Climate Action Plan By The Numbers
Posted by Michelle Moquin on June 11th, 2014
Good morning!
Last Friday I blogged about Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the biggest action a president has ever taken to slow climate change. (Can I have another “Yippee!?”:)
So what does all of this mean? What exactly is his Climate Action Plan going to do? I asked the same questions. This is what I found.
From Think Progress:
Acting On Climate
The Impact Of The New Climate Protection Proposal, By The Numbers
As reported last week, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled the latest piece in the Obama Administration’s Climate Action Plan today: a proposed rule to dramatically cut carbon pollution from America’s coal-fired power plants in the coming decades. “Climate inaction is costing us more money, in more places, more often,” said EPA Administration Gina McCarthy in the announcement. “This is an investment in better health and a better future for our kids.”
When it comes to the importance of this rule for public health and for slowing the effects of climate change, the numbers tell the story:
- 491: The number of coal-fired power plants in the United States.
- 42 years old: The average age of a coal-fired power plant.
- 1/3: The share of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions that come from coal-fired power plants, the largest source in the United States.
- 30 percent: The amount that the new standards aim to cut carbon emissions from the power sector by the year 2030, compared to 2005 levels.
- 150 million: The number of cars that a 30 percent reduction in emissions from power plants is equal to–that’s two-thirds of all the nation’s passenger vehicles.
- 6,600: The possible premature deaths avoided annually when a 30 percent cut in carbon emissions is achieved.
- 150,000: The possible number of asthma attacks per year avoided when a 30 percent cut in carbon emissions is achieved.
- 490,000: The possible number of missed school or work days avoided when a 30 percent cut in carbon emissions is achieved.
- $93 billion: The possible economic value of the public health benefit when a 30 percent cut in carbon emissions is achieved.
- $7: The amount in health benefits that Americans will see for every dollar invest as a result of this plan.
- 27: The number of states that already have energy efficiency goals or standards in place.
- 8 percent: The average projected decrease in electricity bills for consumers due to energy efficiency (contrary to opponents who claim bills will go up).
- 50: The number of different ways the EPA proposal can be implemented, one for each state, according to Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Dan Utech. “This plan is all about flexibility,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in her announcement Monday morning. “That’s what makes it ambitious, but achievable.”
- 70 percent: The share of Americans who say the federal government should require limits to greenhouse gases from existing power plants, including 63 percent of Republicans.
- 63 percent: The share of Americans who want limits on greenhouse gases even if they raise monthly energy expenses by $20 a month.
Head over to Climate Progress for a more in-depth run down of the 8 things you should know about the biggest thing a President has ever done on climate change. They’ve also got some great reporting on the most ridiculous responses from political and industry opponents so far.
BOTTOM LINE: For other health threats like arsenic, mercury, and lead, we set limits on contaminants to keep people safe. But we let dirty power plants release as much carbon pollution into the air as they want. That needs to change. The new EPA rule is a huge step for public health and for our children’s futures. The companies that oppose this rule are desperate, dirty, and in denial. They were wrong in 1970 when we passed the Clean Air Act, they were wrong in 1990 when we took steps to stop acid rain, and they are wrong now.
*****
Readers: Pretty cool right? I don’t know if you feel this way, but it makes me want to take a long deep breath followed by a happy sigh and a smile. What about you? Blog me.
&♥
”Live it, give it to our planet.”
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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June 11th, 2014 at 1:59 pm
The people in this world with the most money don’t care that getting more at the expense of the rest of us is bad for the planet.
June 11th, 2014 at 5:37 pm
All those stats mean nothing when you have republicans being paid by the coal industry to continue the status quo.
Vote the criminals out.
June 11th, 2014 at 5:47 pm
As a former Senior Engineer for a large power company, I have to say this is wonderful news. That fact is we do not need Filthy Fuels much longer, and already have the technologies to replace them now.
