President Barack Obama at midnight Saturday posted a video on Facebook previewing the regulations he intends to impose upon the nation’s power plants — without a vote of Congress. ADVERTISING President Barack Obama at midnight Saturday posted a video on
President Barack Obama at midnight Saturday posted a video on Facebook previewing the regulations he intends to impose upon the nation’s power plants — without a vote of Congress.
The Obama regs portend a shutdown of hundreds of coal-fired plants, which currently generate nearly 40 percent of the nation’s electricity, as well as a freeze in construction of new power plants.
Obama apparently thinks it’s a small price to be paid to address the threat to humanity posed by global warming. It’s “the biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken to combat climate change,” he said in his Facebook vid.
Under the administration’s so-called Clean Power Plan, the nation’s roughly 7,300 power plants will be required by 2030 to cut carbon emissions 32 percent — not from 2015 levels, but 2005 levels.
Never mind that the Census Bureau projects the U.S. population in 2030 will be 22 percent larger than in 2005; or that the U.S. economy will be 72 percent larger in 2030 than in 2005.
The Obama administration, as well as such confederate nongovernmental organizations as the National Resources Defense Council, suggests coal can be regulated out of existence by 2030, and it will have little or no deleterious economic effects.
In fact, claims a White House fact sheet, ridding America of coal will “create tens of thousands of jobs,” “prevent 300,000 missed work and school days,” “save consumers a total of $155 billion from 2020-30,” and “avoid up to 3,600 premature deaths.”
Well, if we thought those claims were closer to “fact” than fiction, we might entertain the idea of supporting Obama’s Clean Power Plan. But to accept the White House fact sheet at face value requires a suspension of disbelief of which we are incapable.
For example, the supposed consumer savings of $155 billion from 2020-30 assume wind and solar energy not only will replace the megawatts generated by coal, but also do so at lower cost. But coal remains the cheapest source of electricity, especially if wind and solar no longer were subsidized by the government.
Obama apparently has forgotten the remarks he made in 2012 when he called for “an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American energy” — including coal.
We commended the president then for his rational energy strategy.
That’s why we are so chagrined he walked back that strategy.
— The Orange County Register
