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27Mar2011
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27Mar2011
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27Mar2011
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Speaking of China…could we do any more harm to the Earth? Evidently the answer is “Yes.” This is so sad what we are doing to our mother Earth. This is just not good.
China is just about the same size as the United States, but livable land is in short supply. With the population and economy still growing at a rapid clip, the government has undertaken a plan to bulldoze hundreds of mountains to create land for building on.
In a paper published in journal Nature this week, three researchers from Chang’an University in China warn that the scores of mountains already being truncated is leading to air and water pollution, erosion, and flooding. With unprecedented plans to remove over 700 mountains and fill valleys with the debris, they warn that “there has been too little modelling of the costs and benefits of land creation. Inexperience and technical problems delay projects and add costs, and the environment impacts are not being thoroughly considered.”
Totaling several hundred square miles of newly flattened land, mountaintop removal has never been carried out at this scale, warn the authors, not even in strip mining operations common in the United States. These projects in China often ignore environmental regulations in search of profit and unadulterated development. Around one-fifth of China’s population, more than 250 million people, live in mountainous areas.
In the city of Yan’an, “the air is often brown with dust owing to construction teams working on windy days without dampening the soil,” write the authors. “Forests and plants on hills and in gullies are stripped ahead of the demolition and filling.”
The project in Yan’an will double the city’s current area by creating around 30 square miles of flat ground. It is the largest project ever attempted on deposits of wind-blown silt, which can subside when wet and cause structural collapse. The scientists warn that such infill projects have never been used for urban construction.
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What are your thoughts? Blog me.
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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Momentum Builds As Seattle City Council Unanimously Approves $15 Minimum Wage
Last month, we wrote about the tale of two Washingtons: just a day after 41 Republican Senators in Washington, DC prevented a federal minimum wage increase to $10.10 from even being debated, Seattle, Washington announced a plan to raise its minimum wage to $15 per hour.
On Tuesday, the city made that deal official, with the city council voting unanimously to approve a $15 minimum wage. It will be phased in over the next seven years and will be the highest in the United States.
The minimum wage has been advancing in cities and states around the country, and not the halls of Congress, for some time. But the ambition of Seattle’s increase has sparked a particular flame for other cities and states considering a bigger increase. The Seattle Timesreports that “organizers who pushed a $15 minimum wage in Seattle are looking at their next targets,” including Bellevue, Spokane, or an increase in the state minimum wage.
“It’s expanding the range of the possible,” said Paul Sonn, general counsel and program director for the National Employment Law Project. “Seattle was a breakthrough.”
Think Progress, meanwhile, has published a detailed investigative report on the fight to bring a living wage to Seattle, featuring a coalition of a millionaire, a socialist, and some Taco Bell workers. While it notes that “some things about that process may be unique to Seattle,” the ingredients for a $15 minimum wage “are completely portable, and could soon come to a city near you.”
At the same time, the ambition of Seattle’s increase — a full-time minimum wage worker making $15 per hour will earn over $30,000 annually — has generated broader discussion among national thought leaders and policy analysts. The Seattle entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, a prominent supporter of the $15 campaign, spells out the argument in favor of the increase in a New York Times column entitled “Well Paid Workers Strengthen Local Economies“:
If the minimum wage had tracked productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.70 today; had it tracked the wages of us in the top 1 percent, it would be $28. Raising it to only $15 in a city as prosperous and expensive as Seattle isn’t a risky experiment. The risky experiment has been the 30 years of trickle-down policy that enriched a few of us while eviscerating the middle class.
The most insidious part of trickle down isn’t the idea that if the rich get richer, that’s good for the economy. It is that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. A $15-an-hour wage isn’t a risky and untried policy in Seattle. It is the natural evolution of common-sense economic thinking.
BOTTOM LINE: Conservatives really believe that the economy grows from the top down – that if we give more to CEOs and billionaires it will trickle down to the rest of us. But decades of trickle down policy has done nothing but give millionaires and billionaires more, leaving middle and worker class families with less and destabilizing our entire economy. Seattle’s $15 minimum wage is a bold alternative approach–one that will help the economy grow from the middle class out and build an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few. And it appears that the wave could be catching on.
*****
Blog me.
Peace out.
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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If you think your messages to your Facebook friends are private, think again. The social network announced that it has plans to look at your personal conversations as a way to make more profits from targeted advertising.
