The Use of the EPA as a Weapon to Kill Coal-fired Power Plants

The Use of the EPA as a Weapon
to Kill Coal-fired Power Plants

and drive up the price of electricity

The EPA is being used by President Obama as a weapon against the coal industry. This will cause the price of electricity to "necessarily skyrocket," as Obama himself predicted years ago. If this action isn't stopped by a wave of lawsuits (and fresh new faces in the Congress), it will be an economic disaster that was entirely preventable and completely unjustified. The EPA's war on coal is based on a series of its own misguided declarations and a few favorable rulings by activist judges. The EPA is bypassing the Congress and overstepping its authority. The EPA's proposed standards for coal-fired power plants are unattainable.

Trump's EPA Finalizes Plan To Repeal And Replace Obama-Era Coal Plant Regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its plan to repeal and replace an Obama-era regulation that critics said would cost thousands of coal industry jobs. The Clean Power Plan never went into effect. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay on its implementation in 2016. EPA's replacement plan, called the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, asks states to improve coal plant efficiency. "ACE is an important step towards realigning EPA actions so they are consistent with the rule of law and the original mission of the agency," Mandy Gunasekara, a former Trump EPA official who worked on ACE, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

EPA: Trump's easing of coal rules could kill 1,400 people per year. The Trump administration announced plans on Tuesday [8/21/2018] to ease Obama-era restrictions on coal-fired power plants, but an Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the new rules said they would increase carbon emissions and could cause up to 1,400 premature deaths each year.

The Editor says...
[#1] Carbon dioxide is not carbon. [#2] Show me the death certificate of any person whose death was caused by carbon dioxide emissions from a power plant. It doesn't happen.

EPA's Pruitt Declares End to Obama's 'War on Coal'. Sunday [4/22/2018], Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt stated there was an end to the "war on coal" in America. Pruitt told New York AM 970 "The Cats Roundtable" host that the EPA is not in the business of picking of winners and losers in the energy industry, chastising former President Barack Obama's administration for declaring war on coal.

Trump's making American mining great again. Lost amid this week's tumultuous vote on a tax-cut bill, President Trump signed an executive order that may be even more important: guaranteeing America has a reliable supply of the critical materials needed to produce modern-era weapons as well as popular consumer goods. The executive order, signed on Wednesday, follows a report by the United States Geological Survey that — not for the first time — identifies 23 critical materials, including metals, minerals and so-called rare earth elements (REEs) that America, once the world's leading source of rare earths, no longer produces. The reason: China, our main trade nemesis and a potential future military enemy, can provide them cheaper.

"The War On Coal Is Over," Declares EPA Administrator Pruitt. The Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will file a proposal later this week to repeal the Obama Administration's Clean Power Plan (CPP), EPA administrator Scott Pruitt declared in a speech in the coalfields of Kentucky today [10/9/2017]. The draft repeal proposal argues that the Obama administration exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Acts when it imposed rules on power generators that went beyond making improvements in their own plant operations. Specifically, the CPP would likely require power generators to create or subsidize significant amounts of generation from power sources — solar and wind — outside of their customarily regulated activites.

Judicial Watch: Documents Reveal Obama EPA's Projection of Reduced 'Premature Deaths' by Clean Power Plan Was Misleading. Judicial Watch today [8/23/2017] announced it received documents from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that show the agency's claim that the Obama administration's 2015 Clean Power Plan would prevent thousands of premature deaths by 2030 was, at best, misleading. [...] The documents forced out by Judicial Watch reveal that carbon dioxide reduction itself would not prevent any deaths.

EPA Resists Order Requiring Assessment of Job Losses. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to resist a judge's order requiring the agency to determine how many coal mining and coal power plant jobs its emissions regulations have eliminated. The ruling by Judge John Preston Bailey of the U.S. District Court in Wheeling, West Virginia was handed down in a case in which coal producer Murray Energy sued EPA in 2014 alleging the agency failed to fulfill its duties for decades and account for the economic impact, including job losses, caused by its rules. This is the second time Bailey has ruled against EPA in this case. In October 2016, citing Section 321(a) of the 1970 Clean Air Act, Bailey ruled the Clean Air Act requires EPA, on a continuous basis, to calculate job loses, including coal mine and power plant layoffs, caused by its regulations. Bailey gave EPA 14 days to submit a plan for assessing job impacts of its regulations on the coal industry.

US EPA Backs Off Haze Rule for Texas Power Plants. Texas has more than a dozen coal-fired power plants in the state, with the capacity to generate 19,000 megawatts of electricity. In March Texas sued the EPA to block a regional haze plan it implemented in January that was expected to result in the closure of seven coal fired power plants in the state. Under the 1999 Regional Haze Rule the federal government and states governments were supposed to work together to improve visibility in the U.S.'s 156 national parks and wilderness areas. The January rule offered by EPA was intended to improve visibility in Texas's Big Bend National Park and Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The power plants targeted by EPA's haze plan were located hundreds of miles from the parks in question.

Judge rebukes EPA, orders quick evaluation on coal jobs lost over regs. After ignoring the requirement for decades, the Environmental Protection Agency is now under court order to quickly evaluate how many power plant and coal mining jobs are being lost due to air pollution regulations. U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey in West Virginia made the ruling Wednesday [1/11/2017] after reviewing a response from outgoing EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. The judge had objected to McCarthy's response to an earlier order, in a lawsuit by Murray Energy Corp., that the EPA must start conducting the analysis. According to Wednesday's [1/11/2017] order, McCarthy asserted it would take the agency up to two years to devise a methodology to use to try to comply.

How American Coal Could Come Back Leaner and Cleaner. True, some of the damage done to the coal industry has been a result of the rise of shale gas, but much of it comes down to burdensome regulations Obama and his EPA saddled on the coal industry. In 2015, the Obama administration stopped giving leases for new coal mines on public lands, which is the source for around 40 percent of coal in the U.S. National Economic Research Associates found the EPA's most recent mercury admission standards, which went into effect in 2015, will cost the economy $25.6 billion per year. Things were bound to get worse under the Obama's Clean Power Plan, which limits carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and specifically targets coal.

Trump's Plan For Coal Country Is To Hollow Out The EPA. President-elect Donald Trump's campaign to jump-start the coal industry is predicated on hollowing out the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to members of his transition team. The EPA will be dialed back to focus solely on pollutants posing harm to public health and will cease its present extracurricular focus on agenda-centered pollutants supposedly causing man-made global warming, Kathleen Hartnett-White, a member of Trump's transition team, told reporters Monday [11/14/2016]. "He's very much for clean air and clean water," she said. "But the better home for considering this discussion about carbon dioxide and climate is in the Department of Energy."

Green Energy Reforms Will Hurt the Poor. Consider the EPA's Clean Power Plan, released about a year ago. EPA declared the CPP to be "a historic and important step" that "takes real action on climate change" and is "fair" and "flexible." By talking about the CPP in such grandiose terms, EPA attempts to distract people from asking questions like, "Who will pay for this?" and "By how much will the CPP reduce climate change?" Turns out, the effect on climate change is almost negligible. Applying the same climate model used by the EPA, Benjamin Zycher, from the American Enterprise Institute, determined that the climate benefit of the CPP amounts to a temperature reduction of 0.0015 of one degree by the year 2100.

The most important assumption in EPA's CO2 Endangerment Finding has been conclusively invalidated. The objective of this research was to determine whether or not a straightforward application of the proper mathematical methods would support EPA's basic claim that CO2 is a pollutant. Stated simply, their claim is that GAST [Global Average Surface Temperature] is primarily a function of four explanatory variables: Atmospheric CO2 Levels, Solar Activity, Volcanic Activity, and a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO.) The first objective of this research was to determine, based on the very considerable relevant and credible tropical temperature data evidence, whether or not the assumed THS [Tropical Hot Spot] actually exists in the real world. The second related objective was to determine whether, adjusting ONLY for ENSO [El Niño-Southern Oscillation] impacts, anything at all unusual with the Earth's temperatures seemed to be occurring in the Tropics, Contiguous U.S. or Globally.

EPA's Proposed "Clean Power" Plan: Missing Benefits, Hidden Costs. In August 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the final version of its proposed Clean Power Plan (CPP), which calls for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from U.S. electric generating plants by 870 million tons below 2005 levels by 2030, when the EPA assumes that the CPP will be fully implemented. This paper presents the results of a comprehensive examination of the assumptions and methodology used by the EPA to estimate the costs and benefits of the CPP.

Nearly All U.S. Coal Plants Now Comply With The EPA Mercury Rule That Was Shot Down By Supreme Court. Nearly all U.S. coal plants have come into compliance with the EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standard — which the Supreme Court last year ruled is illegal — and only a small percentage have closed, according to new data from the Energy Information Administration. It may be another sign that U.S. pollution goals may be more easily achievable than opponents claim. Last June, the Supreme Court ruled in Michigan vs. EPA that the EPA had not conducted a sufficient cost-benefit analysis of the 2012 rule, which prohibits the emission of mercury, arsenic and other airborne toxins. But the court left the rule in place while the EPA conducted that analysis, and nearly all vulnerable coal plants have borne the costs and stayed in business.

Florida State Rep. John Wood Fights Regulatory Overreach. Aside from the legal deficiencies, the Clean Power Plan is just bad policy for Florida and many other states. For all practical purposes, the EPA has set up a framework under which power currently produced from coal plants must be displaced by increased reliance on natural gas plants, renewables, and energy efficiency and conservation. Due to the inherent limitations of the latter, the CPP puts Florida in a situation where it must fuel its power plants almost exclusively with natural gas. For a state at the end of the pipeline, this creates serious concerns about electric system reliability and exposure to price volatility. You don't need to go back far to see how a supply disruption like the one caused by Hurricane Katrina could affect the state or to see how volatile natural gas prices can dramatically impact our electric rates. A greater reliance on a single fuel can only exacerbate these concerns.

EPA Administrator Admits: Climate Regs Don't Limit Warming. Under questioning by Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) during March 22 hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy admitted the Obama administration's climate efforts will do nothing to prevent climate change, acknowledging they are symbolic attempts to get other countries to make steep carbon dioxide emissions cuts. McCarthy was unmoved when McKinley noted the negative impact regulations such as the Clean Power Plan have had on jobs and electricity prices. Concerning the Clean Power Plan, McKinley asked, "If it doesn't have an impact on climate change around the world, why are we subjecting our hard-working taxpayers and men and women in the coal fields to something that has no benefit?"

Supreme Court rejects case challenging key White House air pollution regulation. The Supreme Court on Monday [6/13/2016] left intact a key Obama administration environmental regulation, refusing to take up an appeal from 20 states to block rules that limit the emissions of mercury and other harmful pollutants that are byproducts of burning coal. The high court's decision leaves in place a lower-court ruling that found that the regulations, put in place several years ago by the Environmental Protection Agency, could remain in effect while the agency revised the way it had calculated the potential industry compliance costs. The EPA finalized its updated cost analysis in April.

EPA is reminded that Power Plan enforcement violates SCOTUS order. Back in January, 26 states asked the Supreme Court to put a halt to the EPA's new "Clean Power" Plan based on the extraordinary cost it imposed on states, stress to the power grid and a variety of other factors. The Court agreed to that request, instructing the involved parties to put on the brakes until ongoing litigation made its way through the court system. Unfortunately, EPA chief Gina McCarthy never seemed to get the memo and the agency has continued work on the program, drafting plans to reward states which exceed the mandated targets in carbon emissions and punishing those who do not. As the Daily Caller reports, two state Attorneys General have now taken the EPA to task, reminding them that they are acting in direct defiance of an order from the Supreme Court.

Former top Obama energy official calls EPA's Clean Power Plan 'all pain, no gain'. A former top Obama administration energy official characterized the Clean Power Plan last week as "all pain, no gain," saying it will do almost nothing to reduce global emissions while fueling double-digit hikes in electricity costs. Charles McConnell, who served two years as assistant energy secretary under President Obama, told a House subcommittee that the total reduction in U.S. emissions by 2025 foreseen under the CPP will be offset by just three weeks of emissions in China.

Government Regulations Likely to Backfire Again. So how does government ruin companies and entire industries? Well, they can punitively tax them, but this has to be done legislatively and must be at least loosely based on the Constitution. That's far too much of a hassle and also must effect all people or businesses. Oh, and it's also far too public. No, this the answer is and has been the Administrative State — bureaucratic regulatory bodies within the government whose dictates often go unheard and unseen to the general public, but whose rules and regulations carry the full weight of law — without the legislative entanglements and fanfare. Save for the relatively informed few like us, most Americans are still virtually unaware of the havoc the EPA has wrought on the coal industry, or their stated goal to kill it off completely. The general public may only notice an increase in their power bill for which many will simply chock up to corporate greed.

Obama Violates the Law to Push His Climate Obsession. On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court set aside the Obama administration's far-reaching Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations targeting mercury and other emissions from coal-fired power plants. When EPA initially drafted the rule early in the Obama's first term, it considered mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants as a "proxy" for limiting carbon dioxide. After it became clear Congress would not pass cap-and-trade legislation to limit carbon dioxide emissions, the White House decided to act administratively to limit greenhouse gases through the backdoor. The Supreme Court ruled in Michigan v. EPA the agency should have taken into account the cost to utilities, consumers, and others before deciding to implement the regulation. EPA's failure to conduct a cost-benefit analysis violated the Clean Air Act, the court ruled.

EPA Continues To Implement Global Warming Plan Supreme Court Said It Couldn't. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials are moving ahead with a key part of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) despite the Supreme Court issuing a stay against the agency's global warming plan in February. The EPA submitted a proposal to the White House for green energy subsidies for states that meet the federally mandated carbon dioxide reduction goals early. The Clean Energy Incentive Program would give "credit for power generated by new wind and solar projects in 2020 and 2021" and a "double credit for energy efficiency measures in low-income communities," according to Politico's Morning Energy.

Earth Day marks the composting of the global climate deal. Climate diplomats have paraded December's Paris Agreement as historic. But as representatives gather in New York Friday [4/22/2016] to sign the deal, they should already know: The deal is nothing but a stack of empty promises. [...] The United States' contribution to this climate agreement hinges entirely on President Obama's commitments. Congress has passed no new laws to enable the president to meet his promises, and the so-called Clean Power Plan — the capstone regulations for cutting emissions 26-28 percent by 2025 — has been dealt a major blow. On Feb. 9, the US Supreme Court issued an unprecedented stay of the Clean Power Plan, halting the implementation of its rules until the suit is settled.

Fighting Junk Science. The government's Environmental Protection Agency promotes junk science because it gives the bureaucracy mission and funding. The Sierra Club is little more than a junk science 5th column. The club has adopted global warming as its primary tool for frightening people into paying dues. The club's war on coal promotes numerous imaginary scares concerning the alleged toxicity of coal. [...] Unfortunately, politics rules and politics dances to the tune of junk science. Thus we have the EPA joining the Sierra Club in the war against coal by setting standards for mercury and other emissions designed to destroy coal-generated electricity. The motivation, of course, is to reduce CO2 emissions in order to prevent the imaginary global warming.

EPA Boss: Coal Regulations Are About the Politics of Power. In a classic case of exercising power for the sake of power, Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), admitted that the real reason for EPA regulations is "showing sort of domestic leadership as well as garnering support around the country for the agreement we reached in Paris." Her admission against interest was made during testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday [3/29/2016]. When grilled by Representative David McKinley (R-W.V.), about EPA regulations that are crippling the coal industry, McCarthy did not dispute the charge that the regulations will have no measurable effect on "global warming." Instead, she said that the "benefit" of the regulations is in flexing federal muscle over industry.

EPA lacks authority on Clean Power Plan. On March 10, Democratic state Sen. Pat Spearman wrote in the Sun that the Office of the Attorney General, where I serve, defied "bipartisan" hopes for Nevada's clean-energy future by filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the Clean Power Plan lawsuit. This lawsuit challenges the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ambition to permanently displace Nevada as primary regulator of its energy policy. I would have thought my action served the most essential bipartisan position of all: that Nevadans, under the principles of federalism, should control their own destiny. Dozens of states sued the EPA for fear that its rule could spike electricity rates by double-digit percentages and foist on consumers more than $79 billion in new costs. But my brief on Nevada's behalf addressed a different issue: the constitutional one. The EPA simply has no legal authority to do what it schemes to do. The EPA's administrator even admitted to Congress that the rule is less about "pollution control" than a federal-driven "investment opportunity" in renewables and clean energy.

Clean power, dirty results. If President Obama were to demand that more than two-thirds of U.S. thread and cloth manufacturing be replaced by massing together spinning wheels and hand looms, most Americans would openly mock it. Yet, he is doing just that with electricity production. The U.S. Supreme Court recently placed Obama's Clean Power Plan (CPP) on hold while 27 states challenge it through the federal courts to better evaluate the plan's potential economic and social damage. However much the plan might reduce potential dangers of climate change, it will cause much more harm to middle-class and poor Americans if it is implemented.

Texas, other states resist EPA strategy targeting coal, mercury and haze. A pair of court actions this week, less than a month after an historic halt to the Clean Power Plan by the Supreme Court, shows the breadth of assault on affordable energy by the Environmental Protection Agency. The same Supreme Court that brought a temporary stop to the agency's efforts to direct the energy grids of individual states, chose on Thursday not to block the EPA's Mercury and Air Toxic Standards rule. And on Monday [3/7/2016], Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the state of Texas was suing the EPA to resist its imposition of rules directed at coal burning power plants to reduce haze in wilderness areas.

Obama's Clean Power Plan: How Much Staying Power? The CPP is the newest set of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that, as the Atlantic states, "anchors the Obama administration's climate-change policy. It seeks to guide local utilities away from coal-fired electricity generation, and toward renewable energy and natural gas" — with a goal of reducing CO2 emissions from existing power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. [...] Immediately following the rule's publication, a coalition of 24 states and a coal mining company, led by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R), filed a lawsuit to challenge the CPP. Morrisey called it "flatly illegal and one of the most aggressive executive branch power grabs we've seen in a long time."

The Editor says...
The so-called Clean Power Plan is far more dangerous to our long-term health and freedom than the emission of carbon dioxide from power plants. This is a pointless restriction on energy production that is being put into effect by decree. There is no reason for this, other than the intentional destruction of America's economy by a president who was raised by Communists.

EPA's Disgraceful Reign. The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the media circus surrounding the political primaries drowned out recent news that highlights the arrogance, incompetence and lawlessness of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Following the unprecedented U.S. Supreme Court decision to stay the EPA's Clean Power Plan that regulates greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said she was disappointed but added the ruling will not impede "a low-carbon future." EPA's spokesman backed her boss saying, "We're disappointed the rule has been stayed, but you can't stay climate change and you can't stay climate action." Going beyond words, McCarthy promised continued action regarding the implementation of the Clean Power Plan.

Speaking of the EPA's Clean Power Plan:
The EPA's regulatory terrorism. Why would the EPA have ever taken the time and trouble to promulgate a regulation with such a low chance of ever being upheld by the courts? In persuading the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit not to stay the Clean Power Plan, the EPA itself provided the answer. The agency proclaimed proudly that even though its earlier 2013 regulations requiring reductions in mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants had been struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015, the mere threat that those regulations might be upheld had shut down many coal-burning facilities and caused others to spend up to $10 billion on compliance. Thus, the EPA argued, since unlawful regulations terrorize regulatory targets into compliance, there is no need to hurry in declaring those regulations officially unlawful when the targets have already suffered irreparable loss.

The Enemy Within. [Scroll down] One of the best examples of this is the proposed Clean Power Plan (CPP) that's being pushed by the Obama administration. Overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, CPP aims to reduce carbon emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels. It will grossly impact fixed-income seniors, potentially gut millions of jobs from black and Hispanic communities, and has coal-producing states scratching their heads, as the new regulations would devastate their local economies. It's part of another area of Washington overreach — Obama's war on coal — which if successful, would kill over 125,000 jobs, along with a net loss of $650 billion in GDP over the next decade.

SCOTUS Stops Obama's Clean Power Plan. Yet another Obama administration initiative was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court this week. The Clean Power Plan (CPP) was a far-reaching effort by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to control greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act (CAA). If implemented, the CPP would have closed hundreds of coal-fired plants across the country and increased the production of wind and solar power, which are significantly more expensive to produce. The CPP was challenged in court by energy companies, industry groups, and a coalition of 29 states, led by West Virginia.

