Maybe I didn’t read the article correctly. The way I read it, the ruling is that the EPA can’t determine that a regulation is needed without considering the costs. Before this ruling, it was already necessary to consider costs in the implementation of a regulation. Do you read it differently?
Edit: Here’s another link that describes it better than I can.
Think about it this way: Who owns the right to your health?
In the EPA’s reasoning, you do. Under the Clean Air Act, if someone else’s activities are going to meaningfully endanger your health, the government is entitled to stop them.
In Justice Scalia’s reasoning, now the law of the land, the toxic chemical emitters do. If it is economically efficient to poison you with mercury—if the costs to them outweigh the benefits to you, calculating an economic value of your health—then they get to do it.
Timex
2042
I’m gonna have to read the ruling myself, as I’m not seeing it as being horrific from what I’m seeing second hand. I mean, there are lots of folks who are injecting hyperbolic interpretations, just like they did with the ACA ruling, and the gay marriage ruling… but I’ve found that reading the actual decisions tends to indicate that they are generally pretty well considered.
So I’ll have to check it out myself… although I’ve been reading the other rulings over the past few days, and it’s kind of burning out my brain.
Well it is all about giving legal wriggle room so the corporations don’t have to risk their profit margins, even in a time when we have absolutely zero possibility to avoid damaged profit margins due to climate change. That is going to hit everything all across the board, and the more we drag our feet on effective real changes that corporations can’t dance around, the bigger those costs 20 years from now etc.
Short-termism needs to stop, especially in relation to AGW and what is causing it. There is just no where to hide from the facts, and the costs are real-world ones, no one is going to escape them, and making them worse is pretty dumb! But i guess the corporate lawyer is just focused on his/her next 5-10 years and then whatever?
Timex
2044
Saying that there’s no time for thoughtful analysis, and that we need to just act on impulse, is not an intelligent plan of action.
This I agree with, but I don’t think there’s any room to call the pre-decision EPA process impulsive.
The Agency may regulate power plants under this program only if it concludes that “regulation is appropriate and necessary” after studying hazards to public health posed by power-plant emissions.
That initial process already takes years and requires huge amounts of data, research, and public comment. After the process is complete and new regulation is determined to be necessary, there is another phase to determine exactly how to implement, including cost and timeline. The only change from the SCOTUS decision (if I’m reading it right) is that the initial process has to consider cost (remember that the implementation phase already did), meaning that the EPA must prove that the health of people and environments is worth more than the cost of the power plant’s implementation costs before determining if regulation is “appropriate and necessary”.
I don’t think anyone is saying that this is a death knell for the EPA. (At least, I’m not.) But it is just another way for polluters to avoid regulation, either temporarily or permanently, and this particular instance is especially galling since it specifically puts company costs (and thus profits) on the same footing as the health of the environment and those who live in it.
China climate change plan unveiled
Sounds like a huge step in the right direction, just need the USA to follow suit and we may have a chance for human life on earth in 500 years time!
the Uk and EU zone got some crazy temps:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/01/heatwave-hits-heathrow-temperature-airport-flies-past-32c
very happy about AC, even if using it kind of adds to the problem causing these increasing record temps! Catch 22!
ShivaX
2048
When I hurt and kill people for profit they call it a felony.
Yesterday was deeply unpleasant. We nominally have air conditioning in the office, but by mid-afternoon it was sweltering anyway. And don’t even get me started on the train journeys. I ended up sleeping with the window open and the fan on full blast.
You brits are just not used to heat! I used to live in a place where 42 celsius was common midday during August.
It is mainly, at this stage of AGW, about the health concerns for the very young (as their bodies can not deal with extremes of temps as well) and very old. But i’ve been reading some predictions that in 50 years a 40 degree summer temp will be the new norm in places like the uk etc, so yeah time to invest in air-con for comfort and health (and add to the AGW problem) if you have not already.
Germany to mothball largest coal power plants to meet climate targets:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/02/germany-to-mothball-largest-coal-power-plants-to-meet-climate-targets
You brits are just not used to heat! I used to live in a place where 42 celsius was common midday during August.
I’m aware of this. I don’t even cope well with temperatures that most Brits enjoy. Anything over 20 and I get uncomfortable.
KevinC
2053
Temperatures of 40+ aren’t too uncommon in the summer where I’m at (they’ve been at or above 40 for about a week straight now) but at least here it is very arid. I always feel like I enjoy the summer heat until I have the misfortune of visiting somewhere with high humidity. Ugh. I love you, New Orleans, but I ain’t going to be back for a while.
LMN8R
2054
Seattle is gonna hit the 90s (F) next week :-(
(Most people in Seattle don’t have air conditioning, just FYI)
And lets not forget about the Oceans, the drivers of much of our food chain:
Oceans face massive and irreversible impacts without carbon cuts – study:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/03/oceans-massive-irreversible-impacts-carbon-cuts-global-warming
Time is rapidly running out for the world’s oceans and the creatures that live in them as the Earth’s climate continues to warm, say scientists.