Facebook has been a leader in data-mining, taking information from people’s profiles and studying their behavior to make money and improve the website. But its decision to delve into private content marks the next frontier for Big Data. Silicon Valley and big businesses alike have become increasingly reliant on data mining, which can predict election outcomes based on social media posts, or make a connection between what words people use and the weather.
In its quarterly investors conference call in late April, Facebook’s chief operations officer, Sheryl Sandberg, explained exactly why the company is going further to track your data: “Our goal is that every time you open News Feed, every time you look at Facebook, you see something, whether it’s from consumers or whether it’s from marketers, that really delights you, that you are genuinely happy to see.”
To do that, Facebook wants to take a look at your private messages. “Facebook historically has focused on friends and public content,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the call. “Now, with Messenger and WhatsApp, we’re taking a couple of different approaches towards more private content as well.”
Your chats reveal more about you than you think
Private messaging has become an incredibly popular feature, which nearly every top social media app centers itself around. Snapchat, the picture-sharing app that automatically deletes pictures seconds after they’re sent, just added a one-on-one chat and video function similar to what Twitter and Google already have.
“People are making more intimate connections now than ever before just by chatting through a window on a screen,” Ramani Durvasula, PhD., a Los Angeles-based psychologist at California State University, Los Angeles told ThinkProgress.
Those private conversations are rife with details that may seem insignificant on the surface but provide valuable insight into a person: “What people share via a private chat and what they share in a status update are vastly different,” Durvasula said. That’s what makes personal conversations “the best place to get data because it’s uncensored.”
People are already generally uninhibited online, sharing everything from their emotional ups and downs, to live-tweeting childbirth. But what’s said one-on-one pulls back another layer, exposing what truly makes one tick — “The stressors people share, the intimacies, give insight to what people are most passionate about,” Durvasula said.
Private chats online also tell companies like Facebook how you use technology, what kinds of information you share on which platforms and with which audiences. “Some people use it much more for one-to-one communications than they would use the other parts of Facebook,” Augustin Chaintreau, assistant professor of computer science at Columbia University in New York, explains. For example, Facebook may be interested in seeing whether certain users prefer emailing or texting loved ones, and only use its Messenger app to keep up with more tangential relationships. Or the data could be used to tell whether someone was in distress or needed help, he added.
But there’s a risk in trying to piece together a profile of a person based on their online habits, Chaintreau said. “The risk is that there is a natural reason that people do different things in different places. You’re a different person, have different behaviors. The emotions will be different. Even if you’re very consistently presenting yourself [across the Web], you may or may not like a particular message presented on one platform or app versus the other because it doesn’t fit who you are [or what you're doing in that space].”
All of those pieces of conversations — telling a friend you went to the doctor Tuesday, where you stayed on vacation, the fight you had with your significant other — add up and paint a fuller picture of users, leading to better products and ads recommending clinics, hotels and relationship counselors, Durvasula said: “Everything you say, every character typed is being watched. So if you’re typing a [private] message at 1 a.m., that means you could get targeted for an Ambien ad.”
In the past, Facebook tracked what users didn’t post in status updates, and was able to determine which types of users self-censored the most.
Those are the kinds of details that give companies an advantage, Pamela Rutledge, PhD., director of the Media Psychology Research Center in Newport Beach, Calif., told ThinkProgress. “There’s monetary value in conversation. What do new moms worry about, and how does that change over the lifespan? So [as a company] you’re really stepping into the shoes of your customer. And what better way to do that then look through private conversations,” Rutledge said.
“People don’t realize what they’re putting out there,” Durvasula said. Almost everyone uses the Internet on the daily basis with more than 65 percent having a photo publicly posted online, according to a Pew study. Another one in two Web users readily have their email, birth date or old job posted publicly. Those numbers jump significantly when you look at teens’ use: Almost all teens use their real name, post their interests, birth dates and post pictures of themselves, Pew found. Over 70 percent have their school name and where they live.
And when it comes to personal conversations, even more could be revealed. “What if [a conversation] does reveal something about your medical or mental history? This could keep you from getting insurance or even a job.”
When private chats aren’t actually private
It’s common for tech companies, especially as they go public, to look for ways to make money through advertising. Twitter, which entered the stock market in 2013, recently bought its longtime data partner Gnipwith eyes for turning its user data into revenue. Since Zuckerberg took the company public in 2012, Facebook has been similarly ramping up its advertising efforts — running into privacy controversies along the way, including using users’ profile pictures without their permission to make the ads more relatable.
