EPA Gonna Punch That Climate Emergency Right In The Snoot!

The Biden administration rolled out yet another piece of its climate plan today, as the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new regulations to limit the greenhouse gases emitted by electric power plants fueled by coal and methane (so-called “natural” gas). As the New York Times puts it in an admirably simple and accurate sentence,

The nation’s 3,400 coal- and gas-fired power plants currently generate about 25 percent of greenhouse gases produced by the United States, pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.

Instead of mandating any particular technology, the rules set caps on rates of carbon dioxide pollution that plants can release, leaving it up to energy producers to find ways to meet the goal of eliminating CO2 emissions by 2040. If industry can find ways to capture all CO2 from smokestacks — technology that doesn’t exist yet — then great. But it’s more likely that utilities would have to switch to green energy, or for gas plants, to burning green hydrogen (the kind produced without fossil fuels), which emits no carbon.

And while the EPA doesn’t say it, we’re happy to: The faster the US and the world adopt solar and wind electricity, the cheaper that electricity will be per megawatt hour. According to an Oxford University study published in September, a rapid transition away from fossil fuels to wind and solar could save the world $12 trillion by 2050, which would help offset other costs of the transition like grid upgrades and developing reliable storage/backup/distribution of clean energy. Going slow, on the other hand, will cost more and result in greater climate caused damage.


The EPA press release says the regulations will

avoid up to 617 million metric tons of total carbon dioxide (CO2) through 2042, which is equivalent to reducing the annual emissions of 137 million passenger vehicles, roughly half the cars in the United States. Through 2042, EPA estimates the net climate and health benefits of the standards on new gas and existing coal-fired power plants are up to $85 billion.

The EPA emphasizes the public health benefits of not burning all that stuff, which doesn’t just contribute to global warming but releases nasties like particulates, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides into the air Americans breathe, especially in communities nearest to power plants, which tend to be home to poor and minority people because America. In addition to helping to keep the planet more habitable for large mammals like gazelles and the NCAA Final Four champion men’s and women’s teams, the proposed standards would mean huge health gains. In 2030 alone, the EPA says, cleaner air resulting from the new standards would prevent

• approximately 1,300 premature deaths;

• more than 800 hospital and emergency room visits;

• more than 300,000 cases of asthma attacks;

• 38,000 school absence days; [and]

• 66,000 lost workdays.

Under the new rules, virtually all coal and methane gas plants would be required to either reduce or capture 90 percent of their carbon emissions by 2038, or shut down. Currently, roughly a quarter of American coal plants are already scheduled to be retired by 2029, per the US Energy Information Agency.

Needless to say, industry groups and Republican state officials are at this very moment working on the first drafts of legal challenges to the policy, written as is traditional with the congealed blood of seals and dolphins killed by oil spills. The Times reports that West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) is already declaring the EPA plan DOA in the courts, whining that “It is not going to be upheld, and it just seems designed to scare more coal-fired power plants into retirement — the goal of the Biden administration.” Stupid not-wanting-climate-catastrophe Biden!

Sen. Joe Manchin (“D”-West Virginia), whose family fortune is built on selling some of the filthiest coal available — a mining waste slurry called “gob” coal that’s particularly carbon intensive — also threatened today that he will oppose any new Biden appointees to the EPA unless the plan is dropped. Manchin griped that the administration is

“determined to advance its radical climate agenda and has made it clear they are hellbent on doing everything in their power to regulate coal- and gas-fueled power plants out of existence, no matter the cost to energy security and reliability.”

Also, fuck the future, the man has money at stake, and he hasn’t spent a career lining his own nest with filthy feathers from crows with black lung disease just to watch it all go away because people in the tropical regions think they “deserve” to live.

So yeah, kids, this is going to be a fight between the wealthy bastards who want to keep pumping the atmosphere full of planet-heating pollutants, and the first president ever whose administration is actually taking the action needed to get close to meeting the US’s commitments to decarbonization by midcentury, which all nations need to do in order to hold warming to non-catastrophic levels.