When I was at PG&E, we got our power from hydro, nukes, supercritical gas boilers, geothermal, photovoltaic, solar thermal, landfill gas, fuel cells of all kinds, pumped storage, gas peaking, and even the emergency generators in the facilities of our customers, dispatched directly by us.
Got sun? You can actually make money selling power to the power company, while reducing transmission and distribution losses in the system. Wind? Three nuclear powerplants are closing because they cannot compete with gas and wind.
Got cows? Every seven can produce energy to power a household continuously.
Get used to it. We did it in California in the 1980′s. Technologies are proven and practical and getting better. Say good-bye to the Fuel of the 1800′s and look toward the future.
June 11th, 2014 at 5:49 pm
NO one will ever know what this country, indeed the world would be like had God not seen fit to allow this man to become President.
June 11th, 2014 at 8:11 pm
Graham#3, Yea and oh, as I remember your rate hikes in California is one of the highest in the CONUS. It spiked so high that people were complaining and it made national news. So who can afford utilities in your state…….
June 11th, 2014 at 8:11 pm
Graham#3, 2 things:
Nuclear power will probably never go mainstream in the USA after 3 mile island, and now Fukushima.
Also, I wouldn’t be proclaiming California as being some major success. They have the worst pollution in the states, and are circling the drain financially.
June 11th, 2014 at 8:13 pm
Graham:
Wow!! The square footed required with wind power per kilowatt is something like 10, 20 or more times a conventional power plant. Also we do not have storage systems with solar or wind. Also conventional plants are needed for fast response to supply our power grid.
June 11th, 2014 at 8:14 pm
Howie, liven this blog up with some alien tales. This site is getting stale.
June 11th, 2014 at 8:18 pm
Irene#4, you are so astute. The problem with most of us white males is that we think with our dicks. Hence when we look across the economic table the last thing we want to see is a black (with a big dick) making the same kind of money we are.
How the hell will be able to compete equally for sex if the competition has the dick and the dough?
Sorry Obama nothing personal, its just nature competing for the pussy.
June 11th, 2014 at 8:19 pm
AK#5, NJ has bills so high, you get state subsidies to PAY your electric bill to the electric companies…. so in that case, it would be all the kickbacks and subsidies of a large energy provider… PLUS all the subsidies for individual households.
We have no money not because of citizenry… We have no money because our politicos use it to grease the tracks for every pet project, up to, and including.. “warmongering”.
June 11th, 2014 at 8:21 pm
Scott#7, you miss the point. I described an integrated grid of all technologies, each in their place for responsiveness, cleanliness, economy, and timing.
Why do critics always assume we will ONLY use wind or PV or anything else. The point is the integration of processes into systems, the integration of those systems into other systems greater than the sum of their parts, and able to operate in more complex envelopes.
Every kWh produced by a wind turbine is replacing one fouling the air with particulates, Mercury, and radionuclides.
June 11th, 2014 at 8:23 pm
Levin #8, I agree with you. We need more Howie. I like the girl stuff, but even then a shot of Howie makes everything better.
June 11th, 2014 at 8:25 pm
Graham#11, t’s a pipe dream. Without subsidies alternative energy would not even break ground.
June 11th, 2014 at 8:26 pm
Scott#13, Excuse me, but you have it backwards. Nuclear power is almost completely subsidized, and the oil and gas bought their Congressmen long ago,and keep a whole stable of them.
I suggest you look up the facts and tell us what nuclear powerplants are closing because they cannot compete with wind.
Or shall I?
June 11th, 2014 at 8:32 pm
Graham#14, Subsidized how? It’s like saying we are subsidized for taking deductions on our home interest rate or standard business expenses. Is that a subsidy. Yes it is. Oh the politician on TV did not clarify that.
Also I’ll go a bit further. Wind farms are subsidized on each tower built. Not on the kilowatt or energy produced. Those towers u and I see, some don’t even have turbines installed. So they are getting money from us taxpayers for nothing produced
June 11th, 2014 at 8:35 pm
Scott#14, The mortgage interest deduction IS a subsidy to buy houses. And that should be ended, too. It sounds as if you’re arguing that Big Oil should be subsidized because…well.. everyone else is, too. That’s a lame argument.
