SCOTUS: Clean Air Act Trumps Emissions Lawsuits 303
schwit1 writes "The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a global warming lawsuit against five big power companies, its most important environmental ruling since 2007 and a victory for the utilities and the Obama administration. The justices unanimously overturned a ruling by a US appeals court that the lawsuit now involving six states can proceed in an effort to force the coal-burning plants to cut emissions of gases that contribute to climate change. In a defeat for environmentalists, the Supreme Court agreed with the companies that regulating greenhouse gases should be left to the Environmental Protection Agency under the clean air laws. The ruling stemmed from a 2004 lawsuit claiming the five electric utilities have created a public nuisance by contributing to climate change. The lawsuit wanted a federal judge to order them to cut their carbon dioxide emissions."
Yes, the EPA (Score:4, Funny)
Supreme Court agreed with the companies that regulating greenhouse gases should be left to the Environmental Protection Agency
Yes, and I'm sure they're going to start doing that any day now.
Re:Yes, the EPA (Score:5, Informative)
The complainants were smacked down unanimously simply because suing the power companies is the wrong target. They are free to sue EPA once it hands down regs, and SCOTUS made this clear. I'm not sure why they thought anything different would happen here.
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The complainants were smacked down unanimously simply because suing the power companies is the wrong target.
Wait what? Suing the people polluting and causing the problem is the wrong target and they should be suing the government agency that has not had the power to do anything yet? How does that make any sense? Regardless of if it is illegal to use asbestos in buildings, citizens should still have the right to sue companies that sell it to builders and willfully ignore the scientific evidence of its harmful effects. Likewise citizen should still be able to sue power companies for poisoning them and causing damag
Re:Yes, the EPA (Score:5, Interesting)
Releasing CO2 isn't illegal as long as it falls within current regulations. Suing the power companies is like me suing smokers (who are smoking in legal places).
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Releasing CO2 isn't illegal as long as it falls within current regulations. Suing the power companies is like me suing smokers (who are smoking in legal places).
Sure, that's a fine analogy. Say you're in one of the few counties that still allows smoking in jail cells. Say you have severe asthma and the guy in the next cell is smoking. You tell him about the condition and ask him to stop and he tells you to fuck off and that it's legal and he doesn't care if it harms you. Yeah, you should absofuckinglutely have the right to sue him. That's what lawsuits are for, resolving conflicts where a crime is not being committed, but where the rights of two people or corporati
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Unfortunately, if its legal to smoke in the jail cell you would lose.
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Not so. Civil suits are not bound by whether or not the activity is legal. They are bound by the ability to prove damages. It is legal to throw rocks, but if you damage my car when doing so I can sue you for the damage.
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Unless, of course, there's a standing federal law in place which proclaims that it has highest precedence (per the Supremacy Clause), and that smoking is not harmful for all purposes under the law... So, obviously, you can't sue for any damage, because under the controlling law, smoking is incapable of causing damage.
Analogies suck. Nonetheless, in US environmental law, a substance widely held to be a pollutant is not, in legal fact, a pollutant until the EPA blesses it thus. So you can no more sue a utilit
The law disallows (Score:2)
In very many places the law disallows suits over things. We don't need thousands of suits clogging up the courts over issues that have already been decided by law or already have an alternate legal venue prescribed by law.
People who bring such suits need to be punished for abuse of the court system.
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Except that they have, since the 2007 case.
The EPA issued a ruling in 2009 which says so explicitly, listing CO2 with several other gases which could be considered pollutants because of potential greenhouse effects.
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Re:Yes, the EPA (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't read the law that created the EPA, but,
Either the plaintiffs didn't read that law and it clearly states that anyone is exempt from being sued as long as they follow EPA regs, or the Supreme Court inferred that anyone who follows EPA regs is indemnified but it doesn't actually say that in the law.
With woo-woo plaintiffs and a classic Alice-in-Wonderland Supreme Court, I give it a 50-50 shot that it went either way.
Except that this was a unanimous decision, and I know at least 3 of these justices know enough to read the law before voting on it.
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In other words, you can punish someone, as long as it's ultimately yourself.
Don't pay for power anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be nice if technology evolves so you could generate your own power easily, perhaps with a few neighbors - and not pay or support any company at all.
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The most commonly found here are:
Wind power
Hydro power
Solar power
Depending on where you live, scratch some off, pick one of the remaining.
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I wonder how many kWH can people manage to produce at home with today's technologies.
