Posted on 06/27/2015 2:27:18 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
With the Obama administration only two months away from releasing its “Clean Power Plan,” much debate has focused on the supposed benefits of cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions over the next 15 years. Lost amid the rhetoric is the economic hardship it will impose on working families — especially the 2.2 million blacks and Hispanics living in Pennsylvania.
That's the finding from a new study commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce. This regulation will leave minority communities with disproportionately fewer jobs, lower incomes and higher poverty than whites. Thus, while the administration calls its regulation a “justice issue” for minorities, its effects will amount to a severe injustice.
The regulation — enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency — will shutter much of our existing energy grid. New facilities will necessarily cost more and also rely on more expensive energy sources. Our study estimates this transformation will increase annual electricity costs by $565 billion in the coming years.
Ultimately, these higher costs will be passed on to families in the form of higher electricity bills and higher prices at every store. This is especially harmful to blacks and Hispanics.
Right now, blacks spend 50 percent more of their family incomes on utilities than whites, while Hispanics spend 10 percent more. This regulation will exacerbate these disparities, increasing the energy burden on both blacks and Hispanics by around 35 percent.
Then there's the matter of lost income and lost jobs. Minorities typically have lower-paying jobs that are most vulnerable to regulatory cost increases. Ours are the first to be affected when business costs rise, such as the higher electricity bills this regulation will bring about.
Our study estimates cumulative job losses for blacks and Hispanics of 2.2 million and 3.8 million, respectively, over the next decade. We also estimate reduced annual household incomes for blacks and Hispanics by a respective $455 and $515 by 2035.
These three effects — higher energy bills, fewer jobs, lower incomes — will lead to greater hardships on families already struggling to get by. Our study estimates the regulation will increase black and Hispanic poverty rates by 23 and 26 percent, respectively.
We simply cannot afford this. While we're working hard to pursue the American Dream and give our children the best shot at a better life, the EPA is pushing us even further down the ladder of opportunity.
State lawmakers must act to prevent this from happening. The regulation requires that unelected state environmental agencies draft implementation plans and submit them directly to the EPA. This sidesteps Pennsylvania's elected representatives and eliminates accountability from voters.
There are two ways to fix this. Governors can issue executive orders prohibiting their environmental agencies from submitting plans to the EPA or our state legislators can pass legislation to the same effect. Either option ensures that elected officials have the final say over what happens to their constituents.
These are commonsense and simple solutions that could prevent the impending burdens facing millions of black and Hispanic families. Pennsylvania lawmakers should do everything in their power to prevent that from happening.
Harry C. Alford is the president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce.
The Left's assault on natural resources and their 50 year struggle to de-develop the United States through regulation, taxation and EPA "protections" have hurt industry, mining, forestry, fishing and manufacturing.
Sept 2010 [Holdren is still Obama's Science and Tech Czar] White House Science Czar Says He Would Use ‘Free Market’ to ‘De-Develop the United States’
"In a video interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNSNews.com that he would use the “free market economy” to implement the “massive campaign” he advocated along with Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich to “de-develop the United States.”
In his role as President Barack Obama’s top science and technology adviser, Holdren deals with issues ranging from global warming to health care.
“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” Holdren wrote along with Paul and Anne H. Ehrlich in the “recommendations” concluding their 1973 book Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions.
“De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote.
“Resources must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries," Holdren and his co-authors wrote. "This effort must be largely political, especially with regard to our overexploitation of world resources, but the campaign should be strongly supplemented by legal and boycott action against polluters and others whose activities damage the environment. The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”.....
There are two ways to fix this. Governors can issue executive orders prohibiting their environmental agencies from submitting plans to the EPA or our state legislators can pass legislation to the same effect. Either option ensures that elected officials have the final say over what happens to their constituents.
These are commonsense and simple solutions that could prevent the impending burdens facing millions of black and Hispanic families. Pennsylvania lawmakers should do everything in their power to prevent that from happening. .....
