A 'suicide pact' for N.C. economy
Published June 12, 2014
Editorial by Jacksonville Daily News, June 11, 2014.
For North Carolina, there’s bad news and good news in President Obama’s plan to order huge cuts in carbon dioxide emissions at U.S. power plants. The bad news is that North Carolina is supposed to reduce its emissions by 40 percent, far above the nationwide goal of 30 percent.
The good news is … well, the good news is that the bad news could’ve been worse. New York faces a targeted reduction of 44 percent.
If you’re wondering why we shouldn’t celebrate a pending cutback in pollution, it’s because this cutback comes at an enormous economic cost. Converting plants to cleaner power generation, closing older plants and transitioning to alternative energy sources are likely to kill jobs and drive up customers’ power bills.
Michael Biesecker of The Associated Press reported that N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resurces spokesman Drew Elliott responded to the EPA’s power-plant crackdown saying: “So, just as we get our economic comeback on solid footing, we would be raising electricity prices on North Carolina families and businesses.”
Sen. Richard Burr issued a statement which said: “Despite a weak economy and the recent addition of staggering health-care costs under Obama-care, the EPA and Administration want to add further strain on American families by implementing aggressive regulations that would cost 224,000 jobs and $3,400 of disposable income per household, without any effect on the global CO2 emissions.”
The free-market Americans for Limited Government was more blunt. It called the pollution cuts “nothing less than an economic suicide pact.”
The cuts are intended to scale back so-called greenhouse gases that ostensibly contribute to global warming. The EPA expects to give “customized” cutback targets to individual states, then let the states figure out how to meet their goals. Some states (Kentucky: 18 percent) have relatively modest targets. Others, like North Carolina, would face stiffer challenges.
The aim nationwide is to reach a 30 percent reduction in CO2 from 2005 levels by by 2030.
By then, of course, somebody else will be president. That gives us reason to hope these regulations won’t be around long. The next president could scuttle them. So could a Republican-controlled Congress. Or state governors could simply ignore the EPA mandates.
“If a state declines to develop a (pollution reduction) plan, the EPA can create one itself,” The Associated Press reported. “But how the EPA could force a state to comply with that plan remains murky.”
Who knows? Maybe there will be some good news to report after all.
Portions of this editorial first appeared in the Panama City News-Herald, a Halifax Media Group newspaper.
