Image: The Clean Power Plan requires power plant owners to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030.
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“The new US clean energy plan does deserve appreciation”.
Mr Obama’s revised plan relies more heavily on renewable energy sources like wind and solar replacing dirtier coal-fired power plants.
If the Clean Power Plan can weather that storm, though, it will likely stand as the most significant piece of environmental policy enacted by the Obama Administration.
The regulations face certain legal challenges from states and industries, and their long-term fate depends on their ability to withstand such challenges. “We’re the last generation that can do something about it”, Obama told a sympathetic audience at the White House. We only get one planet.
“We only get one home. There’s no plan B”.
The National Mining Association has said it will seek to block the plan in federal court, while the Republican leadership has urged state governors to defy the federal EPA by refusing to submit compliance plans.
And Republican critics say the rules will also hit average citizens in their pocketbooks.
Republican lawmakers in coal-producing states like Texas and others in Congress are lining up against the plan, casting it as a job killer.
“I will do everything I can to stop it”, he said.
Wyoming’s representatives are not pleased with the new plan.
“The EPA’s final plan is unattainable, unachievable and unrealistic”.
Obama rejected criticism that his plan would increase energy bills for Americans and hurt the poor, saying, “If you care about low-income, minority communities, start protecting the air that they breathe”. “But, we believe that since America is the second biggest carbon emitter after China, the 32 percent carbon emission target by 2030 does not sound impressive and the target must have been higher to provide pretty strong push for other rich polluters such as Russian Federation, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Korea and Canada to announce their more ambitious carbon emission reduction plans, respectively”, Mushahidullah Khan stressed.
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The agency said the state’s goal “looks less stringent” compared with the original proposal, but some observers said an apples-to-apples comparison is hard in large part because the EPA in the final rule changed its nationwide projections for renewable energy production in the coming decades. “I don’t want my grandkids not to be able to swim in Hawaii or not to be able to climb a mountain and see a glacier because we didn’t do something about it”, he said, his voice cracking audibly. “Europeans especially know too well that overreliance on intermittent energy sources can create its own economic hardships”.
