Head of EPA: Obama’s Clean Power Plan will hit low-income minorities hardest

originally posted by: TonyS
a reply to: xuenchen

She's jittery because she's lying and she's lying because.......that's what liberal Democrat Government workers do. She knows the cost increases will be a lot more than the cost of a gallon of milk. And she knows the incentives to start the programs early won't help at all by 2030.

The truth of the matter is that they continuously tell this lie that the destruction of coal generated electrical power plants won't necessarily cause prices to skyrocket and that it will take 40 to 50 years for the "renewable" sources to make up even half of the lost capacity.

Not true. Geothermal is renewable. We could replace coal with geothermal on a near 1:1 ratio per mwh generated and save money since it's cheaper than coal. And while doing so we would save many lives considering the astronomically high deathprint of coal power compared to other forms of electricity generation.

Plus there's that pesky fact of limited resources which force the issue.

originally posted by: KawRider9
The people getting hurt the hardest by the EPA and their draconian laws are us small business owners. And not only are we the backbone of America, "we" are the majority! Once we're fined/taxed out of business, the only thing left will be the huge corporations (that everyone despises, yet still shops there) that get exempt status from the laws/fines/regulations/taxes that these idiots put in place.

So in your small business (and I'm assuming it actually is a small business such as under 10 employees, not one of those 500 employee behemoths that claims to be small) what environmental regulations specifically is the EPA causing you harm by leaving in place? Give specifics and explain why you should be allowed to do what they're preventing you from doing.

originally posted by: jrod
a reply to: xuenchen

Doesn't surprise me that you would make an OP like this.
Figures you guys would use the fear of economical strain in attempt to hoodwink us poor folks to be against climate change action.

Wonderful attack right off the bat.

Great day in the morning.

originally posted by: jrod
a reply to: ketsuko
This has nothing to do with screwing the poor and everything to do with clever political tactics.
Screw the world, our oil based currency is more important!!!

Figures you guys would use the fear of economical strain in attempt to hoodwink us poor folks to be against climate change action.

So these aren't your words?

You are basically saying, "Yes! Punish me for being poor, and punish all the rest of us poor people right along with me!"

a reply to: Aazadan

Give me an hour or so, but I will give you several examples. Sorry, I don't have the time to type this from my phone.

I will PM you the second I reply, so you can rebuttal.

And yes, I'm truly a small business.

a reply to: Aazadan
So, does your house run on geothermal? If not, why not?
Can one go off-grid with geothermal or do you still need to have electricity or some other form of energy to get the geo going?
I understand that where sources of really, really hot water are available (in the US that's mostly just California) this is an alternative but what about the rest of the country?
Could you back up that claim about "astronomically high deathprint of coal power" with sources please? What exactly is that deathprint today when looking at lives lost per kilowatt of power produced? And just for the record, I'm not asking what it has been in the past---I'm asking about the last ten years.

The Poor will not be impacted at all. The government will step in and the working people will continue to pay their bills for them. that's the reality of the situation. I Michigan it's against to turn peoples utilities off between October and April. So they stay for free!!

originally posted by: diggindirt
So, does your house run on geothermal? If not, why not?
Can one go off-grid with geothermal or do you still need to have electricity or some other form of energy to get the geo going?
I understand that where sources of really, really hot water are available (in the US that's mostly just California) this is an alternative but what about the rest of the country?
Could you back up that claim about "astronomically high deathprint of coal power" with sources please? What exactly is that deathprint today when looking at lives lost per kilowatt of power produced? And just for the record, I'm not asking what it has been in the past---I'm asking about the last ten years.

Can one realistically go off grid with coal? The answer to that is no.

My house is powered by a coal plant that's a few miles out of town, when I lived out west it was powered by a geothermal plant that was a few miles out of town. The US has immense geothermal reserves, most of that is on the west coast obviously but not all of it. Even still, electricity can be sent quite far without increasing costs too much. Geothermal if maximized could cover roughly 33% of our power needs.

If you want a recent source on the death rate of coal power here's one from the past few years
www.forbes.com...

Even in the US where coal is less polluting it's still more deadly than the global nuclear total with disasters like Fukushima included by a factor of more than 100.

Last, what we're starting to find out is that even clean coal is pretty dirty because the waste that we've been burying rather than letting blow into the air is leeching into ground water, or in some cases just gets dumped right into rivers.

a reply to: Chrisfishenstein

There's more to "life" than protecting outdated jobs, not to mention crappy outdated jobs.

I don't remember hearing all these complaints when technology made telephone switchboard operators obsolete. Or how about all those people who used to make those old rotary phones?

No one was crying all these tears for those who made their livelihood raising horses or making saddles when the automobile came along either.

I've worked enough coal to know what kind of job it is and I can tell you this, I wouldn't want to see my kids doing it and I would just imagine that most miners feel the same way.