The EPA's Lawless Land Grab. Today there is no greater threat to the rule of law and the right to the peaceful enjoyment of property than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the course of prosecuting its ostensible mission to clean the air and the water. Under the guise of the Clean Air Act, the agency's Clean Power Plan will take control of America's electrical-power infrastructure. Yet Congress did not envisage that the 1970 legislation would be used to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. To get around the inconveniently precise wording Congress provided in the statute, EPA resorted to rewriting the provision of the Clean Air Act that didn't fit with its regulatory plans — a gambit that has had ups and downs in the Supreme Court, which will soon address the legality of the Clean Power Plan.

The Power Grid and the Presidency. Yesterday [2/9/2016], in a ruling that surprised many legal experts, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay that blocked the federal government from implementing a series of far-reaching environmental regulations that effectively crippled the coal industry. The new rules were issued by the Environmental Protection Agency last summer as part of President Obama's attempt to unilaterally force America's energy sector to conform to the administration's demands that it act to reduce carbon emissions.

EPA: Coal [is] Not Marketable. Coal, oil and natural gas are unpopular at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris -- so much so that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said she and her associates are "pumped up about the work we're doing." Answering questions Thursday [12/10/2015] while in Paris, McCarthy said the EPA is doing as much as it can to limit not just CO2 and mercury pollution from power plants that burn coal, but also methane emissions associated with the oil and natural gas industries. "The Clean Power Plan is one of the keystones of President Obama's Climate Action Plan. It has changed everything in the U.S.," McCarthy said. "It is riding the wave of new solutions and technologies. We are going to show that utilities can do it. We don't need to make a choice between the environment and the economy. We can build a growing economy, as we have in the U.S., by actually focusing on green, clean solutions."

Senate deals a blow to Obama climate rules. The Senate approved two resolutions Tuesday evening [11/17/2015] that would repeal the Obama administration's climate change rules for power plants. The vote is meant to send a strong message to President Obama that a majority of Congress disapprove of the regulations. The first resolution approved, 52-46, would nullify the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan, which requires states to reduce emissions a third by 2030. The second resolution, approved by the same vote count, would repeal separate but related rules effectively banning new coal plants.

Congress Must Stop Obama's Global Climate Change Agenda. The U.S. and China agreement is a horrible deal for Americans. Not only does the agreement allow China to run its fossil fuel carbon dioxide emitting economy for more than a decade while the U.S. is forced to cut its emissions, China is now balking at verifying adherence to its plans. Most disturbingly, Obama can achieve his climate change goals including U.N. targets without Congress. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued rules targeting coal powered power plants including two proposed rules to force power plants to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Obama's actions targeting coal-fired power plants is forcing hundreds of units to close and as a consequence, reduces carbon dioxide emissions.

States sue over new EPA air regulations. States and industry groups dependent on fossil fuels began filing court challenges Friday [10/23/2015] to President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Opponents of the plan were expected to file a flurry of lawsuits at the U.S. Court of Appeals as the Environmental Protection Agency published its final version of the new regulations. All but two of the 24 states filing challenges are led by Republicans. They deride the plan as an "unlawful power grab by Washington bureaucrats" that will kill coal mining jobs and drive up electricity costs.

States, Senate Ready to Fight Obama's Clean Power Plan. The Obama administration unveiled the Clean Power Plan on Monday, calling it "a historic step in the fight against climate change." The Clean Power Plan establishes the first-ever national standards to limit carbon pollution from power plants. It sets what the EPA and White House describe as "flexible and achievable standards" to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Opponents argue it is yet another assault in what they describe as the Obama/EPA War On Coal.

EPA's Clean Power Plan Overreach. On June 2, 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the Clean Power Plan, President Obama's marquee climate change initiative. In the proposal, the EPA took the unusual step of preemptively seeking Chevron deference from federal courts, even though the Clean Power Plan will not undergo judicial review until after the final rule is published in the Federal Register later this summer. Chevron deference is a famous and oft-employed administrative law principle that federal courts should defer to reasonable agency construction of the statutes they are charged with administering, in reference to a seminal 1984 Supreme Court ruling, Chevron USA Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. As this analysis demonstrates, the agency's request for judicial deference lacks merit.

You shouldn't have voted for Democrats if you didn't want rabid job-killing environmentalism.
In coal-mining Kentucky, shock and dismay over Clean Power Plan's new targets. It is a tense time in Kentucky. The Environmental Protection Agency has just come out with its final rule on reducing carbon emissions — the strongest step ever taken to counter climate change in the United States — and this coal state is reeling. Kentucky's energy secretary was in talks with EPA officials all afternoon on Tuesday [8/4/2015], trying to figure out what the rule means — and trying to understand how it was that the agency boosted the target that it had proposed for Kentucky last year. A target that the state was on track to meet.

Six items to look for in the EPA power plant rule. The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to finalize the signature climate change policy of President Obama's administration next week, and sources familiar with the plan said it's undergone changes from a draft version released last summer. States, environmental groups, the energy industry and others filed more than 4 million comments on the proposed Clean Power Plan, which would set carbon emissions limits on power plants for the first time and aims to cut electricity emissions nationwide 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Concerns were numerous and widespread, and the EPA says it has listened to all of them.

Obama rule for power plants to compel steeper emissions cuts. Aiming to jolt the rest of the world to action, President Barack Obama moved ahead Sunday [8/2/2015] with even tougher greenhouse gas cuts on American power plants, setting up a certain confrontation in the courts with energy producers and Republican-led states.

Making environmentalism divisive. In May, Murray Energy, which sits along the old National Pike here in eastern Ohio, told nearly 1,500 workers at five of its West Virginia mines that their jobs were eliminated. In Ohio, 249 Murray jobs were gone; nearly 170 employees were out of work in Illinois. The announcement wasn't an isolated one. Mines are being boarded up and thousands of coal jobs are vanishing across America, in part because of competition from abundant natural gas but in larger part because of new federal regulations limiting carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants. One month later, Murray filed two lawsuits against the U.S. EPA to halt its rewriting and expanding of the definition of "waters of the United States."

Barack Obama's green plans could cripple America's economy. Cheap energy isn't just the result of the shale-gas boom. In much of the US, the power industry continues to rely on coal. Consumers in Kentucky, where over 90% of electricity is generated from coal, enjoy electricity prices roughly 50% lower than in the UK — an indication of the huge potential cost of Obama's plans. Indeed much higher bills are almost inevitable now that the US is adopting EU-style policies. Carbon emissions from the power sector will be cut by an ambitious 32% by 2030 (compared to 2005 levels). Worse still, the 'Clean Power Plan' will favour expensive renewable energy over the relatively low-cost option of cutting emissions by switching from coal to natural gas.

Which is worse, Obama's plan to shut down coal plants, or McConnell's 'plan' to fight it? President Obama is about to release a plan to fight imaginary global warming by shutting down many coal fired power plants. Coal fired power plants produce a lot of carbon dioxide, which is a key element in the imaginary theory that CO2 causes global warming. I say imaginary because (1) there hasn't been any global warming in 18 years, (2) man-made CO2 accounts for only about 3% of global CO2, which is mostly natural, and (3) CO2 is a tiny percentage of the upper atmosphere, and is not present in enough volume to be substantially trapping heat. But Obama's plan to shut power plants is very real.

After Iran, Climate Change. [Scroll down] At the end of June, the Supreme Court struck down an EPA regulation on power plant emissions with traces of mercury (Michigan v. EPA). The Court's majority protested that the cost of compliance to utility companies would run to some $10 billion per year, while direct benefits from limiting exposure to mercury vapors were calculated (by EPA) at $4 to $6 million per year (less than .05 percent of the cost).

Feds: Coal power plant closures would double under EPA rule. A proposed rule to limit carbon emissions from power plants would shutter twice as many coal-fired power plants than if the regulation were never implemented, according to a federal analysis. More than 90 gigawatts of coal plant retirements would occur between this year and 2040, with most occurring before 2020, under the Environmental Protection Agency proposal. Without the emissions limits, 40 gigawatts would come offline, said the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department's independent statistics arm.

States pre-emptively block EPA power plant regulation. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 72 bills or resolutions related to the Environmental Protection Agency's plans have surfaced in 27 states, spanning Alaska to Virginia, with 10 of the measures already enacted into law.

EPA Plan for 'Clean Power' Could Jeopardize Safety of U.S. Electrical Grid. For those worried about "climate change," coal is a convenient target. Unfortunately, a plan by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to shutter hundreds of domestic, coal-fired power plants has been hastily thrown together, with no confirmed alternatives for steady, reliable power generation. What's at stake is "grid reliability," whether supply exists to meet the current, massive U.S. demand for electricity. For much of the country, the EPA's mandate is troubling because, right now, roughly 40 percent of electricity in the United States comes from coal-fired generation. Under new EPA regulations, many of these plants would be effectively forced out of operation. And to date, no one is saying how that power will be otherwise produced.

The Courts Must Finally Stop the EPA's Reckless and Wanton Destruction of the Coal Industry. It's been said that 'timing is everything' and time is just one of the issues at stake in the legal proceedings surrounding the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed Clean Power Plan, which would regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants. Specifically, the Court must decide if a proposed federal regulation, like the CPP, can be struck down before it is finalized. In this case, that would be the right decision.

McConnell unveils surprise attack on EPA power plant rule. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he plans to use a little-known, little-studied, little-used Clean Air Act clause to undercut a key element of the Environmental Protection Agency's attempt to cut carbon emissions from power plants. [...] The section of the Clean Air Act that McConnell highlighted, 102c, permits two or more states to enter into compacts for reducing air pollution. McConnell, however, quoted language that said, "No such agreement or compact shall be binding or obligatory upon any state a party thereto unless and until it has been approved by Congress."

Coal company lays off hundreds, blames Obama policies. A major Appalachian coal mining company is laying off hundreds of workers in West Virginia and blaming the lost jobs on President Obama's environmental policies. Murray Energy Corp. will lay off the 214 workers at three mines in Marion and Marshall counties.

GOP calls for temporary halt to EPA's Clean Power Plan. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has begun work on legislation that would temporarily stop implementation of the administration's Clean Power Plan, designed to force states to dramatically cut carbon pollution. The pollution reductions envisioned by the Environmental Protection Agency could only be achieved by addressing emissions from power plants, particularly coal-fired facilities. More than a dozen states, along with major energy companies, already have filed lawsuits challenging the EPA plan, which is set to be finalized this summer. The first such cases will come before a federal court Thursday [4/16/2015], with West Virginia and Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp. leading challenges to the EPA's legal authority to impose the cuts.

Congressman Slams EPA For Claiming Global Warming Rules Will Reduce Energy Prices. Rep. David McKinley was astounded to hear a top Environmental Protection Agency official say regulations to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants would reduce consumer energy bills after 2030. "Are you serious?" McKinley, a West Virginia Republican, asked EPA acting administrator for clean air Janet McCabe in a hearing Wednesday [4/8/2015]. McCabe had just said Americans' energy bills would go down after 2030 as a result of energy efficiency mandates. "That is what our analysis shows across the country," McCabe said, talking about the agency's regulations forcing states to reduce power plant emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. EPA claims that despite huge amounts of coal-fired power plants closures, these regulations would reduce energy bills 8 percent after 2030. "Unbelieveable," McKinley said. "Just seems delusional."

The Editor says...
If that's the case, maybe the EPA could tighten the rules some more and make electricity too cheap to meter.

Laurence Tribe, Obama's legal mentor, attacks EPA power plant rule. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is attaching himself to an unlikely bedfellow in his growing efforts to take down President Barack Obama's climate plan. Liberal legal lion Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor who taught constitutional law to President Barack Obama, is the new GOP darling in the fight against the Environmental Protection Agency's upcoming climate regulations for power plants. Tribe handed Republicans a ready-made talking point during a House hearing this week, when he accused his former student of "burning the Constitution" in the effort to combat global warming.

The Obama Administration's Attack on the Constitution: Part 2, Environmental Protection Agency. The Environmental Protection Agency has long been in the forefront of Obama administration lawlessness. Don't forget: before Hillary Clinton's secret email server came to light, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was conducting government business off the books as "Richard Windsor," which, she explained when caught, was the name of her dog. The EPA's current usurpation, an effort to remake America's power supply system, is much more serious. The EPA has proposed a far-reaching regulation of power plants that would drive many of them out of business in the name of global warming.

19 Times the Government Withheld Documents It Didn't Want You to See. [#19] Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency said it didn't save text messages at issue in a Freedom of Information case seeking records about the agency's plans to crack down on coal power plants. An EPA spokesman contends that federal law doesn't require the messages to be retained.

NERA Report on EPA Power Plant Rules. [Scroll down] Figure 18 shows changes in annual average (2017 through 2031) delivered electricity prices (averaged over all sectors) for the State Constrained (BB1-2) scenario by state.

The Editor says...
Notice that electricity rates will "necessarily skyrocket" a lot more in Texas than in California or New York.

Did The Most Expensive Regulation Ever Just Arrive At The White House? Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just sent what could be the most expensive regulation ever to the Office of Management and Budget for final review. We don't know what the ozone rule will look like, but an EPA advisory board is pushing for standards that would, under EPA's own estimates, cost about $100 billion to comply with every year. Another study by the National Association of Manufacturers estimates the rule could cost $270 billion per year and would put millions of jobs at risk.

Why I Blew the Whistle at EPA. The Endangerment Finding led directly to EPA's proposed regulations for reducing CO2 emissions from power plants earlier this year. The new EPA proposed regulations are even worse than I expected in 2009, perhaps because the blueprint for them was actually written by an environmental organization. First of all, they are illegal, as per any reasonable reading of Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. They impose many aspects of the Waxman-Markey bill despite Congress' rejection of it, and try to force red states to adopt the usual market-distorting preferences for power generation promoted by radical environmentalists.

Obama "Clean Power" plan seen to hit seniors, minorities hardest. In June, as you may recall, the EPA announced their new "Clean Power Plan" which was, for all intents and purposes, another shot across the bow in the war on coal. In their mission statement, while paying lip service to the fact that the needs and resources of each of the states are different, they also cite "the important role of states as full partners with the federal government in cutting pollution." This is matched with the built in assumption of the need to "address the risks of climate change." (Apparently nobody bothered to ask the states exactly how much of an "equal partnership" they were interested in.)

EPA Proposed Regulation Would Significantly Hurt Access to Electricity. A report published by the Institute for 21st Century Energy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce outlines the stark economic impacts of the proposed Clean Power Plan. Between 2014 and 2030, the U.S. GDP will see an average annual economic loss of $51 billion, an average decline of 224,000 job losses per year, and an average annual loss of real disposable income topping $200. It is also likely that those families with low and fixed incomes with bear the greatest financial burdens associated with these proposed regulations. The proposed Clean Power Plan also represents a significant change in the relationship between the EPA and the states in the environmental regulatory making process.

EPA could hit your utility bill. [E]ven though the EPA claims its proposed rules would reduce emissions by only 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels, Talquin says the actual requirement is a 56.5-percent reduction. One result of these rules would be a faster abandonment of using clean coal to generate power, even though it's often the cheapest fuel available — and even though Talquin says it's providing power from "one of the top 10 cleanest coal plants in the world." Indeed, thanks to technological advances such as "scrubbers" on smokestacks, using coal to generate electricity can be safe, efficient, clean and cheap. Apparently that's not good enough for the EPA, which continues to push rules that would affect Floridians' electric rates in at least two ways.

The Washington Post calls for more invasive, costly, intrusive and senseless regulations:
The EPA's limits on emissions are important but not enough. The Obama administration's plan has three pieces. First, the EPA has persuaded carmakers to nearly double the fuel efficiency of U.S. autos, in the process cutting their carbon emissions in half. Second, the EPA placed limits on the carbon dioxide that new power plants can emit, virtually guaranteeing that no more conventional coal-fired plants will be built in the United States. Third, the EPA proposed in June a rule that would restrict the emissions of existing power plants, cutting their carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The central criticism is that these rules, particularly the third, will exact extreme costs on the economy without reversing the rise in global temperatures.

The Editor says...
If the EPA were to disband next week, the country would be far better off. Each of the 50 states has its own EPA, and without the pencil-pushing federal bureaucrats in the way, American businesses would have one less layer of paperwork impeding their progress.

The EPA's Costly 'Clean Power Plan' Power Grab. Under the EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan, the agency will accomplish a wholesale transfer of site-based power plant regulatory authority to the federal government, while cutting states out of prioritization and affordability concerns. Where Obamacare comes between the doctor and the patient, the CPP comes between the states and their energy plants. Obamacare was at least an unseemly legislative reconciliation product. The Clean Power is agency invention with only tangential basis in statutory legitimacy. The EPA has already acted outside of the Clean Air Act provisions to regulate stationary power sources, existing generating units, and now greenhouse gases. The EPA has admitted that some of these assumptions "'would have been unrecognizable to the Congress that designed' the governing statutory framework.

Why I Sued the President. The president and his administration have ignored the law on a breathtaking range of issues. For example, President Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency to propose new environmental rules that will devastate coal miners and raise electricity prices sky-high, even though the EPA admits that the "literal" terms of the Clean Air Act prohibit the regulations. Similarly, after he failed to pass immigration reform through Congress, the president decided to ignore the laws on the books and give out work permits as he pleases. He did the same thing with the Affordable Care Act, giving billions of dollars of tax credits that the law does not authorize. [...] Americans from both political parties have decried this lawlessness.

Is the post-EPA regs power grid ready for a truly hard winter? In order to comply with the new Obama era EPA regs, American Electric Power, which supplies a major portion of the electricity used on the east coast, will be closing almost one quarter of their coal fired plants between now and next June. This is because they were economically unable to come into compliance with the new regulations in the impossibly short window of opportunity offered by the EPA. This is going to reduce the total surge capacity available for some of our most densely populated areas just when we may get hit with weather related demand spikes beyond anyone's control.

Power plant regs spur new union rebellion for Obama administration. Labor unions for years have hounded the Obama White House over allegations that officials are dragging their feet in making a final decision on the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil pipeline. But labor organizations are now piping up regarding an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The rules are intended to curb global warming.

Greens are the enemies of energy. Here in America and elsewhere around the world, Greens continue to war against any energy other than the "renewable" kind, wind and solar, that is more costly and next to useless. Only coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear keeps the modern and developing world functioning and growing. The most publicized aspect is Obama's "War on Coal" and, thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency, it has been successful; responsible for shutting down several hundred coal-fired plants by issuing costly regulations based on the utterly false claim that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to save the Earth from "global warming."

More Harsh Winters Could Spell Disaster For The Electrical Grid. If you thought last winter was bad, get ready for a potentially worse winter in parts of the country this year. But another record-setting winter could mean more than higher heating bills and snow fights. Harsh winter weather combined with coal-fired power plant closings could spell trouble for many households across the country who will desperately need to keep the lights and heat on this winter.

Declare a Ceasefire in EPA's War on Coal. Before we become too optimistic about the prospects for using renewable energy sources to curb carbon emissions, it's worth looking at a study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which should give pause to even the most confident advocate of action against climate change. The study forecasts that new EPA regulations — regulations intended to cut carbon emissions by 30% from coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired plants by 2030 — will lead to higher energy costs, fewer jobs, and slower economic growth in the United States. That, in turn, will lower Americans' standards of living. A typical household could lose up to $3,400 in disposable income annually by 2030.

12 States Sue Obama Administration for Regulatory 'Overreach'. Coal country is striking back at the federal government in the latest "war on coal" battle. Twelve states are suing the Environmental Protection Agency to deter impending restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. The states filed the lawsuit in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday [8/8/2014], accusing the EPA of "overstepping its legal boundaries" under the Clean Air Act.

Real, Live Endarkenment — Redux. [Scroll down] All snark aside, reducing electricity demand literally means a shrinking economy and a shrinking America. Growth requires power. But that's not what they have in mind. Is it? EPA then applied each of these building blocks to a state's electric generation fleet to arrive at each state's emissions intensity goal. Which ignores the fact that all states are not created equal. Many states don't have a ton of water, wind, or solar available. But perhaps the idea is that each state has to generate the electricity required for their state within their state. Or maybe the idea is to eliminate the ability of states to take care of their own power needs such that they are dependent on power from far away blue state renewable, politically correct power.

