Tom Reilly and Co. get their day in court regarding whether CO2 is actually a real pollutant that poses grave danger to people, and therefore is required to be regulated by the EPA. Tom is actually leading the group of plantiff states.
You’ve got to be pretty confident on this one, if this is the best the Bushies can do to defend their nutty policy:
Deputy Solicitor General Gregory Garre, representing the Bush administration, cautioned justices that EPA regulation could have a significant economic impact on the United States since 85 percent of the U.S. economy is tied to sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Garre also argued that EPA was right not to act given “the substantial scientific uncertainty surrounding global climate change.”
Give ’em hell, Tom.
But not too big. That sigh (of CO2) may soon be subject to EPA regulation.
The Bushies have consistently argued that addressing the threat of global warming will harm our economy.
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Do they ever consider what the catastrophic effect would be on our economy of their policy of ignoring this threat?
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Michael Bate
There’s lots of threats.
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Maybe I should plan for the Rapture. Although, if it arrived, because I have no idea what it would involve (warm clothes, cab fare?), I’d have probably planned wrong.
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Alternatively, maybe I’ll plan for the big asteroid, so lots of bottled water and canned tuna. That’ll do me no good if the darn rock hits in Central Massachusetts.
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Now, if you’re talking about threat from:
–crime I’ll lock my door;
–heart disease, I’ll watch my cholesterol and exercise;
–tornados, I’ll have a storm cellar.
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Not sure which, if any, of these threats, you feel more resembles global warming, but if you’re proposing allowing beaurocrats to regulate my fireplace as a solution, I’ll pass, because I’m thinking that actual threats from global warming threat is distant, complex and uncertain and any solution the EPA has today will, most likely, be wrong.
Regulate your fireplace? WTF are you talking about?
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The proposed national ideas RE global warming include things like: * Cap and trade CO2 plans for large polluters like power plants, industrial sites, etc. * Public investment in transportation alternatives (biofuels, mass transit, etc) * Regulation on emissions and mpgs of automobiles, trucks, and maybe extended to 2 stroke engines like motorboats and ski-doos. * Renewable energy portfolio standards.
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The gas you’re passing isn’t significant from an engineering perspective. Go after the big sources first, either as singular sources or as a distributed network of significant size.
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Besides, burning wood in the fireplace is just part of the Carbon Cycle and is, for all intensive purposes, carbon neutral over a short period of time. Gas fireplaces on the other hand…
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The SCOTUS case at hand, involves whether or not EPA can regulate the production of CO2. The EPA has wood stove standards because it has the authority to regulate nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, organic gases, and particulate matter.
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Add CO2 to the list, and the EPA then has the authority to regulate output of CO2 from any source: coal fired stacks to fireplaces to autos, whether significant or not.
the burning of strawmen too? Even if their contribution is insignificant?
about the potential economic impact of CO2 regulations? Seems like you write it off with “Right”. Its one thing to study what such an impact may be, check out the high and low estimates from both sides, and make an informed value judgement about what the expected cost/benefit will be.
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Speaking of which, I’ve not seen any analysis of what the actual difference will be over any length of time whether we keep CO2 emissions on their current path, vs. cut them 10%. (I’m doubtful that is is possible to do, actually) Have you?
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Personally, I have faith in technology and human ingenuity to conquer whatever really ends up becoming a problem in our next 50, 100, or 1000 years. Even if it were another ice age, natural or otherwise.
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That is, unless we wipe ourselves out by allowing nuclear proliferation….
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All over the map huh
As far as the cost/benefit of our responding to the threat of climate change, economic, environmental AND security-wise, consider this source and substance:
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Pentagon Report
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Rent a copy of An Inconvenient Truth this weekend and see if you still think technology alone is going to save us in the next 50, 100 or 1000 years. The time to act is now.
because of all the rain this year and last in the fall, the first and second cuttings of hay here in Vermont were late, after the hay had blossomed, which makes it poor winter feed for cows, horses, goats, etc. Falls are usually dry, we sometimes got 3 cuttings.
So dairies are in even more of an economic pinch – they are already only getting as much for their milk as they did in 1980, and have less places to sell it – there are 3 main wholesalers who buy milk for the price the wholesalers set.
This year food rotted and never ripened – too much water, too much cloud cover, not enough sun. Seeds usually saved for planting next year didn’t ripen. Winter crops like onions, potatoes, winter squash are much smaller.
Land is wet, not dry enough for equipment – it gets stuck in the mud, so even on sunny days work can’t get done. Then the rain comes again and crops rot in the field.
What happened when our food supply is so upset that we can’t feed ourselves? Sounds like parts of Africa, doesn’t it?
We are today seeing the effects of global warming – the water melting from the Greenland glaciers has evaporated and is with us as rain. The warmth has produced more insects and has weakened our trees – They need to cold weather. They are more suseptible to disease and wind damage – they leaf out less, grow less, make less nuts, then they die. And trees take years and years to grow, they aren’t an anuual flowering petunia.
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We are not talking about 10-20-30 years. This is not in our future. This is now.