It's time to begin weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and on to a cleaner energy future.

originally posted by: mikell
The Poor will not be impacted at all. The government will step in and the working people will continue to pay their bills for them. that's the reality of the situation. I Michigan it's against to turn peoples utilities off between October and April. So they stay for free!!

You know 60 percent of the "workers" in the country are poor right?

a reply to: xuenchen
Not an attack, just as an observation. You certainty are a cheerleader for the right wingers.

a reply to: Aazadan
And the information in your source supports my point---that these "free energy" devices made in China, using coal as an energy source are the cause of pollution, human suffering and death there rather than here. How is that acceptable? How did they get to be favored trading partners when the toll of human suffering is so high?

Energy Source
Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)
Coal – global average 170,000 (50% global electricity)
Coal – China 280,000 (75% China’s electricity)
Coal – U.S. 15,000 (44% U.S. electricity)

It is notable that the U.S. death rates for coal are so much lower than for China, strictly a result of regulation and the Clean Air Act (Scott et al., 2005). It is also notable that the Clean Air Act is one of the most life-saving pieces of legislation ever adopted by any country in history. Still, about 10,000 die from coal use in the U.S. each year, and another thousand from natural gas. Hydro is dominated by a few rare large dam failures like Banqiao in China in 1976 which killed about 171,000 people. Workers still regularly fall off wind turbines during maintenance but since relatively little electricity production comes from wind, the totals deaths are small.
Nuclear has the lowest deathprint, even with the worst-case Chernobyl numbers and Fukushima projections, uranium mining deaths, and using the Linear No-Treshold Dose hypothesis (see Helman/2012/03/10). The dozen or so U.S. deaths in nuclear have all been in the weapons complex or are modeled from general LNT effects. The reason the nuclear number is small is that it produces so much electricity per unit. There just are not many nuclear plants. And the two failures have been in GenII plants with old designs. All new builds must be GenIII and higher, with passive redundant safety systems, and all must be able to withstand the worst case disaster, no matter how unlikely.

So it is okay to sacrifice human lives and the environment in China and other less developed countries so we can feel good about having sustainable, free energy?
Why must the Chinese people be made to sacrifice for our comfort?
If it were sustainable we would be mining the minerals and building these machines right here in the US. You've been tricked---and not just you but lots of people have been tricked. Instead of looking only at the results as you've been taught to do, you need to get down to the basics and start with the cost of the first shovel of dirt turned in search of minerals to build these devices---not what you pay for the devices manufactured from those minerals. The costs are kept down by the use of slave labor, lack of environmental regulations and government subsidies.
Even back in the 1980s when solar panels were being manufactured in the US, the math and hard science proved that the energy expended in mining and manufacture could never be recovered in the lifetime of the device. At that time I believe it was something along the lines of 2000 tons of earth that needed to be mined for each square foot of solar panel. The more of these minerals we remove, the scarcer they become also.
Since the US has stopped mining these minerals for the most part, the costs have gone higher due to having to import them. Mining of rare earth minerals stopped in the US because the regulations needed to do so safely made the industry unprofitable in the US. Not so in China because they have the very great advantage of being able to employ slave labor and they have the biggest deposits of many of the needed minerals. They are not constrained by the same safety and environmental regulations as the US and other developed nations have implemented.

I don't have all the answers for all the peoples of the world. Wish I did. But I do know that the answer for me isn't taking advantage of the human suffering of people on the other side of the earth.
I've watched too many of my friends' parents die of the horrible effects of working in the nuclear industry. I'm afraid that has created a very deep bias in me toward that industry.
I fully agree that geo-thermal technology is a good solution for a goodly number of people. It's one of the many options not being utilized to its potential.
Hydro power is another under-utilized technology because the "Stop the Earth" people get their socks all atwist when it is mentioned.

If the cost of going green is that poor kids will have to drink a gallon of fluoridated tap water rather than a gallon of milk---I'll stay with the current system until that can be worked out.

originally posted by: jrod
a reply to: xuenchen
Not an attack, just as an observation. You certainty are a cheerleader for the right wingers.

Did you have any worthy comment about Gina McCarthy's stutterings?

So it's okay if we just transfer all the crappy, outdated jobs across the planet to the Chinese? Let them do the nasty, dangerous mining and foundry work instead of subjecting ourselves to a bit of sacrifice? Because sacrifice is the only word I can use to describe what is needed to attain that weaning we all so desire.
It's okay that Chinese children have to endure air and water pollution so we can feel good about "saving the planet" while depriving poor kids of food on their table?
Sorry, that just doesn't sound sustainable to me.

hmmmm...so why did Sorros buy those coal mines?

originally posted by: diggindirt
a reply to: Aazadan
And the information in your source supports my point---that these "free energy" devices made in China, using coal as an energy source are the cause of pollution, human suffering and death there rather than here. How is that acceptable? How did they get to be favored trading partners when the toll of human suffering is so high?

