This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply. The New York Times: The Trump administration announced Monday that it would take formal steps to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, setting up a bitter fight over the future of America’s efforts to tackle global warming. Why is every week a god damn nightmare? I mean, come on. Expand - View Original
I see this as more of a PR move for continued support from his core constituents. Natural gas is cheaper and cleaner and coal was well on its way out before the curb on emissions. I'd be surprised if this repeal will have any impact at all. The question to me is, was the Obama policy even necessary? I think he hurt his party and provided more fodder for his adversaries than the policy did any good.
I'm not sure what that face means. It's a pretty well documented fact that natural gas did more to kill coal than the emissions ban. I really don't see this creating many jobs or firing back up any coal plants.
Coal extraction is still happening. The coal fired power plants are already built and companies will squeeze every last drop out of it to the extent its permitted. You're correct that we'll be moving on, but the carbon emissions rule simply would've sped up the transition. Also, its worth mentioning that natural gas is not necessarily cleaner when you take emissions from extraction and processing into account. Not to mention the environmental destruction from the wave of major pipeline construction. Of course we need to move on from coal, and stricter emissions rules are always a good thing, but we should be rushing along clean renewables rather than natural gas.
I mostly agree with you, my point was that I don't think lifting this ban will change much. Outside of the coal plants that already exist there is no money to be had in firing up more. I just think this repeal will be negligible in the large scheme of things. You very well could be right that the ban sped up the transition but i'm more on the side that coal was already dead. I find the motive in this move more interesting from a political point of view than an environmental one. It's a tough argument to make that natural gas is not cleaner than coal. I don't disagree that it's destructive but more than coal? I'd like to see the data on that. I think what people tend to forget is that all extraction processes are destructive, be it coal, lithium, gas, or oil. We tend to underestimate or fail to plan for the consequences of our actions. Also, I think there is a general underestimation of just how much produced oil goes into the creation of the equipment needed to collect renewable energies or just into all of our electronics for that matter. We have a long way to go.