But the social network also has been strategically positioning itself to join the ranks of Google, which already reads your personal communications. In its privacy agreement, Google reserves the right to sift through users’ data as long as they’re logged in, including everything a person searches with Google.com, what videos they watch on YouTube, where users travel using Google Maps, and private chats and emails.
With widespread data collection and mining Google has run into legal trouble. The company has been dealing with several lawsuits regarding its email scanning, one of which accuses Google of reading children’s messages and tracking their Internet use through its education apps. Google is also waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether collecting data through private, unencrypted Wi-Fi networks for Google Maps is legal.
Earlier this month, Facebook divorced its messaging function into a standalone app. People used to would send messages with their friends online within Facebook’s native app. The company has tweaked its chat function over the years, making it easier to navigate with features — like floating profile pictures to indicate pending messages on the home screen — that made new messages and conversations more prominent in the mobile app. But making Messenger its own app, which has a built-in camera for photo sharing and video messaging, helps Facebook better keep track of the data in those chats.
Facebook’s recent purchases — namely Instagram and WhatsApp — further exemplify the company’s commitment to personal messaging. Instagram, which Facebook bought just before it went public, added direct messaging to its app late last year, allowing users to privately trade photos, and adding to a wealth of data on every user. WhatsApp lets users send SMS messages practically for free to anyone who has the mobile app. The app isn’t very popular in the United States but has a half billion strong user base in Europe, India, Latin America and Africa, where Facebook is looking to expand. WhatsApp is expected to soon hit a billion users, making it a ripe source for digging into — not necessarily what people are saying — but what those millions of texts reveal about their habits and desires.
Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp for $19 billion shows not only how serious the company is about private chats, but how much they’re worth.
The tipping point in the privacy debate
The reality is that it has become nearly impossible to keep your personal data from Internet companies. Google, for example, already collects millions of pieces of user data that rivals only Facebook which houses a complete network of friends, coworkers and family and their musings through statuses, link shares and picture uploads.
“We’re entering a social experiment where so many companies know so much about us and we’re in the dark,” Chaintreau said. People feel a familiarity with companies like Facebook that they use every day. “It’s almost as if they’re your friend.” But without being more transparent about what they’re doing with consumers’ data, that could change.
It’s a tradeoff: “If you want this convenient way to connect with 7 billion people, you have to give us your data,” Durvasula said. And people will generally go along with it: “A lot of people will give up a little bit of their privacy for the convenience, which can sometimes be helpful like Amazon’s ‘People who bought this also bought that’ feature,” Rutledge said. So the debate around privacy won’t be whether or not companies should be collecting such personal information, but what data customers let them collect.
Regardless of whether users see it as a big deal, Facebook’s private snooping may just push the privacy debate to the tipping point. Some people may say, “I don’t care that Facebook knows I like Chiquita bananas and Mercedes Benzes,” Durvasula said, or respond with more alarm, as Rutledge pointed out: “‘Oh my gosh they’re listening to my conversations with my husband!’”
“Most private conversations are about what you see in public anyway, you just feel they’re more appropriate for a limited audience,” Rutledge went on. But the bottom line is that having personal information in cyberspace slowly erodes true privacy, in part because companies like Facebook turn around and make money off it, said Durvasula, who advocates for not using Facebook.
“The real [responsibility] is not to get all fired up and get your pitchforks out, but to draw a line and ask do I have a choice,” Rutledge said. “There’s a burden on the individual to get educated, but there’s also a burden on the companies,” Rutledge said. “We’re not all lawyers, we’re not all IT guys,” the public needs to demand companies explain their data and privacy rights in plain English: “What are these things that I might not understand that I might not want,” Rutledge said.
The next frontier in the data wars
When Edward Snowden leaked documents detailing the U.S. National Security Agency’s dragnet, internationally-run phone surveillance program in 2013, it incited a public outcry, with Americans calling on Congress and President Obama to change how the country collected intelligence. The same concern applies when companies gather bits of your Internet activity.
“Anyone who knows a lot about you can exert a certain amount of power,” Rutledge said. And the amount of information that companies collect is likely going to increase.
It’s possible, Chaintreau adds, for technology like Google Glass to become as ubiquitous as the Internet. That will create a host of new sensory-based data that companies, or even the government, could use to tap into what you see and feel.