Previously:

When you combine the anticipated greenhouse gas reductions from the EPA’s recent vehicle emissions standards, its methane reduction standards, and the power plant emissions standards announced today, the Times reports, the total emissions that would be eliminated would be around 15 billion tons of CO2 by 2055, or

roughly the amount of pollution generated by the entire United States economy over three years. Several analyses have projected that the Inflation Reduction Act will cut emissions by at least another billion tons by 2030.

That could put the nation on track to meet Mr. Biden’s pledge that the United States would cut its greenhouse gases in half by 2030 and stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by 2050, although analysts point out that more policies will need to be enacted to reach the latter target.

And that, children, puts the world within what I’ll call realistic hoping distance of actually meeting the Paris Climate Agreement goal of limiting warming since the start of the industrial age to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). It would require all countries doing the same as or better than the Biden plan is close to accomplishing, so yeah, that’s freaking difficult. But doable, genuinely doable, according to the climate boffins. The Times again:

“Each of these several regulations from the E.P.A. are contributing to the whole picture that is necessary to steer this ocean liner away from the worst climate disaster,” said Dallas Burtraw, an economist with Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan research organization that focuses on energy and environmental policy.

Also I just remembered that we were going to do some kind of Wonkette Book Club on Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 climate novel The Ministry for the Future (Wonkette-gets-a-cut link), so I guess I’d better actually make a plan and write it up for tomorrow, damn my eyes.

Let’s choose hope. But back it up with action.

OPEN THREAD.

[EPA / NYT / Oxford University / AP / NBC News / Photo: American Wind Energy Association, used by permission]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please give $5 or $10 a month to help us keep this mommyblog going! If you’re shopping at Amazon anyhow, here’s a link that will help out Yr. Wonkette with a portion of sales.

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#EPA #Gonna #Punch #Climate #Emergency #Snoot

2022 In Energy And Climate: The Transition Is ON

Climate and energy stories are always about numbers, so let’s start this review of 2022 with a fairly small one that should give you hope: Nine. That’s nine percent, and according to polling by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, it’s the percentage of Americans who are “dismissive” of the reality of climate change: They “believe global warming is not happening, human-caused, or a threat, and most endorse conspiracy theories (e.g., ‘global warming is a hoax’).” Just nine percent. That’s roughly the percentage of Americans who think Elvis is still alive or that the Holocaust never happened. But because they make so much noise, spreading their denialism at every opportunity, most people would assume the number is a lot higher.

The poll also identified another 10 percent as “doubtful” of climate realities; these folks may say it’s happening, but “do not think global warming is happening or they believe it is just a natural cycle. They do not think much about the issue or consider it a serious risk.” I think that probably describes most Republicans apart from the all-out cranks, and it’s very bad news that many members of those two groups are in positions of political or economic power, of course. But here are the other good numbers from the poll:


Most Americans are either “concerned” or “alarmed” about global warming and its effects on climate, and as those effects become all too visible in our lives, those numbers are only going to increase. We’re finally demanding changes. And those changes are happening — 30 or 40 years later than needed to have headed off the significant worldwide damage that’s now locked in, and we still need to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions much more quickly to avoid the worst possible effects of warming.

The Paris goal of limiting total warming since the Industrial Revolution to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) remains theoretically possible, but unlikely without dramatic changes in how we create and use energy. That’s the bad news. But every tenth of a degree C of warming we prevent will also prevent progressively worse and worse outcomes. There’s good reason to think we’re finally heading in the right direction. The International Panel on Climate Change reports are going to continue to be grim, but it’s no time to throw our hands in the air and say we’re screwed — I worry that climate despair may be as bad a disincentive to pursue change as denial — and as unrealistic.

