By: Marita Noon (Diary) | August
4th, 2014
During the week of July 28, the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) held hearings in four cities: Atlanta, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Washington.
DC. The two-day sessions were to allow the public to have their voice heard
about the proposed rules it released on June 2
that will supposedly cut CO2 emissions by 30 percent. Many,
including myself, believe that these rules are really an attempt to shut down
coal-fueled electricity generation and implement a cap-and-trade program that
the Administration couldn’t get through Congress in 2009, when cap-and-trade’s
obvious allies held both houses of Congress.
If the EPA’s plans were clear, direct, and honest, the
public would likely revolt outright. Instead, the intent is hidden in pages of
cumbersome language and the messaging becomes all about clean air and water—and
about the health of children.
Because I was in the area—speaking a few hours from
Atlanta on Sunday—I took advantage of the proximity and signed up to speak at
the hearing. When I first attempted to sign up, day one was already full. The
EPA had so many people who wanted time to share their opinions, a second day
was added, and I was put on the schedule.
The first day, Tuesday, July 29, included competing
rallies held in near-record low temperatures for Atlanta in July. Supporters of
the EPA’s plan—many of whom were bussed in from surrounding states—gathered in
Centennial Olympic Park. I spoke
at the rally, made up of plan opponents, that was organized by Americans for Prosperity’s Georgia
chapter held at the Sam Nunn Federal Center—where the hearing
was originally scheduled (before a power outage forced a move to the Omni
Hotel).
Busloads of plan supporters
I spent the rest of the day at the hearing. It had a
circus-like atmosphere. With tables of literature, people carrying signs, and
many of the plan’s supporters identified by their matching pale-green tee
shirts emblazoned with:
Protect
our communities
CLIMATE
ACTION NOW.
Once I had a taste of what to expect the next day, when I
was to present my comments in the five minutes allotted, I prepared what I
wanted to say. The following is my original text—though I had to edit it down
to get it within the allowed time frame. For presentation here, I’ve also enhanced
my comments with some additional insights from others. The verbiage that is not
a part of my original testimony is included in italics.
I was here yesterday and earlier today. I’ve listened to
the well-intentioned pleas from many who have begged you, the EPA, to take even
stronger action than this plan proposes. One even dramatically claimed: “You
are the Environmental Protection Agency. You are our only hope. If you don’t
protect us no one will?”
I heard a teary-eyed, young woman tell a tale about a man
she knows who is dying of cancer, supposedly, because he grew up near a
coal-fired power plant—he couldn’t be here, so she told his story. She also
said: “I am fortunate enough to have not been around in the 1960s when there
was real smog.” Her father has told her about it.
One woman claimed her neighbor had gotten asthma from
global warming.
Another addressed how she gets headaches from emissions.
She told how lung tissue could be burned. And, how particulates are why people
can no longer see the mountain in her region.
An attorney’s testimony told about seeing “carbon
pollution” every day from his 36th floor office “a few blocks from
here” from where he looks “out over a smog-covered city.”
The passion of these commenters supersedes their
knowledge as none of the issues I’ve mentioned here, and there are many more,
are something caused by carbon dioxide—a clear, colorless gas that each of us
breathe out and plants breathe in.
Dave Bufalo is a retired civil engineer who attended and
testified at the EPA’s Denver location. He told me he had a similar experience:
“I was only able to stay for about an hour but I did hear about 10
testimonials. They were all in support of the EPA’s proposed regulation. I
don’t believe that anyone had really read the proposal prior to testifying.
Their testimonies seemed to lack an understanding of the chemical nature of CO2.
One elderly woman could only state that she thanked the EPA for insuring that
she had clean air and water. One gentleman was clearly pushing for the sale of
his company’s solar panels.”
James Rust, PhD, is a retired professor of nuclear
engineering from Georgia Tech. In his testimony in Atlanta, he referenced
thousands of peer-reviewed papers showing carbon dioxide emissions had a
negligible effect on climate change. He pointed to the stack of documents from
the Heartland Institute called Climate Change Reconsidered I and II that
contained these peer-reviewed articles. It was at that point, that a man in the
front row shouted out “Liar!” Rust told me: “This is the typical type of
response from the mob that promotes this climate change scare. They use ad
hominem attacks and don’t debate the real issues because they have no
experimental data that backs up what they are proposing.”