Privacy online has only recently become a major concern for most people. As identity theft and large-scale breaches become more common, Web users have started taking additional steps to try to minimize their digital imprint: Nearly 90 percent of online users clear their browser’s cookies, which can be used to track online activity, or delete old status updates, according to a Pew survey. More than half of people have taken steps to avoid being detected online by certain people, organizations or the government.
But despite those efforts, the sheer convenience and desire to stay connected tends to outweigh the loss of privacy.
“Instead of being purposely disconnected [from technology], you have to be more aware,” Chaintreau said. “People need to understand the economics behind their data. If people know how much it was worth maybe they would act differently,” Chaintreau said. Projects like this already exist. DataCoup is one that allows people to sell their information from Facebook, Google, YouTube and other outlets to prospective companies.
“Consumers are winning free services, which are cool,” Chaintreau explained, “but they’re not that expensive to run, and the companies are making millions off the personal data they collect.”
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Happy Sunday! It is a gorgeous one and I am out to enjoy it. I HOPE you are too!
Blog me.
Peace out.
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 :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:
Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129
I love when I get to post something about Michelle Obama. She does so much and yet she gets more media time on the way she dresses (I do think she has great style) than what she does with her intellect.
First lady Michelle Obama declares the “keel well and laid” as she participates as ship’s sponsor in a keel-laying ceremony for a submarine that will become the USS Illinois, Monday, June 2, 2014, at the Electric Boat company in North Kingstown, RI. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia) (Stephan Savoia)
BOSTON – First Lady Michelle Obama visited Boston Monday afternoon for a political fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at the Intercontinental Hotel.
The visit was tied to a tour by Democratic congressional leaders, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, called “When Women Succeed, America Succeeds: Women on a Roll.” Pelosi visited Lowell and Boston on the tour on Monday, accompanied by several of Massachusetts’ members of Congress.
The first lady’s visit was covered by a pool, which means a single reporter was allowed in. Pool reporter Laura Bassett of the Huffington Post reported that around 200 people attended, mostly women, along with 15 members of Congress. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh also attended. Ticket prices ranged from $500 per person to $32,400 per couple, according to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Obama spoke at around 4:30 p.m.
U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, a Democrat representing Massachusetts’ 5th District, who has focused on women and family issues, introduced Obama. Both Clark and Obama talked about the need for Democrats to retake the House in the 2014 midterm elections. Obama said Democrats must win 17 seats, which she called “a doable number,” if Democratic voters turn out.
The midterm elections are widely predicted to favor Republicans, with President Barack Obama struggling with problems with his health care overhaul and an economy that is only slowly recovering from recession.
According to a White House transcript of Michelle Obama’s remarks, the first lady stressed the job growth the country has seen under the Obama administration as well as other accomplishments, including the killing of terrorist Osama bin Laden, increased production of clean energy and increased access to health insurance.
“Barack’s last campaign was not in 2012,” Obama said. “Barack’s last campaign is this year, 2014, because that election in 2012, that election wasn’t the change we sought…it was only the chance for us to make that change. And frankly, if we lose these midterm elections, it’s going to be a whole lot harder to finish what we’ve started together.”
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Readers: No doubt, when “When women succeed, America succeeds.” But my tour, if I had one, it would be called something like this: ”When women ‘woman up’ and support each other, we’ll get what we want…and then America succeeds.”
Let’s heed the first ladies words: “…if we lose these midterm elections, it’s going to be a whole lot harder to finish what we’ve started together.” I’d like to say it a bit harsher (because I can) …just so that we totally understand: “..if we lose these midterm elections, we’re screwed big time.” That’s the reality.
She said that those in the room and others who support the president ‘‘need to call them and remind them that the midterms are coming and we need to give them a ride to the polls to make sure they get there,’’
She said that Democrats are 17 seats away from taking back the House, calling it ‘‘a doable number.’’
So make sure we encourage people to vote…take them to the polls if necessary. No excuses. And…I think 17 is a doable number too. Thoughts? Blog me.
Happy Saturday! Thanks for being here with me.
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 :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:
Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129
Obama did what no other president before him has done. Another first and a feather in Obama’s cap. He’s starting to look like a very handsome bird. :)
So…what exactly did Obama do this time? Once again, Obama has made history. Obama bypassed Congress and put together a plan that represents one of the biggest actions taken by the U.S. government, and the biggest action taken by any U.S. president – this is a big plan to slow climate change. Woot! Woot!GoObama!
President Barack Obama removes his jacket before speaking about climate change, Tuesday, June 25, 2013, at Georgetown University in Washington.
