Photo Credit: YouTube Gina McCarthy, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, was on Bill Maher’s show and clarified the department’s position on coal:
Bill Maher: “Some people called it a war on coal. I hope it is a war on coal. Is it?”
Gina McCarthy: “That’s exactly what this is.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: AP / Matthew BrownThe Obama administration on Monday will roll out a plan to cut earth-warming pollution from power plants by 30 percent by 2030, setting in motion one of the most significant actions to address global warming in U.S. history.
The rule, which is expected to be final next year, will set the first national limits on carbon dioxide, the chief gas linked to global warming from the nation’s power plants. They are the largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S., accounting for about a third of the annual emissions that make the U.S. the second largest contributor to global warming on the planet.
The regulation is a centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s plans to reduce the pollution linked to global warming, a step that the administration hopes will get other countries to act when negotiations on a new international treaty resume next year.
Despite concluding in 2009 that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, a finding that triggered their regulation under the 1970 Clean Air Act, it has taken years for the administration to take on the nation’s fleet of power plants. In December 2010, the Obama administration announced a “modest pace” for setting greenhouse gas standards for power plants, setting a May 2012 deadline.
Obama put them on the fast track last summer when he announced his climate action plan and a renewed commitment to climate change after the issue went dormant during his re-election campaign.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: dantekgeekDespite being soundly rejected a few years ago, cap-and-trade will get its U.S. encore but not in Congress. The Obama administration will likely use its executive power to unilaterally impose carbon dioxide emissions trading systems.
The Environmental Protection Agency will unveil regulations for existing U.S. power plants early next month. For months, onlookers have speculating about what could be included in the EPA’s rule for existing power plants.
But over the past few days it has become clear that the Obama administration will use the EPA to push cap-and-trade systems and other anti-fossil fuel policies on U.S. states. Administration insiders have told news outlets that cap-and-trade will likely be one of the options the EPA gives states to cut their carbon dioxide emissions.
The Wall Street Journal reported the EPA’s proposal will “include a cap-and-trade component where a limit is set on emissions and companies can trade allowances or credits for emissions” to meet new federal rules. The journal added that power plant “operators could trade emissions credits or use other offsets in the power sector, such as renewable energy or energy-efficiency programs, to meet the target.”
The plan is being sold as a “flexible” one. By allowing states a menu of policy options to meet federal mandates, the standards will ostensibly meet the unique needs of each individual state. But the stark reality behind the proposal is that it will be a boon for states that have already imposed cap-and-trade systems — which are overwhelmingly Democratic states.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: AP / J. Scott Applewhite
Issa, who has been investigating employee misconduct at the Environmental Protection Agency, demanded that deputy administrator Bob Perciasepe produce documents within one month.
“It is my intention to bring to this committee a contempt if that is not done,” Issa said during a Wedneday hearing, before citing his investigation into the Internal Revenue Service targeting of Tea Party groups and the Benghazi terrorist attack as evidence that the Obama administration has a strategy of “running the clock” on House investigations.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Fox News
The internal memos published by The Washington Times show EPA officials working behind the scenes as early as 2008 to kill the gold and copper mine project — two years before any scientific study or survey was conducted looking into the environmental impact.
“As you know I feel that both of these projects (Chuitna and Pebble) merit consideration of a 404C veto,” EPA official Phillip North wrote, according to the emails.
North, according to the Times, pushed to have the mine’s veto added to the agenda of a 2009 agency retreat.
But the EPA announced in 2011there would be a neutral and scientific review of the mining project. At the time, they said that concerns raised by environmental groups and local tribes would be investigated, but that no decision had been made.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Fox News
Earlier this year, the EPA issued its Mercury Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which the agency said will eliminate 90 percent of mercury and acid gas released into the air by coal-fired power plants.
“I would say this administration is certainly unfriendly towards coal,” Wyo. Governor Matt Mead said. “And in my view it is a war on coal.”
Mead proudly pointed out that Wyoming is currently the nation’s largest coal producing state. “We export more coal than any other state by far…about 400 million tons per year. Wyoming coal produces a lot of electricity in this country,” he said.
