If I was in the habit of dumping my trash in the neighbor’s lawn rather than paying to have it removed from my house, I would have a rational motivation for resisting passage of anti-dumping laws. I’d still be kind of a jerk, but I’d have my reasons.
That’s kind of how I think of Indiana officials when I read that they plan on resisting anti-emission rules by the EPA designed to reduce pollution.
“Indiana ranked seventh among the states in coal production in 2012, and coal-fired electric power plants provided about 84% of Indiana’s net electricity generation in 2013,” according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration website.
. . .
So when the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule Monday for reducing carbon emissions by as much as 30 percent, Hoosier officials lashed back.
“Indiana will oppose these regulations using every means available,” Gov. Mike Pence said in a statement.
“The EPA’s proposed rules amount to a backdoor energy tax that will damage Indiana’s economy and hike electric bills for all Hoosiers,” Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., said in a statement.
I sympathize with the pain this sort of thing might cause, but when your business model relies on dumping your trash on someone else, it’s not a good business model. Externalizing your costs means you are imposing them on someone else who isn’t necessarily a party to your transaction — this distorts the price of your product, artificially lowering it because of the involuntary subsidy being provided by the third party (in this case, all the people breathing the air and paying for the environmental consequences of the emissions.) And, because the price is distorted, it sends bad signals to the marketplace, creating incentives for suboptimal economic activity.
Rather than bellyaching, Indiana’s lawmakers should figure out ways to help Indiana’s energy and other businesses shift to a more sustainable business model.
No, Doug. They understand “opportunity” as the chance to dump your issues onto other people, a philosophy they carry into all phases of their functioning. If it’s a problem, give it to someone else. If it’s education, privatize it. If it’s coal pollution, send it to Illinois. After all, Illinois has better health care from the ACA, so they can afford it. When they say “take responsibility”, they mean for YOU to take the responsibility. It’s no wonder that they see the rules, designed to save the lives and fortunes of millions, in such a narrow focus. And this they call being “conservative”. Well, I don’t know about others, but I kind of like living without a pollution-related disease and being able to breathe the air.
First, pence denies Medicaid. Then, he denies money to combat prison rape. Now, he wants to fight these Federal regulations. When will he announce our secession for the Feds?
Stupid people bothering me when I’m trying to avoid work. “From” the Feds
I am all for people picking up their own trash. I am amazed, however, that people believe without question that a problem is being solved here. Just empty your wallets and feel good about yourselves.
I can remember 35 years ago when coal was good and nuclear power plants were shut down. Now, the Obama Administration seriously wants us to shut down our coal plants and spend trillions to replace them with nuclear plants. Apparently the problems with radioactive plutonium are trivial compared to the evils of carbon.
The business model that government suggests for us is that we all shoot ourselves in the head and then there wont be a need for trash pickup.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair. That’s why we will have a difficult time proving the dangers of coal’s emissions to the satisfaction of its primary beneficiaries.
No, Doug. Coal is cheap, efficient, plentiful, stable, nearby and easy to use. Everyone who wants cheap, abundant, power is a beneficiary of coal. As coal is merely solidified oil, coal has the same ready power-packed utility as oil-derived fuels.
It used to be a selling point of a house to be built into or atop a coal seam, so the house could get free energy.
Coal is neither efficient or stable. It has the nighest carbon emission of any other fossil fuel and has led in the past 50 years, to acid rain and now climate change. It’s time to forget the 19th century and move forward
Actually coal is extremely stable. You can hit it with a hammer and it doesn’t explode. You can put a match to it and it is hard to ignite — unlike natural gas. If you spill it then on land you can just pick it up while at sea you can just let it sink — unlike oil there are no major environmental consequences. Coal is also fairly efficient having twice the energy density of wood. ‘Freedom’ is correct — coal is cheap, efficient, plentiful (in Indiana and the USA), stable, and easy to use (anyone can use a coal furnace). If we just blind ourselves to the horrible pollution — CO2, heavy metals, SO2, acid rain, ash — that coal creates then it is a very nice fuel.
If you spill it then on land you can just pick it up while at sea you can just let it sink — unlike oil there are no major environmental consequences
Not very true:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/09/us/north-carolina-coal-ash-spill/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/11/us/west-virginia-slurry-spill/index.html
Doug, Jonathon Chait noted the Chinese responded to our EPA regulations by promising to write a 30% reduction in their emissions also. We can’t stop climate change; heck, there’s a chance we might not be able to stop the 2 degrees Celsius rise that climatologists fear, but if we can keep it around two…..well, I have some faith in government research and a the market finding a CO@ containment system
The Obama Administration is not pro-nuke
There are only two power plant designs which currently meet Clean Air standards. They involve nuclear or natural gas fuels.
Natural gas would be the ideal way to go. Natural gas is plentiful because of a controversial extraction process known as fracking. The EPA may someday say that fracking violates the Clean Water Act; at that point natural gas supplies would become scarce. Nuclear energy is left as the most reliable investment if you need to build.
Yup, fracking near my sister-in-law’s place gave her groundwater an interesting characteristic where you could create a plastic skin if you applied fire.
Acid rain is generally caused by burning coal which contains sulfur. Indiana coal does not contain sulfur. I don’t know if anyone even uses sulfur coal nowadays.
Rick, there is a whole geology of coal in Indiana, which is (I believe) the 6th biggest coal producer in the U.S. The seven types of coal in So. Indiana are all classified as high-volatile bituminous but some is better than others in that the better stuff contains less sulfur. The problem with coal is that it kills people: when they’re mining it and when they burn it. There is an interesting article in the April 2014 of Wired, entitled “Solar, Wind and Nuclear Won’t Meet the World’s Energy Needs in Time. We Must Clean up Coal”. Quite a title. Another one of those “technology will fix it” articles. There’s another article entitled “Oil is Not the Climate Change Culprit–It’s all About Coal”. Can we take the biggest source of pollution and clean it up? We’ll see. After all, the President didn’t say to stop burning coal. He just said to cut emissions 30%.