On Monday morning, the Environmental Protection Agency released itsproposed rule to limit the amount of carbon pollution that existing power plants can dump into the atmosphere. This is the most significant move President Obama has made to address the direct causes of climate change.
The Clean Air Act, passed by Congress in 1970 and amended in 1990, is finally getting to tackle carbon pollution from the nation’s 491 smoke-spewing coal power plants. Contrary to what fossil fuel advocates claim, though, it does not mean that EPA will be directly shutting down coal plants. Each state would have a broad menu of carbon-cutting options, including energy efficiency improvements, adding clean energy sources, implementing a carbon tax, or instituting or joining a cap-and-trade system.
By 2020, states will have to have drop their carbon emissions from existing power plants 25 percent from 2005 levels. By 2030, according to the proposed rule, those emissions will have to drop another 5 percent — to 30 percent — from the same base 2005 level.
Here are 8 things you should know about the new rule:
This is the most significant move any U.S. president has made to curtail carbon pollution in history.
It would be the first-ever action to reduce carbon pollution from an existing source in U.S. history. Using the authority granted to the EPA by the Clean Air Act that Congress passed decades ago, every state will need to find ways to lower the carbon dioxide emissions coming out of the fossil fuel-burning power plants. The electricity sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Dropping those 25 percent in 6 years is significant — it amounts to roughly 300 million tons of annual CO2 reduction.
In the rule filed on Monday, the EPA proposed “state-specific rate-based goals for carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector, as well as guidelines for states to follow in developing plans to achieve the state-specific goals.”
This has additional benefits beyond greenhouse gas emission reduction, dropping pollution that causes soot and smog 25 percent by 2030, according to an EPA fact sheet. The EPA also said it would “avoid up to 6,600 premature deaths” and 150,000 asthma attacks in children. When you lower CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants, you also lower the emissions of other pollutants like nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, mercury, and sulfur dioxide.
There are many opinions of what method is best to lower emissions: carbon tax, cap-and-trade, clean energy incentives, direct regulation. All that matters for those concerned about climate change, in the end, is whether emissions drop, and how quickly. The Council of Foreign Relations’ Michael Levi points to EIA analysis of the likely impact of a carbon tax and other climate bills on power plant emissions. A $25-per-ton carbon tax would be far more effective, dropping emissions 47 percent by 2020 and 66 percent by 2030 — and the cap-and-trade bill passed by the House would have lowered emissions 56 percent by 2030 according to the EIA. The EPA’s proposed target, however, achieves reductions comparable to a far lower carbon tax, the Senate’s 2010 American Power Act, and 2012′s Clean Energy Standard Act. Levi suggests that the 2030 could be seen as a moving target — it could be ratcheted down through additional legislation or new regulation.
Indeed, the EPA could finalize this rule next year with a stronger target, especially if it receives a great deal of feedback from the public. Many environmental groups will be pushing for more ambitious targets later in the decade, even as they nearly unanimously applauded the regulations.
There is room for improvement, and time to improve it.
There is a good reason the government is using 2005 as the base year for emissions reductions. It matches the target set by the U.S. and the U.N. in 2009: a17 percent emissions cut by 2020 from 2005 levels. The targets in the proposed rule apply only to the electricity sector, while the 17 percent target is for all sectors of the economy. At the same time, using that year allows the EPA to be less aggressive than if it used a more recent year when emissions were lower.
In 2005, U.S. power plants emitted over 2.4 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. These levels dropped after 2007, to just over 2 billion tons in 2012. The proposed rule’s target means that carbon pollution from the nation’s power plants would have to drop to roughly 1.8 billion tons by 2020, and 1.68 billion by 2030.
In 2013, energy-related carbon emissions jumped back up 2 percent in the U.S. after several years of decline. This was mainly because coal use increased as natural gas priced inched up a bit. Though the 25 percent drop by 2020 does get things moving in the right direction, the fact that the 2030 target is just 30 percent does not appear particularly aggressive on its own.
The Natural Resources Defense Council’s plan would drop emissions by 20-30 percent by 2020 from 2012 standards, meaning roughly 1.4 billion tons of CO2 at the most. NRDC estimated furthermore that the $21 billion initial cost would be paid back twofold by $51 billion in public health benefits and avoided climate impacts by 2020. EPA estimates that by 2030, the rule will yield “net climate and health benefits of $48 billion to $82 billion.”
The EPA is just doing what Congress (and the Supreme Court) told it to do many years ago.