In fact, I’m much more concerned about the economic effect of doing nothing to curb C02. The changeover to less CO2 emissions can in fact be an opportunity for economic growth.
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The damage to be caused by global warming is incalculable, although that doesn’t stop some people from trying to calculate it:
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Actually, the other economic impact of doing nothing is similar to what is happening to our auto industry: with no regulation, you get no incentive to produce carbon neutral technology and so Japan, Europe, India, or China ends up producing carbon neutral technology. The end result is we lose another market to the Eastern Hemisphere.
Why does it just seem like fate, pre-ordained, ‘Twas Ever Thus that the Japanese companies make more innovative and more reliable cars than the US? It doesn’t have to be that way. I’d like nothing better than to be in the market for a fabulous, US-made, 70 mpg and good-for-250k-miles car.
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Well, we can dream, can’t we?
killed the US auto industry
… killed the auto industry and the unions.
that we can all have whatever we need in terms of health care and medicine will kill health care and medicine
… so many of these are predicated on if a worst case scenario occurs or if sudden climate change occurs and they are also stretched so far out into the future that it is mind boggling to me that we just take it all as face value impending disaster. Bazillions of unknown factors in global climate; and can you even imagine what we will be capable in 50 or 100 years? Probably 90+% of everything you use daily has only been invented in the past 100 years, and technological progress has only increased in pace over that span…
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Has anyone considered elasticity of the Earth’s surface when talking about what an increased volume of water sitting in the oceans would do? Do you really think we’d sit still for catastrophic flooding? The Netherlands conquered that one centuries ago, surely we wont really be helpless even if water levels do rise.
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But but but but MOST importantly, the thing that kills me about all this: no one* has quantified what specifically will be different if we cut the pace of emissions growth and weighed that against the cost. Everyone is looking at this as an all or nothing: act or we perish!! Oh yea? Maybe you’re gonna perish anyway, barring a total ban on CO2 huh?
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Cost. Benefit. Know them before you act.
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* actually the Brit govt recently did come out with something that tries to do this but it is so heavily caveatted with layer upon layer of assumptions nesting that it almost seems calculated to give the politically chosen answer…
Legal briefs can be found here from International Center for Technology Assessment
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Interestingly two of the nation’s biggest energy producers, Calpine and Entergy, are on the side of “Mass et al” as they strive for market certainty. Other amici include a diverse array of groups and individuals, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, four former EPA administrators, Alaska tribal groups, hunter and angler groups, religious groups, the Aspen Skiing Company, and many others.
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I love that Massachusetts is out in front on this as we’ve suffered the humiliation of Romney yanking us out of the important RGGI regional greenhouse gas pact and this suit puts us back on the side of procation. Reilly was always a great champion when it came to this issue, so I’m glad you gave him credit, Charley.
has a big economic incentive – they supply nuclear power a carbonless source of electricity. If carbon regs happen, nuclear becomes economically more feasible.
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Calpine looks like a big Wind company. (just sold a bunch of their stuff to GE)
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Mark
Calpine is mostly natural gas and geothermal, relatively cleaner than their competitors the soot belching, earth-warming, asthma-inducing, spill-making, black-lung causing, mountain top lopping, coal and oil burning power plants. You’re right about Entergy. Alterior motives (beyond what is probably some altruism as well) aren’t too hard to find. The specter of climate change is certainly making for some pretty strange bedfellows.
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typo correction: “Proactive” will work better than “procative” in my last comment.
I listened to Nina Totenberg’s report on all things considered. Her call, based on the questions being fired from the bench, is to expect a 5-4 decision one way or another, with Kennedy as the swing vote.
At the present rate of climate change, Massachusetts will have the climate of South Carolina by the end of the century (So I was told at the recent MCAN meeting in Cambridge). It’s a 12 degree increase in average temperature.
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How will this hurt the economy? Let me count the ways…
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Higher temperatures in the south will make Agriculture much more difficult. New England may have to become its own breadbasket. Do we in NE have enough land to feed ourselves?
Hell I haven’t grown tomatoes since I was a kid – and I vaguely remember my mother canning them…
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So much for the apple crop…
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Destruction of Coastal property. Fine if you live inland, but what does it mean to the coastal property owner or cities like Quincy and the businesses in the flood plain?
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Reduction in actual land (rising sea level)… Even Flatley can’t sell submerged acreage. And that’s going to hurt tax revenue.
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Population shift from the coasts… where are they going to go? (the apple orchards of Stow, Bolton, Berlin etc?)
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Greater weather uncertainty and more intense weather – who can predict the effects of weather shift…
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Mark
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already having trouble for a variety of reasons, may have even more trouble if the CO2 going into the oceans and screwing up the pH occurs.
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Lobstahs without shells may not sell as well….Changes in fish populations….etc.
You also have the problem of the bird population (for example) getting out of sync with the catepillar and beetle populations. The result is that insects once controlled by predators eat your lunch — and your breakfast and dinner too. While it might seem delightful that we see robins throughout the winter, those changes in migratory patterns are not benign.
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Perhaps we can get the global warming skeptics to make up for this by eating the beetles and catepillars themselves.
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Just a thought.