Will the proposed new guidelines by President Obama on slashing carbon dioxide emissions by up to 30 percent by the year 2030 finally mitigate the worst effects of climate change?
By: Ringo Bones
Maybe it was probably the recently published NASA’s
satellite images showing the West Antarctic ice shelf melting and crashing into
the sea that will increase the possibility of a catastrophic sea level rise by
the 22nd Century that finally prompted the general public to take
the issue of climate change much more seriously. Fortunately, the Obama
administration finally bares a proposed coal fired power plant greenhouse gas
emissions guidelines that finally pleased the majority of American
environmentalists. Unfortunately, Washington’s coal lobby has been up in arms
of the proposed emissions guidelines, warning of a catastrophic economic
decline if it gets the green light at Capitol Hill. FOX News, The US Republican
Party and Chris Hamilton – West Virginia Coal Association chair – all have
critical views on what they call as President Obama’s “War on Coal”, but the
good news is that if the latest proposed emissions limiting guidelines could
cut up to 30 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from American coal fired power
plants by the year 2030.
Unlike the 8-year tenure of former US President George W.
Bush, which had been a “paradise” for climate change deniers and those who
profit from it, US president Barack Obama has recently consulted and negotiated
with the US Environmental Protection Agency – with EPA administrator Gina
McCarthy - back in Monday, June 2, 2014, on new guidelines to slash carbon
dioxide and other industrial greenhouse gas emissions from coal fired power
plants in order to limit the most catastrophic impact of climate change and sea
level rise. Fortunately, the latest proposed emissions guidelines are based on
the latest peer-reviewed climate research and not from coal mining and crude
oil profit projections of the biggest American based fossil fuel extraction
companies. Given that a typical coal fired power plant burns as much as 16-tons
of coal a day, some of them will probably be shut down permanently and
President Obama says departure form coal burning based power generation could
open up new business opportunities for the American wind turbine and solar
power generation energy sector.
The latest carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions
data shows that American coal fired power plants produce 40 percent of the
country’s overall carbon dioxide emissions and on a per capita basis, every
American has on average two times the carbon footprint of a typical Mainland
Chinese citizen. But the proposed emissions curb guidelines have had the
Washington DC coal lobby up in arms and warns that the entire state of West Virginia’s
coal industry could collapse at the cost of millions of jobs. Political
rhetoric aside, many American environmentalists had been very wary of the Washington
DC’s fossil fuel extraction industry lobby since the mid 1990s for their
notoriety of manipulating Evangelical Christianity’s religious dogma to benefit
their own profitable ends.