He and others in the coal industry are concerned, however, that the EPA’s MATS rules, which go into effect in January 2016, will devastate coal production in America and force many older power plants to close because the cost of retrofitting them will be too high.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: REUTERS
The EPA published its so-called New Source Performance Standard (NSPS) for power plants in early January, more than two months after it was submitted to the Federal Register. Furthermore, the EPA announced the standard, which would effectively ban coal-fired power plants, in late September.
Republicans have alleged that the delay in publishing NSPS was politically motivated, arguing that the Obama administration’s actions will push the finalizing of the costly rule until after the elections this fall.
“Based on this sequence of events, it appears that the delay in the proposal’s publication may have been motivated by a desire to lessen the impact of the President’s harmful environmental policies on this year’s mid-term elections,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe wrote in a letter to McCarthy.
Inhofe wants to know why there was a delay. Did it originate within the EPA or within the White House’s Office of Management and Budget?
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Thinkstock
Scientists Andrew Ghio, Jon Sobus, Joachim Pleil and Michael Madden, with laboratory director Wayne Cascio, administered this toxic mix of diesel and particulate matter to 41 people. In all, they gassed 81 subjects with various mixes of diesel, particulate and ozone in five different experiments — tagged with the science fiction-like names Omegacon, Xcon, Kingcon, Depoz and Lamarck.
No, these are not mad scientists from some 1930s D-list horror movie; they’re employees of the Environmental Protection Agency who used human subjects in an air pollution test chamber at the EPA’s Human Studies Facility in Chapel Hill, N.C., in 2010 and 2011.
The consent form that volunteers signed for the Omegacon cocktail pumped into Subject No. 1 lacked the warning that particulate exposure can cause death in older people with cardiovascular disease. EPA accepted a 58-year old woman with Stage 1 hypertension, premature atrial contractions, osteoarthritis, gall bladder removal and a family history of heart disease. EPA’s scientists were humane enough to turn off the gas when she suffered atrial fibrillation, and hospitalized her overnight for observation.
The quintet of EPA gas chamber experimenters were producing risk assessment studies ordered by then-agency head Lisa Jackson to justify the Obama administration’s push for crushing new clean air regulations, which they claimed would prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths each year by reducing emissions.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: CNSNews.com / Penny Starr
In a March 7th letter to House Science, Space and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), McCarthy admitted that EPA cannot produce all of the original data from the 1993 Harvard Six Cities Study (HSC) and the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) 1995 Cancer Prevention Study II, which is currently housed at New York University.
Both studies concluded that fine airborne particles measuring 2.5 micrograms or less (PM2.5) – 1/30th the diameter of a human hair – are killing thousands of Americans every year.
These epidemiological studies are cited by EPA as the scientific foundation for clean air regulations that restrict particulate emissions from vehicles, power plants and factories.
The agency has recently come under fire for exposing volunteers to concentrated levels of particulate matter without informing them of the risks, a practice Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), chairman of the House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, called “despicable.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: American Thinker
The study was greeted with great joy and celebration by the anti-mining groups. It was not so well received by the rest of us here in Alaska, as it marks yet another encroachment of federal oversight into a mining district on state lands that was designated as a mining district decades ago.
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R, AK) and Representative Don Young (R, AK) blasted the assessment and the process. Mark Begich (D, AK) embraced the study, pronounced it sound science, and said he now publicly opposes the mine. Begich is up for reelection in November.
When the EPA announced the assessment process in 2011, they couched it in terms of addressing local concern about the project, which they as the Rightful Stewards of the Environment simply couldn’t ignore. As it turns out, that was all a big lie. The results were pre-ordained and anti-mining groups were working closely with the EPA well before the assessment process was announced.
Now, this is not at all surprising, given the revolving door between members of this regime and environmental groups. What is surprising is that they have gotten sufficiently careless and arrogant that resource development people here in Alaska have copies of some of the relevant e-mails.
Read more from this story HERE.