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about 1-2 KWH if your lucky depending on location of course.
Solar can never be more than 50% efficient(sun shines for ever more than 12 hours in the majority of the USA
Wind runs about 25% efficient over a year(wind blows only so much
Hydro requires destroying thousand of acres of usually good land to create enough water pressure to function best.(Most of the natural ones are all ready being tapped )
I have looked into it over and over again. without a decent home sized electrical storage system that doesn't
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Solar and wind may not be good total replacements for a connection to your local electric power utility, but they can be very good supplements if the price is right. For instance, if you live in the southern states and use a lot of A/C, you need much more power in the daytime than at night; not coincidentally, solar arrays provide all their power in the daytime. If your utility charges you different rates at different times of day, then this can be a great way of keeping your house cool in the daytime wit
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except unless your in a very very new small house you won't cover 1/4 of your AC bill. It has to be new, as then it was built with better thermal design, and insulation. NOw to assist your AC as well you can due a geothermal circulation system on top of the Solar your power bill goes up slightly but it should be offset by the A/C not working quite as hard.
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Can't build more Dams, the greenies wont allow it. I like the idea of Solar, as soon as I come up with 30grand I'm off the grid.
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Or you lease the system through SolarCity, and pay your same monthly electric bill that covers the cost of your installed system. Very little to no upfront investment. Google just kicked $280 million into SolarCity for financing this sort of arrangement.
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I like that idea. I want a breeder reactor. Give me a few years and I'll teach those people down the road there to let their dog crap in my yard. I think a 2KT yield should do the trick.
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Security is a concern with many small reactors. It would take quite a few of them to generate sufficient energy and ever one would be a target for terrorism. All it would take is a small bomb to cripple the coolant and/or crack the containment and you have a major disaster.
I am actually for nuclear energy but on a larger scale where the risk and security is more concentrated.
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SWEGS [ivedc.com] seems far more likely than that. 1MW per unit (~800 homes). Renewable. Baseload. No proliferation, safety, or environmental risks. Use virtually anywhere in the world.
Re:Yes, the EPA (Score:4, Insightful)
Right or wrong - the courts shouldn't be making laws - that's congress's job.
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If the coal industry doesn't follow the law, it doesn't matter who makes them.
And the coal industry is notorious for ignoring the law in brazen and voluminous manner [google.com].
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hehe....I think that's what the Supremes said there. EPA is legislated by congress to manage the situation. Whether they do it or not.....
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Well in 2009 the EPA released a report saying - this stuff is really f-ing up the place so Congress you either create some legislation or we'll use the powers you granted to us under the Clean Air Act to regulate it ourselves.
Now if the EPA regulates it themselves then there is a chance that somebody will contest whether the Clean Air Act actually gives them that authority and if they lose then the EPA is even more toothless than it is now. If on the other hand Congress passes a law it has a better show of
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Also, if you are Obama, this is something for your second term. Doing something fast that turns out to be unpopular could be his undoing. So I expect the Notice to be released mid-November, 2012.
So far, I haven't seen Obama do much to make himself popular. The righties all hate him just because he's not a Republican, and his own base isn't too happy with him because he turned into Bush-lite as soon as he got elected. The Dem voters seem to be split between those who are pissed at him because he lied to th
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Re:Yes, the EPA (Score:4, Insightful)
Green types who want to cripple our lifestyle and economy in the name of reducing CO2 emissions will have to convincingly win an election with a clear mandate to do so.
Change != cripple.
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Some people thought the Great Leap Forward was a great idea.
Get your priorities straight (Score:5, Interesting)
You can do anything you want as long as you don't fry the frickin' planet.
Is that too much to ask? Apparently yes for many people.
And don't give me "the science is wrong" crap. I heard it straight from the co-chair of working group 1 of the IPCC last week.
The science is high-quality. The predictions are getting worse (for us) every time they are revised. The evidence that humans
are a major cause is clear. As the CO2 is increasing, O2 is decreasing correspondingly, showing that the CO2 emissions
are from combustion processes. "The science is wrong" is a desperate last-ditch appeal by the ignorant or malicious to
the ignorant.
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Because, of course, nature is subservient to elections.
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Precisely. Anthropogenic global warming cannot exist if the average voter doesn't believe in it. ~97-98% of active, publishing climate scientists be damned; [pnas.org] they're not a majority of the electorate.