EPA goes from Environmental Protection Agency to Extremist Political Agenda. During the week of July 28, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held hearings in four cities: Atlanta, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Washington[,] DC. The two-day sessions were to allow the public to have their voice heard about the proposed rules it released on June 2 that will supposedly cut CO2 emissions by 30 percent. Many, including myself, believe that these rules are really an attempt to shut down coal-fueled electricity generation and implement a cap-and-trade program that the Administration couldn't get through Congress in 2009, when cap-and-trade's obvious allies held both houses of Congress. If the EPA's plans were clear, direct, and honest, the public would likely revolt outright. Instead, the intent is hidden in pages of cumbersome language and the messaging becomes all about clean air and water — and about the health of children.

EPA's far-reaching regulatory authority undermines democracy. Last week the Alabama Power Company announced that federal "environmental mandates are forcing (the company) to close two coal-fired generating units... and reduce or eliminate the ability to use coal (at two other plants) by 2016." Those mandates are a direct product of President Barack Obama's agenda executed by the EPA: End coal-fueled electricity generation in the United States. Unfortunately for the president, he simply does not have enough votes in Congress to eliminate coal generation through legislation. Many members of Congress on both sides of the aisle recognize the negative economic impacts of taking lower-cost coal power out of the energy generation mix. So how does the president push through policies that impact us in Alabama without having to go through Congress? The answer is both complicated and problematic.

Alabama leaders blast Obama administration over Alabama Power's coal closures. Alabama Power's announcement that it would shutter several coal units in the state is tangible evidence that President Barack Obama's "war on coal" is having negative consequences, critics said Friday [8/1/2014]. The company announced Friday [8/1/2014] that it would reduce the amount of coal it burns to comply with new Environmental Protection Agency regulations governing emissions. The changes, which the company said it would phase in the changes by 2016, will affect seven small power plants.

The Editor says...
There is no such thing as a small coal-fired power plant.

Warmist Group Admits Obama's CO2 Restrictions Are Pointless. The Obama administration's proposed carbon dioxide restrictions will have little impact on global climate, a prominent global warming activist group has acknowledged. Highlighting China's growing use of coal power plants and the gap in power plant environmental safeguards between the United States and China, Climate Central senior scientist Eric Larson predicted on the Climate Central website, "All the windmills in the world won't deliver our children a climate they can depend on" without a substantial change in Chinese policy. Larson warned such a change is not coming. Instead, China is locking in for decades its rapidly increasing coal use and carbon dioxide emissions.

Obama's CO2 Restrictions Will Hit Hardest in Key Senate States. The Obama administration's proposed carbon dioxide restrictions will impose their highest costs on states with key U.S. Senate races this November. The restrictions, which do not apply uniformly throughout the nation, threaten the chances of Democratic Senate candidates who argue their party identification gives them extra leverage with the Obama administration. Under the proposed restrictions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assigns each state a different emissions reduction requirement. The state of Washington, for example, will have to reduce its power plant carbon dioxide intensity by 72 percent, while North Dakota will have to reduce its emissions by only 11 percent.

Obama-Style Climate Programs Have Failed Everywhere They've Been Tried. President Obama's recently announced energy and environment policies have been tried in many countries, always with the same result: abject failure. [...] Ontario's economy continues to decline today, largely due to the government's decision to turn off the province's cheapest form of electricity — coal. In 2003, coal provided 25 percent of Ontario's power. By mid-April 2014, coal had been completely phased out. Replacing hydrocarbon fuel energies with alternate energies drove Ontario's costs through the roof and created a multitude of other problems. This is precisely where the United States is now headed, only it will be worse since Ontario still benefits from Canada's policy of financial equalization between provinces, whereas there is no one who will bail out the United States.

New EPA regulations on coal-fired power plants could cost Mississippi billions. Like an iceberg, the regulations on carbon emissions are the visible element. Another element of the proposed regulations that will raise rates for Mississippians is the mandate for electrical generation from renewable sources. Patrick Sullivan, president of Mississippi Energy Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to energy-based development in the state, said the renewable requirements alone could cost state ratepayers anywhere from $5 billion to $10 billion by 2030.

Get Ready for the New England Power Shortage. New England is now limping along with 33,000 megawatts of electrical capacity, which barely meets its needs. At one auction last winter, the New England Independent Systems Operator, which manages the grid, came up 145 megawatts short — an almost unheard of occurrence. Yet in the next two years the region will be closing down 1/10th of its capacity in a bid to rid itself of anything that does not win favor with environmentalists. First to go will be the last of four coal plants at Salem Harbor, which can no longer meet the EPA's new regulatory requirements. New Englanders already pay 45 percent higher electric bills than the rest of the country and that figure can only grow.

States Fighting Obama EPA's Global Warming Decrees. The "climate" regulatory regime unveiled by the EPA last month calls for massive reductions in emissions from power plants. Under the scheme, described as "ObamaCare for the atmosphere," emissions of what scientists refer to as the "gas of life" — exhaled by humans and required for plants — must be slashed by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Obama explained the economic effects of his plot in a 2008 interview: "Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." At least in that instance, he was telling the truth. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated that the scheme could cost $50 billion per year in lost GDP and over 200,000 jobs annually, in addition to a plunge in household disposable income of over half a trillion dollars a year.

Environmental regulator: Renewable energy is 'unreliable and parasitic'. Oil, gas and coal have boosted living conditions around the globe, but policies to effectively replace those fossil fuels "with inferior energy sources" could undermine those improvements, a former Texas environmental regulator argues. In her new 36-page paper outlining "the moral case" for fossil fuels, Texas Public Policy Foundation senior fellow Kathleen Hartnett White insists that access to oil, gas and coal are inextricably linked with prosperity and human well-being. Current policy debates about heat-trapping greenhouse gases — including the Environmental Protection Agency's new plan for throttling carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plans — overlook "the inestimable human benefits of fossil fuels," White says.

Obama's war on coal will cost U.S. $1 trillion in new technology growth. It is important to understand that U.S. power plants produce a scant four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, compared to China and India, which together emit more than 20 percent of all GHG emissions. Shuttering all U.S. coal plants would have a negligible effect on the environment: equivalent to decreasing sea level rise by less than the thickness of three sheets of paper.

Coal company uses glitch to swing for the fences against EPA rule. A large coal company's petition against the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed emissions rule for power plants is a legal swing for the fences, but a decades-old discrepancy in a technical amendment to the Clean Air Act might give it a chance, according to experts. Separate House and Senate versions of the act, which was last amended in 1990, were never reconciled and therefore lead to different interpretations. Murray Energy Corp., which filed the petition June 18 in the D.C. Circuit Court, is hewing to the House version in claiming the EPA has overstepped its authority.

The EPA is America's Other Enemy. While our attention is focused on events in the Middle East, a domestic enemy of the nation is doing everything in its power to kill the provision of electricity to the nation and, at the same time, to control every drop of water in the United States, an attack on its agricultural sector. That enemy is the Environmental Protection Agency. Like the rest of the Obama administration, it has no regard for real science and continues to reinterpret the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. It has an agenda that threatens every aspect of life in the nation.

Justices, With Limits, Let E.P.A. Curb Power-Plant Gases. In a big win for environmentalists, the Supreme Court on Monday [6/23/2014] effectively endorsed the Obama administration's efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from sources like power plants, even as it criticized what it called the administration's overreaching. The decision is one in a recent string of rulings upholding the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to issue Clean Air Act regulations to curb climate change, and the agency celebrated the decision. But the combative tone of Monday's ruling, along with its rejection of one of the agency's principal rationales for the regulations under review, suggests that the road ahead may be rocky for other initiatives meant to reduce carbon emissions.

Justices limit existing EPA global warming rules. The justices said in a 5-4 vote along ideological lines that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot apply a permitting provision of the Clean Air Act to new and expanded power plants, refineries and factories solely because they emit greenhouse gases.

Supreme Court limits greenhouse gas regulations. A divided Supreme Court blocked the Obama administration Monday [6/23/2014] from requiring permits for greenhouse gas emissions from new or modified industrial facilities, but the ruling won't prohibit other means of regulating the pollutant that causes global warming. The court's conservative wing ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency exceeded its authority by changing the emissions threshold for greenhouse gases in the Clean Air Act to regulate more stationary sources. That action can only be taken by Congress, Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion said.

The Editor says...
Carbon dioxide is not "the [only] pollutant that causes global warming." In fact it is not a pollutant at all, and it makes only a very minor contribution to the greenhouse effect.

Energy CEO says Obama is destroying low-cost energy with EPA. Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray says he is scared to death for this country, for poor people, those who live on fixed incomes and for people who are retiring. Murray says Obama is illegally using the EPA and the Clean Air Act to take over the US Electric Power Grid and in the process he's destroying low-cost energy. Murray points out that coal is only 4 cents per kilowatt-hour and Obama wants to replace it with renewable energy sources, wind and solar, that cost 22 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Exposed: The Horrific Cost And Utter Pointlessness of Obama's War on Carbon Dioxide. Here is the Obama administration's green strategy reduced to one damning equation. 19 million jobs lost plus $4.335 trillion spent = a reduction in global mean temperature of 0.018 degrees C. Yes. Horrifying but true. These are the costs to the US economy, by 2100, of the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory war on carbon dioxide, whereby all states must reduce emissions from coal-fired electricity generating plants by 30 percent below 2005 levels.

If it has no detectable impact on global temperatures, sea-level rise, or other climate indicators,
How Can EPA's 'Clean Power Plan' Deliver $Billions in Climate Benefits? EPA's Clean Power Plan "By the Numbers" Fact Sheet estimates the public health and climate benefits at $55 billion to $93 billion. The RIA projects net benefits of $46 billion to $84 billion in 2030 (RIA ES-23). Reductions in premature fatalities attributed to coincidental reductions in ozone and fine particulate (MP2.5) pollution account for more than 90% of the estimated $23 billion to $59 billion in health benefits in 2030 (RIA ES-22). Those gigantic air quality "co-benefits" should be taken with several handfuls of salt.

The EPA is Putting Environmental Politics Before Policy. The Obama administration placed its crosshairs right on the coal industry by mandating a 30 percent cut in carbon emissions at fossil fuel-burning power plants by 2030. [...] The Administration's position on the ever-changing climate is based only on un-validated, man-made computer models that have yet to produce climate forecasts that are accurate for periods as short as a decade. The scientific test of the man-made climate change hypothesis cannot be done with un-validated, constantly failing computer models but only by comparing the hypothesis to real, empirical observations of current and past CO2 and temperature relationships. This time-honored test indicates that "CO2 is the major cause of climate change" is false.

At Commencement, Obama Mocks Lawmakers Who Deny Climate Change. President Obama, appearing emboldened after his recent move to cut carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, on Saturday [6/14/2014] ridiculed members of Congress who deny climate change or plead scientific ignorance as an alibi for avoiding an uncomfortable truth.

Also posted under The suppression of global warming skeptics.

Will EPA's Carbon Plan Swing a Senate State or Two? Environmentalists have labeled Republican U.S. Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land as a "climate change denier." They believe the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan proposal that was released June 2 will give them new torque to tighten their green vise on the Republican running to replace Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in the Senate.

Krugman's Misleading Post on Coal. A reader reading quickly might think that it's no big deal for Obama to restrict coal-fired utilities because there are so few jobs at stake in coal mining. But Krugman has covered himself by pointing out that there is capital invested in coal and owners of capital have a stake in producing coal. But wait. Isn't there another important player in the coal market, namely utilities that buy coal and will now need to turn to a more-expensive fuel? Don't they stand to lose and lose big time?

"EPA Pumps Up Benefits of Proposed Carbon Regulation". Limousine liberals — of both parties — give themselves a pass and give only lipservice to other nations' abuses, because in the end this is about population, densification, location, and mobility control, not about the environment. This is about a return to feudalism and the centralization of power in a faceless bureaucratic apparatus while at the same time maintaining the facade of representative government and scientific "progress."

The EPA Is Shifting Its Approach for Calculating Benefits of Climate Rules, Including For Power Plants Emissions. President Obama's proposed rule for limiting carbon dioxide emissions from the nation's power plants is estimated to have a compliance cost $7.3 billion dollar while providing a climate benefit of $30 billion in 2030. But a new working paper from Ted Gayer and Kip Viscusi suggests that the EPA's methodology for calculating the benefit represents a shift away from typical practice. A more traditional cost-benefit analysis would estimate climate benefits of only $2 billion to $7 billion — less than the estimated compliance cost of the rule.

Trampling Democracy to Fight Climate Change. Republicans are calling President Barack Obama's new coal-plant regulations a "power grab." The truth is more complicated, and ominous, than that. This isn't a case where the executive branch has simply gone beyond its authority. It's a case where officials in all three branches of government have found a way to achieve their policy goals while shielding themselves from accountability. Congress sends bills to the president and the president signs them: That's how major policy changes are supposed to work. But Congress has never passed large-scale regulations to combat global warming. It has never even voted to authorize such regulations.

Springtime For Warmists. Last month Rush Limbaugh remarked that the reason for "the re-establishment of climate change and global warming as a new primary impetus of the White House" is that "it offers the president opportunities to be dictatorial." A defender of the president might counter that "dictatorial" is overwrought. [...] But National Journal's Lucia Graves takes a different approach. Instead of denying that Obama's actions are dictatorial, she disputes Limbaugh's implicit premise that there's anything wrong with that. [...] Yes, it has come to this. Americans are being urged to submit to "dictatorial" government because democracy is incapable of controlling the weather. "In college classes, climate change is taught as a textbook example of where democracy fails," Graves asserts in the very first sentence of her column.

White House goes all-hands-on-deck for power plant rules. Using a carefully executed, months-long strategy, the Obama administration is sending a strong signal that it believes Democrats have the upper hand on public opinion concerning emissions limits on power plants. The White House prepared the runway months in advance of the June 2 landing for the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal, which aims to slash carbon emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. It's the single largest effort by the EPA to address climate change, but it's also prompted harsh criticism from conservatives and centrist Democrats for what they have labeled an example of regulatory overreach.

President's carbon math doesn't add up. The regulations aim to cut carbon emissions by 700 million tons by 2030. As the Manhattan Institute's Robert Bryce notes, emissions rose worldwide by about 700 million tons in 2011 alone. China increased its emissions by 3 billion tons from 2006 to 2012. In D-Day terms, the regulations are like trying to roll back the Nazis by sending two landing craft to Normandy and doing some TV interviews. Even by the assumptions of the so-called global-warming consensus, the regulations will have an imperceptible effect on global temperature by 2100.

The accepted killing and maiming of animals in the name of Green energy. Why is the market changing? Is it a deliberate change, and why do we need innovative energy generation and utilization? Is it the fulfillment of the administration's promise to cause electricity costs to "necessarily skyrocket," while bankrupting the coal industry? According to Michael Bastasch from the Daily Caller News Foundation, "at least six electric cooperative utilities across the mid-west and southwest could raise electricity rates up to 40 percent if the EPA imposes new permitting regulations on coal-fired power plants." Deseret Power Electric Cooperative (DPEC), that serves 45,000 people in rural Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and Colorado, must spend $200 million to install advanced equipment to satisfy the Clean Air Act Title V permit. DPEC's Bonanza Power Plant is located on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservations. The environmentalist WildEarth Guardians are suing EPA to force Bonanza Utilities to upgrade to a Title V permit. After public comments close on June 16, customers will have to foot the bill through much higher utility charges.

Obama's clean-energy push, new EPA rule will prevail, predicts Podesta. US lawmakers of all political stripes are challenging new limits on carbon emissions from US power plants unveiled earlier this week, but the White House isn't backing down from what is likely the boldest action any American president has taken to combat climate change.

Obama's "Carbon" Plan: Killing Jobs, Costing Americans Money. I'm still not that concerned with Obama's climate change plan: there is a low probability that it will actually be implemented. There will be too many lawsuits filed and fought. Republican led states, and perhaps energy states with Democrat leadership, will blow the regulations off. A GOP president starting in 2017 will roll the regs back to zero. And if the Democrats get blown out in 2014, much as happened in Australia in 2012 and 2013 to Labor, which was solely due to their climate change policies, Democrats will be squeamish as Obama's final term winds down. That said, how bad would Obama's plan be?

The Editor says...
It is a bit premature to assume that "A GOP president starting in 2017 will roll the regs back to zero." That may be true of a conservative president, but I wouldn't bet that Chris Christie, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, John McCain or Lindsey Graham would nullify Obama's war on coal. Certainly it would take a strong conservative leader to eliminate the EPA altogether and leave environmental matters up to the states, as the Constitution demands -- especially since all fifty states have an EPA equivalent. Remember, it wasn't Al Gore who outlawed the incandescent bulb in order to save the earth from global warming. It was the moderate, centrist, reach-across-the-aisle George W. Bush.

Annual Direct Cost of Obama's "Climate" Power Grab. Of course, increasing energy costs drives up the price of literally all goods and services, in addition to destroying jobs, so this only scratches the surface. What we are witnessing is the deliberate lowering of the American standard of living out of ideologically motivated malice by executive fiat. The highest price of all won't come in terms of dollars, but will be paid in something more precious still: liberty. Obama and other extremists in the government tried to impose this regulation through legislative means but failed. So Congress was shoved aside; the rules are to be imposed by unelected and unaccountable EPA bureaucrats.

Republican senators push Obama to repeal EPA proposal. Forty-one Republican senators sent a letter to President Obama Wednesday urging him to withdraw the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed regulations to limit carbon emissions from power plants. The senators said the rules would increase electricity costs, reduce consumers' disposable income and result in job cuts.

States Can Stop EPA's War on Coal. [O]n Monday the administration violated the law by announcing stringent carbon dioxide emission targets for power plants that will effectively kill the coal industry. The new regulation calls for a 30 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 2030. Congress failed to pass so-called "cap and trade" legislation that would enable such a move, so Obama is using the regulatory authority he claims the EPA already has to regulate carbon. But the president cannot just ignore the will of Congress. To do so assumes that Congress is irrelevant. Apparently this is what President Obama believes.

Trick the Bumpkin: Democrats and the EPA. Today's EPA decision to limit the emissions of coal-fired power plants was expected as part of the legacy stage of Obama's presidency. Our side immediately rushed to declare that middle-class families will be hit with higher electric bills, that we face reduced economic growth, and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. However, today's most important lesson isn't that Obama is willing to wreck a sector of the economy in order to build the Tom Steyer Wing of the Obama Presidential Library. It's that the liberal apparatus in the press, the vast constellation of left-wing advocacy groups, and the Democratic donor class are perfectly comfortable with lying to win, and that the rules they insist everyone else play by are tissue-thin political screens. The coal- and energy-state Democrats they need to elect are engaged in a world-class spin job.

Guess Which Loyal Obama Voter Block Will Be Punished The Most By EPA's Climate Change Regulations. Black households have the lowest average incomes and highest unemployment among demographic groups. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, black households income was at $33,321 in 2012 which is the lowest median income among race groups according to a report by the U.S Census Bureau. As promised by Obama in 2008, his climate change regulations will make electricity prices "skyrocket." A study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated that climate change regulations like the EPA's recently announced new rules for existing power plants will result in added electricity expenses of $17 billion a year through 2030. That $17 billion in added costs are going to hurt black families a lot more than Obama's billionaire donors [...]

The National Climate Assessment (NCA) Doubles Down on Doom. President Barack Obama has decided to make "combating climate change" one of the top priorities of his second term; his EPA has pursued policies that amount to a "war on coal" — or more specifically on emissions of carbon dioxide. On June 2, EPA announced a goal of a 30% reduction by 2030 — focusing mainly on coal-fired powerplants that currently supply well over one-third of US electricity. The proposed EPA rules would cost approximately $51 billion a year and destroy 224,000 jobs each year through 2030. The poor and people on fixed incomes will be hurt the most. And all this pain will be for absolutely no gain: It will have no impact at all on the global climate, according to reports published by the libertarian Heartland Institute — based on peer-reviewed climate science.

