***No time to read it all? There’s a call to action near the end***
The fossil fuel industry has been fighting back—no surprise—against regulations proposed by the EPA this year to make power generation cleaner and more efficient. The industry’s efforts have inspired a great article from DeSmog (used to be the DeSmog Blog), which tracks misinformation opposing climate action. DeSmog finds that the industry and its allies have used the same half-truths and dubious logic over and over to argue against clean air and water laws.
As DeSmog explains (emphasis mine):
Power plants are the second-largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States, and the pollution standards, which are open for public comment until August 8, will mark a new milestone in climate action. But the United States’ biggest polluters and their political allies are pushing back—just as they have resisted every other landmark shift in the 60-year history of federal air pollution control.
“This administration . . . has made it clear they are hellbent on doing everything in their power to regulate coal and gas-fueled power plants out of existence, no matter the cost to energy security and reliability,” declared Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) in a May 10 statement.
The National Mining Association (NMA) echoed Manchin’s fiery rhetoric, warning of “premature coal plant retirements,” alleging that these would pose “serious risks” and calling for “an energy policy reset to avoid an uneasy and potentially failing energy situation.”
This not-so-fast rhetoric is nothing new. . . . In the 1960s, as the American public grew increasingly concerned about coal-based air pollution, a spokesman for the United States’ most powerful coal lobby told senate lawmakers that the elimination of pollution could “be brought about only gradually” without “impairing the viability of any of our energy industries.”
Instead, [he] urged that policy should focus on “continuing research” aimed at alleviating “fossil fuel pollution” while expanding the “fullest possible use” of all energy industries, predominantly “coal, gas and oil.”
DeSmog traces the struggle over the next several decades between industry/allies and the public leaders promoting environmental progress, including JFK, Abraham Ribicoff, Maurine Neuberger and Edmund Muskie. It summarizes “the polluter’s playbook” as follows (my emphasis):
- calling for more time to research technofixes
- denying or doubting that a problem exists
- scaremongering that regulations will hurt the economy, threaten living standards, and limit energy supply
- insisting that industry is already making great progress in fixing the problem voluntarily
- arguing that local and state governments, rather than the federal government, should be in charge.
As you can see, the steps in this playbook are rich in BS—and the polluters are drawing on all of them to fight the new regs. The comment section for the regulations features quite a number of polluters and allies as sources. So I encourage each reader, if you can, to offer a comment to the EPA supporting the regulation. I’ve already done my own (below). I’m showing it here as a source of some arguments you may want to use. Don’t copy it (identical comments are much less effective), and don’t feel your comment has to be long (the EPA says short ones are fine).
Also, if you can talk about how global heating or dirty particulates have affected you and yours personally, go right ahead; the EPA encourages this.
As the Gnusies say: they are few, and we are many.
My comment:
I applaud the EPA’s proposed regulations that will greatly lower emissions from electric plants powered by fossil fuels. The dangers of greenhouse gas emissions have been driven home by the frightful weather events of the past few years: over 60,000 heat-related deaths in Europe last year; monstrous typhoons and hurricanes; fierce, lengthy droughts in the US West, many parts of Africa and Latin America, and elsewhere; and wildfires in Siberia, the US West Coast, several countries in Europe, and Canada (where wildfires this year have raged in every province but Nunavut and Prince Edward Island and burned an area bigger than Pennsylvania).
Very recently, we have seen the hottest June ever worldwide, followed by the hottest July. Temperatures are approaching 100 degrees F in the foothills of the Andes—in midwinter. We have known about this danger for many decades. Even strong action now cannot erase the results of our neglect, but it can help fend off still harsher consequences in the future.
Climate chaos is far from the only scourge wrought by our continued use of fossil fuels for power. The unleashing of airborne particulates in various sizes threatens the health of any citizen living or working close to these plants, including the plants’ employees, not to mention the vulnerable waterways, soils, plants and animals nearby on which our lives depend. People’s exposure to particulates leads to problems with lungs, the brain (including dementia), cardiovascular systems, and more.
Moreover, the fossil fuels in question must be extracted from the earth, causing well-documented environmental havoc with very long lasting effects. They must also be transported from point source to plant, with dangers ranging from train-borne coal dust to pipeline leaks to fiery explosions on highways and railways—as the headlines reminded us just this summer.
Finally, the ills caused by using fossil fuels for power fall hardest on US minorities—particularly African American, Latine and Native American. Members of these communities are more apt to live near dirty energy facilities, trapped there by old restrictive housing laws and customs or unable to fight the siting of plants in their neighborhoods the way richer and Whiter neighborhoods can. They are likelier to live near the highways over which hazardous fossil fuel loads pass, or to find their towns chosen for the path of new pipelines. They also have fewer resources to fight the ill effects of global heating, from tree cover to help shield people from torrid weather to proper protection from flooding and violent storms.
Don’t listen to industry voices claiming that the United States can’t afford to transition away from fossil fuel energy. They’ve been saying that ever since the original clean air laws were enacted 60 years ago, only to be proven wrong by the strong economic and health benefits of cleaner, safer, more efficient power.
In one way we’re lucky. Even as the climate emergency presses on us ever more urgently, the means of dropping fossil fuel power grow cheaper, and the adoption of alternatives grows more widespread. New climate and infrastructure laws will make the transition easier for US industries and workers alike. The time to act is now. I strongly support these new regulations.
Many thanks.