Only “immediate and substantial” reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can hope to prevent “massive” impacts on marine ecosystems, warn the experts.
Researchers compared the fate of the oceans under two scenarios, one a “business-as-usual” approach and the other involving drastic cuts in emissions.
Their analysis showed that business-as-usual would have an enormous and “effectively irreversible” impact on ocean ecosystems and the services they provide, such as fisheries, by 2100.
Even after curbing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) enough to prevent temperatures rising by more than 2C compared with pre-industrial levels, many marine ecosystems would still suffer significantly, they said.
The international team led by Dr Jean-Pierre Gattuso, from the Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche in France, wrote in the journal Science: “Impacts on key marine and coastal organisms, ecosystems, and services from anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 emissions are already detectable, and several will face high risk of impacts well before 2100, even with the stringent CO2 emissions scenario.
“These impacts are occurring across all latitudes and have become a global concern that spans the traditional north/south divide.”
Any new global climate agreement that fails to minimise the impact on oceans will be “incomplete and inadequate”, stressed the scientists.
The findings are intended to inform the forthcoming 2015 United Nations climate change conference in Paris.
Prince Charles being awesome:
Prince Charles: rewire the global economy to stop climate change:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/02/prince-charles-climate-change-rewire-global-economy
Prince Charles has said that “profound changes” to the global economic system are needed in order to avert environmental catastrophe, in an uncompromising speech delivered in front of an audience of senior business leaders and politicians.
The heir to the throne – often criticised for his meddling in political affairs – argued that ending the taxpayer subsidies enjoyed by coal, oil and gas companies could reduce the carbon emissions driving climate change by an estimated 13%.
Although the prince’s passion for environmental causes is well known, the speech delivered on Thursday evening in St James’s Palace, London was particularly pointed in its criticism of companies that protected vested interests and came with a report that proposed raising taxes on them.
Speaking at a event for the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), of which he is a patron, the prince complained that “the irresistible power of ‘business as usual’ has so far defeated every attempt to ‘rewire’ our economic system in ways that will deliver what we so urgently need”.
He said: “Yet if we are to limit climate change, conserve resources and keep ecosystems functioning, while at the same time improving the health and wellbeing of billions of people – including the several billion who are projected to be added later this century – then we will need to see profound changes.”
The prince also attacked what he characterised as the wastefulness of modern society. “The challenge now is to go much further and much faster, progressively eliminating waste by developing a circular economy that mimics nature’s loops and cycles, rather than perpetuating our largely unsustainable and linear way of doing things,” he said.
Anti-fracking Nanas: ‘The government is all out for shale – we’re all out to stop it’:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/03/nanas-shale-cuadrilla-fracking-lancashire
A nice inspirational tale of a bunch of older women deciding to draw a line in their local area (and they have reason after the earthquakes in Blackpool after fracking was first attempted, details in the article).
A nicely written amusing look at the state of play re man made climate doom:
It’s too late to save our world, so enjoy the spectacle of doom:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/05/too-late-to-save-world-heathrow-runway-stewart-lee
‘No plan B if Paris climate summit ends in failure, says EU climate chief’:
(but atleast Heathrow is set to get that third runway as the previous article mentioned!)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/06/no-plan-b-if-paris-climate-summit-ends-in-failure-says-eu-climate-chief
High Stakes gambling, the fate of the world (pretty much) in the next century or two (with mounting financial loses as we are already seeing).
White House plans rooftop solar panel initiative for inner-city neighbourhoods:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/07/white-house-rooftop-solar-panels-inner-city-neighbourhoods
America is in the midst of a rooftop solar boom – with installation up 139,000% in the last decade, because of falling costs.
But only about 1% of the electricity moving along America’s grid comes from solar, and nearly half of all US households are shut out of solar, because they are renters or their properties are too small to install panels, White House officials told a conference call with reporters.
“We think it’s important for everybody to have access to solar energy,” Brian Deese, a senior White House adviser, told reporters.
In the new solar initiative, the White House said it wanted to make rooftop solar panels more affordable and open up new jobs in inner-city neighbourhoods. Officials said they would work with housing authorities and solar companies in 20 states to improve financing packages.
The new initiative – the second move by Obama to expand solar since April – aimed to install 300 megawatts of solar power in subsidised housing by 2020, officials told the call.
That’s just over half as much energy as generated by the big solar farm in the Mojave desert – one of the first big solar projects backed by Obama, which went into operation earlier this year.
But it represents a tripling of Obama’s initial target to install 100 megawatts of rooftop solar in subsidised housing by 2020 – a goal that has already been reached thanks to falling prices for solar panels.
More please usa :)
