Mercury limits on coal power plants no longer "appropriate," EPA says - Polidicks

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-28/mercury-limits-on-coal-plants-no-longer-appropriate-epa-says?utm_source=google&utm_medium=bd&cmpId=google The Trump administration is proposing that limits on mercury pollution from power plants are too costly to justify and no longer “appropriate and necessary,” a finding that could make it difficult to impose more stringent curbs in the future. For now, at least, the Environmental Protection Agency isn’t seeking to rescind the 2012 standards, responding to a clamor from utilities that have already spent at least $18 billion complying with the requirements. But the EPA is asking the public to comment on whether it has the authority or obligation to do so, opening the door to a possible future repeal. And, in another reversal of former President Barack Obama’s environmental policies, the agency now finds that the mercury mandates cost far more than the potential benefits that spring from paring emissions of the toxin. According to the new EPA analysis, the costs of complying with the rule are projected at $7.4 billion to $9.6 billion annually, while monetized benefits are estimated to be just $4 million to $6 million each year. The new calculations represent a dramatic shift from the EPA’s 2012 estimate that that the requirements would lead to $37 billion to $90 billion worth of benefits from fewer asthma attacks, heart attacks and premature deaths -- mostly by indirectly reducing airborne particle pollution. President Donald Trump’s EPA now is effectively ignoring those so-called co-benefits and focusing only on the direct potential benefits from slashing mercury emissions. Energy analysts say that even a broad repeal of the mercury standards would do little to alter long-term shifts in the electricity market, as cheap, cleaner-burning natural gas displaces coal as a source of power.

How can leaders of our country be THIS STUPID.

It isn't stupidity. It's greed and malice.

Come. On. Fucking really??? Why are these assholes so desperate to literally poison EVERYONE in the name of the almighty dollar? Is there NO ONE in charge that has a single shred of fucking care for other people? For animals? For the fucking planet in general? We dont deserve to leave earth, we'd just poison the next planet the same way.

I don't see why its so hard for them to understand that, if we are healthy, the longer we stay alive, and the higher chance we spend more money.

The Environmental Poisoning Agency going strong on its bold new direction of going 180 to its founding purpose.

Conservatives: Mercury is harmless, we need to loosen the restrictions on it to SAVE COAL JOBS Also conservatives: Mercury in vaccines gives your children AUTISM

More like Coal Power plants are not appropriate.

Don't need regulations if you don't have any coal power plants to regulate. *touches forehead*

The coal industry as a whole needs to die, and fast. Billionaires keep trying to claim corporations are people, how about we start executing the serial killers then?

Tbf anti vac isnt exclusively conservative nuttery, its p ideologically neutral id say and its just nutters from all sides of spectrum

True but on the right those nutters are getting voted into office, while on the left those nutters are generally kept on the fringes.

100% certain doing stupid unjustifiable shit like this will only hasten the downfall of coal as this will create regulatory uncertainty. You can't conclude from evidence something is harmful in any amount then say abruptly that it doesn't have any harm because it'd be too costly.

Coal is a dying industry that only continues to exist because of government subsidies. It's simply no longer cost effective compared to literally every other kind of power. But Pennsylvania is an important state in national elections, which is why politicans continue to kiss the coal industry's ass. And the worst part is, I'm not sure if you could win the state even if you promised to pour massive amounts of government money into replacing Pennsylvania's entire coal industry with green energy, and offer free training to help ever single coal industry employee get new green jobs. I have no doubt at least some of them will refuse an offer like that for the same reason people in this country generally refuse good things: because change is an anathema to americans. People here will fight tooth and nail to be allowed to continue dying in far greater numbers than in any other sector of the energy industry, just because their family has been doing it for generation after generation. And they are ignorant and uneducated enough to believe that it can go on forever - despite the fact that climate change will fuck us over if we don't stop, and even if it didn't, the coal is going to run out soon anyway.

Sounds like the Coal Miners need to follow the advice of the GOP and "pick themselves up by their bootstraps!" * *(Or, does that only apply to liberals and minorities??)

Isn't that factored into the monetized benefit?

Wait wait wait... Did I read this right? Restrictions on dangerous thing to not make it as dangerous costs too much so just say "fuck it" and take the restrictions altogether? Is that it? That can't be right. That's some combination of supreme greed and dumbness tied together. Wait... By that logic, Trump should not build the wall then? It costs too much to keep "the dirty drug smugling mexicans" out of the greatest country in the world, so he should just quit it, along with whatever war on drugs exists? And I guess war on terrorism aswell? jesus fuck WHAT FUCKING MENTALITY IS THIS? I still don't think I read it right.