It's just like how God exists if you can't fathom the concept of living in a universe without a God.
Re:Yes, the EPA (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, I think when it comes down to it, I think the problem is we're not teaching people HOW to believe.
I don't mean WHAT to believe.
I mean HOW. As in, how to arrive at justified levels of belief in a rational and consistent manner.
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that most people are not that good at believing properly, or
anywhere arguably even close to properly. The wrong conclusions being in the majority most of the
time are then something of a foregone conclusion, given that when you don't know how to believe
rationally, you typically just believe whoever you think is trustworthy, and charismatic slime-ball
manipulators (overly self-interested leaders) sure know how to fake trustworthiness when there's
something in it for them.
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Well well... (Score:3, Insightful)
...sometimes they actually get it right. Sort of.
Go figure.
Now if they could only figure out that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and therefore does not fall under the Clean Air Act either...
Re:Well well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now if they could only figure out that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and therefore does not fall under the Clean Air Act either...
Well, anything is a pollutant in high enough quantities, but sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. The climate WILL change. If not from AWG, then from something else. Perhaps a meteor strike, or a massive volcano, or decreased/increased solar activity. Better to focus on creating an upwardly mobile society that can more easily adapt to these inevitable changes than to risk making society poorer and therefore less able to adapt. Within reason of course. Not to advocate for slash and burn in the name of economic expansion, but we're not ready to run our economies on windmills and horse manure yet.
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The climate WILL change... Better to focus on creating an upwardly mobile society that can more easily adapt to these inevitable changes than to risk making society poorer and therefore less able to adapt.
It's nice to hear a voice of reason on these boards every so often ;)
If only we could stop making our kids neurotic about how much carbon daddy's lawn mower is emitting, and get back to making them neurotic about how many starving kids that leftover meatloaf mommy just threw out could have fed...at least the starving kids is a real, tangible (and heartbreaking) issue.
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No, the crappy motor in the lawn mower is real and tangible. It's not heartbreaking though, the strawman is quite sad. Starving Ethiopians are not tangible.
Actually, I bet they are very tangible*. [reference.com] They're just not sitting right beside you, so it's harder to get worked up about them and therefore harder to get the kids involved in fundraising for them. Whereas that lawn mower is breaking the planet, so mommy and daddy should absolutely go out and buy an eco-certified one right now. And by the way, kids, here's a handy list of eco-friendly lawn equipment suppliers to show your parents...
*I do not think that word means what you think it means...
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How is that reasonable? Yes, we *could* get struck by a meteor. But the odds of that happening any time soon are extremely small. Meteors big enough to cause large local or global extinction events are on the order of once every several tens of millions of years. Equivalently devastating volcanic disasters are more common, but not *that* much more common. Stars are generally amazingly stable until they near their death (I'd be happy to dig up some papers for you on this if you'd like), with interdecada
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I just heard the logic train whiz by.
"Why should I quit smoking? I've already got 15 years of smoking under my belt!"
"Why should I stop working with asbestos? I've already done it for 15 years."
"Why should I stop huffing paint thinner? I've already done it 15 times."
"Why should I put out the fire in my hair? It's al
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Who? Which serious players are you talking about doubling energy costs? That's absolutely *not* a recommendation of the IPCC. The analyses on various proposed solutions are all rather low cost.
As for renewables in China: Link [chinamining.org]. China is pushing harder on them than we are. So pointing to the third world as a reason why we shouldn't do anything is a total cop out.
That said, I think there's not as much distance between our views as it initially looked. I'll take it that you're for investment into clean t
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Im sorry, i have to call this out. Thats a fucking stupid way to look at things. You call it tangable because its easier to see the damage of a starving child, but because you can see the damage of the climate it someone less tangible?
No, I call climate 'damage' intangible because we don't actually know or have any way of measuring what 'climate' is, much less determining what it should be.
'Climate' is mutable, and means different things to different people, depending on what they want to argue about. To some people, it is average temperature alone, while to others it is average air temperature, average wind speed and direction, average precipitation, average cloud formation, average ocean temperatures, average sea level, etc. etc. The
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Now if they could only figure out that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and therefore does not fall under the Clean Air Act either...
Well, anything is a pollutant in high enough quantities, but sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. The climate WILL change. If not from AWG, then from something else. Perhaps a meteor strike, or a massive volcano, or decreased/increased solar activity. Better to focus on creating an upwardly mobile society that can more easily adapt to these inevitable changes than to risk making society poorer and therefore less able to adapt. Within reason of course. Not to advocate for slash and burn in the name of economic expansion, but we're not ready to run our economies on windmills and horse manure yet.
