sarahlee310:

Tell the EPA: We need stronger rules to protect us from climate change. Submit a comment before the Monday deadline.

The new rule applies only to future coal plants, which were already unlikely to be built, due to the rising cost of coal, the low price of natural gas, and the tireless work of activists around the country fighting coal’s toxic pollution. The rule does nothing to reduce carbon pollution from natural gas plants, which due to the potent greenhouse gas methane released in the process of fracking for natural gas, may be as or more polluting than coal.²

The EPA must immediately act to place limits on existing sources of carbon pollution. But while EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is to be commended for her leadership on this rule, it appears a begrudging White House and the Tea Party Republican majority in Congress have succeeded in tying her hands.

Announcing the carbon standard back in March, Administrator Jackson literally said in a press conference, “we have no plans to regulate existing sources.”³

Climate change is on the verge of spiraling out of control. If the EPA doesn’t have any plans to limit existing sources of pollution, they need to make some! And fast.

Tell the EPA: We need stronger rules to protect us from existing and future sources of carbon pollution. Submit a comment before the Monday deadline.

Click to sign.

(via randomactsofchaos)

tartantambourine:

The U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment on April 18 to the Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2012 (HR 4348) that would effectively pre-empt the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating coal ash, the waste from coal burning plants, as a hazardous waste. About 140 million tons of coal ash are produced by power plants in the United States each year. There are about 1,000 active coal ash storage sites across the country. According to the EPA, the ash contains concentrations of arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and other metals, but the coal industry has claimed there is less mercury in the ash than in a fluorescent light bulb. However, the EPA found in 2010 that the cancer risk from arsenic near some unlined coal ash ponds was one in 50 — 2,000 times the agency’s regulatory goal. Additionally, researchers from the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice, and Sierra Club have documented water contamination from coal ash sites in 186 locations. The new bill would strip the EPA’s authority to regulate the ash and hand it over to the states.

And, here again, ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, has pushed the idea of stopping the EPA from regulating coal ash.

(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)

cultureofresistance:

 Less than an hour after passing the so-called Protect Life Act to guard the unborn, the House of Representatives passed a bill that the EPA warns will kill thousands of people prematurely.

House Republicans argued that the EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011 was a “timeout” from long-delayed regulations aimed at mercury that threatened to raise costs on boiler operators and incinerators. But the measure also exempts smaller burning facilities from any regulation at all.

The EPA estimated that the bill, H.R. 2550, would allow 20,000 people to die prematurely from pollution.

But for the GOP, preserving the jobs was more important.

“The House Republican jobs agenda is focused on removing the uncertainty hampering small businesses through policies that promote private sector growth,” said House GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.). “Small businesses and entrepreneurial start-ups are the engine of job creation in America, and Washington should not be working to make it more costly and more difficult for them to do business.”

He added that the proposed boiler regulations “could raise compliance costs, take away billions of dollars in capital annually and put hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee immediately began campaigning on the vote, attacking Democrats who opposed the bill, saying they voted to “endanger over 300,000 American jobs.” The committee’s press release cited a report prepared for the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners.

(Source: socialuprooting)

cultureofresistance:

The U.S. House of Representatives forwarded a bill on Friday that environmental leaders warn would undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to curb air pollution and protect public health. Green groups are now urging the Senate and President Barack Obama to stand strong — and avoid a repeat of recent environmental health failures, such as the shelving of proposed ozone and greenhouse gas standards.

“The Tea Party House has passed, with ease, the most radical dirty-air legislation in the history of this country,” John Walke, the clean air director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told HuffPost. “It absolutely eviscerates the legal standards for adopting emissions limits under the Clean Air Act.”

Introduced by Rep. John Sullivan (R-Okla.), the Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation (TRAIN) Act would create a special committee to oversee the EPA’s rules and regulations, and require the agency to consider economic impacts on polluters when it sets standards concerning how much air pollution is too much. For the last 41 years, since passage of the Clean Air Act, only scientific and medical considerations have been allowed in that analysis.

“This results in lying to the American people about whether the air is healthy or not,” said Walke.

The TRAIN Act would also repeal or block new and pending clean air safeguards, from standards that would curb mercury emissions from power plants to limits on pollution that travels across state lines. According to EPA estimates, such measures would save 140,000 lives over the five or more years of proposed delays.

Another provision would postpone new EPA regulations on gasoline — a welcome revision, according to industry groups. “The new requirements could be devastating for consumers and communities across the nation,” Misty McGowen, director of federal relations at the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement. “American taxpayers deserve a thorough analysis of the economic and jobs impacts before EPA moves forward with its proposal.”

(Source: socialuprooting)

motherjones:

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is worried that the EPA is going to regulate farm dust. So worried, in fact, that he pledged to eliminate the EPA during Thursday’s presidential debate. But maybe he should do some more research: It turns out, the EPA is actually doing nothing of the sort.

climateadaptation:

Another set of environmental rules has been postponed. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson says the agency won’t make its goal of issuing new rules for power plants by Sept. 30. It’s the second time the new rules have been delayed. It had originally aimed to issue the new regulations on July 26, but facing pressure from congressional Republicans and industry, the agency extended the deadline to the end of this month. Earlier in September, the Obama administration postponed new ozone standards for at least two years.

Source: Daily Beast

(via socialuprooting)