The EPA is Destroying America: Electricity Rates to Jump by 10-35%
Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, most Americans still believe that the EPA is dedicated to making our lives better. In the minds of America, the EPA ensures we have clean air and clean water. They punish people who dump dangerous waste and pollute our country.
The truth is much uglier. The truth is that the EPA pushes a radical environmentalist agenda at the expense of American's quality of life. They have a dubious scientific basis for their actions, and they certainly have no constitutional authority.
I know that will seem to absurd hyperbole to many of you, but stay with me for a few minutes, and I will show you some examples of what I mean.
Firstly, lets dismiss the notion that our environment would be dirty and unfit for human life without an EPA. We don't need the EPA to stop people that cause scientifically provable harm to other specific people or their property. For instance if my next door neighbor buries toxic waste in their yard, and the poison seeps into my land, they have harmed my property and pre-existing law would be plenty to take them to court. The same applies for people dumping industrial waste into rivers, or releasing poisonous gas into the air.
Something like the EPA is "needed" only when you want to have blanket prohibitions or regulations on actions which cannot be proven to harm anyone. For instance, Anthropogenic Global Warming couldn't be shown to exist to a fair court, and it certainly couldn't be shown to be harming specific individuals. Therefore, if you want to strangle industry based on unproven assertions the EPA is needed.
Strangling industry is exactly what President Obama is directing the EPA to do. You may remember that Obama has promised to make electric rates skyrocket and to bankrupt the coal industry.
"Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket"
"If somebody wants to build a coal power plant they can, it's just that it will bankrupt them."
Half of America's electricity comes from Coal, and getting rid of it without building hundreds of new Nuclear Plants means having vastly less energy available. Behind every unit of GDP there is a unit of energy. It's a fact of reality. Less energy (or more expensive energy) means lower GDP and lower standards of living. Period.
Nonetheless, we see that the EPA is carrying our Obama's orders. Due to new regulations, a massive power company called AEP will have to shut down 5 coal power plants by 2014. That means 6000 MW of reliable cheap power available 24/7 will go offline. AEP expects electric rates to jump by 10-35% as a result.
There are no two ways around it, that is going to harm every customer of AEP. Their quality of life will necessarily suffer. The local economy will necessarily suffer. And for what? What scientifically provable fact justifies this mass injury to the people of the midwest?
Obama and the EPA are pushing a radical green agenda. They are violating rights, and worsening human rights on a mass scale, without any regard to facts. They certainly aren't taking a rational look at pros and cons. America needs reliable affordable power in order to prosper. Wind, and solar simply cannot deliver. They are ferociously expensive compared to fossil fuels. They take up enormous swaths of land compared to traditional power plants. They are very unreliable, which means they can only supplement (at best) a traditional power plant. It's dark half the time, and often cloudy during the day time. The wind stops, often during the hottest parts of the year. Coal doesn't care, coal keeps burning cheaply and reliably 24/7.
Nuclear power could indeed be a viable alternative, especially if we allowed plants to recycle their nuclear waste. However, neither the EPA nor President Obama are pushing for a solution that would actually work. They don't want something which would actually power America's economy.
Comments
Then don't forget the attacks on the nuclear power industry, which will raise their costs and our bills.
Then there is the oil price. Oil is the primary replacement power source in Japan, and will be used some here, too. So there will be more upward pressure on oil prices.
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