by Rona Fried
Aren’t you sick and tired of Republicans fighting every last thing?
As they prepare for all-out war over EPA’s pending power plant regulations (and smog, methane emissions, fracking on public lands ETC), the climate deniers want climate research dollars axed at the CIA and Defense Department budgets.
Even though the Defense Department says in its 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, "Climate change will affect the Department of Defense’s ability to defend the Nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security," even that doesn’t get Republicans’ ears.
Instead their draft budget calls climate research "an example of areas where there is room to cut waste and end the abuse or misuse of taxpayer dollars."
That’s after the Pentagon announced they are integrating climate change threats into all "plans, operations, and training" across the entire agency, in addition to the tiny portion of the budget that goes to related research.
"Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict. They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe," says DoD.
While it hasn’t made headlines, four years of terrible drought led to the uprising in Syria.
ALEC is Ready to Help
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is calling on states to ignore EPA’s power plant requirements.
The strategy is to tie up the regulations in so much red tape that EPA’s plan can’t go forward. Since the 2015 legislative session began, at least a dozen states have introduced such bills, which give state legislatures veto power over their environmental agencies’ carbon emission reduction plans, reports InsideClimate News.
ALEC has just the bill they need! Act Requiring Approval of State Plan to Implement EPA’s Carbon Guidelines.
EPA’s "proposal is projected to cause double-digit electricity price increases in most states and threaten electric reliability," ALEC says in the introduction to the bill.
Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania have already enacted these laws and bills have been introduced in West Virginia, Minnesota and Montana. In Colorado, the state utility commission would have to sign off on the plan, and in Nebraska, Arizona and South Dakota, environmental agencies would have to show how their plans would impact the economy.
Ironically, all these bills do nothing more than limit states’ options. If they don’t submit a plan, or their plan doesn’t meet the criteria, EPA will create one for them.
"This is greater than just a coal debate," Delegate John Shott said at a hearing in the West Virginia House. "This is a debate about the federal EPA telling citizens how much energy they can use in their own homes," reports InsideClimate News.
Really? At least these people should get their "facts" straight.
Read our article, Caring For the Environment Used to Be Non-Partisan.
Read the full article at InsideClimate News:
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