Mark Levin: EPA Rule is 'greatest power grab since Obamacare'. On Mark Levin's radio broadcast on Monday [6/2/2014], he called the new EPA rule being pushed by the Obama Administration for existing power plants to reduce CO2 emissions as the "greatest power grab since Obamacare." This proposed rule, for existing power plants, follows another rule for new power plants. EPA chief Gina McCarthy, with very little media scrutiny, blatantly lied in testimony about the timing of a rule for new power plants" so that it would not interfere with the elections of Democrats." There is no other way to say it. She lied.

Obama: Carbon emissions rule will spur economic growth. President Obama said the rule to cut carbon emissions his Environmental Protection Agency proposed Monday would bolster economic growth while also improving public health by reducing exposure to pollutants linked to respiratory and heart ailments. [...] While emissions are at their lowest in two decades and have declined 16 percent below 2005 levels, Obama noted in a conference call to reporters that "it's just not good enough" and that tackling emissions presents an "important opportunity" to grow the economy through innovation into cleaner energy sources.

Obama Rebuffs Critics of EPA. President Obama today [6/2/2014] pushed back against critics of his plan to dramatically cut U.S. carbon emissions, telling supporters it's necessary to confront a looming threat to "this beautiful blue ball in the middle of space that we're a part of." "Climate change is real. It has impacts not just in a distant future. It has serious impacts as we speak," the president said during a conference call with public health advocates and other environmental supporters of the new proposed EPA regulations that aim to curb carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.

If you voted for Obama, how can you now complain?
Unions Slam Obama EPA Rule. Labor unions criticized the Environmental Protection Agency's new regulations on carbon emissions from power plants on Monday [6/2/2014], highlighting growing tensions between the environmentalist and working class arms of the Democratic Party. Those tensions have come to the forefront as leading Democrats embrace environmentalist policies backed by billionaire political donors that are generally opposed by members of the party's rank and file base.

N.J Gov. Chris Christie's EPA praises Obama's coal emission crackdown. Washington Republicans are decrying President Obama's plan to cut carbon emissions from energy plants 30 percent as a job and economy killer, but New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's EPA welcomed the move as the right thing to do — setting up a potential 2016 GOP presidential fight over green energy initatives [sic]. New Jersey is among the hardest hit states in the Obama plan, with a demand for 43 percent reduction in emissions from fossil-fueled power plants by 2030. But state officials said less than 3 percent of the state's electricity comes from coal plants.

EPA Says 'Science Is Clear' as Agency Imposes Tough New Coal Rules. The Environmental Protection Agency has imposed a set of new air quality standards on the nation's coal-burning power plants aimed at slashing carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 30 percent within 16 years. [...] There are about 600 coal-fired power plants across America generating about 40 percent of the nation's electricity. Those plants also are responsible for about one-third of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions, says the EPA. Last October, the agency imposed strict new greenhouse gas emissions standards on newly constructed power plants. This move completes the circle.

The Editor says...
The laws of physics and chemistry can't be violated by Big Brother, no matter how he tries. You can't drive a car 50 miles on one gallon of gas, because gasoline just doesn't have that much potential, and you can't burn coal (or natural gas or any hydrocarbon) without producing carbon dioxide. Electricity that is generated by coal-fired power plants which conform to the new arbitrary CO2 standards would be prohibitively expensive. Barack H. Obama and the people at the politicized EPA know this already. The destruction of capitalism is the goal of rabid environmentalists.

Obama's war on electricity. The directive, outlined over 645 pages, empowers the EPA to enforce extreme and radical regulations in each state in pursuit of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuel-burning power plants by "approximately 30 percent from CO2 emission levels in 2005." The administration regulates carbon dioxide as an "air pollutant," but carbon dioxide is not all bad. One of the largest sources of carbon dioxide is exhaling by humans, and that's always a good thing. Without carbon dioxide, plants would wither and man (and woman, too) would suffocate. Like most government schemes, the new EPA rule employs extreme measures that won't be effective, at great expense to taxpayers and to the economy, with methods based in flawed science and bad math. It addresses a problem that exists in the fertile imagination of the foolishly frightened. What is real is that hundreds of coal-fueled power plants will close for the states to meet the new requirements. Since more than one-third of America's power comes from coal, and coal is the largest source of electricity for half the states, shuttering coal-fired plants will create a dramatic shortage of energy.

The Subversion of Democracy. Upon the nation descends a set of proposals the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says would, if implemented, suppress average annual Gross Domestic Product by $51 billion, lowering employment growth by an annual average of 224,000 jobs through 2030. Just what America lusts for right now — a big jump in living costs, to be spread among workers fortunate enough to have jobs. You're wondering: Game over? Not by any means. The EPA proposal, however the media may depict it, is just that — a draft rule put forth for a year's worth of public comment, and after that a raft of lawsuits.

Gina McCarthy: New emissions rules are clean and affordable. The Obama administration has released strong new rules targeting coal-burning power plants in an effort to curb global warming. The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Clean Power Plan seeks to cut carbon emissions by 30% by 2030. The 645-page rule is a centrepiece of President Barack Obama's plans to leverage similar commitments other polluting nations like China and India. EPA administrator Gina McCarthy dismissed criticism the rules would lead to an exorbitant rise in electricity prices.

Obama administration targets coal with controversial emissions regulation. The Obama administration took aim at the coal industry on Monday by mandating a 30 percent cut in carbon emissions at fossil fuel-burning power plants by 2030 — despite claims the regulation will cost nearly a quarter-million jobs a year and force plants across the country to close. The controversial regulation is one of the most sweeping efforts to tackle global warming by this or any other administration. The 645-page plan, expected to be finalized next year, is a centerpiece of President Obama's climate change agenda, and a step that the administration hopes will get other countries to act when negotiations on a new international treaty resume next year.

EPA: The Obama administration's new legislative branch. Will the Environmental Protection Agency resurrect the defunct Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, a 1,428-page behemoth that threatened to slam the brakes on the U.S. economy before it died in the Senate in 2010? That may seem unbelievable but it's the likely end game if courts uphold EPA's draconian carbon "pollution" rules for new and existing fossil-fuel power plants, which are almost fully upon us. And American democracy will also suffer if EPA goes ahead.

Obama suggests his upcoming rule on coal plants will avert long-term health crisis. President Obama on Saturday [5/31/2014] tried to bolster public support for new rules his administration will announce next week on coal-firing [sic] power plants, arguing their carbon emissions are a national health crisis — beyond hurting the economy and causing global warming. "We don't have to choose between the health of our economy and the health of our children," Obama said in his weekly address. "As president and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our children to a planet that's beyond fixing." The cost of carbon pollution "can be measured in lost lives" and roughly "100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks will be avoided" in just the first year that the standards go into effect, Obama said in the address [...]

The Editor says...
Please select one of the following retorts: [#1] Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. [#2] I doubt if it can be proven that carbon dioxide causes widespread heart attacks or asthma. [#3] Burning coal to produce abundant electric power helps the economy. Barack H. Obama hates America and wants the United States to be more like Cuba, where the government controls everything and electric power is available only 12 hours a day. [#4] Burning coal does not cause global warming, obviously, because China is burning coal like there's no tomorrow and there has been no global warming since 1998 at the latest. [#5] Barack H. Obama lies about everything, and he's lying about this issue, too. [#6] Name one person who has had a heart attack this year because he or she lives near a coal-fired power plant.

New EPA rules could burn coal state Democrats. It's not just electric companies and coal miners bracing for the Obama administration's announcement Monday of tough rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from America's roughly 600 coal-fired power plants, rules designed to cut U.S. power plant emissions by nearly a third in the next 15 years. Democratic candidates and the party's campaign organizations have positioned themselves carefully in anticipation of more stringent emissions standards that will thrill the party's environmentalist base but cause political headaches for Democrats facing tough challenges in states that produce coal or rely heavily on coal to generate electricity.

EPA eyeing 30 percent emissions cut for power plants. Having failed to ram a key piece of his climate agenda through Congress in 2010, President Obama on Monday will endorse far-reaching new restrictions on carbon pollution widely expected to push states to embrace cap-and-trade-style systems. Details of the new regulations, to be announced by Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Gina McCarthy, have been kept under wraps, but leaked reports Sunday night suggested the administration will go even farther than many had expected, setting a goal of reducing carbon emissions from existing power plants by 30 percent by 2030. The agency already has proposed carbon emissions restrictions on future power plants.

Rand Paul Vows To Repeal 'Illegal' EPA Climate Rule. Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul is not happy about the Environmental Protection Agency's new carbon dioxide emissions limits for power plants, arguing it is an "illegal use of executive power." Paul has vowed to force a vote on the EPA's rule to repeal it. "This latest assault on our economy by President Obama will destroy jobs here in Kentucky and across the country, and will hurt middle class families by hiking their utility bills and straining their budgets," said Paul in a statement. "The excessive rule is an illegal use of executive power, and I will force a vote to repeal it," Paul added.

EPA unveils landmark climate rule. The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday released new rules that call on power plants to cut their carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030. The new rules, posted on the EPA's website on Monday, are the centerpiece of President Obama's climate change plan, and are set to trigger a major battle with Republicans, coal-state Democrats and business groups. EPA chief Gina McCarthy framed the rules as having the potential to dramatically improve public health, saying that for every dollar the government invests in the new climate initiative, families will see $7 in health benefits.

The Editor says...
If I may borrow from Bill Clinton, I guess that depends on what the definition of "health benefits" is. That's just another statistic that is impossible to believe, impossible to prove, and probably based on impossible presuppositions.

Reaction to Obama's Global Warming Plan. "If these rules are allowed to go into effect, the administration for all intents and purposes is creating America's next energy crisis." — Mike Duncan, president and CEO of the American Council for Clean Coal Electricity.

Obama administration unveils controversial emissions cap on power plants. The Obama administration took aim at the coal industry on Monday by mandating a 30 percent cut in carbon emissions at fossil fuel-burning power plants by 2030 — despite claims the regulation will cost nearly a quarter-million jobs a year and force plants across the country to close. The controversial regulation, which some lawmakers already are trying to block, is one of the most sweeping efforts to tackle global warming by this or any other administration.

The EPA as Super-Legislature. Having failed to get the Democrats' cap-and-trade scheme through Congress, President Obama intends to create it through fiat, with the Environmental Protection Agency scheduled to issue today what amounts to a bill of attainder against coal-fired electricity generators. The regulation will set a national limit on greenhouse-gas emissions from coal plants and then offer states a phony menu of choices for meeting that standard, stacking the policy deck in such a way as to force them into cap-and-trade programs administered by multistate cartels. It is far from obvious that the Obama administration has anything like the legal authority for this; [...]

Obama declares war on Republicans over climate change with slew of measures to reduce pollution from coal-fired power stations. The Environmental Protection Agency announced this morning that it would slap coal-fired power plants with first-of-its kind restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon was not previously among the power plant pollutants regulated by the EPA. The agency now says it will require existing plants that run on fossil fuels, including coal and natural gas, to slash emission levels nationwide by 30 percent over the next 15 years.

The Editor says...
Carbon dioxide is not carbon, nor is it a pollutant.

Obama's climate rule clocks in at 645 pages. The Obama administration's new climate change rule spans 645 pages, providing a detailed roadmap to states for cutting emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency released the proposed rule on Monday [6/2/2014], beginning the fight to establish what would be the first standards for greenhouse gas emissions at existing coal-fired power plants. The EPA is calling on power plants to cut their carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030 and is offering states flexibility in how they reach that goal.

Read the EPA's new carbon pollution rule. The new rules are a central part of President Obama's climate change agenda meant to ensure he leaves behind a legacy on tackling global warming.

Obama to unveil rule to cut greenhouse gas emissions. President Obama will unveil a rule Monday intended to confront climate change by cutting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the nation's greatest source of the heat-trapping gas. Obama plans to bypass Congress and use his authority under the Clean Air Act to achieve greenhouse gas reductions. Power generation accounts for about 40% of such emissions. The 3,000-page rule is expected to spark lawsuits, claims of job losses and charges by critics that Obama has launched a new "war on coal." In some coal-reliant states, however, power companies and regulators are expected to take a more pragmatic approach, planning for a future they assume will include carbon dioxide limits.

The Editor says...
I find it hard to believe — and impossible to accept at face value — that coal-fired power plants are the largest source of CO2 in the country. If I were to guess, I would say the internal combustion engines in the millions of cars and trucks are probably the greatest contributors of CO2, but this country also has other natural and unstoppable sources, such as termites, cows and volcanos. Additionally, the use of the term "heat-trapping gas" implies that radiant heat cannot pass through carbon dioxide at all.

CBS Hails 'Groundbreaking' New EPA Regulations on Climate Change, Skips Job Risk. CBS and NBC's morning shows on Monday [6/2/2014] avoided any mention of the potential job killing-harm that new Environmental Protection Agency rules will create. The three networks spent a scant 61 seconds total on the global warming regulations, but it was only Amy Robach on Good Morning America who raised a red flag. She pointed out: "The new rules will require power plants to cut Earth-warming pollution by 30 percent. Opponents say this will drive up energy costs and kill thousands of jobs."

Senators Predict 'Pain' for Americans as a Result of New EPA Rule. Sen. Vitter says today's announced regulations will bypass Congress — and the American people — to institute and force taxpayers to fund cap-and-trade: "This rule is all pain, no gain. American families and businesses will have to shoulder all the costs and burden from this rule without contributing to any significant reduction in global carbon emissions. "It's cap and trade all over again — but this time without giving the American public a voice to vote on it in Congress. This rule is just a payday for President Obama's friends and political allies."

Note: Everything below this point was published before the draconian anti-coal rules were announced. As you can see, this has been brewing for a long time.

Lawmakers and interest groups clash as Obama prepares to announce performance standard for power plants. Lawmakers and Washington interest groups are engaged in a battle over whether looming EPA rules will help or hurt as President Obama prepares to announce a highly anticipated performance standard for power plants June 2. The proposed standard will require existing natural gas and coal-fired power plants to release no more than 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity — easily done with natural gas but unobtainable by present day coal plants. Although coal still provides almost 40 percent of U.S. electricity, the White House's new point man on energy, John Podesta, said Wednesday that climate change necessitates coal's demise. "President Obama believes we have a moral obligation to act now to curb climate change," he said.

EPA To Unilaterally Push Cap And Trade On Carbon Emissions. Despite being soundly rejected a few years ago, cap-and-trade will soon 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 been 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.

Obama to claim credit for economy-killing EPA plan. President Obama will personally drive the next nail into the coffin of America's economy next week, proudly announcing harsh new Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on energy. It won't just be power plants that feel the new Clean Air Act restrictions expected Monday. Expect the president to brag about "flexibility," which is a bureaucratic way of spreading the burdens so they will fall on consumers all across the country. [...] Why? For the salvation of mankind. On something simpler, like deciding if there's wrongdoing within the Veterans Administration, Mr. Obama insists on more study. But on supposed man-made climate destruction of Planet Earth a hundred years from now, he claims the debate is over: New regulations must dictate that we kill America's economy now, lest our economy kill the planet in a century or so.

Delay EPA power plant rules, senators demand. Forty-five senators are pressing the Environmental Protection Agency to delay new rules on limiting carbon emissions from power plants. The senators are asking the EPA to extend a public comment period for the rules, which could also delay their issuance. The agency is set to unveil the proposed rule, which seeks to limit the carbon output of existing coal-fired power plants, on June 2.

Obama Said to Put Personal Push Behind EPA Emission Rules. U.S. President Barack Obama plans to personally unveil proposed carbon-emissions rules for power plants, elevating climate change policy as a top tier issue for his final two years in office, according to two people familiar with White House strategy. Obama is preparing to make the announcement with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy, who said this week the rules are on track to be proposed by June 2, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the schedule is still being planned.

President Obama's big carbon crackdown readies for launch. The EPA will launch the most dramatic anti-pollution regulation in a generation early next month, a sweeping crackdown on carbon that offers President Barack Obama his last real shot at a legacy on climate change — while causing significant political peril for red-state Democrats. The move could produce a dramatic makeover of the power industry, shifting it away from coal-burning plants toward natural gas, solar and wind. While this is the big move environmentalists have been yearning for, it also has major political implications in November for a president already under fire for what the GOP is branding a job-killing "War on Coal," and promises to be an election issue in energy-producing states such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Louisiana.

Supreme Court Ruling Empowers EPA. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday [4/29/2014] that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate emissions produced by coal-fired power plants in order to protect downwind states from deleterious effects of pollution. The 6-2 ruling in the latest battle of what has been termed the "War on Coal" is a big victory for the Obama administration and environmental groups who maintain burning coal represents a health risk to those with respiratory problems. It also indicates the nation's highest court is likely to side with the EPA on other issues related to their regulatory powers.

Supreme Court revives EPA rule limiting air pollution from neighboring states. The Supreme Court on Tuesday [4/29/2014] handed the Obama administration an important victory in its effort to reduce power plant pollution that contributes to unhealthy air in neighboring states. In a 6-2 decision, the court upheld a rule adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2011 to limit emissions from plants in more than two-dozen Midwestern and Southern states.

Supreme Court OKs EPA pollution rules: another blow for coal. The Supreme Court upheld a federal regulation Tuesday that limits the amount of air pollution that can cross state lines, handing a victory to the Obama administration's efforts to limit air pollution. The Supreme Court ruling deals a blow to the US coal industry, but the biggest hit is yet to come.

Wyoming gov accuses White House of using new EPA regs to wage 'war on coal'. The American coal industry is accusing the Obama administration of using the Environmental Protection Agency to end the use of coal despite the president's claim of having an "all of the above" energy policy. 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."

Court upholds EPA air pollution rule. A federal appeals court on Tuesday [4/15/2014] upheld the Obama administration's standards for curbing mercury and toxic air pollution from power plants. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected a challenge to the rule, which was completed by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2011 and set the first national limits on air pollution emitted by coal and oil-fired power plants, specifically mercury, arsenic and acid gases.

Court Upholds EPA Emission Standards. A federal appeals court on Tuesday [4/15/2014] upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's emission standards for hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants.

The EPA's Science Problem. In a stunning admission, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy revealed to House Science, Space and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) that the agency neither possesses, nor can produce, all of the scientific data used to justify the rules and regulations they have imposed on Americans via the Clean Air Act. In short, science has been trumped by the radical environmentalist agenda. The admission follows the issuance of a subpoena by the full Committee last August. It was engendered by two years of EPA stonewalling, apparently aimed at preventing the raw data cited by EPA as the scientific foundation for those rules and regulations from being independently verified.

The stringent EPA clean air rules are based on NOTHING, unless the EPA can produce these documents.
EPA Concedes: We Can't Produce All the Data Justifying Clean Air Rules. Seven months after being subpoenaed by Congress, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy conceded that her agency does not have — and cannot produce — all of the scientific data used for decades to justify numerous rules and regulations under the Clean Air Act. 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.

Nebraska Sues EPA over Power Plant CO2 Restrictions. The State of Nebraska has filed a suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for overreaching restrictions on carbon emissions from coal-power plants. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning filed the suit January 15 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska. Bruning and Nebraska state officials are challenging an EPA proposed rule that would cap carbon dioxide emissions at new power plants to 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of power generation. Coal power plants would have to cut emissions by approximately 50 percent to meet the standards. No current or expected technologies would enable coal power plants to meet such a standard and remain economically viable.

Did EPA's Fake Spy Shut Down Real Power Plants? In his ongoing investigation of fake EPA spy John Beale, Sen. David Vitter (R., La.) is increasingly focused on Beale's role in leading a 1997 rewrite of federal rules on air quality. [...] In a draft report, Sen. Vitter also places the Beale rules in context: "Since the 1997 standards were issued, EPA has steadfastly refused to facilitate independent analysis of the studies upon which the benefits claimed were based. While this is alarming in and of its self [sic], this report also reveals that the EPA has continued to rely upon the secret science within the same two studies to justify the vast majority of all Clean Air Act regulations issued to this day. In manipulating the scientific process, Beale effectively closed the door to open scientific enquiry, a practice the Agency has followed ever since."

House GOP starts investigation on EPA power plant rules. House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans initiated a probe Wednesday [3/12/2014] to determine who at the Environmental Protection Agency was responsible for crafting greenhouse gas emission rules for future power plants. The GOP members want to zero in on a provision in the proposed rule that they say violated the Energy Policy Act of 2005, as it cited carbon capture and sequestration projects that received federal funding. They said the act prevents the EPA from requiring new power plants to use that technology, which would be necessary to comply with the rule.

