Yesterday I mentioned that Team Obama was going to release a plan, which is less a plan than a rough outline
(White House) Building on the strong progress made under President Obama to curb the emissions that are driving climate change and lead on the international stage, today the United States submitted its target to cut net greenhouse gas emissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The submission, referred to as an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), is a formal statement of the U.S. target, announced in China last year, to reduce our emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, and to make best efforts to reduce by 28%.
There’s no such thing as “carbon pollution”. First, it is CO2. Second, it is a necessary trace gas necessary for life on Earth. Calling it “carbon pollution” means this is politics, not science.
Here are the intended targets
- Clean Power Plan: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed guidelines for existing power plants in June 2014 that would reduce power sector emissions 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 while delivering $55-93 billion in annual net benefits from reducing carbon pollution and other harmful pollutants.
- Standards for Heavy-Duty Engines and Vehicles: In February 2014, President Obama directed EPA and the Department of Transportation to issue the next phase of fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles by March 2016. These will build on the first-ever standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (model years 2014 through 2018), proposed and finalized by this Administration.
- Energy Efficiency Standards: The Department of Energy set a goal of reducing carbon pollution by 3 billion metric tons cumulatively by 2030 through energy conservation standards issued during this Administration. The Department of Energy has finalized multiple measures addressing buildings sector emissions including energy conservation standards for 29 categories of appliances and equipment as well as a building code determination for commercial buildings. These measures will also cut consumers’ annual electricity bills by billions of dollars.
- Economy-Wide Measures to Reduce other Greenhouse Gases: EPA and other agencies are taking actions to cut methane emissions from landfills, coal mining, agriculture, and oil and gas systems through cost-effective voluntary actions and common-sense regulations and standards. At the same time, the State Department is working to slash global emissions of potent industrial greenhouse gases, called HFCs, through an amendment to the Montreal Protocol; EPA is cutting domestic HFC emissions through its Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program; and, the private sector has stepped up with commitments to cut global HFC emissions equivalent to 700 million metric tons through 2025.
That last one should give everyone pause: “economy-wide measures”. Every single one of these means a cost of living increase for Americans, and will burden the middle and lower classes, while barely impacting those rich 1%ers, like Obama, that the Democrats constantly demonize.
And for what?
(Barbwire)…Obama’s plan will only avert 0.001 degrees Celsius of global temperature rises a year, according to climate scientist Chip Knappenberger with the libertarian Cato Institute.
Knappenberger notes that Obama’s climate plan mirrors a scenario where the U.S. reduces carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2050. Using this assumption, Knappenberger calculates that only about one-tenth of a degree of temperature rise will be averted by 2100. This breaks down to about a one-thousandth of a degree of averted temperature rise every year over the next century.
The cost? It’s not clear, but EPA regulations aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector is projected to cost as much as $8.8 billion a year based on agency figures. Other studies put the cost much higher — a NERA study found the costs would be $41 billion per year.
.0001 degrees C. All for a massive increase in the cost of living.
(Reuters) The Obama administration’s plan for U.N. climate change talks encountered swift opposition after its release Tuesday, with Republican leaders warning other countries to “proceed with caution” in negotiations with Washington because any deal could be later undone.
Everything Obama is doing makes it that much more important to get a Republican in the White House, even a super squishy one like Jeb Bush. Republican voters failed to show up with Romney, who had a chance to roll back many of Obama’s regulations and rules, particularly Obamacare. Obama seems to be on a scorched earth campaign. Time to roll it back.
8 billion sure is a big number !
It really frightened me until I realized it was 7 cents a day for each person in the USAteach please tell us what personal impact this will have on you
First, just because a substance is necessary at a certain amount doesn’t mean it’s not damaging at lesser or greater amounts. Think of water, sodium, heat, potassium, ozone, bacteria, years, Scotch etc.
from Encyclopedia Brittanica: pollution, also called environmental pollution, the addition of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or any form of energy (such as heat, sound, or radioactivity) to the environment at a rate faster than it can be dispersed, diluted, decomposed, recycled, or stored in some harmless form.
Wikipedia: Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change.[1] Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light. Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants.
Humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere (and oceans) faster than it can be removed, causing CO2 to accumulate. The CO2 is causing the Earth to warm, which by most accounts is and will be deleterious to human civilization. So yes, CO2 is a pollutant in this context.
Warmth is necessary for life, but too much is dangerous to human health.
Deniers keep saying that. Can you support this claim with evidence? How about numbers?
“Massive increase” is squishy. Do your models predict a quadrupling in cost of living? Doubling? Can you express in meaningful terms? Will someone who pays $100/mo in home heating, cooling, lighting etc suddenly start paying $400/mo? What do you mean by massive?
If one of your primary arguments has evolved to “it will cost too much”, shouldn’t you support your argument? (Deniers have lost and are abandoning the “It’s not warming” and “It’s not CO2” arguments, as predicted).
Here are the two activities listed:
1. cut methane emissions from landfills, coal mining, ag, and oil and gas systems
2. slash global emissions of potent industrial greenhouse gases, called HFCs
What is your specific concern about cutting methane and HFCs?
As mentioned in Pirate’s Cove many times the focus on carbon footprints is a manufactured crisis to extract more power and resources from society. A far bigger impact to the environment than the emission of naturally occurring carbon dioxide is the destruction of the planet for all the precious roads on which these 0 emssion vehicles would travel.
Assuming a zero emission vehicle can be produced or one that even creates energy as it operates, we would still have destroyed countless natural settings and flattened landscapes for petroleum-based roads on which to travel in blissful serenity, secure in the knowledge that we are not producing even 1 microgram of “toxic” carbon dioxide.
Why do warmer advocates keep offering these typre of measures? They will never get consensus.
Why not offer a 10 billion dollar prize to anyone who can find a non fossil fuel solution to energy?
If successful 10 billion dollars would be a pittance compared to the return.
If AGW is real then the impact would be noticeable. If not, then their are other benefits.
..or we can just keep squabbling over this for another decade.
The measures will likely not be implimented so it is only lip service by the White House to give the illusion that they are trying.
However, in Ontario a carbon tax is a real possibility. Other provinces and countries are paying this to no avail.
Money that could be much better used to benefit other aspects of our societies.
“deniers have lost and are abandoning ‘It’s not warming’ and ‘it’s not CO2″ argument”, as predicted.” Good one J- nice try. You guys haven’t predicted anything correctly yet, and still aren’t now. If anything, people are abandoning the church of the giant hoax. “CO2 will be deleterious to the environment.” But before that you inquired about the supposed massive increase in the cost of living: “Quadrupling, doubling, what do you mean by massive?” This is why we love to debate J. Why don’t you first answer how “deleterious to the environment Co2 will be”? And, speaking of “will be”, you mean you still don’t know what, how much or when this deleterious stuff “will” happen?
Except for warming, ice melting, sea level rise, ocean pH dropping…
Why won’t you answer what damages you imagine to the economy?
It’s always nice when the left tell us what other people can afford or what they should spend.