It’s no secret that the elitist Obama Administration was more than willing to crush the American working class in favor of its globalist policies. In a move that will restore some semblance of common sense to the EPA, the federal agency is rolling back its excessive carbon emission and wetlands regulations under Pres. Donald J. Trump.
Restrictions on carbon emissions during the Obama years were a back door to bankrupt power plants and coal mining operations. The far-left administration supported initiatives such as the Paris Climate Agreement that allowed other countries to build and operate coal-fired electric facilities while America shuttered mines and thrust workers on the unemployment rolls.
Pres. Trump has made the hard-working American coal miner a cultural icon that embodies both greatness and how extreme liberal policies can negatively impact everyday people.
An EPA rule embraced by the Obama administration in 2015 reduced power plant emission to 1,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour. The rule was designed to force plants to outfit facilities with carbon capture technology. The previous administration recognized that the cost of such retrofitting would force coal-fired energy plants out of business.
The Obama Administration “knew the new technology was not adequately demonstrated,” Environmental Protection Agency Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler reportedly said. “We are rescinding unfair burdens on America’s energy providers. This proposal would further the historic growth in energy production under President Trump.”
The EPA will now adopt a standard of 1,900 pounds for major facilities and 2,000 pounds from small plants. The move sets a realistic output that would allow power plants to operate at profitable levels while still minimizing emissions.
“(Carbon capture) was promising but it should not be the basis for setting a standard,” American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity pres. Michelle Bloodworth reportedly said. “We feel like it makes sense to replace some of these retiring coal plants with high efficiency, low emissions coal plants.”
Bloodworth added that the Trump-era rule would “make it viable for new coal plants to be an option in the United States.”
While coal has seen a resurgence under the Trump Administration, it has naturally trailed off as more cost-effective energy sources have emerged. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the country is expected to burn through approximately 691 million short tons of coal in 2018. That would be the lowest usage since 1979 and a 39-percent dip since the 2007 peak. Many agree that the Obama Administration’s “War on Coal” decimated the industry, putting thousands of Americans out of work and destroying entire communities.
“The previous rule was a de facto ban on new coal-fired power plants, threatening manufacturers’ long-term access to an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy,” National Association of Manufacturers vice pres. Ross Eisenberg said, adding that the new standard was a “more realistic approach to regulating greenhouse gas emissions.”
In another shift by the EPA, a job-killing rule used by environmental extremist to thwart construction projects, residential land use, and farming has also been rolled back. The unreasonable application of an Obama-era rule under the Clean Water Act effectively shut down anything in proximity to wetlands.
The controversial application of the rule by EPA liberals targeted use near both moving and stagnant bodies of water. Before Obama, the rule was traditionally understood to mean significant lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams. But the extremist bureaucrats under the two-term president claimed that minor pools of standing water also enjoyed protection.
These so-called wetlands included temporary seasonally standing water and land users saw a long, uphill legal battle against the EPA that became an inherent construction project deterrent. Residential property owners and farmers were also negatively impacted and unable to utilize their land.
“I think the Trump administration rollback … is going to be good for landholders and for farmers and for that matter anybody who wants to eat affordably,” Northern California farmer John Duarte reportedly said. The federal government, for decades “have been expanding the definition of what’s a wetland.”
Duarte was fined more than $1 million for plowing a wheat field the EPA claimed was protected under Obama’s Clean Water Act rule.
The California Farm Bureau Federation touted the Trump Administration’s recommissioning of the excessive rule, stating that it “undermined farmers’ efforts to work cooperatively with government agencies to protect water and land.”
While biased and fake news media have decried Trump-era changes, everyday working people and organizations that advocate for common sense environmental protections back the president’s policies.
~ Liberty Planet
