On Leaving Coal Emissions to the States: Implications for American Federalism

With the transportation (i.e., fuel) and power (i.e., coal) sectors accounting for a majority of the carbon emissions in the U.S., according to the EPA, the Trump administration’s moves to freeze his predecessor’s fuel efficiency standards and relax pollution rules for power plants needing renovation put at risk the declining trend of emissions in 2018. The implications for climate change (e.g., hotter summers) were stark, according to Janet McCabe, who had been Obama’s EPA air chief.[1] The Trump administration’s proposal to allow the states, including West Virginia, to set their own rules for regulating coal was, according to the New York Times, “the administration’s strongest and broadest effort yet to address what the president has long described as a regulatory ‘war on coal’.”[2] An implication is that carbon emissions from coal in the U.S. would likely increase as a result, even though large states like California and New York could be expected to tighten the rules. The interesting point about turning the regulations to the states revolves around federalism. Constitutionally speaking, should the states regulate the carbon emissions from coal?

The full essay is at "States Regulating Coal."

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1. Lisa Friedman, “Trump’s Plan for Coal Emissions: Let Coal States Regulate Them,” The New York Times, August 18, 2018.

2. Ibid.

Coal Industry Challenges Lower Carbon-Emission Targets: Human Nature on Full Display

With heat-waves underway and glaciers melting, climate-change was undeniable in the summer of 2015. Human nature itself was on full display. It was almost as if the human race could not summon itself into action even as the hardships of a warming world were a foregone conclusion. 

                               Penguins face receding ice and rising waters. (Natacha Pisarenko of AP)

The full essay is at "Coal Industry Challenges Lower Carbon-Emission Targets."

The EPA's Coal Carbon Emission Targets: Natural Gas Leaks Through

Coal is the bad guy. At least it is the antagonist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 645-page carbon-emissions plan unveiled in early June, 2014. In spite of the fact that the 30% reduction in CO2 emissions from the level in 2005 being set for 2030, critics showed their oligarchic focus on today by pointing to what the current likely costs would be. Electric bills increasing $4 or so a month in West Virginia. Lost jobs—as if the criteria of capital were also those of labor. In short, short-term inconveniences without a hint of the other side of the ledger. I submit that this is precisely the element in human nature that can be likened to the proverbial “seed of its own destruction” in terms of the future of our species. As menacing as such “reductionism to today” is, the assumption such as underlies the EPA’s proposal that coal is the definitive obstacle—and, furthermore—that we are not missing any other huge but invisible danger—is just as problematic from the standpoint of the species’s survival.

From: “What We Know about Coal and Natural Gas: The EPA’s Coal Emissions Targets