So, where is all that electricity going to come for Obama’s million electric cars?
The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.
Legislation? What the heck does our Monarch Obama wants to do with that?
Going through the process, having Congressional hearings, markups, votes in the House, votes in the Senate – and then have it become law? Instead, because BOTH Democrats and Republicans have grown this Leviathan Big Government, we have unelectable and unaccountable bureaucrats making a HUGE decision on how Americans will live their lives. Legislation? No need – just have a different agency change the regulations. Already the EPA and the NTSB simply changed the emissions and CAFE requirements to FORCE the choices for very small cars that Americans will have to buy – courtesy of Obama mandating “here, fools, here are the small cars that you’ve always wanted to buy but the car companies refused to sell you.” Our freedom to choose is being removed by Progressive elites who know what is best for us. Coal fired electrical plants exit stage Left – sacrificed on the Alter of AntiHumanists.
This is a both a harbinger of what happens when a President whose ideology is antithetical to that of the philosophy of the Founders and just a ‘taste’ of what a second term of Obama would look like having been relieved of having to run again. We know that he doesn’t care what the US House thinks – he’s got Dirty Harry running point for him in the Senate to shut pretty much anything down that would relieve him of having to use a veto (or, he just might decide to pour gas on the fire and tell Reid “let’em rip” just so he could do the signature-thumb-in-the-eye”).
Here we see the environmental freedomists at work – the freedom “of the Earth” to not “suffer” from human caused pollution. Our freedom to live a modern lifestyle – not so much. It isn’t just oil but natural gas development we’ve been seeing the last couple of years is about to disappear (mark my words!) as the Federal regulators turn their gaze on fracking.
“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.”
No, not quite right – this is also going to kill off existing plants as well. Thus far, I think the count is up to nine an that was in ADVANCE of this ruling; I highly doubt that this will be the final count.
Finally, one Obama promise that will not have an expiration date – and why not? He told us that this was one thing that was in his plan to transform America:
“You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”
You bet – you think gas prices are rising too fast? Give it a few months and that monthly electrical bill will set off lights in your eyes.
Yes, more Determined Weakness from Obama for “his subjects” from his beneficence? No, to keep sounding like a broken record, this IS the end game of Progressives – the Administrative State where votes wither from lack of importance, where elected officials become mere figureheads, and rules will come faster and faster and be further intrusive into every aspect of our lives. You raise energy costs and EVERYTHING becomes more expense – and at the lower socioeconomic levels, life will become miserable even as Obama and the enviro-wackos tell us, 1984 style, to embrace the poverty – it’s good for Mother GAIA!
Land of the Free will be no longer; Land of the regulated serfs will take its place. If the Supreme Court does not kill Obamacare’s individual mandate, we are done.
Yet, as I have written here before, with Obama’s minions simply ignoring the courts (FCC, Interior Secretary Salazar), who is to say that Obama won’t ignore the Supremes?