We can't control what China is doing to their environment, they'll have to decide if and when they want to do something about it. Perhaps it becomes a global problem with CO2 emissions and the rest of the world can convince them, or perhaps not. What we can do something about though is the pollutants we release into our cities and towns in the US.

There are no perfect solutions.

Coal is dirty and kills millions.
Oil is too limited a resource, and if we're going to be honest is much more valuable put to use building materials like plastics than being burned.
Natural Gas is good, but isn't renewable.
Hydro can only be used sparingly, too much and we destroy the environment we're trying to preserve.
Geothermal is limited by geography.
Biofuel is nearly as dirty as coal.
Solar is a good supplemental power source, but ceases to be useful when there's less coal plants, it's also expensive and prone to being useless at times.
Wind takes a lot of space, not a big deal in the US but it's an important factor in other countries.
Nuclear has the problem of fuel storage and is expensive.

My personal energy policy is "all of the above". Build nuclear but offset some of the costs with geothermal and coal. Use hydro where it makes sense but leave some areas alone. Use rooftop solar to reduce demand. Build wind farms where we can.

My main objection to the coal pushers is that coal, like virtually every other political option in the US gets pushed as an all or nothing approach when moderation works far better. Do you know what 100% electricity generation from coal would do to our air quality? That's not a solution, but I can admit that coal does still have a place, it just shouldn't be our only or even our biggest source of energy.

a reply to: Chrisfishenstein
And just consider that the EPA may be using the same financial/mathematical wizards that the administration used to figure the costs of Obamacare. Now if that don't make your hair stand up and your head go sidewise...

a reply to: Aazadan

I agree with most of what you've said.
However---I don't surrender to the notion that there's nothing we can do to discourage China's rash behaviors. Simply don't buy their products. Boycotts work. But they require sacrifice. They require us to be conscious consumers, something most folks aren't willing to do.
Our leadership has decided that the mighty dollar and the power it brings them is far more important than the human being used as sources for those dollars. They constantly tell us how much better life will be if we'll just reduce the amount of money in our wallets by adding it to their ever-growing coffers. That dog won't hunt anymore.

a reply to: ketsuko
Not at all, and I really dislike it when my words get twisted around like that.

The poor will not be worse off after we take action to combat climate change.

I do not need money and certainly not a fiat currency based on the petro trade to survive. The ones who will be impacted the most be climate change action are the ones who are living like kings as a result of the exploitation of finite resources on this planet.

They want the layman to be doubtful of the science, because as long as the general population is unaware of the consequences the longer they can profit greatly from their exploitation without regard for the long term health of this planet and get inhabitants.

originally posted by: diggindirt
a reply to: Aazadan

I agree with most of what you've said.
However---I don't surrender to the notion that there's nothing we can do to discourage China's rash behaviors. Simply don't buy their products. Boycotts work. But they require sacrifice. They require us to be conscious consumers, something most folks aren't willing to do.
Our leadership has decided that the mighty dollar and the power it brings them is far more important than the human being used as sources for those dollars. They constantly tell us how much better life will be if we'll just reduce the amount of money in our wallets by adding it to their ever-growing coffers. That dog won't hunt anymore.

I take the opposite approach. Boycotts don't work. If you get right down to it and start investigating every corporation you're going to hate them all. A boycott only works if there's an equally desirable product at an equal price but for most products there aren't. There's reasons to boycott just about every company. Here's the problem, lets say I can get 10 million people together to boycott smart phones. 5 million of those are going to boycott Iphones because of Apples horrendous business practices, while 5 million are going to boycott Android because Google needs to be broken up under anti monopoly laws. Where are those people boycotting Apple going to go? They're going to go right over to Android and the same is true for the other group in reverse. In the end you still have 10 million boycotts going on but everyone is still buying a product.

An example of this on a mass scale right now is the meat industry. Many people boycott meat due to the cruelty aspect. Many others go out of their way to purchase more meat to spite those people, and even the ones who do boycott meat are buying food products from others. Those others are now able to buy meat, and they do. In the end there is no change in total consumption.

As far as changing China's behaviors, there are things we can do but no one wants to. If we offered to front the costs for nuclear energy plants that they get control of, China would probably accept. From their standpoint that would be free money, and infrastructure building they could use. That would never go over in the US though, can you imagine the political backlash if we were found to be building state of the art nuclear plants in China when we could be using that money to build them in the US? Besides that, when pushed on this point China has responded and truth be told they have a pretty good response. Essentially it's that they're a developing nation, coal is the most cost effective way of modernizing their country and it's something western nations took advantage of. Why should they agree to use cleaner more expensive technologies to modernize when none of us did the same?

I think that the best way to clean up China is to refine those technologies here and export them in the future, pushing China to adopt them as part of multinational trade deals as we can get them to acceptable price points.