equating cap-and-trade to genocidal violence
I didn’t do that. Hitler did many things that weren’t genocidal violence. Including many things that the progressives of the time applauded, until he ratcheted up the Jew hate and later invaded the USSR.
Personally, I don’t see the rationalization for CO2 regulation. The EPA is required to demonstrate that CO2 causes harm to human health in the US. They haven’t done so.
“The EPA is required to demonstrate that CO2 causes harm to human health in the US. They haven’t done so.”
Well, allow me! See, plants breathe in C02, right? Which makes the plants grow tall and strong. Soon their kind will cover the earth! And if that isn’t bad enough, think about the really big ones, known as “trees.” Lots of C02 means big trees, which means the next time a big storm comes, these trees can come down and crush more of us!
It’s us or the trees, people. Whose side are you on?
The jack boots come when people don’t obey the law.
So now the enforcement of laws is thuggery? How would you suggest laws be enforced?
Enforcement of unjust laws, passed by a democratic mob against the principles and foundation of a constitutional republic is thuggery.
People hanged at Nuremberg for it.
> On the reading comprehension front, note the words “lawful actions.”
Does Jim really believe that “lawful actions” can not be violently criminal?
Lawful just means that the govt didn’t break its rules. There are scads of criminal govts.
Rand:
Enforcement of unjust laws, passed by a democratic mob against the principles and foundation of a constitutional republic is thuggery.
Do you consider the Clean Air Act to be such a law?
That depends on the way in which it is interpreted by the regulators and the degree to which it is enforced. It certainly is if it means that the regulators have carte blanche to regulate any source of carbon dioxide (like, for example, me).
The constitutional basis for such a law is dubious at best, so, yeah.
Okay, here’s an odd literary reference. I once read an “Uncle Scrooge” or “Donald Duck” comic where Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck (and Hewey, Dewie, and Louie) got caught up in a hunt for an old viking helmet hidden in Newfoundland. The plot device was that some crank claimed to be a direct descendant of Lief Erikson, and by recovering the helmet he would validate his claim to be rightful monarch of all North America (since Lief was the first to claim it all originally, you know). At one point Donald gets the helmet and, reasoning with the crank’s lawyer that nobody could prove he WASN’T a descendant of Lief Erikson, Donald momentarily concluded he could be monarch of North America.
Why do I remember this story now? Because Donald (Donald Duck, mind you!) immediately devised a scheme to tax the population for using air. He even came up with the idea of breathing meters on people to charge for gasps and sighs.
It’s a sad day when the intentional silliness of Donald Duck, of all things, begins to look like the reality of the current EPA.
Maybe the writers of the comic went on to government jobs?