Supreme Court weighs EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The Supreme Court on Monday [2/24/2014] will hear challenges to an Obama administration greenhouse gas regulation. The program in question is the Environmental Protection Agency's permitting process for industry sources, which includes coal-fired power plants, chemical facilities and oil refineries. In 2010, the EPA said its emissions standards for passenger cars "triggered" a need to regulate greenhouse gas pollutants under permits for new facilities because the gases were deemed an endangerment to "public health or welfare."

At the Supreme Court, a royal mess for 'King Barack'. Monday morning's [2/24/2014] Supreme Court argument about the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases went badly for the Obama administration — so much so that the real question before the justices seemed to be how severe the EPA's loss would be.

Obama throws in towel on global-warming legislation. President Obama came to office promising significant action to fight climate change, and Tuesday night's State of the Union indicates this administration fully recognizes any action on that issue over the next three years will come not through legislation but through regulations and executive actions. Rather than call for a "comprehensive energy and climate bill" as he did in 2010, Mr. Obama on Tuesday focused on much smaller goals and touted the controversial efforts of his Environmental Protection Agency to cut down on carbon emissions from power plants.

No wonder McCarthy wants to ignore job-killing EPA regulations. Four and five percent growth rates of the Reagan and Clinton recoveries in the 1980s and 1990s aren't likely these days because the EPA regulatory onslaught under Obama is a major cause of stagnant economic activity since 2009. At least 205 coal-fired generators will soon close due to EPA regulations, with the loss of 17,000 jobs, according to an October 2012 report from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Then there are the jobs lost from stimulus-backed green energy failures like Solyndra, Abound Solar and Evergreen Energy.

The stakes are high in Supreme Court case on EPA's reach. The Supreme Court will hear an important case next week involving regulatory overreach by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The case involves greenhouse gas regulation, but it also raises the issue of how far the Obama administration can go in ignoring laws that Congress adopts in favor of its well-documented "go-it-alone" approach. The stakes in the case, known as Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, are enormous. The administration has been criticized for governing by executive fiat, but what it has in mind with greenhouse gas regulation dwarfs anything it has done so far, and opens the door to a fundamental restructuring of the constitutional division of power between the Executive and Legislative branches of government.

EPA 'clean coal' rule would increase power prices by 70 or 80 percent. An Obama administration official has said that the new clean coal rules could increase electricity prices by as much as 80 percent. Dr. Julio Friedmann, the deputy assistant secretary for clean coal at the Department of Energy, told House lawmakers that the first generation of carbon capture and storage technology would increase wholesale electricity prices by "70 or 80 percent." The Obama administration's plan to fight global warming includes limiting carbon dioxide from new power plants.

Acting EPA boss: We might go after existing coal plants in 2014. Having practically banned the construction of new coal-fired power plants, Environmental Protection Agency regulators may try to cap emissions at existing coal plants, according to the acting head of the agency. "[T]hat's certainly something that will be on the table in this next fiscal year," acting EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe told reporters last week, per Midwest Energy News, after saying that the EPA intends to start "working with states on existing sources, but we're not there yet."

EPA v. USA. As part of President Obama's Climate Action Plan unveiled in June, his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is mandating exorbitant and punitive limits on power plant carbon emissions. The EPA unveiled its proposal in September to restrict new power plants to technologically impossible standards of carbon dioxide generation and capture. The announcement has brought down a storm of criticism from industry and public officials. "Never before has the federal government forced an industry to do something that is technologically impossible," countered U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who serves on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He warned, "If these regulations go into effect, American jobs will be lost, electricity prices will soar, and economic uncertainty will grow."

Nebraska Sues EPA over Power Plant CO2 Restrictions. The State of Nebraska has filed a suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for overreaching restrictions on carbon emissions from coal-power plants. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning filed the suit January 15 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska. Bruning and Nebraska state officials are challenging an EPA proposed rule that would cap carbon dioxide emissions at new power plants to 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of power generation. Coal power plants would have to cut emissions by approximately 50 percent to meet the standards. No current or expected technologies could enable coal power plants to meet such a standard and remain economically viable.

States Fight for Their Rights with the EPA. EPA regulations have been getting tougher, and now the states are fighting back to try and take back some of their power in this situation. The newest carbon emissions standards for existing power plants will be coming out in June and the states are looking to keep the EPA from destroying their abilities to make their own decisions.

EPA Administrator to Scientists: 'Speak the Truth' on Climate Change to Meet Obama's 'Needs'. Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), asked scientists at a climate change conference on Thursday in Arlington, Va., to explain the science of climate change. She also said that the EPA looks at climate change as an opportunity to grow the economy and create jobs.

EPA set to strike key blow against coal? Stymied by the GOP's long resistance to cap and trade legislation, the EPA this week began public hearings — the next step toward a final rule — to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new coal plants. The rule would limit emissions to 1100 pounds per Megawatt hour, a level the coal industry says is technologically unattainable.

EPA, IPCC Push Ahead Even as Global Warming Theories Crumble. Ten days ago the Environmental Protection Agency issued its proposed rule for the implementation of regulations of carbon dioxide on utilities' coal-fired power plants. Last week revealed news that there is no reason for costly government-imposed limits on such emissions, as the global warming they were supposed to cause has been absent for 15 years. That didn't stop the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from issuing yet another alarm on Friday, ahead of its official report yesterday [9/30/2013], that said increased carbon dioxide caused by people is negatively affecting the earth's climate.

EPA Administrator Says Coal Rules Necessary Because of 'Devastating Impacts on the Planet'. Senate Republicans attacked the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) plan to cut pollution for coal-fired power plants last week, challenging the validity of the research on climate change and the viability of a technology aimed at cleaning carbon emissions. Four of the federal government's top climate change officials appeared before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to try to build momentum for the president's climate change strategy.

Senate confirms Gina McCarthy as new EPA head. She will oversee the effort Obama announced in a recent speech on climate change to develop regulations designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.

Sessions Hammers EPA Administrator Unable to Defend Obama's Claims on Global Warming. In a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing Thursday [1/16/29014] on climate regulation, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) pressed EPA administrator Gina McCarthy to support President Barack Obama's statements on global warming, which have been used to justify massive proposed administrative actions. McCarthy was unable or unwilling to support the Obama's claims despite being the central figure crafting and implementing EPA regulations... [Video clip]

Sen. Inhofe on Obama's Global Warming Claims: 'The President Just Made that Up'. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told a Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee hearing today [1/16/2014] that the president must have fabricated two oft-repeated climate claims. "Both statements are false," Sen. Inhofe said of Obama's global warming claims, since neither the EPA nor the U.N. IPCC climate group can provide any supporting statistics. "On multiple occasions, and most recently on May 30th of last year, President Obama has said, and this is a quote he has used several times, he said that 'the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even ten years ago' and that 'the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago.'

Obama's Climate Five-Year Plan. [President Obama's] plan directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "to work expeditiously to complete carbon pollution standards for both new and existing power plants." The EPA is still formulating those standards, but in their current draft form they would limit new power plants to emitting 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of electricity generated. Since conventional coal-fired plants typically emit around 1,800 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour generated, the new rule would essentially be a ban on building new coal-fired power plants. If the EPA were to establish a uniform 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour standard, that would eliminate nearly all coal-fired plants in the United States, which generated about 37 percent of the country's electricity last year.

Sierra Club Pressed EPA to Create Impossible Coal Standards. Emails between the Sierra Club and the EPA produced through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit show the green group and senior officials at the nation's top environmental enforcer met and corresponded frequently about the agency's work on new coal regulations. The EPA published its long-awaited New Source Performance Standards for new coal-fired plants on Wednesday [1/8/2014], four months after the agency announced their creation. The EPA has repeatedly said the regulations on coal-fired power plants will not be a death blow to the industry. However, the agency was working closely behind the scenes with the Sierra Club, an environmental organization that was pushing the agency to adopt standards that would be impossible for power plants to meet.

Obama's anti-stimulus energy policies take money out of economy. The Institute for Energy Research predicts that new EPA rules on mercury and cross-state pollution targeting old power plants will shut down 34 gigawatts of coal-fired production capacity, or 10 percent of the U.S. total. Those burdened most by the energy price increases resulting from these rules — as with the price hikes that result from Obama's more ambitious plans for carbon reduction — will be the poor, who already spend a greater percentage of their income on energy than those who are more affluent.

GOP lawmakers accuse EPA of muzzling scientists on climate regulations. Republican leaders on the House Science Committee are accusing the Environmental Protection Agency of disregarding science in its push to impose carbon dioxide limits on power plants. Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and 20 other Republican lawmakers sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on Thursday, claiming the agency has "muzzled" members of its independent science advisory board.

Arizona Fights Anti-Coal Regional Haze Rules. [Scroll down] In Arizona, it would cost the Apache, Cholla and Coronado coal plants over $1 billion to adhere to EPA's regional haze rules. That would mean higher electricity costs and possibly higher water costs if the rule is extended to the Navajo Generating Station which powers water delivery in the state. And since other states like Montana, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Wyoming are also covered by these consent decrees, expect EPA to institute rules on those states that target coal-fired power plants.

'Massive Seizure of Power': Climate scientists, economists challenge EPA. A group of climate scientists and economists are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other stationary sources. These critics see a "massive seizure of power" by the agency. The scientists and economists, including the former chair of the EPA's Science Advisory Committee, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, arguing that the agency does not have the authority to permit greenhouse gases from stationary sources. According to the group, such a permitting scheme is a "naked power grab of the most cynical sort."

Barack Obama's Presidency Is A Complete Failure By His Own, Self-Imposed Standards. [Scroll down] Meanwhile, electricity prices are skyrocketing to all-time highs, according to the government's own official statistics. The Electricity Price Index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics hit an all-time record in November, 20% higher than 6 years ago. That is another loss for the middle class, further reducing real incomes. That is due to Obama's runaway overregulation, pursuing the President's War on Coal, and other manipulative, fairy tale delusions. New EPA regulations will take out 10% of all electricity produced by plentiful, low cost American coal, according to the Institute for Energy Research.

The use of the EPA as a political weapon:
Northeast states push EPA on Midwestern, Southern emissions. Eight Northeastern states petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday [12/9/2013] to require a group of "upwind" Midwest and Southern states to more aggressively reduce smog-forming pollutants from power plants that drift across their borders and pose health risks. The states, all represented by Democratic governors, said the petition was a last resort after trying to persuade the leaders of the upwind states — Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia — to reduce harmful emissions that cause respiratory problems, such as asthma.

EPA preparing to unleash a deluge of new regulations. Happy holidays from the Obama administration. Federal agencies are currently working on rolling out hundreds of environmental regulations, including major regulations that would limit emissions from power plants and expand the agency's authority to bodies of water on private property. On Tuesday [11/26/2013], the White House released its regulatory agenda for the fall of 2013. It lists hundreds of pending energy and environmental regulations being crafting by executive branch agencies, including 134 regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency alone.

Obama's path on climate change runs through EPA. Obama has vowed to reduce greenhouse gases and to slow warming temperatures, saying a failure to do so "would betray our children and future generations." And while environmentalists applauded the president's pledge, they are encouraging him to use his executive powers rather than Congress on issues like stricter limits on carbon emissions. The EPA last year recommended limited carbon emissions from new power plants, but advocates now want Obama to expand that rule to include existing power plants, as well.

New EPA Rules Will Kill Clean Coal. In an astounding paradox of modern politics, the Obama administration continues to promote green-energy technologies while also working hard to kill at least one of them. The proof lies in the administration's carbon regulations on coal power plants announced on Sept. 20. The rules would wipe out the development of ecologically important carbon capture and storage technologies. In announcing the EPA's new carbon regulations, Administrator Gina McCarthy said that new power plants "can minimize their carbon emissions by taking advantage of modern technologies." The fact is that the coal-based industry cannot realistically follow these rules without putting itself out of business.

Submission to EPA hearing on 'carbon pollution' standards. Consideration by the EPA of carbon pollution standards for existing power plants is based upon an argument whose conclusion is that an intolerable level of global warming would result from continued emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from combustion of fossil fuels. [...] The equivocation fallacy is the source of the conclusion that an intolerable level of global warming would result from continued emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from combustion of fossil fuels. Scientific research is not the source of this conclusion though this is commonly assumed. Currently, there is neither a logical nor a scientific basis for regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by the EPA.

SCOTUS Revisits EPA Regulation of CO2. In 2009, EPA published the required Endangerment Finding, which was subsequently attacked on scientific grounds by a collection of plaintiffs. However, in June 2012, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled against plaintiffs, giving deference on the science to EPA. EPA had proceeded to institute emission limits for motor vehicles, essentially by setting mileage standards. EPA is now arguing that, having successfully set CO2 limits for motor vehicles in May 2010, the CAA requires that emission limits be set on all other emitters of CO2. Using their statutory authority to set New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), EPA has proposed stringent limits on new power plants that will make new coal plants virtually impossible to construct. The EPA also wants to limit emissions from existing coal plants, arguing that EPA can set guidelines which the states would have to follow in regulating emissions from existing plants.

Why You Should Care That Courts Overturn EPA's Carbon Pollution Standard. In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals struck down the EPA's Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), a regulation chiefly targeting coal-fired power plants. The Court found that the CSAPR exceeded the agency's statutory authority. Similarly, in March, the Court ruled that the EPA exceeded its authority when it revoked a Clean Water Act permit for Arch Coal's Spruce Mine No. 1 in Logan Country, West Virginia.

New air pollution standards restrict soot particles. The Obama administration announced a new air pollution standard Friday [12/14/2012] that would bring about a 20% reduction in microscopic particles of soot emitted by coal-fired power plants and diesel vehicles that contribute to haze and respiratory ailments. The new limit, fought by industry and welcomed by environmentalists, marks the first time the Environmental Protection Agency tightened the soot standard since it was established 15 years ago.

The EPA's Carbon-Capture Delusion. On Friday [9/20/2013], the EPA finally unveiled its long-awaited rules for new coal-fired power plants. The agency's administrator, Gina McCarthy, has claimed that the new rules "will provide certainty for the future of new coal." That's true. The rules mean that no new coal plants will be built in the U.S., because they won't be able to meet the limit of 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of electricity produced.

Supreme Court to Review EPA Climate Rules. The Supreme Court has today granted cert to review the EPA's greenhouse gas rules. This is highly significant. The high court clearly botched the last global warming case, Massachusetts v. EPA, back in 2007. Maybe they'll correct themselves.

New EPA proposal for cutting emissions draws immediate reactions. Industry groups already are responding to the rollout of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) draft rule to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions of future power plants. [...] The American Public Power Association (APPA) said the EPA's mandate to use carbon capture and storage is "unrealistic" and out of line with what the Clean Air Act requires.

The EPA as Energy Master. The imperial EPA has once again raised its scepter, this time proposing the first hard caps on carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. The proposed coal rule merits a deeper assessment than it has yet received. The impacts of this and other EPA rules targeting coal go far beyond the coal industry. The EPA is undermining the very foundations of economic productivity.

EPA's Anti-Coal Policies are adverse to human health and welfare. The myopic EPA approach ignores three fundamental realities: (1) over 40% of our electricity depends on coal, (2) the U.S. will add 120 million people in the next 35 years, and (3) new supercritical coal plants significantly reduce emissions while providing affordable power. With the GDP projected to more than double in the next several decades, coal is the only fuel able to meet that scale of demand — natural gas is insufficient, wind is intermittent and nuclear is too expensive.

Obama administration killing jobs pointlessly. Last Friday's announcement by EPA head Gina McCarthy of impossible-to-meet emissions standards for new coal power plants shows that the Obama administration is not for jobs. The EPA's move — the start of a long-term effort to effectively outlaw the burning of coal — is all of a piece with the stalling over the Keystone XL pipeline and sends a similar message to blue-collar workers: The Obama administration is prepared to sacrifice your jobs even when it can't show any benefit to the United States.

EPA to propose tougher rules on soot. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rolled out plans Friday [6/15/2012] to toughen standards for fine particulate matter, or soot, which is dangerous microscopic pollution emitted by factories, power plants, diesel vehicles and other sources. The proposal, which the agency is issuing under a court-ordered deadline, would pare the current annual exposure standard of 15 micrograms per cubic meter down to between 12 and 13.

McAuliffe says for first time that he supports EPA rules on coal-fired plants. Terry McAuliffe said Tuesday that he supports new Environmental Protection Agency rules on carbon emissions, taking a clear stance for the first time on an issue that has become a key flashpoint in the Virginia governor's race. The EPA unveiled guidelines two weeks ago that would limit the amount of carbon that future coal- and gas-fired plants can emit into the atmosphere, likely making it difficult for any new coal-powered plants to be built.

Bias alert!
The new EPA rules don't make it difficult to build a new coal-fired power plant, they make it economically infeasible. Or, to put it more simply, impossible. No doubt this is one of Barack H. Obama's proudest achievements, as it advances his ultimate goal of collapsing the American economy.

America's Actual Health and Welfare Crisis: EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says we face grave threats to human health, welfare and justice. She's absolutely right. However, the dangers are not due to factory or power plant emissions, or supposed effects of "dangerous manmade global warming." They are the result of policies and regulations that her EPA is imposing in the name of preventing climate change and other hypothetical and exaggerated environmental problems. It is those government actions that are the gravest threat to Americans' health, welfare, and pursuit of happiness and justice.
(Italics in original.)

EPA moves to limit emissions of future coal- and gas-fired power plants. The Environmental Protection Agency will move Friday [9/20/2013] to strictly limit the amount of carbon that future coal- and gas-fired power plants can pour into the atmosphere, the first such restrictions on greenhouse gases imposed by the agency. The limits in the proposed rule will be difficult for any new coal plant to meet without incurring the substantial costs of additional technology to limit carbon dioxide output or developing new methods of cleansing emissions.

Bias alert!
When a power plant is powered by the combustion of coal, oil, natural gas, garbage, switch grass, sludge or anything else, the resulting exhaust gas — usually a harmless mixture of water vapor and CO2 — is sent up a smokestack and discharged into the air. It's the same process that has been employed since the invention of the smokestack. The article immediately above says the power plants pour carbon into the atmosphere. The deceptions here are (1) carbon dioxide is not carbon, (2) the primary "greenhouse gas" is water vapor, which cannot be regulated, and (3) what else are they supposed to do with the exhaust from a power plant? If your car did not have a tailpipe, and you were expected to drive to work and back before disposing of the exhaust gas in some place other than the atmosphere, would you be able to afford to travel by automobile? Of course not. The avoidance of carbon dioxide emissions is utter futility. CO2 is not a pollutant, and it is not something to be avoided, suppressed, or stashed away in caves. The EPA's goal is the same Barack H. Obama's goal, and that is the destruction of capitalism.

The Green Jobs Boondoggle. One thing at which the "green" portion of the public sector has become particularly adept is burning through taxpayer money. The Environmental Protection Agency now spends about $11 billion per year, up from an already ridiculous $8 billion three years ago. The EPA has nearly completed what it will consider the signature accomplishment of its 41-year existence if successful — the implementation of "a proposed rule for greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants ... (which) experts believe 'effectively bans new coal plants' in the United States." In 2008, candidate Obama said he wanted to bankrupt companies if they tried to build new coal-burning plants. Since Congress wouldn't create that situation by passing ruinous cap and trade legislation, Mr. "We Can't Wait" is having the EPA do it for him.

Obama's War on Energy. The EPA is about to release a new draft rule effectively prohibiting new coal-fired power plants. The rule will undoubtedly face a stiff legal challenge, but that takes time, and in the meantime coal mines and utilities facing the regulatory uncertainty will get squeezed in the marketplace.

Justices take up air pollution rules. The Supreme Court will review a lower court decision that nullified Environmental Protection Agency rules aimed at cutting soot- and smog-forming power plant emissions that cross state lines. Monday's [6/24/2013] announcement provides new hope for the EPA and green groups that suffered a big defeat in 2012 when an appeals court nixed the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, a pillar of the Obama administration's air pollution agenda.