Though the EPA is simply carrying out the letter of the Clean Air Act in acting to regulate carbon dioxide as an air pollutant, as the Roberts Court ruled it had the authority to do in 2007, there would not have been the need to do so if Congress had acted a few years ago.
The House passed a cap-and-trade bill in 2009, but the Senate did not vote on a bill, dooming a strong campaign for comprehensive climate legislation. This put even more impetus on the EPA’s rulemaking authority to rein in carbon pollution.
So the Obama Administration is taking action not only because it will be a big first step toward a low-carbon future, but because it is executing the laws of the land in the way the Supreme Court affirmed 7 years ago.
States will have huge amounts of flexibility to comply.
As Dan Utech writes in a White House blog post, there are 50 ways the “EPA proposal can be implemented.” The rule divides up the pathways states can use to achieve these carbon pollution reductions into four basic groups: lowering individual plant emissions, switching generation to to natural gas combined cycle plants, switching generation to clean, low-emissions renewable energy, and lowering electricity demand or increasing efficiency. Clean Air Act wonks refer to these pathways as Best System of Emission Reduction, or BSER.
“This plan is all about flexibility,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy Monday morning. “That’s what makes it ambitious, but achievable. That’s how we can keep our energy affordable and reliable. The glue that holds this plan together, and the key to making it work, is that each state’s goal is tailored to its own circumstances, and states have the flexibility to reach their goal in whatever way works best for them.”
The rule also highlights regional compacts like the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative as progress that can already be taken into account for emission reduction achievements, and could serve as a model for other states. McCarthy put it this way: “If states don’t want to go it alone, they can hang out! They can join up with a multi-state market based program, or make new ones. They’re doing it now.”
A report earlier this month by Ceres looked at how carbon emissions varied widely by state, and the most carbon-intensive states offer an easy rubric of where much of the state-based opposition will originate.
The darker the green, the more carbon-intensive the state’s energy is.
CREDIT: CERES
Coal was on its way out and this speeds up the transition.
The fossil fuel industry, conservative groups, and politicians from coal-heavy conservative states greeted news of the details of the proposed rule with predictable attacks. A coal industry lawyer told the New York Times that the rule “is designed to materially damage” the fossil fuel industry, household budgets, and jobs. Nevermind that coal was already on its way out for other reasons: 60 gigawatts of dirty plants were expected to retire anyway by 2020.
These groups will try to fight the rule in court, and though the lawsuits could slow down implementation, the Clean Air Act is clear, and so have the courts: the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide. In fact, if it does not, it opens itself to arguably much stronger lawsuits petitioning it to regulate CO2.
This is one rule in a long string of carbon-cutting actions since President Obama took office.
Electricity production churns out almost a third of America’s greenhouse gas emissions, followed by the second-largest source: transportation. In President Obama’s first term, following EPA’s Supreme Court-permitted “endangerment finding” that carbon pollution was a danger to human health and welfare, the federal government moved to double fuel economy in light vehicles by 2025.
Last June, President Obama unveiled his Climate Action Plan, which had three main goals: cutting carbon pollution in America, leading international efforts to cut global emissions, and preparing the U.S. for the costly impacts of climate change. Many of the items on his laundry list have seen action in recent months, including reducing methane leaks.
The rule won’t come into effect overnight.
This is a proposed rule, and will not be finalized until next year, after which the states would have a year to draft and submit their plans on how they will achieve their emissions reductions. If EPA approves, those states are off to the races. If not, EPA can just submit their own plan for the state.
And after it takes another look at the carbon rule for new plants, it can revisit the finalized rule for existing plants — it has 8 years to do so. This means that in 2022 or 2023, they can update the rules, leaving plenty of time to implement stronger state standards.
It’s not just fossil fuel companies and conservative groups that have a voice in this process.
Perhaps the most important takeaway is that though this is the most significant step the U.S. will take to cut carbon pollution, it is, still just a proposed rule. The agency announced four public hearings: on July 29 in Atlanta, GA and Denver, CO; on July 31 in Pittsburgh, PA, and during the week of July 28 in Washington, DC. EPA will be soliciting comments from all Americans before it is finalized next year. Anyone in America can comment on the proposed rule here.
*****
Readers: Are you smiling from ear to ear like I am? And it’s not only because it’s Friday. Thank you Obama for doing something…again. And yes, since it is Friday…you know what to do. Blog me.
Peace & Love…
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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