Carbon dioxide is a natural, and essential, part of the
environment—with massive, unknown, quantities of carbon dioxide emitted each
year from natural sources, such as volcanoes. Were you able to eliminate carbon
dioxide from every industrial source in the United States, it would have
virtually no impact on global carbon dioxide emissions.
I understand the concerns over true smog and pollution. I
grew up in Southern California—graduating from high school in 1976. At that
time, we had made a mess of our environment. We had polluted the air and water.
Cleaning up our collective act was an important public policy issue. San
Bernardino, California, where my family lived, is in a valley, surrounded by
mountains. It was not uncommon for a family to move into the area in the
summer, when the smog was the worst, and not even know the beautiful mountains
existed. In the fall, when the winds came in and blew the smog out to sea,
newcomers where amazed to discover the mountains.
But that pollution, that smog, has largely been cleaned
up. Utilities have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on scrubbers, and
other highly technical equipment such as SCR’s, electrostatic precipitators,
and bag houses, to, successfully, remove the vast majority of the particulates.
People often see a billowing white cloud coming from the stacks at a
coal-fueled power plant and confuse it with pollution when it is really H2O—water
in the form of steam. Depending on the time of year, or the time of day, it may
be more, or less, visible. The weather conditions may make it settle like fog
until the sun burns it off. And this, I believe, is mistaken for pollution.
If you haven’t seen Randy Scott Slavin’s Bird’s-Eye-View of New York City, I encourage you
to check it out as it shows an amazingly clean city—despite the more than 8
million people living in those compact 469 square miles. New York City is one
of the most populated places on the planet, yet its air is sparkling.
This rule is not about pollution. It is about shutting
down coal-fueled power plants and killing jobs and raising electricity
rates—both of which punish people who can least afford it. But plenty of others
have addressed the economic impact so I won’t take more of my time on that
topic.
Dozens of members from a variety of different unions were
present in Atlanta to speak out against the plan. Skip Howard,
Business Manager for Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 421 in North and South
Carolina, explained: “Although Nuclear Power is a clean, renewable source of
energy and not affected by fluctuating oil-and-gas prices, energy from
Coal-fired Plants is cheaper and helps keep the cost of electricity affordable
to consumers. Coal-fired Plants are reliable and cheaper to build than a
Nuclear Plant. Coal-fired plants are now designed to be a safe and efficient
source of energy that supports grid systems, helping to avoid blackouts. New
clean coal technologies create many thousands of new high-wage jobs across our
country, helping our economy grow.”
Several of the union members who testified in Atlanta
assailed the EPA representatives because the hearing locations were far from
where those most impacted—the coal miners—live.
I spent some time on Tuesday talking with many of the
union representatives. David Cagle, Marketing Representative for the Plumbers,
Pipefitters, and HVAC/R Service Technicians Local Union 72 based in Atlanta,
told me: “I appreciate your interest in helping our country to be able to
continue to provide economical electric energy and well-paying jobs to
America’s families and businesses.” He, then, offered me this brief history of what the coal-fired electric energy industry
means to his family:
After World War II my father worked in one of the first
large coal-fired powerhouses built in the state of Georgia. That well-paying
job allowed him to help his parents pay off the mortgage on their house and
also to start saving for a down payment for a home of his own one day.
My father worked on several coal-fired powerhouses
throughout his career in the piping industry. These well-paying jobs provided a
decent standard of living for his family.
The powerhouses that my father helped build are still
providing well-paying jobs for the people who run them and the workers who do
the maintenance on them. Hundreds of thousands of construction workers have
benefited from the well-paying jobs in the construction and maintenance of
these facilities. They are also still providing low-cost electrical power to
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of customers.
Beside my family benefiting from the coal-powered
electric generation industry, I can tell you firsthand what coal does for our
country across the continent.
