NY Times: Cancelling Clean Power Plan Serious Blow to Obama’s Hotcoldwetdry Legacy

The NY Times, like most of the media, has already moved on from gun grabbing rhetoric and back to attempting to bash Mr. Trump for doing things he promised to do, such as ending Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The front page subhead encapsulates this all perfectly

Ending goals to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants will be the most serious blow to President Obama’s legacy on global warming.

Trump is ending a plan for which Obama avoided Congress altogether, never bothering to even consult with them, simply used the power of his pen, and said plan was never implemented because 27 States plus individual groups and companies sued Obama over the plan, primarily over it being outside the boundaries of legality per existing Congressional law. The plan was halted by the judge in the case until the suit was settled. Is that perfect Obama legacy or what?

The Editorial Board, comprised of mostly rich people with large carbon footprints, much like Mr. Obama, is upset

Mr. Trump Nails Shut the Coffin on Climate Relief

The Trump administration formally proposed on Tuesday to roll back yet another of President Barack Obama’s efforts to position the United States as a global leader in the fight against climate change. The move, though widely anticipated, was deeply disheartening. In March Mr. Trump ordered Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to repeal the Clean Power Plan, which was aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Mr. Pruitt, a climate denier closely tied to the fossil fuel industry, was only too happy to oblige — boasting to an audience of Kentucky coal miners on Mondaythat the plan was dead and that “the war on coal is over.”

All this is infuriating on several levels.

Mr. Pruitt should have announced the Clean Media Plan, which would have required all news outlets that support this so-called fight against ‘climate change’ to use 100% renewable energy and to be carbon neutral for all operations by 2019. Not so easy to collect the news without fossil fuels and reliable energy, as well as all that paper from killed trees, eh?

It repeated the same false narrative that congressional Republicans have been peddling for years and that Mr. Trump’s minions are peddling now — that environmental regulations are job killers, that restraining greenhouse gas emissions will damage the economy, that the way forward lies in digging more coal and punching more holes in the ground in the search for oil.

The thing is, killing the CPP doesn’t stop any individual, group, or company from implementing their own investment/usage of renewables. Cleaner energy would be great, but, it won’t fly until it has similar costs as coal and oil, which, even with all the taxpayer money thrown at it during the Obama years, is not competitive.

It reaffirmed the administration’s blind loyalty to dirtier energy sources, ignoring the pleas of corporate leaders who know that economic momentum and new investment lie with cleaner sources of energy, and fear that without innovation their costs will rise and their competitive edge over foreign countries will be lost.

If all these corporate leaders want this, let them invest their own money. Let them do it without taxpayer money. Let them have the same tax breaks that other energy (and pretty much every company) is eligible for. Let them compete.

And it gave us another reminder that Mr. Trump is hellbent on abdicating the leadership on climate change Mr. Obama worked so hard to achieve — first with a suite of regulatory measures and then by making an emissions-reduction pledge at the 2015 Paris climate summit meeting strong enough to induce 194 other nations to sign on to what had all the makings of a historic global agreement.

A do as I say not as I do leadership, which more resembled a dictator than a leader who worked through the duly elected law making branch. And got sued over it. And, as the NY Times goes on to explain, Mr. Trump blew up all sorts of other Hotcoldwetdry policies of Obama’s, ones which they fail to note would increase costs to consumers, harming the middle and lower classes. Rich people like Obama? They wouldn’t be bothered.

Those same experts, however, also concede that federal help is crucial, both in limiting emissions from existing sources and in promoting alternative fuels and new technologies. This administration shows no interest in either. Mr. Pruitt, in fact, used the occasion of his triumphant dismissal of the Clean Power Plan to say he would love to get rid of the federal subsidies that have been and remain vital to the development of wind and solar power, while saying nary a word about the lavish subsidies for the oil industry.

What the Times means by federal help is more Government Regulations limiting liberty and more taxpayer money. Oil doesn’t receive subsidies, they receive tax breaks. Standard Warmist talking points.

Like some of Mr. Trump’s other rollbacks, the power plant decision will be fought in court by some states and by environmental groups. The E.P.A. is required by law to regulate carbon dioxide emissions in some fashion, but so far Mr. Pruitt has not proposed a substitute plan. The betting is that if he does, it won’t amount to much, surely not the closing of any coal-fired plants. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama’s measures lie in tatters, along with Mr. Trump’s claims to leadership.

First, federal law doesn’t require the EPA to regulate CO2: they looked at existing law and twisted it around to give themselves this power, confirmed by a very bad SCOTUS decision. Second, in terms of getting sued over doing away with a plan that sits on dubious legal ground and was never implemented in the first place is a hoot, and will waste money from these Warmist states. Nor will Pruitt recommend a new plan, other than “if Warmists want this, let them do it in their states and their own lives.”

Finally, this is Obama’s legacy in a nutshell: things that can be done away with easily because they rested on a bed of autocratic executive orders, rather than working through the law making branch.

Crossed at Right Wing News.