Sure, and the human race could go completely batshit insane and commit mass suicide. Why don't you test this theory first on yourself?
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But would you be willing to breath an atmosphere that was 100% carbon dioxide? No?
g=
Er, no, however one that was 100% oxygen (or pretty much any gas) would be just as toxic for you and me...should the Clean Air Act cover oxygen emissions as well?
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It does cover ozone.
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It does cover ozone.
Touche.
Perhaps the EPA's real intent is to be able to control all the world's diamonds, then? After all, they're carbon too, just in a different arrangement...;)
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Ozone isn't "oxygen". When discussing the atmosphere, the term "oxygen" (as in "atmospheric oxygen") refers to O2, not just any compound that happens to have oxygen atoms.
It's just like how the term "hydrogen", in many contexts, is different from "deuterium" or "tritium".
Re:CO2 is not a pollutant, no... (Score:5, Insightful)
If companies were dumping enough oxygen into the air for it to be a threat to our quality of life, then yes.
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If companies were dumping enough oxygen into the air for it to be a threat to our quality of life, then yes.
Afraid the trees and other assorted greenery have that covered...damn things are always trying to blow us up, consuming all that safe, inert CO2 and pumping out all that highly flammable and explosive O2...;)
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Er, no, however one that was 100% oxygen (or pretty much any gas) would be just as toxic for you and me...should the Clean Air Act cover oxygen emissions as well?
If we were in danger of oxygen emissions reaching that level, then yes, the Clean Air Act should cover such emissions. Since such a thing has no chance of occurring, it's a moot question. The Clean Air Act after all should only affect those emissions that are actually a threat to our health.
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The Earth used to have a primarily CO2 atmosphere. Then those polluting plants showed up and starting spewing waste oxygen. So it has happened.
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So no, CO2 is not a pollutant. It is not a threat to our health. It is plant food.
Err... no, CO2 is a threat to human health, but that's not the only definition of a pollutant.
Your argument is that we would never be raising concentrations of CO2 to sufficient levels to cause human breathing difficulties, and sure that situation could never occur. However, you could say similar things for other regulated pollutants - but we don't just consider the impact on human health when considering what pollutants to regulate.
If you take the dictionary definition of pollution, that "Pollution is the
Checks and balances, not greenhouse gases (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an interesting ruling to me in that it is more about the balance of power between the three branches of government than it is about the subject of the lawsuit, greenhouse gases in this case.
It has become fairly common for activists to seek court orders to impose their pet issues rather than go through the incredibly slow sausage-making process of legislative reform. This ruling is a smackdown from the Supreme Court saying "no, you six states cannot get a judge to rewrite environmental policy for you. If you want a policy change, you have to do it the old-fashioned way, by getting Congress to tell the EPA what to do. That's why you states have representatives in Congress in the first place."
Regardless of how one feels about CO2 emissions regulation, I think it is none the less a Good Thing that SCOTUS has blocked off this back channel to overriding the normal policy-making process. It's not a sweeping ruling but it is a precedent. Also interesting is that here we have a clear case of the judiciary ruling to limit the power of ... the judiciary. Kind of. How often do you see something like that?
Re:Checks and balances, not greenhouse gases (Score:5, Insightful)
Well said. Some people may react strongly because it is something they believe in but we never want to let the court system override the legislative process because next time it might not be something that we all like so much.
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Of course, this is the same court that brought us such wonderful decisions as Citizens United. They're quite happy to override the legislative system whenever it suits them.
A history of wisdom (Score:2)
The same court that upheld the freedom of speech instead of the freedom to censor?
Not seeing an issue, other than they continue to make wise choices. And in the case of the decision mentioned in the article , the choice was unanimous...
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It's not a precedent, nor is it particularly new. The Supreme Court has been handing issues back to the Legislative Branch for decades. For just one example, that's why nobody has sued any of the major sports leagues for monopolistic practices since (IIRC) the 50's... It was tried multiple tim
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This ruling is a smackdown from the Supreme Court saying "no, you six states cannot get a judge to rewrite environmental policy for you."
It is well within the domain of the judiciary to award compensation for damages from any source, including pollution. That judicial authority is not something Congress can overrule, short of a Constitutional amendment. It does not equate to "legislating from the bench"; if anything, by claiming that following EPA regulations renders companies immune to civil suits regarding pollution, Congress is usurping the role which properly belongs to the courts.
