On Monday, President Barack Obama and Environmental Protection Agency Director Gina McCarthy announced the release of the final version of the Clean Power Plan. It is a good plan and should be enacted. It enhances U.S. leadership on climate change and gives America the moral standing to ask others to limit their carbon emissions.
Of course, there are those who oppose it. Their arguments, however, consist almost entirely of tired rhetoric that has been familiar for decades. And those objections have been proved wrong before.
The Clean Power Plan requires states to cut the carbon emissions of existing power plants by an average of 32 percent by 2030. States have until 2016 to submit plans and until 2018 for final versions. Also included are incentives for states to invest in renewable energy and improved efficiency before 2022.
The key to the Clean Power Plan is that it sets uniform standards for similar power plants, but does not take a cookie-cutter approach to implementation. With it, the federal government sets goals, but it does not mandate how to meet them. States are free to tailor their individual plans to match their unique circumstances.
As Janet McCabe of the EPA’s Office of Air put it, “Carbon reductions can begin now, and each state needs to hit its interim target by 2022 and its final target by 2030 – but no individual plant has to meet the standard alone or all at once.”
It is expected that many states will adopt the successful “cap-and-trade” system already in place in California and a number of Eastern states. It is a market-based approach that works.
As New York Times columnist Joe Nocera was quick to point out, the Clean Power Plan is essentially taking the same approach that successfully targeted acid rain beginning under President George H.W. Bush. Under its cap-and-trade provisions and with federal incentives, utilities switched to low-sulfur coal while better scrubbers were developed. That effort, which passed Congress in 1990, has reduced sulfur dioxide from power plants by 76 percent.
What is envisioned now is an acceleration of the already ongoing switch from coal to natural gas. With that, utilities can cut carbon emissions quickly while renewable-energy sources are developed.
Besides cutting the carbon emissions responsible for climate change, the EPA says that by 2030 it expects the Clean Power Plan to cut emissions of sulfur dioxide by 90 percent and nitrogen oxides by 72 percent. With that, it predicts it will prevent as many as “3,900 premature deaths in 2030 alone.” Overall, the agency says “the health benefits of this rule alone outweigh the costs 4 to 1.”
Critics include the president’s political enemies, coal producers and coal-state politicians, and Obama-haters. And their arguments are familiar: Electric bills will skyrocket, costs of all sorts will go up and countless jobs will be lost.
Those are the same arguments that have been put forth by the foes of every environmental legislation ever proposed. And, as usual, they are specious.
In all likelihood some coal mining jobs will be lost, but those are already endangered. And, the Koch brothers’ coal empire could very well take a hit.
But overall the plan should create jobs and lower costs. As an EPA spokesman said, it has been “proven time and time again that a safe environment is the foundation of a strong economy. Over the last 45 years, we’ve cut air pollution 70 percent – all while our economy has tripled.”
The Clean Power Plan is a step in the right direction.