March 2015: FEMA to deny funds to warming deniers
" The Federal Emergency Management Agency is making it tougher for governors to deny man-made climate change. Starting next year, the agency will approve disaster-preparedness funds only for states whose governors approve hazard-mitigation plans that address climate change.
This may put several Republican governors who maintain that the Earth isn't warming due to human activities, or prefer to take no action, in a political bind. Their position may block their states' access to hundreds of millions of dollars in FEMA funds. In the last five years, the agency has awarded an average $1 billion a year in grants to states and territories for taking steps to mitigate the effects of disasters.
"If a state has a climate denier governor that doesn't want to accept a plan, that would risk mitigation work not getting done because of politics," said Becky Hammer, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council's water program. "The governor would be increasing the risk to citizens in that state" because of his climate beliefs.......
"This could potentially become a major conflict for several Republican governors," said Barry Rabe, an expert on the politics of climate change at the University of Michigan. "We aren't just talking about coastal states."......
These blacks and Hispanics are cannon fodder to the Left. Obama doesn’t care. The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.
[snip]
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW - Michigan v. EPA and related cases (Argued 3/25/15) – This case looks at an EPA emissions regulation. From Oyez: "Did the Environmental Protection Agency unreasonably refuse to consider costs in determining whether it was appropriate to regulate electric utility steam generating units?"
[snip]
Obama voters have got to be the most stupid people on the planet.
The issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution - Alinsky.
The White House Wants Your Doctor To Teach You About Global Warming
".........The central message: doctors should warn their patients that global warming could make their health worse.
“I know we have people all around the country, in all of the regions, who are also listening to this conversation, and like all of you in the room, I hope will go out and continue to talk and educate,” echoed Nicole Lurie, assistant secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Health Department.
“We need to engage medical students themselves,” said Vice Admiral Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, “to demand the curriculum change” to prepare them for a warmer future.
Speakers at the White House summit didn’t just tell doctors to go out and raise awareness about global warming, but to also promote the Obama administration’s regulatory agenda aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions.
“We need people, proponents, to talk about it. Make sure that the public is informed,” said Texas Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. “Stand behind the EPA, because they’re attacked every day, all day by many committees.”
.........“If the facts came even close to supporting the EPA’s economically destructive plans, then Obama officials and their political allies in the environmental community would not need to carefully stage manage events like today’s so-called summit, or use other deceptive tactics to manufacture the appearance of public support for their actions,” Kerrigan wrote...."
"With the continued buildup of greenhouse gases and the continued apathy of governments towards the lethal results of human population growth, Paul and Anne Ehrlich believe that a potential environmental storm is building up to bring down civilization....
..... Can much of the world population come to understand that humanity’s current dilemmas of environmental destruction, inequities, unemployment, and declining democracy, are not largely an accidental result of cultural evolution, but are rather mostly the consequences of deliberate planning, by those in charge, to increase their own wealth and power? Can they move dramatically to close the gap between the rich and poor that is especially dramatic in developing nations, and growing in many rich ones, especially the United States?....
[SNIP]
.....The MAHB’s [mahb.stanford.edukey] strategy is threefold: foster collaboration between natural scientists and social scientists to better understand the issues; build understanding of what we call ‘foresight intelligence’—the ability of individuals, institutions, governments, and society to act (behave) in ‘future smart’ ways; and engage civil society (individuals and organizations), already concerned about collapse, in ways that ‘strengthen’ the political impact of their endeavors. In short, the MAHB’s main goal could be said to help generate a bottom-up program to produce large numbers of global citizens, who, in turn might be able to divert society from its suicidal course. The odds of success seem small, but what choice does any ethical person have but to try?"
They are expected to be the sacrificial collateral damage for the greater cause. At least by those that push away the lobster and T-bones as they feel so full right now.
They can find sympathy right between sh*t and syphilis in the dictionary.
What the National Black Chamber of Commerce is effectively saying is that it is Okay if EPA restrictions oppress whites disproportionately, but it is wrong to allow the EPA oppression to cause blacks and Hispanics any hardship.