States, green groups delay lawsuit amid Obama climate rumors. New York is one of a dozen states and cities that on April 17 threatened to sue the Environmental Protection Agency in as few as 60 days. The litigation would be aimed at forcing completion of delayed rules, floated in draft form more than a year ago, that would set emissions standards for new power plants. The cities and states also want the EPA to carry through on its commitment in a 2010 legal settlement to require carbon standards for existing power plants.

The Editor says...
Once again, a reporter says carbon when he obviously means carbon dioxide. And once again, carbon dioxide is harmless at the current 400 ppm levels. CO2 is not a pollutant, it's plant food. Simply stated, CO2 restrictions are motivated by anti-capitalism.

Apparently waiting until after the elections:
EPA says no climate rules for refineries in 2012. The Environmental Protection Agency likely won't finalize standards for greenhouse-gas emissions from refineries this year, an agency spokeswoman said. The announcement is the latest delay to EPA climate rules for stationary sources. The agency has already postponed the refinery rules and separate greenhouse-gas regulations for power plants.

A Supreme Court EPA Decision That Could Cost Taxpayers $21 Billion Per Year. Is the Clean Air Act so badly flawed that it will cripple environmental enforcement and economic development alike unless the EPA and its state counterparts defy clear statutory provisions or, alternatively, spend $21 billion a year to employ an additional 320,000 bureaucrats? That is a central issue in a recent lawsuit by the Southeastern Legal Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a host of lawmakers and several companies. They are petitioning the Supreme Court to review an appellate court decision upholding the EPA's global warming regulations.

EPA urged to rewrite or ditch CO2 standards for new coal plants. The state Public Service Commission is urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to back off on proposed greenhouse-gas rules for new coal-fired power plants — almost one year after the comment period on the rule closed. In a letter to the EPA signed last week by its five Republican commissioners, the PSC said the proposed emission rules would make it "impracticable" to build new coal-fired power plants in America.

Showdown at the EPA corral. Over the past three years, the Obama EPA has conducted a scorched earth campaign against fossil fuel producers and users, especially the coal-fired power industry, with multibillion-dollar rules that provide no meaningful environmental or public-health benefits, like the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury Air Toxics Standard (MATS). The EPA will soon propose its greenhouse gas emission standards for power plants — rules that will attempt to make it financially impossible to construct new coal-fired power plants in the United States.

A War on Coal? Some observers have criticized the Obama administration for using the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to install onerous environmental regulations on the coal industry. For instance, the new rules aimed at cutting emissions will force dozens of coal-fired plants to shut down or convert to natural gas. However, the rules are not the result of Obama's efforts but of Congress' long-time legislative requirements, says Richard Gordon, professor emeritus of mineral economics at Pennsylvania State University.

An EPA War on Coal? The Environmental Protection Agency, under the direction of administrator Lisa Jackson, has launched a number of regulatory initiatives that affect the energy industry. Given President Obama's belief in the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and in the ability of renewable energies to help secure those emission reductions, critics argue that the administration is using the EPA to conduct a "war" on coal (along with, to a lesser degree, oil and natural gas). The objective is to achieve through administrative action what the president could not achieve via cap-and-trade legislation by Congress. The truth, however, is that the agency is implementing long-delayed legislative mandates dictated by various environmental statutes that well predate the current administration.

'War on coal' may burn EPA nominee. With the Environmental Protection Agency set to play the central role in President Obama's second-term climate change agenda, would-be agency chief Gina McCarthy on Thursday [4/11/2013] tried to calm Republican fears that she would continue the perceived "war on coal" and other harsh regulations under her predecessor.

Agenda-Driven "Science" at EPA. In fact, the final rule may be the most expensive one ever devised by EPA. And yet, even EPA admits, the alleged "hazards to public health" from mercury and non-mercury emissions from American EGUs [coal- and oil-fired power plants] are "anticipated to remain after imposition" of the new regulations.

EPA Gives Activists a New Tool to Pressure Power Plants, Oil Refineries. Environmental activists are applauding the EPA for releasing greenhouse gas emissions data for large polluters through a new, consumer-friendly Web platform. The online reporting tool, launched on Wednesday [1/11/2012], "will help Americans work together to develop innovative ways to reduce climate pollution," said the Environmental Defense Fund.

New EPA regs give coal plant just two-week window to begin construction. Environmental Protection Agency regulations have left one coal company working in Georgia with just a two-week window in which to begin construction before a new rule prevents the plant from being built at all.

Clean-energy hostages. After failing to crush the coal industry with the ill-fated Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, Mr. Obama has since loosed his regulatory agencies, especially the thuggish Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA is on the verge of proposing its greenhouse gas emission rules for power plants — the "cap" part of cap-and-trade — despite ongoing litigation over their legality. One concern is that the rules as implemented will block the construction of new coal-fired power plants — the very same sort of power that safely provides about 45 percent of U.S. electricity.

Court: EPA can stop changes at DTE's Monroe coal plant. Government regulators can try to halt construction projects at power plants if they think the companies didn't properly calculate whether the changes would increase air pollution, a federal appeals court has ruled, marking the latest twist in a decades-long fight over the Clean Air Act.

EPA likely to delay climate rules for new power plants. The Obama administration is leaning toward revising its landmark proposal to regulate greenhouse as emissions from new power plants, according to several individuals briefed on the matter, a move that would delay tougher restrictions and could anger many environmentalists.

Somewhat related:
The EPA Opens a New Front in the War on Coal. The rapid pace and severity of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations on the energy sector during the past four years illustrates an ongoing problem — the government's impediment to an economic recovery. The EPA's mandates have unfairly discriminated against certain sectors of the energy industry, most notably coal, pointlessly killing desperately needed jobs. On top of the regulations that have questionable benefits at best, the EPA has withheld permits for coal mining that were already approved by other agencies, gratuitously delayed permits, and even rescinded previously issued permits.

Environmental Zealots vs. the Constitution. President Obama has given more indication about what we can expect from the EPA in his second-term global warming agenda. He has picked Gina McCarthy, one of Lisa Jackson's top lieutenants to head the Environmental Protection Agency as its new chief. Over the past four years, McCarthy has run the EPA's air office, as a notably willful regulator. Her promotion gives notice that Obama has given up on getting agreement from Congress on his anticarbon agenda, particularly given the number of Senate Democrats from coal or oil states. The real climate fight is now over the shape of rules to come that could be released as early as this summer, and apparently a brutal under-the-table lobbying campaign is now underway.

Bias alert: It's NPR, so have a grain of salt handy.
EPA To Unveil Stricter Rules For Power Plants. More than 20 years ago, Congress ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate toxic air pollution. It's done that for most industries, but not the biggest polluters — coal and oil-burning power plants. The EPA now plans to change that later this week, by setting new rules to limit mercury and other harmful pollution from power plants.

The Editor says...
First of all, let's clear up NPR's misconception of the word regulate. When Congress regulates something, like interstate commerce for example, it makes it happen regularly. In recent years, the term has been used as a synonym for constrict or impede. The EPA's job 40 years ago (not 20) was to clean up the air by eliminating airborne lead. This was accomplished by mandating unleaded gasoline, and airborne lead was reduced by practically 100 percent. Power plants may be emitting trace amounts of mercury or other pollutants, but in my opinion those amounts are not enough to be of any concern, because (at least here in Texas) power plants are located way out in sparsely populated areas. And when the power goes out on a brutally hot Texas afternoon, air pollution will be among the least of my concerns. Wildfires and volcanoes are much more significant pollution sources, but there's nothing the EPA can do about them, so they strain out gnats and lets the camels go.

Obama EPA kills power plant, 3,900 jobs in Texas. "Chase Power ... has opted to suspend efforts to further permit the facility and is seeking alternative investors as part of a plan of dissolution for the parent company," Chase CEO Dave Freysinger told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. Freysinger made it very clear who was responsible for the projects death. "The (Las Brisas Energy Center) is a victim of EPA's concerted effort to stifle solid-fuel energy facilities in the U.S., including EPA's carbon-permitting requirements and EPA's New Source Performance Standards for new power plants," he said.

Obama EPA regulations kill 15 power plants, 480 jobs in Georgia. Georgia Power asked state regulators for permission to shut down 15 power plants yesterday [1/7/2013], claiming new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) make the plants too expensive to run. The 15 coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired power plants currently produce 2,061 megawatts (MW) for Georgia energy consumers.

Robber Barony: Obama Energy Policy By Another Name. [The EPA has] issued still more hugely expensive rules that effectively ban the use of coal in electricity generation — sending coal's contribution from 45% a few years ago to 35% today, and killing thousands of mining and utility jobs. Its latest rules demand that the transportation sector slash its soot emissions another 20% — ostensibly to reduce asthma, other illnesses and "thousands" of premature deaths. In reality, the health or environmental benefits exist only in EPA computer models, press releases and cover-ups of illegal experiments on humans, whose response to being subjected to "dangerous" levels of soot actually disproved EPA's claim that tougher standards are needed.

EPA Regs To Destroy 887,000 Jobs Per Year, Senator Says Citing New Study. EPA regulations the Obama administration is scheduled to unleash in its second term would destroy up to 887,000 jobs a year, Sen. James Inhofe announced today. [...] Inhofe's announcement comes a day after the Obama administration missed its second straight statutory deadline for publishing a legally-required report on its regulatory intentions and their economic consequences.

November surprise: EPA planning major post-election anti-coal regulation. President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has devoted an unprecedented number of bureaucrats to finalizing new anti-coal regulations that are set to be released at the end of November, according to a source inside the EPA. More than 50 EPA staff are now crashing to finish greenhouse gas emission standards that would essentially ban all construction of new coal-fired power plants. Never before have so many EPA resources been devoted to a single regulation. The independent and non-partisan Manhattan Institute estimates that the EPA's greenhouse gas coal regulation will cost the U.S. economy $700 billion.

What to expect in Obama's second term: [#11] [Obama will continue] implementation of EPA rules for destroying American business and American jobs. He has no concept of how the American economic system works and the fatal blow this will give to the economy; or, maybe, he is not really stupid but cunningly evil, with an objective of exactly that: destroying the economy so that a new utopian gulag can be built from the ashes.

Federal Court: Obama's EPA recognizes no legal limits. The Obama administration suffered a major legal defeat today when a federal court threw out the Environmental Protection Agency's strict new power plant emission regulations. In a 2-to-1 decision posted Tuesday [8/21/2012], the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the EPA's new Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, targeting the 28 states that generate the majority of the electricity in the United States, exceeded the agency's legal authority.

Court slaps down EPA on coal plant rule. A federal appeals court dealt a major blow to environmentalists and a significant setback to the Obama administration's clear-air agenda Tuesday [8/21/2012] by striking down a key Environmental Protection Agency rule limiting power-plant emissions. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 that the agency's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, meant to curb harmful pollutants from drifting downwind and harming the air quality in neighboring states, went too far and exceeded the EPA's "statutory authority."

GAO: EPA rules to cause energy price increases in Midwest, 'compromise' electric grid. Four coal industry regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will likely cause electricity prices to rise and may "compromise" electric grid reliability — especially in the Midwest and South — according to the Government Accountability Office. "Several representatives from power companies and officials from federal and state regulatory agencies have expressed concerns that as companies incur additional costs in responding to these additional regulations, and as the electricity supply is affected by generating unit requirements, electricity prices could increase and reliability — the ability to meet consumers' electricity demands — could be compromised," the GAO reported to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., yesterday [8/16/2012].

Temperatures up, lights out across America. The Obama administration's war against fossil fuels and infatuation with renewable energy have exacerbated the shortage of generating capacity. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled new standards in December that sharply limit emissions of mercury and other pollutants from the nation's coal- and oil-burning power plants. If the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology Rule is implemented as proposed, more than 60 coal-fired power plants, currently generating enough electricity to supply 22 million households, likely will be shut down because retrofitting would not be economical. Forthcoming rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants will likely shutter additional units.

Democrat Controlled Senate Votes to Keep Costly EPA Restrictions. The U.S. Senate yesterday [6/20/2012] voted to keep costly EPA mercury restrictions on power plants. The Senate voted largely along party lines, with just a few Senators from each party bucking their party leadership. The EPA restrictions are so severe as to effectively ban the future construction of coal-fired power plants. Coal powers nearly half the nation's electricity and is substantially less expensive than alternative power sources, so the EPA restrictions will necessarily cause steep increases in energy prices that will act as a punitive economic tax without generating any tax revenues.

All Hail the EPA. The EPA's first victim was the auto industry — which the agency hit with an arbitrary 54.5 mpg fuel efficiency standard by 2025 intended to force the industry to adopt electric vehicles (just as similar energy standards were meant to eliminate the common light bulb). This alarming development mobilized a broad national coalition — including states from Virginia to Texas and major industries including chemical, energy, utility, agriculture, and mining companies — to bring suit out of fear that the EPA would strike them next (indeed, utilities and mining are already under the jackboot as EPA has targeted coal for elimination with new power-plant CO2 rules).

Republican spending measure would block EPA climate rules. A fiscal 2012 spending bill unveiled Wednesday by House Republican appropriators includes a policy rider that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and refineries for one year.

What Congress Won't Legislate, EPA Will Regulate. Several reports of late reveal that new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency will cause utility providers to shut down a number of coal-fired power plants. ... As our electricity providers continue to honor their commitments to the EPA and the DOJ to provide electricity using renewables such as wind and solar, our electric bills will continue to increase. ... The EPA has become a lawless agency empowered with a government mandate to force coal-fired power plants and industries utilizing fossil fuels into strict emissions reductions agreements that are crippling our entire economy.

ALEC Weighs in on EPA's Proposed Carbon Dioxide Standard. On March 27, 2012, the EPA proposed the first ever limit on carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants, setting a cap of 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour. By EPA's own admission, the rule is designed to force a major transformation in electricity generation away from coal toward other fuel sources, such as natural gas. EPA claims that coal-fired plants can meet the requirement through carbon capture and sequestration, yet the technology is not yet commercially viable, and EPA knows that utilities likely will opt for another fuel source instead. The standard thus amounts to a de facto ban on future coal plants.

The EPA's Flawed Zero Tolerance Policy. For the last three years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has justified new air quality regulations — unprecedented in stringency and cost — on the assumption that even trace levels of particulate matter can cause early death. The EPA's guiding principle in this effort has been that there is no price too high to preempt further particulate reduction, says Kathleen Hartnett White, a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The EPA has gone so far in this endeavor as to claim that its rules will save 230,000 lives by 2020. However, such rhetoric is built on implausible assumptions, biased models, statistical manipulations and cherry-picked studies.

Bid to kill EPA coal plant regulations thwarted in Senate. Senate lawmakers on Wednesday [6/20/2012] blocked a GOP-led effort to scuttle Environmental Protection Agency regulations that mandate cuts in mercury pollution and other toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants. The 46-53 vote against Sen. James Inhofe's (R-Okla.) resolution staves off what would have been a stinging election-year rebuke of the White House green agenda.

Lisa Jackson: EPA isn't to blame for coal industry's problems. Is this some sort of inept, tasteless joke? Try to read around the relentless environmental bias and feel-good blather of this glowing profile of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson from the Guardian, and you'll recognize the same sort of economic-language usage employed by the wider Obama administration to try and disguise their many endeavors at central planning.

'Cap and Trade' For CO2 Needs a Stake through the Heart. With its relentless, ideological war against coal by the activist EPA, the percentage of coal-fired power plants has decreased substantially, from 51% to 42%, and is still trending downward, as power plants fired by lower-cost natural gas are taking over. Natural gas also emits roughly half as much CO2 as coal per kilowatt-hour. The new stringent mercury rule proposed by EPA is already causing old coal-fired power plants to close. And proposed CO2-emission limits would even prevent the construction of new plants in the U.S. Elsewhere the opposite is happening. For example, since Germany has decreed that nuclear plants must close, coal-fired power-plants are being built at rapid pace. And of course, China has been building such plants at the rate of one per week for some time now, paying little attention to the control of genuine toxic pollutants. As a result, global atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing but will increase more rapidly as the world economy recovers — no matter what the EPA decrees.

Region 1 EPA Administrator: Obama coal rules 'painful every step of the way'. Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe plans to highlight a little-known speech by an EPA regional administrator who admitted on video that the Obama administration's air regulations will kill the coal industry.

EPA holds 12-hour hearings with environmentalists to slow coal production. The Environmental Protection Agency held 12 hours of stacked hearings in Washington, D.C. and Chicago on Thursday [5/24/2012] in favor of a regulation that analysts have concluded would kill the building of new conventional coal plants in the U.S. Among the participants scheduled to testify in consecutive five minute blocks throughout the day were multiple representatives from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and environmental activists from the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace.

Sky-high Electric Bills Courtesy of Obama EPA's War on Coal. If Congress doesn't act to rein in the EPA's all-out war on coal, we will all be paying much higher electrical rates — and higher prices for just about everything else, since virtually everything we eat, drink, wear, and use requires energy for production and transportation. Thousands of coal-mining jobs are on the chopping block, of course, but hundreds of thousands of other jobs spread across all sectors of our economy are on the same chopping block. For businesses that are struggling to remain viable in this ongoing recession, energy costs are critical and even a slight uptick in rates can be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

The EPA's Faulty Science Can Be Stopped. United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-sponsored and funded "human health effects science" research is unreliable and makes irresponsible and outrageous claims about how air pollution causes thousands of deaths. Then the EPA claims that it can prevent those deaths with its latest set of regulations of emissions. This junk science can be challenged effectively, legally, and politically, as described [in this article].

All Cost No Benefit. Today [3/27/2012], the EPA has proposed a carbon dioxide standard for new power plants. The EPA blames carbon dioxide and other human emitted greenhouse gases for an increase in global temperature during the past 100 years. Unfortunately, this action is yet another EPA regulation that is essentially all cost and no benefit. First, the EPA's incessant use of the words "pollutant" and "pollution" in reference to carbon dioxide is deceptive. In the press release announcing this regulation, the agency mentioned the words "carbon pollution" eight times. Yet, as you learn in middle school science, carbon dioxide plays a vital role in the environment and has no direct negative human health effects.

New EPA rule threatens coal industry, electricity consumers. On March 27, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule on new power plants in the U.S., limiting CO2 emissions per megawatt-hour of electricity produced to 1,000 pounds. This is about what a state-of-the-art, combined-cycle, gas-fired power plant emits, and far below what the best coal-fired plant can accomplish without extremely expensive (and currently commercially unavailable) carbon capture technology. While the new rule has certain exceptions and allows for phasing in the new technology over many years, it adds to the woes of the largest single source of electric power generation in the country.

Electric rates will soar now that Obama's EPA has crushed coal-fired power plants. That Obama's EPA would release a rule to destroy coal-fired electricity while the president gives stump speeches about an "all of the above" energy policy is an insult to the American people. This rule will effectively block any new coal-fired power plants from being built in America, and a second round of related rules — expected after the election, of course — will shut down existing coal-fired power plants. The result will be steeply higher electricity prices, lost jobs, and lower standards of living.

You are Invited to Occupy the Job-Killing, Wealth-Robbing EPA Mafia. Regular readers have been able to follow along as I chronicle the 17,384-employee wrecking crew that is the EPA. This week the racket put the coal industry out of business, helped raise electricity prices for everyone, and did it all for the low, low price of $9,000,000,000 per year. Underpinning the confidence game is deceptive science that manufactures evidence of climate change/global warming by pointing out people's natural curosity about natural weather events.

The EPA's Unreliable Science. United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) research on human heath effects of air pollution consistently violates the rules of science and is not admissible in a federal court under the rules of Daubert v. Merrell Dow 509 U.S. 579 (1993). ... The whole EPA Air Pollution Regulatory Regime impacting industries and business and energy on small particles, ozone, ozone precursors, mercury, lead, and other air pollutants is a scientific lie, inadmissible when properly challenged in a federal court. The problem is data-torturing, which produces weak associations that don't prove anything.

Why the EPA's new regulation will increase electricity prices significantly. If you can't get Congress to pass a "cap and tax" law, then simply go it alone and direct executive agencies to implement regulation which will cap CO2 by making it too expensive to operate if the plant produces CO2 above the arbitrary limit you set. ... And that's precisely what Obama's done here. Result? Well it gives lie to the "all-of-the-above energy plan" that Obama has been pushing in stump speeches around the country.

