Lisa Jackson, Destroyer of Worlds
Ah, transparency. Clearly concerned to achieve maximum visibility, the Environmental Protection Agency officially released a whopper of a rule the Wednesday before Christmas. How kind of environmental officials!On one hand, we have all of the failed green energy initiatives that the president has been pushing, funding and propping up. On the other hand, we have Lisa Jackson unveiling massive regulations on proven sources of energy when she thinks nobody is paying attention.
This afternoon, the EPA announced regulations that will require power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxics within the next three years. In other words, the rule targets coal-fired power plants. Sure, coal is a “dirty” form of energy and, yes, it is a fossil fuel, but, unfortunately, these regulations will cost the country too much to justify.
According to Scott Segal, the director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, this rule — commonly known as the Utility MACT rule (MACT stands for “maximum achievable control technology”) — is the most expensive air rule the EPA has ever proposed in terms of direct costs.
“Utility MACT will undermine job creation in the United States in several different ways,” Segal explained. “It will result in retirement of a significant number of power plants and either fail to replace that capacity or replace it with less labor-intensive forms of generation. It will increase the cost of power, undermining the international competitiveness of almost two dozen manufacturing industries, and it will reduce employment upstream in the mining sectors. All told, it is anticipated that the rule will result in the loss of some 1.44 million jobs by 2020. While some jobs are created by complying with the new rule, the number and quality of those jobs is far less than those destroyed. We estimate that for every one temporary job created, four higher-paying permanent jobs are lost.”
Source: HotAir
Hope! Change!
