I'm sorry but it hard to truly put much stock in an article when it labels the group it is rebutting as the "Alfred E Newman crowd", as in the fictional mascot of MADtv...
That's why I've never agreed with allowing damages to occur as long as they're within the limits set by regulation. We shouldn't make companies exempt like that.
Okay, now that I have read some articles on the issue OP. 1. The original bill to reduce air pollutants from coal & oil plants was passed in 1990. That is NINTY. Nearly 20 years ago. Then in 2000, the EPA warned that they would limit these pollutants, again another 10 year warning period. In other words, the EPA waited 2 decades before actually putting any restrictions into effect. Your telling that the grand old electric grid could not have prepared for this event over the past 20 years? 2. Natural gas has slowly taken a larger and larger share of the energy generation load over the past few years and it a lot more environmentally clean. This rule DOES NOT AFFECT THIS production. If anything natural gas production will easily outpace coal/oil over the next few decades. All these regulations are doing are affecting outdated , older production facilities that are still being used. 3. Average age of plants that would be closed is about 51 years old. If anything, over time these regulation will affect energy production less and less. If fact, the EPA said some 60% of the 1,400 affected coal- and oil-fired generating units already complied with the rule. 4. I love how all the opponents to the rule point out that regulation on mercury will have few health implications. How about the other parts of the regulation to reduce emissions of arsenic, acid gas, nickel and cyanide, etc. Sure many of these alone will may do little or affect a minute amount of people, but they together they can have much larger impact. 5. Even if we say only .1% of people exposed to these pollutants will have any health effects... that is still 250,000 people. Given that we are making such a big deal about having to pay for other people healthcare, preventing a quarter of a million people having to be treated for asthma or what not is a good chunk of public change. 6. You really think the government will not allow for some flexibility in meeting these standards? The regulations require changes in 3 years. Then there is already a state-by-state provision for an additional 4th year to implement them, plus ways to have site-by-site extensions if necessary. 7. So this bill basically asks power companies to close plants that are typically 50 years old, and replace them with newer, more efficient plants. Hmm, building newer plants typically creates jobs doesn't it?
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/12/president-obamas-christmas-present-america From the article: The power industry, aided and abetted by the conservative press, has spent years retailing horror stories about blackouts all along the Eastern seaboard as the new rules take effect, but this is, unsurprisingly, little more than the usual doom mongering. Brad Plumer provides the reality: [An AP] survey found that the coal plants set to be mothballed are mostly ancient — the average age was 51 — and largely run without modern-day pollution controls, as many of them were grandfathered in under the Clean Air Act. What’s more, many of these plants were slated for retirement in the coming years regardless of what the EPA did, thanks to state air-quality rules, rising coal prices, and the influx of cheap natural gas. “In the AP’s survey,” she writes, “not a single plant operator said the EPA rules were solely to blame for a closure, although some said it left them with no other choice.” Crucially, none of the operators contacted by the AP seemed to think that huge swaths of America were on the verge of losing power, as Jon Huntsman claimed. An official from the North American Reliability Corporation put it this way: “We know there will be some challenges. But we don’t think the lights are going to turn off because of this issue.” This jibes with an Edison Electric Institute study, as well as a Department of Energy study (which focused on worst-case scenarios), a study from M.J. Bradley & Associates, and the EPA’s own modeling (PDF). Utilities will manage to keep the power running, in part by switching to natural gas, as plenty of gas plants currently operate well below capacity.