I lived in Campbell County, Wyoming for two years in the
mid-90s. Campbell County Wyoming is the Energy Capitol of the United States.
Thousands of families would lose a very good way of living, if the coal mines
in Wyoming were shut down. The coal mined there is very low sulfur and produces
some of the cleanest electricity on earth. I also know many people from West
Virginia who depend on coal to be able to make a decent living.
I fully understand the devastating effects the Obama
administration’s new EPA rules on coal-fired powerhouses would have on people
on a fixed income. My parents are in their late 80’s and early 90’s. They are
on a fixed income and in poor health. The last thing they need are large power
bills that would destroy their budget and force them to rely on their children
to help pay their power bills.
My whole family are outdoorsmen. We have all been raised
to hunt and fish and respect and protect our environment. My family would be
the first to embrace a low-cost environmentally sound alternative to coal-fired
powerhouses. The problem is, there is no alternative economically viable source
available at this time.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) covered a union protest
that took place at the Pittsburgh hearing. It states: “Unions opposing the proposed rule argue
that U.S. workers will pay the price for lowering emissions domestically while
other countries—most notably China, where coal usage has grown rapidly—will
continue to burn coal and emit carbon dioxide.” The WSJ reported: “unions
focused their efforts on Pittsburgh, sending busloads of unionized miners,
utility workers, railroad workers and others from Pennsylvania, West Virginia,
Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama and other states.”
But, I do want to address the constitutionality of the
proposed plan, as it does exactly what the Supreme Court admonished the EPA
about on June 23. Justice Antonin Scalia, for the
majority, wrote this about the Tailoring Rule decision: “Were we to recognize
the authority claimed by EPA in the Tailoring Rule, we would deal a severe blow
to the Constitution’s separation of powers… The power of executing laws…does
not include a power to revise clear statutory terms that turn out not to work
in practice.” Yet, this is exactly what this proposed plan will do.
Later in the decision, Scalia says: “When an agency
claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate ‘a
significant portion of the American economy’ . . . we typically greet its
announcement with a measure of skepticism. We expect Congress to speak clearly if
it wishes to assign an agency decisions of vast ‘economic and political
significance.’”
I believe on these grounds, this plan must not go
forward. It is one more example of executive overreach.
I fear that if it does, America will pay a dear price.
This hearing was scheduled to take place down the street at the Sam Nunn
Federal Center. However, it was moved due to a power outage.
Note: business cannot be done without power. You were able to move this
hearing. In a reduced-power environment businesses will move to places where
they have access to energy that is effective, efficient, and economical. They
will move, as many have already done, to places with far-looser environmental
policies and the perceived gain will be lost.
Thinking that what we do in the United States will have a
serious impact on global carbon dioxide emissions is like thinking that
declaring a “no pee” section in the swimming pool will keep all the water urine
free.
I’ll end with a quote from the smog-viewing attorney who
closed with: “I am hopeful that my new grandchildren, who will live into the 22nd
century, will enjoy a world that my grandparents, born in the 19th
century, would recognize.” If this plan is passed, he may get his wish. His
grandparents’ world contained none of the energy-based modern conveniences or
medical miracles we consider standard and essential today—let alone those yet
to be developed or discovered by the 22nd century. In his
grandparents’ day, life expectancy in the U.S. was estimated at 45 years. By
2000, this had increased to 78 years—mostly due to our expansion of
cost-effective electricity throughout the nation.
Remember, the countries with the best human health and
the most material wealth are those with the highest energy consumption. America
needs energy that is abundant, available and affordable.
* * * *
While the public hearings are over, you can still give
the EPA your comments online. Please add your voice to the debate. http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/how-comment-clean-power-plan-proposed-rule
The author of Energy Freedom, Marita Noon serves as the executive director for Energy Makes America Great Inc. and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible
Energy (CARE). Together they work to educate
the public and influence policy makers regarding energy, its role in freedom,
and the American way of life. Combining energy, news, politics, and, the
environment through public events, speaking engagements, and media, the
organizations’ combined efforts serve as America’s voice for energy.
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