Haven't you heard. The reason white Baby Boomers are so well off compared to any other demgraphic is because they worked hard and earned all that shit! (Now, proceed to conveniently ignore everything that has changed since the American manufacturing sector was at record-highs post WWII - and also ignore all the many ways white baby boomers have made things worse for future generations by solely pursuing their own self-interest.)

at this point, i wouldn't be surprised if we started putting lead back in gas.

Capitalism doesn't technically need people, so it doesn't care about people inherently. We could all disappear tomorrow and capitalism could keep functioning just fine if automated computers were trading and exchanging property and capital.

Or (hear me out on this one) Or... We poison them while still charging out the ass for the medication to treat the poisoning they lobbied to make legal. What do you say to that? Eh? EH?!

I just wanted to revisit this post. Like I said, it's not stupidity, which is a mistake that a lot of people make in trying to imagine a way to solve this problem. These people are very intelligent, dangerously so, no matter how bumbling and incompetent they appear in the media they know exactly what they're doing and exactly what they can get away with. The bumbling incompetent act is just an act, it's a defense, and it's the only one they need because it whips up their voter base. "THE LIBS ARE ATTACKING THEM OVER A SIMPLE MISTAKE! THE LIBS ARE ATTACKING THEM FOR USING THEIR FREEDOM OF SPEECH! THE LIBS..." These people are not stupid. I can't say the same for their voters. But the politicians are geniuses, as or more intelligent as anyone else in the field. You can't win with appeals to logic because they know they're wrong - they just don't care because they're raking in millions and by the time their actions have consequences for people at their economic class, they'll have been dead for a hundred years. Conservatism isn't what it used to be. A conservative loves the environment; presented with irrefutable scientific evidence there should be zero hesitation to take the right steps. These people aren't conservative. They tell their voting base they are, but they've gaslit those people into something else, something twisted. Those old labels barely fit today's political climate. Conservative and liberal should just be a difference of opinion, a critical balance, discourse between which improves society for everyone. But that's not what they are anymore. They're just teams.

I refuse to believe Trump himself is as intelligent as an average human being. He might have been when he was younger, though clinical narcissism and an inferiority complex plagued him even then, but today all evidence points to the man being an actual imbecile, who was just barely reined in by Mattis and his former chief of staff. It's a testament to how money and connections can not only protect someone from the sort of idiocy that'd leave anyone else like him dead in a ditch somewhere at a much younger age, but actually grant him the world's foremost seat of power.

I firmly believe that his facade of success has held due to his influence, garnered through cruelty and some level of wit, but that the man has been deep in the throws of dementia for years now. The folks propping him up are scrambling to contain and normalize his unfiltered ramblings, often failing, but it matters less and less as time goes on and we all become more and more desensitized to a new federal brand of bullshit.

He's not suffering from dimentia he's just functionally illiterate and incapable of changing, which means when he does off the wall stupid shit it is because he doesn't know what he's doing and insists he does.

I have a very narrow definition of Evil, and yet this is smack dab in the centre of that definition.

We need more Grenadiacs.

I'm sure there are specific political operatives who are pretty intelligent but when they make this big of a fuss about fucking coal I don't know. If they were smart they would at least try to be corrupt under the guise of clean energy programs. Before anything else I think of the kind of garbage-tier businessmen that Trump makes friends with, who then get appointed to a government organization that goes way beyond the scope of their old job, and inevitably they're too incompetent to do anything but shill for their industry while the other 90% of the department is left to bang its head against the wall. For now, at least, the Environmental Protection Agency isn’t seeking to rescind the 2012 standards, responding to a clamor from utilities that have already spent at least $18 billion complying with the requirements. But the EPA is asking the public to comment on whether it has the authority or obligation to do so, opening the door to a possible future repeal. i.e. they just tried to do this without thinking Also https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/climate/pruitt-coal-consulting.html WASHINGTON — Scott Pruitt, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency who championed deregulation of the fossil fuel industry, is in discussions to work as a consultant to the Kentucky coal mining tycoon Joseph W. Craft III. “Scott Pruitt has always been doing the dirty work for coal millionaires,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “The only difference is now he’ll be paid by them directly rather than ripping off the taxpayer.”

Almost every politician can talk circles around everyone on this forum. With Trump being the obvious exception, almost everyone in the upper echelons of government are career politicians. If an electrician can go on for hours about ohms and shit, a career politician can use very specific language in discourse, and maneuver themselves politically to always make the largest personal profit. It's not a huge leap to go from "These politicians are stupid" to "These politicians are evil". I made that leap a while ago, and recommend everyone does the same. Note, emphasis on the "these".