Obama’s Promise kept: 83,000 coal mining jobs lost since 2008
Promise kept: 83,000 coal mining jobs lost since 2008
It was during the 2008 campaign that candidate Obama first promised to destroy the coal industry. Since then, more than 400 coal mines have closed, six major coal companies have filed for bankruptcy, and more than 83,000 coal miners have lost their jobs.
That’s one promise the president worked hard to keep.
A 2015 study found the coal industry lost 50,000 jobs from 2008 to 2012 during Obama’s first term. During Obama’s second term, the industry employment in coal mining has fallen by another 33,300 jobs, 10,900 of which occurred in the last year alone, according to federal data. Currently, coal mining employs 69,460 Americans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Much of the blame for the job losses is targeted at federal regulations aimed at preventing global warming, which caused coal power plants to go bankrupt, resulting in a sharp decline in the price of coal.
“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” Obama said during a 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board. Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also pledged that “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
Employment has fallen so drastically because coal production has fallen by 15 percent since 2008 as companies have been forced by environmental regulation to shut down 400 mines due to decreasing demand. Companies opened 103 new mines in the U.S. in 2013 while 271 coal mines were idled or shut down, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations and cheap natural gas have devastating coal companies as well, even forcing Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company, to declare bankruptcy earlier this month. Other American coal companies have faced financial problems too. Arch Coal filed for bankruptcy as well in January and coal companies like Alliance Coal announced mass layoffs.
As a result, many ex-coal miners are unemployed and Appalachian “coal country” has faced very real economic devastation as a result. The coal-producing areas of eastern Kentucky have an unemployment rate of 8 percent unemployment rates and parts of West Virginia have double-digit unemployment.
Obama and many
Analysis: How a New California Climate Law Will Strangle Manufacturing
http://dailysignal.com/2016/09/01/how-a-new-california-climate-law-will-strangle-manufacturing/
California just hung up a big “Manufacturing Workers Need Not Apply” sign. It took the form of extended, stricter, and even less realistic carbon dioxide regulations.
A new California bill extends legislation previously set to expire in 2020 and imposes dramatically deeper emissions cuts for 2030. Under the new measure, California must cut its carbon dioxide emissions to a level 40 percent below its 1990 level by 2030.
It’s worth noting that California’s population is projected to be 50 percent higher in 2030than it was in 1990. It’s also worth noting that carbon dioxide is colorless, odorless, and nontoxic. Its purported health and climate impacts result from carbon dioxide’s effect on global warming. However, no amount of emissions regulation in California (or even the United States as a whole) will have a significantimpact on global warming—the developing world’s demand for affordable energy will swamp any cuts made by the U.S.
But the added regulatory burden will almost certainly drive up energy costs, which is bad news for consumers and businesses—and especially bad for energy-intensive industries like manufacturing.
The Daily Signal is the multi…
‘Libertarian’ Gary Johnson Pushes ‘Free Market’ Carbon Tax
Despite a historic opportunity for third parties to do well this presidential election, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson seems determined to blow it. In the equivalent of shooting himself in the political foot, Johnson announced support for a deeply unpopular tax on emissions of carbon dioxide, or CO2, to stop alleged “climate change.” And he sought to deceive voters while doing it. While the former New Mexico governor framed the tax scheme as a “fee” and a “free-market approach,” even libertarians blasted the deception.
The “fee,” as Johnson referred to his proposed tax in a perfect emulation of ObamaCare-style semantic deception, would massively expand government control over Americans and the economy. At the same time, the scheme would further enrich crony capitalists such as Goldman Sachs and Al Gore, along with the other mega-banks and oil companies pushing for it. The poor and middle class, though, along with freedom and free markets, would suffer a devastating blow from the plan. Even the planet would suffer, according to experts.
Known to scientists as the gas of life, CO2 is an essential molecule needed for plant life and is exhaled by every person on the planet. Despite being absurdly demonized as “pollution” by extremist politicians and bureaucrats, it is emitted in almost every human activity — from sitting on a couch to driving a car to turning on a light bulb. Human emissions of CO2, though, appear to be insignificant at best, making up a fraction of one percent of all the “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere.…
Report: Millennials could lose trillions in lifetime income because of ‘climate change’
Millennials could lose trillions in lifetime income because of climate change
IMAGE: RINGO CHIU/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Americans in their 20s and 30s could lose trillions of dollars in potential lifetime earnings as climate change disrupts the global economy and weakens U.S. productivity, according to a new report by NextGen Climate said.