June 11th, 2014 at 8:36 pm
Michelle, how do you manage to get so many people involved in a topic? I have been doing my blog for about 3 years and I hardly get a peep?
June 11th, 2014 at 8:42 pm
Sydney#16:
MORALLY GOOD WAYS TO SPEND TAX MONEY:
+food
+water
+medicine
+education
+housing
+DEFENSIVE MIL
How u guys can turn giving tax money back to the people who earned it for you every now and again is a bad thing, we may never comprehend. But GE paying a dollar in taxes on billions in profit isn’t considered “not paying your fair share”….
I have a feeling you guys think the american voter base are ALL illiterate. And if you do not fix the education system for common folk… you are going to end up with millions of people living in “madd maxx” times, whilst a few poorly educated rich children rule the world…for the worst.
Two MUSTS for every politician… You should serve your country in conflict or if non-military, you should have proven record of donating time and money (your time, your money) to helping the poor people.
And for extra good measure, he should have been dirt poor at some point in his life. If you place these people in high place, and fix the education system… we won’t need these handful of rich people to “rule our world” because “they are better and smarter than us… that’s why they have more money”… uhm.. sometimes yes…
but this defense seems tailored to make rich look like a “superior race” destined to rule, by the size of their wallet, or their families’ purse.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:10 pm
David#17, I’ve been reading this blog for 5 years. If you want to get a little of Michelle’s $ucce$$. I suggest that you invent characters such as Anon, Howie, Zen Lill, Doug, Mike, Social Butterfly, etc.
She keeps this crowd because we just can’t get enough of these characters. Me I love Zen Lill and Prism Princess. Others have their favorites.
It’s a business and Michelle knows how to keep our interest Did you miss her setting up the Zen Lill character to dis her? I got into so many arguments about that one from friends who claimed they never read her “shit.”
Yet, there they were emailing and texting me with their opinions as to why Zen Lill could believe that Anon would go behind her back.
Jesus! Some of my females friends actually think this guy and Zen Lill are real. They have threatened to end our friendship of decades over that imaginary guy.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:11 pm
Sydney#16, Big oil also gets MUCH more of a subsidy (it has been documented by USA Today and various other newspapers) than solar and wind power generation plants in the real world.
Some people put it at nearly 10 times the subsidy going to oil and gas, even adjusted for various things.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:12 pm
Sydney#16, All businesses are subsidized if you count the deduction of business expenses from income as a subsidy.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:13 pm
Scott#13:
If somebody is running a scam, it is a businessman.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:15 pm
Scott#13;
You really are the worse. You’d rather screw the planet that look or contribute to a positive change just because it will be hard at first.
Come on man we are already being scammed by the goverment, at least let them scam us while doing something positive for us.
You only care about being screwed as a taxpayer and about your money. Who’s gonna spend that money when the enviroment is screwed and we are all fried.
PRIORITIES, or at least don’t keep voting for the same crappy leaders.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:16 pm
Why are so many males jealous of Anon? I just adore the things he stands for.
I was in Northern Africa, He is very real.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:19 pm
Troy, you are a real character. If you don’t think she is real why do you hang pictures of her on your bath room door?
June 11th, 2014 at 9:21 pm
Anon is in southern Africa. Word is he is pursuing leads on some of those missing girls.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:22 pm
Marcel#23, tThe worst is the type that’s ready to toss millions of jobs, and tens of millions of peoples livelihood’s in the trash over some guess of a promise that by doing what they’re saying they’re gonna do will reduce ocean rise by a tenth of an inch over the next hundreds years. Its not worth doing that amount of damage to all those people for something that is pointless without the rest of the world being involved. All this is, is a power play to shift energy money to the lefts alternate energy investors and to force average citizens to pay more for energy costs and taxes to subsidize that.
