Sometime on Tuesday, President Trump will sign an executive order directing the EPA to begin dismantling Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Liberal politicians and the mainstream media (that’s redundant isn’t it?) will call it a blatantly anti-environment move, the truth is the order is another pro-job action by the new president, that will also support America’s minority communities

The Clean Power Plan was the centerpiece of Obama’s Climate Action Plan. It was announced in June 2013, and complies with his more recent pledge to the U.N. that the U.S. will cut its carbon emissions by as much as 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.

The plan, which places heavy restrictions on coal-burning power plants, has served to depress the coal industry, but it effects much more than the coal economy.

 

The plan is a disaster on so many levels, the most important of which is that it will kill jobs from all industries (and the U.S. labor participation rates already at disastrous low levels), the US economy will find it hard recover from these regulations.  The EPA rule is looking to replace cheap energy with more expensive alternate energy, it not only raises the cost of energy for the individual households, but will raise the cost of goods for companies marketing their products resulting in higher costs for all products, but especially staple goods. The Obama created rise in the price of energy and resulting rise in the price of consumer goods, will place the heaviest burden on middle and lower economic class families. And that doesn’t take into account that the rule deals another Obama blow against  business resulting in more unemployment, higher government costs, and energy price inflation.

The Wall Street Journal warned that the Clean Power Plan was going to hurt people all over the country:

If the EPA succeeds, Americans will be paying for decades. NERA Economic Consulting estimates that the Clean Power Plan will cost $366 billion and bring double-digit electricity-rate increases to 43 states. Regulators including the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warn that the plan could weaken the reliability of the national electric grid by forcing many power plants to close well before new ones can be built. Yet even the administration admits that the EPA plan will have only a trivial impact on the climate.

Another study, this one commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce and published in June 2015 predicts the new regulation will leave minority communities with disproportionately fewer jobs, lower incomes and higher poverty than whites.

These regulations would have serious economic, employment, and energy impacts at the national level and for all states, and the impacts on low-income groups, Blacks, and Hispanics would be especially severe. The EPA  rules would:

  • Significantly reduce U.S. GDP every year over the next two decades — over $2.3 trillion;
  •  Destroy millions of jobs;
  •  More than double the cost of power and natural gas to over $1 trillion;
  • Require the average family to pay over $1,225 more for power and gas in 2030 than in 2012.

The EPA regulations will increase Hispanic poverty by more than 26% and Black poverty by more than 23%. The energy burdens for Blacks and Hispanics will increase and large numbers of both groups will be forced into energy poverty, and Black and Hispanic household incomes will decline by increasing amounts each year. There would be increasing job losses: By 2035, cumulative job losses for Blacks will total about 7 million and for Hispanics will total 12 million. Most job losses would occur in the states in which Blacks and Hispanics are most heavily concentrated.

If these regulations were proposed by a Republican rather than an African-American President of the Democratic Party, there would be screams of racism, but since it was an Obama plan those voices are silent.

The cost to families in higher energy costs and loss of jobs was not important to the Obama EPA, supporters of the climate change hypothesis or most people in the mainstream media They are so caught up in their unproven hypothesis, they ignore the facts like the fact the Earth hasn’t warmed in over eighteen years. The real purpose of their climate scheme is redistribution of income world-wide. Thankfully President Trump will not allow it to happen.