For a sobering but grimly optimistic look at where we are now, see this important David Wallace-Wells essay in the New York Times (gift link) published in October. Wallace-Wells explains that, thanks to changes in energy production that are already happening, the hands of the climate doomsday clock have slowed compared to estimates of just a few years ago. The “business as usual” estimates, which assumed no slowing in the rate of greenhouse emissions, pegged the likely increase in global temperatures at four or even five degrees by the end of the century. That would be

a change disruptive enough to call forth not only predictions of food crises and heat stress, state conflict and economic strife, but, from some corners, warnings of civilizational collapse and even a sort of human endgame. (Perhaps you’ve had nightmares about each of these and seen premonitions of them in your newsfeed.)

Now, with the world already 1.2 degrees hotter, scientists believe that warming this century will most likely fall between two or three degrees. […] A little lower is possible, with much more concerted action; a little higher, too, with slower action and bad climate luck. Those numbers may sound abstract, but what they suggest is this: Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years.

Needless to say, that doesn’t mean we can pat ourselves on the backs and throw another endangered species on the barbeque. But the range of outcomes has changed, as Wallace-Wells notes. The nightmare scenarios have been “made improbable by decarbonization,” although the most hopeful options have been “practically foreclosed by tragic delay.”

The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse.

Go read/listen to the whole thing. It’s a holiday weekend, and you have a gift linky right there.

Part of the reason I’m feeling cautiously optimistic is that people who know climate and energy policy are generally very pleased with this year’s climate bill, aka the Inflation Reduction Act. Independent energy reporter David Roberts has discussed it extensively with energy and climate experts, and while it has some dumb shit in it that was the price of getting Joe Manchin’s support, they say the bill really deserves the praise it’s received.

There’s a perfectly good reason the climate provisions in this bill are so good. They’re taken more or less directly from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s “gold standard” climate plan from the 2020 presidential campaign, which itself reflected the work of a whole bunch of climate policy wonks. The dollar amounts are smaller, but the effects are going to be significant.

What’s more, Roberts points out, the “green bank” and other research and development provisions in the bill will provide billions of dollars in seed money for new clean energy enterprises, which are likely to lead to even more reductions in emissions over the next decade — but because those companies and technologies don’t exist yet, they can’t be included in any models. That means the total US emissions reductions resulting from the bill are likely to be more than the 40 percent already estimated. Roberts believes this law has the potential to remake large parts of the US economy.

Another reason for optimism came in the form of a peer-reviewed study published in September by Oxford University’s Institute for New Economic Thinking. The researchers explain that a rapid transition to renewable energy will actually cost far less than going slowly, because greater deployment of renewables will drive down the price of electricity enough to save the world $12 trillion, compared to continuing to use fossil fuels. It’s simply not true that the clean energy transition would be too costly to pursue: If anything, not transitioning quickly will cost far more. And damn right you should go give a listen to this Dave Roberts interview with Dr. Doyne Farmer, one of the study’s co-authors. I am just plain turning into a mouthpiece for Roberts is what’s happening.

Want a book to help you be a climate activist and help make change? That would be The Big Fix: 7 Practical Steps to Save Our Planet, by Hal Harvey and Justin Gillis. It’s a handy guide to policies that will move us closer to a survivable climate situation, and how you can be an Active Citizen, like finding or starting a local climate group and, say, showing up at those mandatory public meetings on utility policies that are normally only attended by business reps and utility spokespeople. Well sure, there’s also a Dave Roberts interview with the authors.

One more book: I’m currently reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s excellent near-future science fiction novelThe Ministry for the Future, which manages to make discussions of climate science, sustainability policy, international tensions, and UN agencies an exciting read. It may help that there’s a subplot involving a terrorist group that’s out to assassinate the hundred people most responsible for continued fossil fuel use, which of course you should not advocate in the comments, but ups the ante and tensions in the novel. Some reader reviews found it preachy, if it is, I must be in the choir.

Happy new year. Consume less. Keep up the pressure for change.

[Yale Project on Climate Change Communication / Volts / NYT gift link / Scientific AmericanOxford University / Ministry for the Future (Wonkette revenue-sharing link) / The Big Fix (Wonkette link too) / Image generated using DALL-E 2 AI]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, help us keep pointing to the horizon with a $5 or $10 donation. We can get there together.

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#Energy #Climate #Transition