l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 U.S. Senator Shelly Moore Capito (D-WVA) did not pull any punches when she
quizzed EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Janet McCabe
during a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on Tuesday.
The topic was the economic implications of President Barack Obama’s air
agenda, and Ms. Capito rightly believed the agenda would have a negative
impact on the nation’s (and West Virginia’s) poor and middle class
families.
Under discussion was the new EPA Clean Power Plan, which demands that the
states sets state targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power
plants or else the EPA will set the target themselves. It is the
centerpiece of Obama’s Climate Action Plan announced in June 2013, and
compiles with his more recent pledge to the U.N. that the U.S. will cut its
carbon emissions by as much as 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.
Whether one believes in the climate change hypothesis or not, this plan is a
disaster on so many levels the most important of which is that it will kill
jobs especially in the coal industry. With the U.S. labor participation
rate at disastrous low levels, the economy will find it hard recover. On
top of that the EPA rule is looking to replace cheap energy with more
expensive alternate energy. Over all it will raise the price of energy and
place an heavy burden on middle and lower economic class families.
A study commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce predicts the
new regulation will leave minority communities with disproportionately
fewer jobs, lower incomes and higher poverty than whites.
West Virginia, the state Senator Capito represents will get double hit by
this regulation. According to the Census Bureau the median household income
in the state $42, 581 ranks 46th out of of the 50 states (or if President
Obama is reading this 46th out of the 57 states). The other hit comes from
the fact that West Virginia is the number two state in coal production.
While the Senator was representing her state when she bashed the EPA, she
was speaking for middle class and lower income families across the country
who will be paying higher energy costs thanks to the new regulations:
The administration has not given enough consideration of the “human
cost” of stricter regulations on ozone levels, particularly the cost to
middle- and lower-income families, Capito said. She cited projections
estimating the cost of energy will rise 17 to 22 percent as a result of the
regulation. She said this will have an impact on the 430,000 middle- and
lower-income people who make an average of $1,900 a month and spend 17
percent of their income on energy.
“What kind of transparency have you brought to areas, like my area in
West Virginia, that will be deeply affected?” Capito asked.
McCabe noted the numbers Capito cited did not come from the EPA. She
said the Agency did an analysis, as it does for every major rule, which
found that by 2030 the average cost of a person’s electric bill would go
down by 7 percent as a result of increased efficiency.
Capito wondered why the EPA decided to make the nation’s top energy
exporters the area’s hardest hit by the regulation.
“It’s all laid out in our discussion. The Clean Air Act tells us to
set expectations on industry that are uniform across the country. We set an
expected emission rate,” McCabe said.
“Which not one plant in my state meets,” Capito interjected.
“They’re not required to meet it tomorrow; they required to meet it by
2030,” McCabe responded.
At the Southern Legislative Conference (SLC) in late July, a legislative
panel passed a resolution urging state attorneys general to sue EPA over the
rule. The SLC is comprised of 15 member states that stretch from West
Virginia to Texas and includes Kentucky, Missouri and Oklahoma.
On Tuesday Capito bluntly warned that many governors are planning to ignore
the directive to submit the plans. She asked the EPA’s McCabe what would
happen if states did not submit plans. Would they the subject of government
intervention? McCabe answered in the affirmative. She said the EPA would
step in and develop a plan for the non-compliant states.
That’s all the U.S. economy needs right now— an over zealous EPA setting
clean air rules which will make little change in the CO2 levels in the air,
to protect an Earth that hasn’t seen any warming in 18 years and 8 months.
The only major change which will result from these EPA regulations is the
suppression of an economy suffering from almost seven years of Obama-nomics. |
|