EPA CO2 Regulation Effectively Bans New Coal Facilities. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a new rule to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants, which would effectively ban new coal power plants, as its emissions standards are too low to be met by conventional coal-fired facilities.

Obama Moves in to Kill Coal Industry With Onerous New EPA Regs. Barack Obama continues his war on cheap American energy. In January 2008 Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle: "Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers." He promised that his plan would cause electricity rates to skyrocket.

The EPA Wrecking Ball. The Environmental Protection Agency is using its power to advance the objective of the environmental movement to deny Americans access to the energy that sustains the nation's economy and is using the greatest hoax ever perpetrated, global warming — now called "climate change" — to achieve that goal.

EPA emission standards may rule out new coal power plants. Taking aim at the gases that the vast majority of scientists say are the main contributor to climate change, the Obama administration proposed rules limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants, a move that could essentially bar new coal-fired electric generation facilities.

Bias alert:
The excerpt above is only the first sentence of the heavily slanted article, but it includes several clear indications of the writer's bias. "Taking aim at the gases"? There is only one gas mentioned in the remainder of the article, and that gas is carbon dioxide. "[T]he vast majority of scientists say..." is an attempt to substitute consensus for scientific proof. "[T]he main contributor to climate change" is the sun, not industrial activity. The rest of the article is similarly one-sided.

Did the EPA Just Kill Big Coal? Today, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a set of landmark greenhouse gas regulations that will surely have every coal country politician, from the hills to Appalachia to the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, sputtering mad. The rule will require new power plants to emit about 43 percent less carbon dioxide than today's coal-fired generators. Natural gas plants already meet this requirement. But if a utility wants to burn coal for electricity, it will need to install carbon capture technology — and that's really expensive.

The Editor says...
China is building two coal-fired power plants a week,* presumably without filters or scrubbers of any kind. And the exhaust from those plants goes into the same atmosphere that the U.S. is struggling to protect from CO2.

EPA to impose first greenhouse gas limits on power plants. Industry officials and environmentalists said in interviews that the rule, which comes on the heels of tough new requirements that the Obama administration imposed on mercury emissions and cross-state pollution from utilities within the past year, dooms any proposal to build a coal-fired plant that does not have costly carbon controls. "This standard effectively bans new coal plants," said Joseph Stanko, who heads government relations at the law firm Hunton and Williams and represents several utility companies. "So I don't see how that is an 'all of the above' energy policy."

The Editor says...
The photograph above accompanied the article next to it, and is an example of journalistic bias on the part of the Washington Post. The photographer took a picture of the water vapor being released from some factory or power plant on a cold and cloudy day, and the picture was then used to falsely depict carbon dioxide coming from a smokestack. Carbon dioxide is a colorless gas. The emissions in this picture appear to be gray and black because of the angle and the lighting. Under other lighting conditions, these plumes would be as white as clouds, because they are made from the same material -- water vapor. And on a hot summer day, you probably would notice these vapors at all. There could very well be carbon dioxide mixed in with the plumes in this picture; but if you'll notice, the emissions are invisible as they leave the stacks, and then they become clouds as they encounter the cold and evidently saturated outside air. Water vapor is the predominant "greenhouse gas", so this is a picture of a "greenhouse gas emission", strictly speaking, but not in the way the Washington Post writer likely intended.

Inhofe Introduces Measure to Stop One of Obama-EPA's Most Expensive Rules. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, today [2/16/2012] filed a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) that will prevent the Obama-EPA from going through with its Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology ("Utility MACT") rule. "The failure of the United States Senate to rein in the Obama-EPA is having a devastating impact on the pocketbooks of American families and threatens the jobs and livelihoods of millions of Americans," Senator Inhofe warned.

MACT — The End of Affordable Coal. Let's say you saw the number one goal of the current US President is domestic energy independence or an all of the above energy policy. Would that include a major environmental regulation that threatened to take nearly 30KMW of electrical power generation offline in the immediate future? Would it involve specifically preventing mining and development of a major source of available domestic energy?

Destroying America by Denying Access to Energy. The EPA has just released a report of those power plants that top the list of its regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. There is no basis in science to justify the reduction of CO2. Indeed, since it is a gas on which all vegetation depends, much as oxygen is vital to all animal life, reducing it would impair great crop yields and healthier forests. These regulations are based on the global warming hoax that blamed CO2 for warming the earth. That is utterly false. The Earth is currently in a perfectly natural cooling cycle and the climate of the Earth is almost entirely based on the Sun — solar radiation — along with the actions of oceans, clouds, and even volcanic activity that spews tons of particulates into the atmosphere.

EPA: Kansas power plants part of global warming. Power plants are responsible for the bulk of the pollution blamed for global warming, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which this week released its most detailed data yet of greenhouse gases. One Kansas plant — the Jeffrey Energy Center northwest of Topeka — ranked as one of the nation's top 20 producers of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a survey.

The Editor says...
I suspect that the list of CO2-emitting entities in the EPA publication does not include names like Kilauea, Mauna Loa, or Mount St. Helens. And in case you have just tuned in, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

EPA: Power plants main global warming culprits. [One] coal-fired power plant reported releasing nearly 23 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, in 2010.

The Editor says...
Bias alert: Carbon dioxide is not the chief greenhouse gas. The most abundant greenhouse gas is water vapor.

Obama's War on U.S. Energy. It is coal-fired plants that currently provide fifty percent of all the electricity generated in America! The EPA is feverishly trying to force a quarter of that capacity offline. Why? Because the EPA claims that these plants are "polluting" the air. The air in America has never been cleaner. The EPA demand for cleaner air is a bludgeon being used to deprive America of its ability to function. America has more than 497 billion short tons of recoverable coal (not counting Alaska) or nearly three times as much as Russia, which has the world's second largest reserve.

Small Business Impact of the EPA Endangerment Finding. While Congress continues to debate the merits of climate change legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been steadily moving forward with a process to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs) under the ill-suited framework of the Clean Air Act (CAA). On January 14 [2010], the first major step of that process — a final rule concluding that GHGs endanger public health and welfare — took effect, and with it the obligation to move forward with what could easily become the most expensive and intrusive set of regulations in history.

EPA to Raise Electricity Prices, Risk Blackouts. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seemingly undeterred by the slow economic recovery, is marching ahead with air pollution regulations that would increase electricity prices, raise costs for businesses and consumers, and risk power outages. The EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) are scheduled to go into effect in January of 2012 and 2015, respectively. Other pending related regulations include the Boiler MACT and Utility MACT rules, coal ash regulations, and new standards for cooling water intake structures. All of these are expensive and put jobs at risk.

The EPA's Mercury Madness. The EPA thinks it's worth spending billions of dollars each year to reduce already minuscule amounts of mercury in the outside air. So why is it trying to shove mercury-laced fluorescent bulbs into everyone's homes?

More about fluorescent light bulbs.

Blackout: Monday Night Football Previews Living In a World Governed By Increasing EPA Regulation. Last night, the power went out twice during the San Francisco 49er's return to Monday Night Football. This is significant for two reasons. First, we live in a country with such a reliable electrical system that it's news when the power goes out. Second, this reliability may soon come to an end with EPA's latest Utility MACT regulation and other rules in the regulatory pipeline.

New EPA rule will cost each taxpaying American $280. By the EPA's own admission, power plants will have to spend $10.6 billion over the next four years to meet new, more stringent standards for anti-pollution controls. The EPA says that these measures will "save $59 billion to $140 billion in annual health costs, preventing 17,000 premature deaths a year along with illnesses and lost workdays." Of course, just how those ridiculous figures were arrived at is anyone's guess, because the EPA doesn't make that research readily available. Think about it: those statistics are, at face value, patently false. We have 17,000 premature deaths a year thanks to dirty air?

The Editor says...
And who has "lost workdays" because the air pollution is so bad? Nobody!

New EPA rules expected to cause closures of at least 32 power plants. At least 32 mostly coal-fired power plants in a dozen states will be forced to shut down and 36 more might have to close because of new federal air pollution regulations, according to an Associated Press survey.

EPA unveils rules limiting mercury, other power plant toxics. The long-delayed final standards have been the subject of a ferocious lobbying and public-relations battle. And it's a fight that could spill onto the presidential campaign trail at a time when GOP candidates routinely accuse Obama of pursuing an overzealous green agenda.

New EPA Pollution Rules May Force Shutdown of Dozens of Coal-Fired Power Plants. More than 32 mostly coal-fired power plants in a dozen states will be forced to shut down and an additional 36 might have to close because of new federal air pollution regulations, according to an Associated Press survey.

Obama's Regulatory Burden. In the next few days, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue another final regulation directed at electricity utilities. This rule, known as the Utility MACT, will impose an estimated $11 billion each year in new costs on our economy. It will threaten electricity-generating capacity in many parts of the country. And it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this administration's runaway rulemaking.

EPA Regulations Cost Jobs and Cause Blackouts. Reports indicate that the predominant costs of implementing the Environmental Protection Agency's new "green" economy regulations are job loss (as coal plants are forced to close) and mass blackouts.

Obama's Regulatory Burden. In the next few days, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue another final regulation directed at electricity utilities. This rule, known as the Utility MACT, will impose an estimated $11 billion each year in new costs on our economy. It will threaten electricity-generating capacity in many parts of the country. And it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this administration's runaway rulemaking.

EPA finalizes tough new rules on emissions by power plants. As part of last-minute negotiations between the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency, the regulations give some flexibility to power plant operators who argued they could not meet the three-year deadline for compliance outlined by the EPA. Several individuals familiar with the details declined to be identified because the agency will not announce the rules until next week.

Where is the evidence for EPA's claims? [By implementing the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule,] EPA claims it will "protect hundreds of millions of Americans, providing up to $280 billion in benefits by preventing tens of thousands of premature deaths, asthma and heart attacks, and millions of lost days of school or work due to illness," because of the cleanup of mercury, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, and other emissions. Exactly where did the EPA come up with these incredible health benefits?

If the Lights Go Out. Say what you will about Obama Administration regulators, their problem has rarely been a failure to regulate. Which makes the abdication of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission especially notable — and dangerous for the U.S. power supply. Last week FERC convened a conference on the wave of new Environmental Protection Agency rules that are designed to force dozens of coal-fired power plants to shut down. The meeting barely fulfilled the commission's legal obligations, but despite warnings from expert after expert, including some of its own, the FERC Commissioners refuse to do anything about this looming threat to electric reliability.

EPA's CO2 endangerment finding is endangered. In a narrow 5-4 decision in 2007, the US Supreme Court authorized the EPA to consider the greenhouse gas CO2 as a 'pollutant' under the terms of the Clean Air Act — provided EPA could demonstrate that CO2 posed a threat to human health and welfare. The EPA then issued an Endangerment Finding (EF) in 2009, which was promptly challenged in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

Will TRAIN Derail the EPA? The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the TRAIN Act, which calls for establishing a committee to analyze the economic impact of recent regulations imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). ... The bill includes an amendment to delay EPA's Utility MACT (maximum achievable control technology) and new transport rules which set unprecedented emissions standards on large institutions. It forces EPA's rules to wait six months after completion of the TRAIN Act analysis. A stronger bill, the EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011 introduced in June by Rep. H. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), would pull the plug entirely on these new regulations.

House votes to thwart EPA power plant rules. House Republicans on Friday raised the stakes in their battle against EPA regulations by adopting an amendment that would block two power plant pollution rules for at least several years and force the agency to rewrite them.

Federal Judge Rebukes EPA. At last, a federal court has sharply rebuked the EPA for exceeding its statutory authority. On May 26, 2011, Judge Richard Leon of the federal district court for the District of Columbia ruled that the agency's regulatory process cannot trump a clear Congressional mandate, nor override judicial authority to compel EPA's compliance with the law. The issue at stake is the statutorily maximum timeframe for EPA's final decision to issue a Prevention of Significant Deterioration air-quality permit, a fundamental authorization for large industrial sources such as power plants and refineries.

Congress Needs to Put the Brakes on the EPA Train Wreck. President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is one of the biggest job-destroying offenders in his administration. Today, the agency has more than 300 regulatory actions under consideration and it continues to issue new rules at an unprecedented pace. This includes the agency's Utility MACT Rule, estimated by the agency to impose new compliance costs of $10.9 billion annually and EPA's notorious greenhouse gas regulations, estimated to eliminate as many as 1.4 million jobs by 2014.

President Obama and the EPA's War on Jobs. For some time now, I and others have been documenting the relentless assault on economic growth by the EPA under President Barack Obama. I feel like a broken record at times trying to beat this drum and get people to realize that while Obama doesn't keep all of his campaign promises, destroying the coal industry is one that he has done everything he can to stay true to. For anyone that paid attention during the 2008 presidential cycle, Obama made it clear that it was his intention to bankrupt the coal industry through regulation and legislation.

White House threatens veto over House attack on EPA pollution rules. President Obama's advisers will recommend that he veto pending House legislation that would block two key Environmental Protection Agency air-pollution rules, a White House official said. "As the President has made clear, the administration will continue to take steps to defend the authority of the Clean Air Act, and the important progress we have made to protect the air we breathe," the official said.

The Editor blurts out...
Yeah, but there's nothing wrong with the air we breathe.

EPA Regulations Still Killing Jobs. A Dallas energy company closes two facilities due to a new regulation, costing hundreds of jobs. The president talks up his jobs bill while his administration creates rising unemployment and rolling blackouts.

EPA regulation forces closure of Texas energy facilities, eliminates 500 jobs. Texas energy company Luminant announced on Monday new burdensome Environmental Protection Agency regulations are forcing it to close several facilities, which will result in about 500 job losses. The company will be idling — stopping the usage of — two energy generating units. It will also cease extracting lignite from three different Texas mines. The EPA regulation Luminant cites as too burdensome is the new Cross-State Air Pollution rule, which requires Texas power generators to make "dramatic reductions" in emissions beginning on January 1, 2012.

More EPA Regulations. The EPA continues to produce ideas that leave you scratching your head because of the questionable science used to justify these regulations. Instead of protecting the environment, these rules are destroying American industry and killing job creation.

New EPA rule could lead to rolling blackouts in Texas, PUC chairwoman says. The head of the Texas Public Utility Commission expressed concern Friday [8/19/2011] that a new federal air quality rule, set to take effect Jan. 1, will cause disruptions in electric service. If implementation of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule is not delayed, "I have no doubt in my mind that this rule will result in reliability issues and rolling outages in Texas," Donna Nelson said at the start of the commission's meeting.

Getting ready for a wave of coal-plant shutdowns. Over the next 18 months, the Environmental Protection Agency will finalize a flurry of new rules to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants. ... Given that coal provides 45 percent of the country's power, that means higher electric bills, more blackouts and fewer jobs.

Sierra Club already using EPA Clean Air regs to shut down manufacturing jobs. Since 2005, anytime a new coal-fired power plant was proposed anywhere in the United States, a lawyer from the Sierra Club or an allied environmental group was assigned to stop it, by any bureaucratic or legal means necessary. And they succeeded. According to The Los Angeles Times, by 2008, the coalition claimed to have stopped construction of 65 power plants nationwide.

U.S. Energy Crisis a Liberal Power Grab. It is no coincidence that U.S. oil production peaked in 1970, the year after President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act and the Environmental Protection Agency was established, just the beginning of a decade of laws that have made the United States the hardest place in the world to produce energy. When the federal government started taking over roles traditionally held by the states and expanding its reach into every corner of every economic activity in the country, those who love more government had the perfect proxy for justifying more power over the economy and over the way Americans live their lives.

EPA's Ongoing Assault on the Economy. Affordable energy is critical for a prosperous economy. Yet, despite the fact that the U.S. is still in the middle of a pronounced economic slump, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of proposing or finalizing a number of air-quality regulations that would limit energy choices and increase energy prices, thus seriously retarding the economic recovery. Economists estimate that just four of these dozens of rules could alone cost the economy trillions of dollars annually. In addition, the rules will cost millions of jobs and raise energy prices, and all with little or no public-health benefit.

Obama's Real Energy Policy. [Scroll down] Ezra Klein in the Washington Post reports that the EPA is moving forward with its plans to shutter 20% of the nation's coal-fired power plants. While many are grandfathered in, the power will still go offline starting in the next 18 months. The president has clearly stated on the record that he wants to put the coal industry out of business.

EPA's Looming Blackouts. It won't matter which light bulbs we use as the administration's implementation of cross-state pollution rules shuts down coal plants across the country. Where will the jobs be when the lights go out?

EPA About to Fulfill Obama Promise to 'Bankrupt' Coal? Over the next 18 months, the Environmental Protection Agency will finalize a flurry of new rules to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants. Mercury, smog, ozone, greenhouse gases, water intake, coal ash — it's all getting regulated. And, not surprisingly, some lawmakers are grumbling.

The EPA's giant green jobs-killer. Even as the "green jobs" promise proves to be a lie, the Obama administration is getting set to force the shutdown of countless power plants across half the nation. The Environmental Protection Agency's new Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, announced last month, will affect coal-fired electric plants in at least 27 midwestern and eastern states. Set to take effect next year, the rule could shutter up to a fifth of the nation's generating capacity.

America is Under Attack. The EPA, wielding these laws like battle axes aimed at our heads, has been unleashed by the Obama-Soetoro administration with orders to attack our last source of affordable power. That the Marxist fraud who would be King is doing this should surprise no one. On November 2, 2008, he told the nation that he intended to bankrupt the coal industry and the coal-fired producers of electricity.

Texas AG Sues EPA over Obama's War on Energy. In an attempt to push back the government overreach that has been killing jobs in the country since Obama's red-tape machine arrived in DC, Texas has decided to sue the EPA over rules that threaten to shut down coal fired plants. Texas, under Governor Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott, has been at the forefront of the 10th Amendment movement seeking to reign in the federal government's repeated attempts to micromanage, manhandle and mismanage almost every aspect of the citizens' personal and professional lives.

EPA Regulation Would Cost $1.2 Million Per Job Created. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been promoting the job creation and health aspects of its impending regulations on the electric industry, but in congressional testimony an agency official admitted the impending regulations would cost business $10.9 billion and create only 9,000 full time jobs.

Small Business Admin report: New coal regulations will kill jobs, economy. President Barack Obama is ignoring heated concerns from within his own administration that new Environmental Protection Agency coal industry regulations will be economically devastating. The EPA is plowing forward with new Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) mandates. The regulations would force coal energy plants to install giant scrubber-like materials inside smokestacks in order to capture and cleanse carbon particles before their release into the atmosphere.

Rogue EPA Targets Ozone — And Jobs. A beleaguered American economy may soon be subject to ozone standards so stringent that Yellowstone National Park could not meet them. Look forward to double-digit unemployment.

Interior asks EPA to delay power plant proposal. The Interior Department is asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to delay its decision on pollution controls for a northern Arizona coal plant while it studies the benefits of the plant and impacts of a potential shutdown.

Now even unions see Obama, EPA moving to kill coal, quarter-million jobs. President Obama's cap-and-trade bill died in the Democrat-run 111th Congress, but that hasn't stopped the chief executive and Lisa Jackson, his U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator, from finding regulatory paths to achieve the same goals. Topping those goals is the abolition of coal as an electrical power-generating fuel. More than half of the electrical power used every day by Americans is generated by power plants fueled by coal. And 90 percent of all the coal consumed in the U.S. goes to electrical power generation. But that doesn't matter to Obama and Big Green, they are determined to kill the coal industry because of its alleged contribution to global warming.

EPA sets the stage for expanded climate rules. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled a schedule Thursday for setting greenhouse gas standards for power plants and oil refineries. While EPA is pledging a "common-sense" approach, the move is likely to escalate a battle between the Obama administration and Republicans, who argue climate regulations will hurt the economy.

EPA to issue greenhouse gas permits in Texas. The Environmental Protection Agency will announce today that it will seize authority from Texas to award permits to plants that emit large amounts of greenhouse gas, because Gov. Rick Perry and state officials have refused to implement federal regulations.

EPA announces it won't wait for Congress on carbon regulation. Stymied in Congress, the Obama administration is moving unilaterally to clamp down on power plant and oil refinery greenhouse emissions, announcing plans for developing new standards over the next year. In a statement posted on the agency's website late Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson said the aim was to better cope with pollution contributing to climate change.

