Jun
1

Obama’s Climate Change Plan: My Prediction

Tomorrow, the Obama administration is supposed to announce its new plan, as drafted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to fulfill the President’s original election-year promises for fighting climate change. (Or, was it “global warming”?) The new standards will be finalized in June 2015, after everyone has had a year to react & respond. States will then have another year to submit their plans for meeting the “new EPA targets”.

“[C]ampaigners say the EPA rules could deliver significant emissions cuts – near the 17% Obama proposed at the Copenhagen climate summit – and the cap-and-trade programmes that were so reviled by Republicans.”

Of course, the push is for more than that.

“The EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy, is seeking steep reductions – as much as 25% [from about 1,600 power plants in operation today] – but she has hinted repeatedly that she will allow states latitude in how they reach those targets.

The plan would allow electricity companies to reduce pollution by shutting down the oldest and most polluting coal plants. They can install carbon-sucking retrofits. They can expand wind and solar energy, upgrade the electrical grid, encourage customers to update to more efficient heating and cooling systems, or more efficient appliances and lightbulbs.”

I don’t have any inside information, but I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that it will involve or result in:

Unconstitutional and intrusive power-grabs by the federal government, particularly the EPA.
Citation of highly controversial scientific “findings” and predictions.
Unreasonable optimism re certain “renewable energy sources”.
Plenty of new, unnecessarily stifling regulation, bureaucracy, and accompanying fines.
Efforts that work against using our nation’s natural resources and available technology.
No serious path to being an energy-independent nation.
Ever-soaring energy/fuel prices.
Destruction of industries and associated losses of jobs.
Increasing environmental litigation.
Nothing that will actually have more than a marginal effect on average planetary temperatures in the next hundred years or more.