Inserted from <NY Times>Unwilling to wait for Congress to act, the Obama administration announced on Wednesday that it was moving forward on new rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from hundreds of power plants and large industrial facilities.
President Obama has said that he prefers a comprehensive legislative approach to regulating emissions and stemming global warming, not a piecemeal application of rules, and that he is deeply committed to passage of a climate bill this year.
But he has authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to begin moving toward regulation, which could goad lawmakers into reaching an agreement. It could also provide evidence of the United States’ seriousness as negotiators prepare for United Nations talks in Copenhagen in December intended to produce an international agreement to combat global warming.
“We are not going to continue with business as usual,” Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, said Wednesday in a conference call with reporters. “We have the tools and the technology to move forward today, and we are using them.”
The proposed rules, which could take effect as early as 2011, would place the greatest burden on 400 power plants, new ones and those undergoing substantial renovation, by requiring them to prove that they have applied the best available technology to reduce emissions or face penalties.
Ms. Jackson described the proposal as a common-sense rule tailored to apply to only the largest facilities — those that emit at least 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year — which are responsible for nearly 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States… [emphasis added]
I certainly applaud this move. It’s a small step, but a necessary one. I expect considerable wailing and gnashing of teeth from the right, and to them I say, “Have a little cheese with your whine.” Now, if only Obama would move ahead and take the lead on a dozen, or so, other issues.
6 comments:
I think in time he will.. but he is trying to let Congress do their job.. It is their job to enact legislation and they aren't doing so. That was one of the biggest complaints people had about Bush, that he was running things and that he was enacting laws not Congress.. That's also the complaints of the RWNJ's they complain all the time Pres. Obama is writing all these laws and destroying the constitution. If Congress writes the legislation and he signs the bills into law.. then he keeps his hands clean.. yes he can suggest behind the scenes and I think he does a lot more than we realize.. Congress just doesn't listen very well.
I know, Annette. I get so frustrated with Congress. I wonder if "Congress" and "doing their job" are mutually exclusive terms. :-(
As long as cap and trade dies it will be good. New plants (some of them) and old plants can use the newest technology or retrofit to pipe the Co2 emissions under ground for storage. I am not sure how the earth will take this but I think it is a natural occurring element and will adapt to a strategy easier than the atmosphere.
It is the Nox emissions though that are the real killers and we hear little about how to dispose of them.
How stupid of a beast is the man who not only is willing to shit in his own bed but to also eat that same shit and then call it good as his home collapses around him?
Mark, what's the problem with cap and trade?
It reduces in areas specific not in the atmosphere over all. Trading carbon credits is shifting simply from one account to another with no net gain.
We have to find ways to take the shit out of the environment entirely. Personally I am for Hydrogen power as the new green alternative. It is coming along pretty quickly as a viable technology.
Doesn't that depend on the level at which they set the cap, as all trading occurs below that level?
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