EPA takes over Texas pollution permits. The federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday [12/23/2010] effectively declared Texas unfit to regulate its own greenhouse gas emissions and took over carbon dioxide permitting of any new or expanding industrial facilities starting Jan. 2.

Fight Back Against Obama's Lawless EPA. On November 15, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency issued a 100-page, highly technical "guidance" document proposing that as of January 2, 2011, large sources of greenhouse gas emissions — such as power plants, steel operations, and petroleum refineries — be required to obtain preconstruction and operating permits limiting their greenhouse gas emissions and to install the "best available" technology to do so. ... Previously, no such permits were needed, and no greenhouse gas limits existed. It is widely agreed such new rules will drive up the costs of electricity, iron and steel, gasoline, and anything else produced by large operations, with these costs passed along to consumers already staggered by a jobless "recovery" from the recession.

EPA decision will cost Texas jobs. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency released the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. This is another rule in an endless line of new federal regulations, all with the stated purpose of improving air quality. Like so many other regulations from the EPA, this rule will cut Texas jobs, cut Texas economic growth, increase Texas energy costs and harm Texas energy security.

Obama's coal tax. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday [7/6/2011] finalized "cross-state air pollution" regulations designed to drive coal-plant operators out of business. This noxious rule will choke job creation and ensure that consumers are stricken with higher utility bills every time they switch on the mercury-filled curlicue light bulbs they also will be forced to buy.

Memo to House GOP: Get a grip on the EPA. Getting a grip on the Environmental Protection Agency must be at the top of the upcoming Republican-controlled House's "To Do" list. Of immediate concern are the EPA rules for regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Unless stopped by a federal court, the Obama EPA will implement on Jan. 2 a flagrantly illegal scheme to regulate emissions from power plants and other large emitters. This enactment will kill jobs and raise the prices of energy, and thus of all good and services.

The EPA Versus the USA. It seems almost beyond reason that a single U.S. agency could so hate America that it was prepared to ignore the Constitution, distort a Supreme Court decision, and impose its will on the nation in the name of totally discredited science. That, however, is what the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to do... The use of fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas — accounts for 85% of America's energy sources. The EPA proposes to limit or end their use. As such it is an enemy of the people and Congress must act to stop this insane agency before it destroys the nation.

Georgia Power says it will close 3 power-plant units. The decision to shutter the coal-fired units is based on the pending Environmental Protection Agency rules that would require the utility to install equipment to meet stricter environmental controls, the company has said. It would be too costly to upgrade the Plant Branch units, which started operating in 1965 and 1967.

New EPA rules to devastate coal industry. The coal industry is crying foul over new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations which they say will be among the most be costly rules ever imposed by the agency on coal-fueled power plants. The result, industry insiders say: substantially higher electricity rates and massive job loss.

Targeting Drifting Pollution with New EPA Regulations. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson is expected to announce tough new regulations Thursday [7/14/2011] that seek to significantly reduce emissions from many coal-fired power plants. The new measures will cover plants in as many as 28 states whose pollution blows into other states.

The House Must Stop the EPA. In the face of our daunting economic challenges the EPA is advancing new rules under the Clean Air Act that will dramatically increase the compliance costs for coal burning utilities. The costs of the EPA's actions against industry and the economy are real. In anticipation of the EPA's new requirements, American Electric Power (AEP), an Ohio based utility, announced in June it was closing five power plants and will be scaling back operations at six additional facilities. AEP estimated that its actions will cost about 600 jobs that generated approximately $40 million in annual wages.

EPA Proposes More Regulations. In yet another economically destructive ploy to "go green," the Environmental Protection Agency has recommended an unprecedented barrage of harsh federal regulations on fuel efficiency standards for semi-trucks, buses, delivery vans, garbage trucks, and heavy-duty pickup tricks. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), "The Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are proposing mandatory reductions in fuel use of between 10 and 20 percent from the largest vehicles. And in January, the EPA will begin regulating large stationary sources such as power plants and factories."

Last chance for GOP to stop EPA train wreck. Since January, the EPA has been implementing its greenhouse-gas regulations and has advanced an entire suite of regulations intended to make it painfully expensive for utilities to continue burning coal for electricity generation. Known as the "EPA train wreck," the regulations will force utilities to further reduce emissions of conventional pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides and mercury even though the current emissions are not causing air-quality or public-health problems anywhere in America.

EPA Goes Ape Over Power Plant Emissions. [Scroll down] What do Americans really die from? Genetic dispositions to illness. Accidents. Poor diets. And bad lifestyle choices that include smoking, drinking, and taking illegal drugs. With the exception of asthma that affects about seven percent of the population none of this has anything to do with air quality. Indeed, the causes of asthma remain somewhat shrouded in mystery even if the symptoms do not. None of this empirical knowledge and data has the slightest effect, however, on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the American Lung Association that profits greatly from any claims about air quality. Both are inclined to making wild claims.

EPA rejects challenge to climate rules. The Environmental Protection Agency Thursday rejected an effort to keep it from regulating greenhouse gas emissions, saying that e-mails released in last fall's "Climategate" scandal gave it no reason to reconsider the science of global warming.

EPA control of CO2: Obama's Vehicle To Destroy The US Economy is Launched. John Topping, who served as editor of portions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) First Assessment Report (FAR) concerning impacts of climate change, wrote an article titled, "Massachusetts v. EPA: A Turning Point for the US on Climate Change?" He sees the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) loss as a victory because they can now control CO2, fossil fuels, and the US economy. Frighteningly, it's based on completely falsified science and is totally unnecessary.

EPA 'Masquerading Propaganda as Facts', Expert Says. The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act will save the United States $2 trillion by 2020, says Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson -- citing figures from an EPA report which one expert has faulted for "widely exaggerated claims." Hundreds of thousands of lives would be saved over the next nine years, thanks to the regulation of air pollutants, Jackson said at the unveiling of a "prevention" campaign at the Health and Human Service Department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday [6/16/2011].

The Editor says...
Abolishing the EPA would be far more likely to "save the United States $2 trillion by 2020."

Go green, kill jobs. [The EPA] is flogging new emission regs that will force AEP to [1] Close five electric plants, with a loss of 6,000 megawatts of generating capacity — triple what Indian Point sends to New Yorkers every day. [2] Kill 600 jobs, sucking $40 million a year in wages out of the economy. [3] Retrofit its remaining plants at a cost of $6 billion to $8 billion — every penny of which will eventually be passed on to ratepayers, further sinking the economy.

Stop EPA from killing coal. The Environmental Protection Agency's crusade against coal-fired power plants is on a fast track to raise electricity bills in Michigan by as much as 20 percent and restrict the state's economic growth. The latest attack on America's economy by the EPA is tough new requirements on mercury and other emissions at coal plants that the agency hopes to have in place by the end of the year. Utility companies would have just three years to comply with the new standards or shut down the offending plants.

Obama's EPA Attacks Boilers, Affecting Millions of US Jobs. Thousands of power plants, manufacturing plants, paper mills, refineries, chemical plants, schools and hospitals use boilers at their facilities. Literally millions of jobs rely on affordable energy from these facilities, and those jobs are put at risk if those boilers can no longer be installed and run in a cost effective manner.

New EPA Regulations Blamed as Power Plants Close. American Electric Power has announced new EPA regulations will force it to close five coal-fired power plants, pay for expensive retrofits for at least a dozen more, eliminate 600 jobs, and substantially increase the price it charges for electricity. AEP's announcement came on the heels of a National Economic Research Associates Inc. report finding EPA's new regulations will cause an 11.5 percent increase in U.S. electricity prices above baseline projections and will kill 144,000 jobs by the year 2020. AEP relied entirely on government data for most of its assumptions.

Democratic Senator: Environmental Protection Agency Out of Control. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, the former governor of coal-producing West Virginia, is blasting the Obama administration for using the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate coal-fueled power plants out of business. On Thursday [6/9/2011], American Electric Power company announced that to comply with a series of EPA regulations, it will close five coal-fired plants — three in West Virginia and one each in Ohio and Virginia — at a net cost of 600 jobs.

Obama's New EPA Rules Would Destroy Our Energy Sector. Half of America's energy comes from coal-fired power plants but Obama's new EPA rules would about destroy the coal industry driving our energy costs through the roof. That's not all they would do, either.

Economic Study Shows EPA Regulations Increase Prices, Kill Jobs. A study of two proposed EPA regulations seeking to curb power plant emissions shows that the regulations will raise electricity prices and cause a four-to-one job loss ration [sic].

EPA 'Prohibited' From Considering Costs When Issuing Air-Quality Regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency informed Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) in a recent letter that it considers itself "prohibited" by law from considering costs when setting National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).

Environmental Protection (Or Propaganda?) Agency. EPA's immediate target is older electrical generating units (EGUs), most of which have substantially reduced emissions to safe levels but still release more pollutants than modern plants. However, its broader agenda is to use air pollution and carbon dioxide restrictions to impose President Obama's goals of requiring "zero" emissions, "bankrupting" coal companies, causing electricity rates to "skyrocket" and effecting a "fundamental transformation" of the U.S. energy system and economy — regardless of what Congress may do or the American economy may require. This raises vital questions that thus far have received scant attention.

EPA bullies its way to first CO2 emissions limit. The EPA is finally getting around to setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources, like power plants — coal industry watch out. ... if the Lake Side limit becomes a precedent or standard for power plant emissions, coal-fired electricity production could be significantly constrained.

Death By A Thousand Rules: EPA's Drive To Kill Coal. Coal is a vital domestic natural resource that powers the U.S. economy. More than 50% of the U.S. electric supply comes from coal-fired power plants. This obviously translates into a lot of jobs: In 2009 there were 1,400 mines in the U.S. employing over 87,000 miners. There were also 31,000 jobs related to the transportation of coal and 60,000 jobs in coal-fired power plants. ... But I don't think the folks at the Environmental Protection Agency care very much about all that. I believe that, through numerous rules and regulations, EPA is trying to kill this industry; mostly, it seems, to appease far-left environmentalists.

The Editor says...
The EPA exists to appease far-left environmentalists. That's why the EPA was created. Environmentalists have a lot of friends in the news media, so the EPA is here to stay.

EPA's train wreck could leave many in the dark. Even with 14 million Americans out of work and an economy still searching for light at the end of the tunnel, the EPA is poised to enact a series of back-door mandates that will stifle economic growth. And with the speed that this runaway train is traveling, people in states like Ohio should be scared of the "train wreck" headed towards a town near you. Unfortunately, everyday Americans may not realize the impact of the EPA's "train wreck" of new regulations on jobs, the economy and the price of essential energy until it's too late.

Supreme Court signals it will toss out global-warming lawsuit. Justices are skeptical about the lawsuit brought by six states, including California and New York, against coal-fired power plants in the South and Midwest. An Obama administration lawyer says it's a matter for the EPA to handle.

Supreme Court signals it will dismiss major climate-change case. The U.S. Supreme Court signaled Tuesday [4/19/2011] it will dismiss a major climate-change case, with justices indicating that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rather than the courts should address greenhouse-gas emissions from major power plants. "Congress set up the EPA to promulgate standards for emissions, and the relief you're seeking seems to me to set up a district judge, who does not have the resources, the expertise, as a kind of super EPA," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Tuesday [4/19/2011].

Obama's greenhouse gas rules survive Senate vote. In a boost for the president on global warming, the Senate on Thursday rejected a challenge to Obama administration rules aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other big polluters.

Bias alert:
In the opening sentence, this Associated Press writer makes the rash pronouncement that power plants are big polluters. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

Senate turns back plan to block EPA rules. The Senate on Thursday [6/10/2010] turned back a largely GOP plan to block EPA greenhouse gas rules, voting 47-53 to stave off what would have been a major blow to the White House and Democratic climate agenda. Fifty-one votes would have been needed in favor of the plan to advance it toward a final vote.

Senate rejects move to block greenhouse gas regs. The Senate has rejected a bid to stop the Obama administration from imposing regulations on greenhouse gases, giving a boost to President Barack Obama as he pursues broader clean energy legislation.

Bias alert:
It's the Associated Press again, and this time the implication is that carbon dioxide is somehow unclean, as in, energy that doesn't produce CO2 is "clean energy".

Is the EPA In Charge of Our Economic Future? A crucial vote to block the EPA's global warming power grab scheme is coming up in the Senate this afternoon. It's called "Senate Joint Resolution 26" ("SJ Res 26," is also called the Murkowski Resolution for its lead sponsor) and it would block and overturn the EPA's global warming regulations. Despite the Democratic majority in the Senate, the White House and Majority Leader Harry Reid have been in a desperate scramble to stop the resolution.

EPA official says jobs don't matter. The Obama administration has repeatedly said job creation is a top priority, but apparently the memo seems to have missed the bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This became evident when EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus testified Thursday [4/14/2011] before an Environment and Energy subcommittee hearing that his agency does not take jobs into account when it issues new regulations.

The Jackson Damage. A "major" regulation used to be defined as imposing costs of $100 million or more. The EPA now routinely issues multibillion-dollar rules with little more than a press release. Ms. [Lisa] Jackson most notably cranked up clean-air regulation that will force a third or even as much as half of the U.S. coal-fired electric fleet out of existence. She also rewrote laws to declare carbon emissions a "dangerous pollutant" even though the laws were written in the 1970s. Along with other rules, including auto efficiency standards, she started a re-engineering of the U.S. energy system, without so much as a Congressional vote.

Energy Tax Prevention Act: The Only End to Cap and Trade. The Obama Environmental Protection Agency's cap-and-trade agenda is destroying jobs and decreasing domestic energy supplies. That agenda is slowing our economic recovery. It will mean higher gas and electricity bills for consumers.

Key Vote At Hand On EPA Authority. Nearly two years after the Great Recession officially ended, unemployment still stands at a troubling 8.9 percent, economic growth remains sluggish, gas prices are high and rising, consumer sentiment is falling. And none of it is expected to get much better any time soon. You'd think that in this context politicians — particularly those hoping to keep their jobs after 2012 — would be doing everything they can to kick away burdensome rules and regulations that would threaten growth and jobs. A good place to start would be blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

Democrats Attempt to Enable EPA Power Grab. With the House poised to pass the Upton-Whitfield-Inhofe Energy Tax Prevention Act, all eyes are on the Senate to see if Republicans can muster up the 60 votes necessary to prevent the EPA's backdoor implementation of cap-and-trade.

EPA proposes first-ever mercury standards for coal plants. The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday [3/16/2011] proposed the first-ever national standards for mercury and other air pollutants emitted from coal-fired power plants. The proposed standards would dramatically improve public health, EPA said.

Hooray for the U.S. House For Standing Up to Regulatory Tyranny. The EPA is actively pursuing a bizarre legal theory that the 1970 Clean Air Act was designed as a global warming law, and that pursuant to it they can regulate just about everything that moves, as well as most industrial facilities. When it's fully phased in, their plans include over 18,000 pages of appendices that would regulate every industry in the U.S., cause electricity prices to skyrocket, and greatly diminish our freedom and prosperity.

U.S. Issues Limits on Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Cars. The federal government took its first formal step to regulate global warming pollution on Thursday [4/1/2010] by issuing final rules for greenhouse gas emissions for automobiles and light trucks. The move ends a 30-year battle between regulators and automakers but sets the stage for what may be a bigger fight over climate-altering emissions from stationary sources like power plants, steel mills and refineries.

Fearing EPA's Carbon Tax. The EPA is moving to impose tough limits on carbon emissions from the big power plants across the country — and then plans to screw the new carbon limits down tighter and tighter. Farmers' fuel and electricity costs would go through the roof, along with everybody else's. The goal, after all, is to make the coal, oil, and natural gas that power most of our power plants too expensive to use. They need to make all our electricity at least slightly more expensive than the ultra-costly solar panels and wind turbines that have failed to produce "Green power" in Europe and, thus far, fail to provide much energy here at home.

E.P.A. Limit on Gases to Pose Risk to Obama and Congress. With the federal government set to regulate climate-altering gases from factories and power plants for the first time, the Obama administration and the new Congress are headed for a clash that carries substantial risks for both sides. While only the first phase of regulation takes effect on Sunday [1/2/2011], the administration is on notice that if it moves too far and too fast in trying to curtail the ubiquitous gases that are heating the planet it risks a Congressional backlash that could set back the effort for years.

Bias alert!
Atmospheric gases are not "heating the planet." Carbon Dioxide does not generate heat. The heat comes from the Sun. The greenhouse effect keeps the average temperature high enough for us to live above ground. For that, we should all be thankful.

Will EPA Regulators Leave America In The Dark? There's no doubt that federal regulations lead to economic harm, but could the wave of Obama regulations affecting electric power plants lead to electricity shortages as well? A new study from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) finds reason for concern.

The War on Coal. The United States Environmental Protection Agency is soon expected to make a decision that could have an enormous impact on coal-fired power plants across the nation and, by extension, on the cost of energy and building materials. No, we're not talking about greenhouse gas regulations here. The question that USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson must answer is this: Should the ash generated from the burning of coal be classified as a hazardous waste or not? It's a decision that has the potential to pile more costs onto the price of energy at a time we can least afford it.

Obama's climate change police. The Senate's attempt to pass a global warming bill appears stuck. But that's doesn't mean greenhouse gas laws aren't coming. The Environmental Protection Agency, spurred by a Supreme Court ruling, is racing to fill the void. As early as March, the EPA is planning to cap greenhouse gases from things like power plants and large factories, essentially doing what Senate Democrats want, without a messy vote.

New EPA proposal would lower limit to 60-70 parts per billion. The proposed rules announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency promise cleaner air that could help prevent thousands of asthma attacks, emergency room visits and early deaths, and cut back on health costs. Consumers could end up paying slightly more for gasoline and electricity as industry passes along the expense of refining cleaner gas and retrofitting power plants to emit less pollution.

The Editor says...
The article immediately above is replete with liberal bias, starting with a jab at former president Bush, and continuing throughout the remainder. In the excerpt above, at least two canards are apparent: First of all, nobody dies from excess ozone in the atmosphere; at least, nobody who was not already in dire health. Secondly, consumers will probably pay a lot more for gasoline and electricity as a result of the EPA's hair-splitting perfectionism.

EPA Overreach. President Obama has promised the world the United States will take definitive action on carbon emissions and he needs to have something to show for this promise at the looming global climate conference in Copenhagen. One problem, the American people hate greenhouse gas regulations and they've been talking to their representatives in Congress — that's why cap-and-trade is stalled in the Senate. That's where the Environmental Protection Agency comes in. The Obama administration is so desperate to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that they are willing to illegally rewrite statutes without authorization from Congress.

Bypassing all elected officials...
E.P.A. Moves to Curtail Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Unwilling to wait for Congress to act, the Obama administration announced on Wednesday [9/30/2009] that it was moving forward on new rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from hundreds of power plants and large industrial facilities.

EPA cracks the whip on coal-fired power plants. In a move praised by activists as a way to save lives but criticized by industry as potentially driving up electricity costs, the Obama administration has agreed to adopt rules reducing toxic emissions of mercury, soot and other chemicals from all coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

EPA to Kansas: Start over on coal plant proposal. A federal official has told Kansas to start over its review process for a proposed coal-fired electric plant in southwest Kansas that Gov. Mark Parkinson had endorsed. Sunflower Electric Power Corp., based in Hays, plans to build the electric plant in Finney County. Sunflower had wanted to build two plants, but Rod Bremby, the state's secretary of health and environment, rejected an air-quality permit for them in October 2007, citing their potential carbon dioxide emissions.

EPA May Block Navajo Coal Site. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has decided to review permits that would allow the Navajo Nation to build a clean-burning coal power plant on tribal lands in northwestern New Mexico. The Navajo consider the proposed Desert Rock Energy Station a promising means of escaping generations of abject poverty, but environmental activist groups argue EPA should ban the construction of all coal power plants.

Dems defeat effort to rein in EPA on global warming. Senate Democrats blocked a bipartisan resolution to block the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing new global warming regulations. The 47-53 vote clears the way for the EPA to proceed with its plan to reduce the nation's carbon dioxide emissions. Six Democrats voted in favor of the resolution, most of them from states dependent on coal for jobs and electricity.

Cap-And-Traitors. The Senate just claimed the title of the world's most delusional body by refusing to strip unelected EPA bureaucrats of the power to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. This was the day freedom died.

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