If countries fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit the amount and pace of global warming, a 21-year-old college graduate today could lose $126,000 in lifetime wages and $187,000 in long-term savings and investments, the report found.
This would outrank the lost income due to student debt or wage stagnation.
As an entire generation, U.S. millennials — all75.4 million of them — could lose nearly $8.8 trillion in lifetime income without climate action, NextGen said. Those losses could keep climbing for the children of millennials and beyond.
“Global warming may very well be the biggest threat over the lifetime of a single generation,” Tom Steyer, the billionaire liberal climate activist and founding president of NextGen, told reporters Monday on a press call.
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Sen Reid brags about threatening coal industry: ‘I will do everything I can to hurt your investments, your company’ – ‘I won, they lost.’
Speaking to the Nevada Lambda Business Association, Senate Democrat Leader Harry Reid recalls how he successfully threatened utility executives over the planned construction of “four or five” coal-fired power plants in Nevada: “I told them, ‘You will rue the day you do that…I will do everything I can to hurt your investments, your company.” Senator Reid says, “I won, they lost.”
LAMBDA Business Luncheon
KTNV Channel 13 Las Vegas
August 16, 2016
Also see: Daily Caller: Harry Reid Brags About Personally Threatening Coal Executives With Financial Ruin – Here’s what Reid told reporters at a luncheon Wednesday, according to KTNV’s Jon Ralston:
But here in Nevada we don’t even have—NV Energy has not been the biggest help. We had companies come here wanting to spend money [inaudible] but they ended up pulling away [inaudible] they lost large amounts of money. [inaudible] is doing the accounting now and he’s doing a lot better now, but there’s still a lot they need to do. They announced that they—because you know, I came out there—but a number of years ago and I learned they were going to build four to five new coal fire generating plants in Nevada. Why? Because it’s pristine. Out there, nobody complains. I complained. My staff and everybody said “why are you doing that? You’re going to hurt yourself.” And maybe I did. But I won, they lost.
I called two of the companies that built plants there and I told them go ahead and do it, but I am going to do everything to hurt investments in your company. So they decided perhaps—decided to get rid of the coal plants. We don’t have a coal fire generated plant open since Reid-Gardner. And it was 40 years [inaudible]. Yesterday, they announced they announced it is going to close a year early. There’s only one coal fire plant left in Nevada and that’s on its way out too. So we’re making progress in Nevada.
Reid has talked about his efforts to keep coal plants out of Nevada, but he’s never admitted to threatening company executives.
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Nearly $300 Billion: The 7 most expensive regs in Obama’s climate plan
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-7-most-expensive-regs-in-obamas-climate-plan/article/2598653
By 8/8/16 12:01 AM
It has been just over three years since President Obama announced his extensive climate change agenda, called the Climate Action Plan.
The plan was his answer to Congress’ failure to pass comprehensive climate legislation, after action stalled in the Senate during his first term. Instead of relying on Congress, with its increased Republican opposition, Obama decided to enact regulations using his executive authority to meet his climate goals.
The Climate Action Plan directed the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department and other Cabinet-level agencies to begin working on new regulations, while speeding up existing programs to reduce greenhouse gases, which many scientists blame for driving man-made climate change.
The most notorious piece of the president’s plan is the rules for existing power plants, called the Clean Power Plan. The regulations for the first time use the EPA’s authority to hold states accountable for regulating carbon dioxide emissions, rather than just the owners and operators of power plants. While the EPA says it is not the most expensive of Obama’s climate rules, many critics beg to differ.
Meanwhile, the Department of Energy was charged with expediting energy-efficiency standards for appliances, placing more stringent requirements on manufacturers.
Increasingly stringent regulations for building low-emission vehicles are also a big part of the president’s agenda, including new rules that go into effect when model-year 2017 cars hit showroom floors.
The cost of the regulations is high, with critics arguing that the rules won’t do much to keep the Earth’s temperature from rising.
Other rules outside of the president’s climate plan, such as those for smog-forming ozone emissions, have been criticized by business groups as the most costly regulations in history because of their potential far-reaching impact on cities’ and regions’ economic growth. But there is no government pricetag for the rules, because the EPA said in the final 2015 rule that it does not have to assess their cost.
