redfiche's Journal: Thank you Republicans

This sort of thing really pisses me off. The administration essentially suspending provisions of the clean air act for some older power plants, and then trying to claim it will be good for us. Right.

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Re:What A Joke.

[redfiche]

The NSR was meant to be a pain in the ass for these older power plants, to strongly encourage them upgrade their technology to meet the newer, more stringent pollution guidelines. By weakening the provisions, the administration will allow older power plants to continue to emit their high levels of pollution that have been grandfathered in. I understand that the changes do not increase existing emmissions, but by removing some of the pressure to lower emmissions, the changes are bad for the environment.

The only people I saw in support of the changes were power industry groups. I maintain that this is more policy out of the White House that places the desires of big business above those of the public at large.

The most ironic part is that if it weren't for Ralph Nader, we'd have a Dem prez, and this would not be happening.

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Re:What A Joke.

[redfiche]

I disagree that it is environmentally neutral. The point I was trying to make is that the changes in regulations remove an incentive for older power plants to upgrade to cleaner technologies. In your somewhat narrow example the policy is quite limiting; however, imagine the power plant is not planning an improvement for worker safety, but rather needs to replace a core piece of equipment that is reaching the end of its lifecycle. Under the old rules this would (rightly) trigger a review. That is no longer the case. While an argument could be made for exceptions to the stringent review policy for things such as worker safety, broadly rolling it back goes too far. IMHO. We may well have to agree to disagree on this.

Re:What A Joke.

[mrjohnson]

You're right, you know. Removing these rules allows the polluters to add to their old factories, and that'll increase the amount of pollution since they're allowed to use the old rules even while the factories are increasing their output.

People fully knew this would limit new projects on old factories, to get around it the factory owners would simply stop upgrading/installing new equipment. But over time they'd get to the point where they'd simply *have* to build more, the point where the cost of building new facilities was justified by demand.

Then Bush came along and simply wiped the rules. Now the owners are sighing relief. Oh, joy. :-(