Obama's plan, you may have noticed, allows each state 2-3 years to come up with a plan to cut their electrical generation GHG output by 30%. As Food and Water Watch said this morning, "In addition, by allowing states the option of using cap-and-trade and offsets, the administration has cut the legs out from under its own rule. Carbon trading is designed to benefit big corporate polluters. It lets industry decide for itself how to limit carbon emissions based on profit motive, and makes it cheaper for the dirtiest power plants to simply pay for permits instead of cleaning up pollution."
Cap and Trade is a boondoggle through which lesser-polluting corporations can sell credits to greater-polluting corporations, so that the former can make a buck helping the latter ignore the emission standard so as to continue polluting profitably. It should be called CAPITALIST TRADING, not "Cap-and-Trade". Think Wall Street, the banking cartel's Fed, derivatives, insider trading, corporate off-shoring tax dodges, selling debts as assets.
2-3 years eh. Isn't that when the next presidential election is? Could it be that the Obummer is setting up these new EPA regs for Hillary? Who knows maybe it's just a co-incidence. But one thing is for sure somewhere long before 2030 a Republican will win the White House and just as this edict by Obama doesn't need congressional approval neither does its dispatch.
Of course there are plenty of self-interested entrepreneurs and the bankers who want to finance the latest gizmo and who see big profits in selling the 'magic bullet' hopefuls on one clean energy scheme or another. Their 'don't worry, be happy' articles are everywhere nowadays. They understand the numbers, the science, the embedded energy involved. They are the deceivers, they understand the materialistic mentality of the believers who want a free lunch. The capitalists know that the government pigs will go along with anything, and provide huge subsidies to boot, to keep themselves in power and near the trough.
One article 'Obama's EPA Plan vs. Climate Catastrophe: 'Fighting a Wildfire with a Garden Hose' by Jon Queally at Common Dreams is worth a look-see in that it gives short quotes by many of the mainstream environmental movement's most well known spokespersons and provides links to their sites' articles on this topic. Almost all of these folks are critical of the White House plan to cut emissions. They all seem to agree that the new rules simply don't go far enough. Which IMO is the type of understatement that may get each of them an invitation to lunch with the Liar Obama but actually mislead folks into thinking these new regs are something other than the cynical political ploy they are.
This diatribe against Obama's bullshit could go on and on but for today let's just take a quick look at who Obama's bullshit will benefit - the frackers. The new EPA regs focus on the CO2 coming out of the stacks of the America's coal burning power plants. Everybody knows burning coal is a dirty business, we've seen the pictures of Beijing's crunchy air. Coal is dirty, but over and over again we're told that burning natural gas is a much cleaner alternative. And it sorta is as long as you only consider the burning part not the total footprint.
Fracked gas isn't the same as conventional natural gas. Fracked gas is plagued by many disgusting added features like the massive abuse of water [murder actually, because once polluted by the unknown chemicals involved in fracking, this non-renewable resource essential to all life becomes unusable forever]. Fracking creates fissures that allow what were trapped gas to migrate into out groundwater, aquifers and wells contaminating them. Scientists investigating fracking leaks say high levels of methane is released in fracked areas. Methane is nearly 100 times more potent as a GHG than CO2.
Recent studies by Cornell experts explored in Andrew Nikiforuk's article 'Natural Gas Is a Bridge to Nowhere' have found leakage rates of four per cent in an unconventional gas field in Colorado, and nine per cent in a Utah shale gas field. Most of the U.S.'s additional natural gas will come from unconventional fields requiring extensive fracking. Natural gas only has a lower footprint than coal in energy systems where the methane leakage rate from wells, pipelines, gas plants and infrastructure is 3.2 per cent or less.
So to conclude, dirty coal is getting the boot, at least for now, maybe, depending on when the Republicans win the White House except wherever the bastards can trade their pollution for bogus carbon credits or it'll be replaced by either some green illusion that will consume and outgas just as much crap and with the added benefit of all those yummy profits and interest to build that infrastructure. Or, the electrical generation power plants will be re-built to burn fracked gas, again more yummy profits for the renovators more yummy interest for the bank's shareholders, more fossil fuels consumed to rebuild. All so that under no circumstances can the evil ideology of CONSERVATION be allowed to be entertained.
