C02 limits based on non scientific erroneous data----what are limits in china, Mexico, India??

RELATED TOPICS Barack ObamaEPACoalEnergyregulations Advertisement Man has used coal as an essential energy source since the third century B.C. in Greece. Today, coal is used both as a primary fuel to produce about half of American’s electric power, and also as a carbon source in metal alloy production such as steel. The pernicious environmentalist narrative -- that carbon-induced climate change is an existential threat to planet earth -- is driving energy and environmental policy away from science and economics toward the irrational demonization of carbon on our planet of carbon-based ecosystems. Coal-fired power plants are the world’s biggest emitters of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2). America has 5,800 electric power plants using coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric (dams) energy sources -- coal-fired plants account for almost one half of all our electric power. (U.S. Dept. of Energy, Dec. 2011) Obama’s activist U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently established air pollution standards for coal-fired electric power generators at 1,000 pounds CO2 per megawatt hour of electric power produced. The average American coal-fired power plant emits over 2,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour of electricity produced – twice exceeding the new EPA CO2 air pollution standard. Existing coal-fired plants would be given until 2020 to comply with the new CO2 regulations. The cumulative economic impacts of these and other EPA coal regulations are: 1) all existing coal-fired power plants would be phased out through the year 2020, risking national power shortages; 2) no single, or combination of, so-called green renewable energy alternatives can replace the loss of coal-fired plant electric power; 3) under the new EPA regs no conventional coal-fired power plant would be feasible to operate after 2012; and 4) as many as 887,000 coal-related jobs would be lost each year in the U.S. according to a National Economic Research Associates (NERA) report of June 2011. NERA further asserts that total compliance costs for the numerous EPA coal-fired power plant air pollution regulations could be up to $220 billion, with annual costs of $16.7 billion or more. It is also disclosed that the coal-rich states of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana would suffer the greatest job-killing impacts, with direct family income losses of up to $1,600. Subscribe free to this Column by clicking the blue-highlighted +Subscribe line below author's title.