In a major boost to jobs and the economy, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Monday that the administration is moving to officially scrap the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s signature regulatory program to kill the coal industry by curbing emissions from coal-fired power plants
“The war on coal is over,” Mr. Pruitt said. “Tomorrow in Washington D.C., I will be signing a proposed rule to roll back the Clean Power Plan. No better place to make that announcement than Hazard, Kentucky.”
Yes, the war on coal is over, America Won.
Of course, liberal politicians and the mainstream media (that’s redundant isn’t it?) will call it a blatantly anti-environment move, the truth is that the announcement is another pro-Jobs move by President Trump that will especially help minority communities.
The Clean Power Plan was the centerpiece of Obama’s Climate Action Plan. It was announced in June 2013 and complied with his Paris climate deal pledge that the U.S. would cut its carbon emissions by as much as 28 percent off of 2005 levels by 2025.
In anticipation of the plan which places heavy restrictions on coal-burning power plants being implemented (it was placed on hold by the Supreme Court in 2016), the coal industry became even more depressed than the initial Obama anti-coal efforts, but it would affect 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, as US economy will find it hard recover from these regulations. The Obama rule was looking to replace cheap energy with more expensive alternate energy. In other words, it not only raises the cost of energy for the individual households, but also the cost of goods for companies creating and marketing products resulting in higher costs for just about everything…including staple goods.
If implemented the Obama program will generate a rise in the price of energy, leading to a rise in the price of consumer goods, that 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 Clean Power Plan 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 initially proposed by a Republican rather than an African-American President of the Democratic Party, there would be screams of racism, but since the Clean Power Plan was proposed by Barack Obama, those voices were 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, and is still not a concern.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 a redistribution of income worldwide. Thankfully President Trump will not allow it to happen.
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