Certainly some first-rate thinking here. Worthy of a Nobel Prize like Obama got.
The less developed a country is, the more polluted it is. Only developed countries have enough money and resources to keep their environment clean. Furthermore, people only care about the environment when their basic needs are met.
“Environmentalists” who oppose any and all development in the name of the environment are working actively towards the opposite of what they claim.
Not quite accurate.
A completely undeveloped country can be quite unpolluted.
However, once the development process starts, pollution tends to get worse and worse till it hits a tipping point where sufficient wealth has been generated that some of the surplus can be applied to the "less urgent" needs of improving environmmental quality rather than simple survival.
Always.
It's just a tool to take more control, as is Obamacare, and federal funding of [fill in the blank].
They can sue under the disparate impact constitutional rights just created by SCOTUS.
I have not seen any evidence of that. Without development, people living off the land can cause massive damage to the ecosystem as they hunt and forage for basic sustenance, especially when their populations grow. Throughout history, species have become extinct and local ecosystems have been permanently altered. I've observed that, for the most part, environmental concern only originates from developed countries.
And I'm sure the fact that Obama chose to use the 9 coffins in Charleston as a soapbox to divided (in the South were race relations are good) and not in Chicago where gun violence in the Black community is practically an hourly occurrence, will be noticed.
Race relations in the South are good because here we understand that "can-do individual ruggedness" that encompasses the idea of an enduring American exceptionalism of freedom for ALL, a strong military, and faith and family keeps us strong. Those who fall into the welfare trap set by Democrats need to find their way out.
The South is more than a flag; Texas is more than the Alamo -- we are a nation "Out of many, one."
The Left isn't bringing us together; they will keep pulling us apart until there is no resistance left to fight their grab for power over us all.
to be honest with ya, I don’t give a damn about the 2.2 million blacks and Hispanics living in Pennsylvania.
Species were almost certainly drive to extinction on some islands, and there is considerable evidence this may have also happened on the American and Australian continents.
But few would contend that the Americas, for example, were heavily polluted before 1492, outside very specific and small areas. Same with Europe at the time, despite the extinction of certain species (aurochs, bison, etc.). Man was simply not the utterly dominating species he is today, there always remained room around humanity for other species to exist.
Speaking of the Americas, I highly recommend a book called 1491 by Charles Mann. It’s about history of the Americas before Columbus. It shows that while Indians did not simply “live lightly on the land” as the PC idiocy claims, like some sort of wildlife, they also did not utterly dominate the environment.
Things get worse and then better in an industrializing economy with regard to pollution. Same thing, roughly, happens with regard to the welfare of workers. For most people, the change from living on the land to factor workers is a decline, almost always in quality of life and often in economic terms.
Things get worse to some extent for a while, and then they gradually get much, much better. Marx, of course, reached his conclusions by studying the lives of workers in Europe about when they reached the bottom of this curve. Rather than realizing it was about to turn upward, he not illogically assumed it would continue in the direction it was trending.
Much blood and suffering followed from his misunderstanding of these trends.
Another case of people not recognizing where they are on a trend line is the uproar over the population explosion in the 70s and later. In retrospect, people were making assumptions about population growth by project present trends that were already starting to turn around.
Looking back on it, I remember SF stories I swallowed whole in which people had been limited by law to one-child families for generations, yet the population continued to explode. How exactly does that work?
It’s actually pretty complicated. Plenty of serious issues have happened to civilizations that were not industrial at all. Maya, Easter Island, Pitcairn Islands, etc. are just a few. Plus the Dominican Republic simply developed more to utilize alternatives to burning wood, while Haiti kept burning wood and scalping their vegetation. Overgrazing is a serious threat even to primitive nations, and erosion is a form of pollution, especially when you include nitrates that wash into surface water or end up in groundwater.
I would add the threat of overgrazing to your list of problems in the undeveloped world.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.