You’re just too blind to see it because you buy into all this fear. No ones going to fry, and if they are, we need to start by limiting or removing automobiles because they’re responsible for infinitely more co2 than the combined output of our coal fired power plants.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:26 pm
Libbie#26, you are not up on the latest. Anon’s has rescued a few of the girls. Some have tested positive for aids and hiv,
One committed suicide at the ward. She did not want her family to see her that way. They all had been repeatedly raped and abused.
Anons brought in a sack of testicles with the penises still attached to some of them. He’s mad, very mad.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:28 pm
Will#27, You should of watched Cosmos last night. Climate change and its causes and consequences was explained in layman’s terms so even the local yokels could understand it.
People have always lost jobs when new technology has come along. You either learn how to use it and then make the move to where the jobs are or sit where you are and wither away.
My dads folks in CT hunted whales. When whale oil was replaced by petroleum, they took up farming and factory work. Adapt and overcome.
If it is a ploy to shift money as the right likes to think, many people would rather it go to clean energy anyway. People are tired of dirty air, fouled water and land.
We are in the midst of a Paradigm Shift. As defined by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolution, it is a, “series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions”, and in those revolutions “one conceptual world view is replaced by another”.
We are fighting it out to replace the dirty energy and the mindset that has embraced it over a century plus of corporate greed that has despoiled the planet and by extension, old business practices as practiced by the Kochs, Waltons, Romney’s of the world, etc.
The corporate fascism they embrace, whether it’s based on oil, coal, chemicals, retail is not sustainable and people are waking up to that fact.
Young people who will be inheriting this planet already know it. As usual, they just have to wait for the old farts in charge to break wind and clear their minds.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:30 pm
Scott#13,
How about govt laws ( eminent domain, etc ) that allow coal companies and power generators to resume land cheaply , very few electricity companies pay the their fair share for water and dams ( yes dams are also for irrigation and house hold water , but if dam levels get low, water for electricity production is the last thing cut ) .
Govts specially build roads and subsidised rail lines for coal mines and power generators . Govts pay for most of the security at nuclear power stations and in most countries are the final insurer for major leaks , private insurance on each nuclear power stations would cost a nuclear plant at least a billion dollars a year .
I am Australian so don’t know all the details about when subsidies are paid for wind turbines . But you are correct in that turbines aren’t installed into the tower , mainly because they cant put them on straight away , they have to wait for the towers to settle and be secure ( just like for many decent size bridges that put in the pylons then wait a while before the put the road way structure on top ) and sometimes they have to wait a little bit longer due to delays in construction or transport of the turbines .
June 11th, 2014 at 9:31 pm
Sure they don’t…
June 11th, 2014 at 9:34 pm
How does Michelle do it? Jealous people like Troy just have to find a way to dis her.
My advice to those of you who would look for the negative is to see the positive she has contributed towards this planet since she started her blog.
I tune in to hear the uncensored opinions of the world. Very few sites give you the opportunity to tune in to actually how the world ticks.
And I love Howie’s Alien Tales. I don’t believe in aliens, but he writes a very interesting post when he whips one up.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:35 pm
Scott#13, I think you are a little confused as to how the PRODUCTION Tax Credit actually works…
June 11th, 2014 at 9:36 pm
Graham, Knock your self out. Your liberal friends hate nukes also. Your tree hugging friends are also whining about the blenders for irds program also known as wind turbines,LOL
June 11th, 2014 at 9:39 pm
Mary#29, Well Said.
June 11th, 2014 at 9:43 pm
Deb#25, Troy has those pictures of Zen Lill on his bathroom door to improve the speed and power of his hand jobs.
It works for me!
June 11th, 2014 at 9:56 pm
Howie, I was thinking of you also. Where are you, hope you’re okay…
Luv, Zen *beep* not real Lill
PS for you, Troy – http://youtu.be/cy7xGwYdRk0