Of course, to win such a case the states would need to sh
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Interstate Commerce, as always.
It could also be said that air quality falls under general welfare since we have to breathe the stuff.
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That old document? We just reinterpret it to mean what we wan...er....what the founders actually meant to say.
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If you don't like how the government is set up then you either need to move or try to start a revolution to get a new Constitution. The checks and balances exist for a very good reason.
And these weren't individuals suing - they were states. To me this is probably more about states' rights than anything else. The states want to regulate the stuff themselves instead of relying on the EPA. Which sounds like a good idea until you get a nutty governor who decides that it is perfectly fine to drain every reso
This ruling limits rights, nothing to do with air (Score:2)
The ruling states that the CAA "displaces" the plaintiff's rights to sue. Meaning that now, we all have fewer rights to sue under the common law, even if the emitters are unequivocally imposing on our rights, such as that to clean air. And this could be applied elsewhere, including, say, contaminated drugs, if SCOTUS were to find the federal law had "displaced" our common law rights.
I find that limiting, not empowering.
States Rights? (Score:2)
This is an odd ruling. Where does it state in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Amendments, or any other federal documents that the federal government has sole authority over environmental protection? Surely this can't be considered interstate commerce since we're talking about individual states.
I'm not a believer of man made global warming so I have mixed emotions on this. States should be able to set stricter laws and regulations on activities within their border as they see fit. It shouldn't matter i
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The United States is not a country of the masses.
See what you did there? "The United States is". People used to write "These United States are". They haven't done so in a long time, because the US has been a de facto single entity for over a century. And that's a good thing. We need a central government with the strength to compete in an increasingly connected world. Even in the status quo, we are overwhelmed by the power of corporations. Our nation would be a 2nd world joke if we were to be dragged back to the 19th century way of doing things.
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Did the states pass additional regulations? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am confused by the article. It could mean one of two very different things:
1) The states passed laws requiring the corporations to cut their emissions even further than what the EPA required. The companies did not comply so the states sued. The Supreme Court ruled that the state laws do not trump the federal law, so they cannot be enforced.
-- OR --
2) The states sued the companies for damages, even though the companies complied with the federal law.
The implications are very different. The first one would surprise me: it seems like a states rights issue. States often times impose local environmental restrictions that may be beyond the federal requirements. If it was the latter, then I am not surprised. This happens all the time with anything where there is any form of regulation or standard practice. If the entity is following the regulation or best practice, they are generally immune from suits. Ex: Suppose a boat captain requires everyone to wear a life jacket, properly maintains the boat according to all the rules, has coast guard inspections, training, certificates, etc.... the captain is probably not liable if the boat catches fire and kills someone . Often times the regulatory body gets sued instead. In the above example, the coast guard may be sued for having lax rules.
Re:Did the states pass additional regulations? (Score:5, Informative)
SCOTUS to whiny states (Score:2)
good ruling bad policy (Score:3)
this is not the way laws and rules are supposed to be made.
I strongly agree with regulating CO2 emissions but it must be done in a constitutionally proper manner or the whole thing lacks legitimacy
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Where did you get that from the story? You think this is actually a step towards strengthening regulation?
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Yes. Since the obama administration believes itself to be above, and not required to follow the law. To the point where it uses lawyers to 'bypass' regulation.
Not the "Obama administration" (Score:3)
If the Republicans had been in power, the government would have taken the same position. This has nothing to do with the Obama administration.
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Oh I understand, you are happy to ignore the incredible abuses (Torture, wiretapping, extrajudicial kidnapping) perpertrated by the Bush administration because you are a Republican sycophant. Gotcha.
Re:Whelp (Score:5, Funny)
We'll trade you the Stanley Cup for a discount.
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The true cost, once you factor in the health problems associated with the pollution caused by burning coal, is a hell of a lot higher than 30 or even 40 cents per kwh. Enjoy your cheap energy now, but make sure to put aside at least a hundred thousand dollars to treat your inevitable cancer and/or lung disease.
I love it when someone wants to track the total cost... and then proceeds to leave out factors.
Why don't you include the health BENEFITS of having a reliable power grid and the advanced society that power grid facilitates? Oh I see, the power you use comes from little faeries that fly out your ass while you're shoving your head up it.