One More Official Exposes Real Goal Of Climate Scare – ‘A $7 trillion investment opportunity’
In recent years we’ve documented the true motivations that are driving the global warming scare.
Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, who aspires to be U.N. secretary general, has admitted that the goal of environmental activists is to destroy capitalism.
One-time U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Chairman Rajendra Pachauri acknowledged that his “fight” against global warming is his “religion” and “dharma.”
Ottmar Edenhofer, who co-chaired the IPCC working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015, has conceded that the climate crusade is an effort to shackle capitalism and establish a global welfare state.
Now we have Bank of England Governor Mark Carney revealing a deeper objective when he talked about how stopping climate change will provide capital markets with as much as a $7 trillion investment opportunity.
Of course his pitch is supposed to sound appealing to capitalists and defenders of the free market. But what good is sinking trillions into investments that are both unnecessary and are unlikely to produce a return?
The carbon trading scheme that was supposed to fuel economic growth while cutting man’s carbon dioxide emissions has turned out to be virtually worthless in Europe. There’s no reason to think Carney’s plot would produce better results.
But it would likely be a lucrative venture for Carney. He “and his banker mates,” Eric Worral writes on the Watts Up With That? blog, “would stand to make a lot of money, out of a vast surge in climate ‘compliance’ activity which would be associated with the new regulations.”
Some might call that “greed.” But to Carney, maybe it’s simply a matter of ensuring domestic tranquility. If his “investment” ideas become reality, then he pleases his wife Diana Fox Carney, who is such an environmentalist zealot that she is almost too easy to make fun of, and he also makes a few extra pounds on the side to add to his central banker’s salary, which is about $1.2 million a year.
Scientists: Global Warming Will Only Cost About 1% Of World Economy
Scientists: Global Warming Will Only Cost About 1% Of World Economy
http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/19/scientists-global-warming-will-only-cost-about-1-of-world-economy/
Dealing with global warming is cheaper than preventing it.
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US Funded World Bank “Climate Program” – Helping China put American Farmers Out of Work
US Funded World Bank “Climate Program” – Helping China put American Farmers Out of Work
Guest essay by Eric Worrall The World Bank, to which the USA is by far the largest contributor, has launched a climate program in rural China, to help Chinese farmers improve infrastructure and productivity. This will in turn help the Chinese drive down the profits and job opportunities in rural America. Project Helps Farmers Adapt […]
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Cheers! ‘Carbon markets in US, Europe & Asia are collapsing, with prices so low they’ve become virtually valueless’
LONDON, July 8 — Carbon markets, the free-enterprise solution to saving the world from global warming, are now in danger themselves.
The idea was simple enough: Set a cap on carbon emissions, issue enough permits to allow power plants, refineries and the like to stay within those limits and then shrink the cap over time to achieve reductions. The companies whose emissions fall fastest can sell their permits for a profit to slower responders — call it a reward for good behaviour.
The reality, though, is more complex. Undercut by a lack of political will on the size of caps and overtaken by costly new environmental mandates, carbon markets in the US, Europe and Asia are collapsing, with prices so low they’ve become virtually valueless. The credits auctioned in the US Northeast in June, for instance, sold for just US$4.53 (RM18.27) a short tonne, a 40 per cent drop from December.
“Climate policy has been muddled and messy,” said Michael Grubb, a professor at University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Resources who has advised the UK energy regulator. “Governments have set inadequate targets due to lobbying pressures and because they didn’t think carefully enough about overlapping efforts. That has destroyed investor confidence that carbon prices will rise.”
The idea of a carbon market originated 20 years ago with Richard Sandor, an economist who also pioneered interest-rate futures and derivatives at the Chicago Board of Trade. Today, there are 38 countries, cities, states and provinces using pricing systems in an attempt to put a lid on greenhouse gases, according to the World Bank.
The problem is that the permits are selling at a slower and slower rate. The surplus of allowances is becoming so large in systems run by Europe, California and Quebec — which together account for more than 90 per cent of global trading — that by 2022 it could cover the emissions spewing from every car on Earth for a full year, according to estimates by the London environmental group Sandbag Climate Campaign CIC and Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
In California’s market, all 23 million allowances sold in an auction in 2014. In May, 7.3 million permits found buyers, only 11 per cent of what was put up for sale.
– See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/money/article/tough-task-to-prevent-global-warming-when-carbon-is-this-cheap#sthash.EwchrFQQ.dpuf…