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We can get those benefits from nuclear power while causing 1/100,000 as many cancers. We need coal-burning energy production like we need injections of benzene.
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...and I would love to see nuclear provide 75% of our power but the same environmentalists who hate coal also hate nuclear. To them, cheap energy (no matter the source) is the problem. Of course cheap energy has done more to lift civilization out of poverty then anything else.
Re:Whelp (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course cheap energy has done more to lift civilization out of poverty then anything else.
Read 'Ecoscience' co-authored by John P. Holdren (science Czar) and you'll understand that you hit it right on the nail. It has nothing to do with the environment, cheap energy is a very serious problem to these guys. They started at the forefront of the eugenicist movement (Holdren is a self-proclaimed malthusian) and now they're at the forefront of the global warming hysteria. If one is to believe what's in that book, the solution is de-industrialization of the world so that we can no longer sustain as large a population as we have now. According to the book, a billion is the magic 'sustainable' figure.
'Think of the environment' is the new 'think of the children'. Yes, there are very serious environmental issues but sadly, these issues are way too useful to our leadership as excuses to push an agenda to warrant implementation of any real solutions.
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We need coal-burning energy production like we need injections of benzene.
But, I love benzene! It's so yummy and )*&^&^%*&^[NO CARRIER]
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Who is proposing that we not have a reliable power grid? Do you know what a peaking plant is?
Re:Whelp (Score:4, Insightful)
1) What is wrong with hydrocarbon-driven peaking, where needed? The point is not ideological purity; the point is getting our carbon emissions down. And it that equals geographically-distributed wind + solar + NG where needed for peaking..... so? What matters is that the coal comes off the grid and most of the energy comes from low or no carbon sources.
2) Conventional hydro is more than sufficient for peaking in the west, although in some places you need to uprate plants (but that's pretty cheap).
3) Storage can also act as peaking. At present, the most cost effective method is pumped hydro, which only adds 1-2 cents per kilowatt hour. It's so cheap that it's already extensively used in China -- not to balance out supply variation, but to balance out *demand* variation. I would not be surprised at all to find direct electrochemical or electrostatic energy storage dominating in 2-3 decades.
4) EGS/SWEGS can also act as peaking, or baseload.
But I'll jot down a note that you'd much rather make fun of your ideological foes with straw men than sit down to a serious debate.
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Why am I condescending? Final point...
Name ONE energy source the environmentalists will approve!
Wind, kills birds, it's ugly
Solar, alters the desert echo system, the chemicals are too bad in the manufacture process
Hydro, Destroys too much land creating the reservoir
Coal, natural gas, oil, --- CO2
Nuclear --- Radiation
Geothermal, destroys the echo system...
Oh I almost forgot... These wackos won't even let us build power lines between the power generation and the location the power is used...
And On and On...
N
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I'm an environmentalist, and I'm big on solar, wind, and geothermal, like 95%+ of people who would tag themselves similarly.
QED, you have been disproven.
FYI, most of the people opposing big projects -- let's say, Cape Wind -- are not environmental groups, although they hide under that guise. Cape Wind was mainly opposed by wealthy landowners afraid it would lower their property values.
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Oh for crying out loud. While I'm sure that breathing crap is bad for you cancer and/or lung disease is not inevitable. Just like smokers that inhale 3 packs a day and live into their 80's and 90's and some die in their 40's it's all pretty much up to the physical ability of the individual's body to resist the poison. Meanwhile continuing to run the price of electricity out of sight affects everyone right now. I haven't read the actual figures on how much pollution we're talking about here but I know in
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no, it's not. It is an essentially random process.
The coal particle get lodged into your lung, causing a tiny lesion. Cell growth is activated around it and the particle get encapsulated. This extra growth spurt might, or might not cause some of the cells to mutate. The mutation might, or might not, lead to cancer.
Some people are more susceptible, yes. But the development is random. Being healthy, or rich will not help you at all.
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Just like smokers that inhale 3 packs a day and live into their 80's and 90's and some die in their 40's it's all pretty much up to the physical ability of the individual's body to resist the poison.
And that makes it ok to spew this crap in the air?
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I'm wondering about this anyway. Don't the States license these plants? I know the State legislature here went round and round about the last big power plant they built here. We've got something called the Public Services Commission that decides how much they can charge for power.
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I thought it would be more along the lines of "Mr. Obama's Neighborhood".
Can you say, "Hope and Change?" I thought you could! Bwahahah!