Greedy motherfuckers

[FAHQTOO]

he already lost his TV for a different reason. His face was priceless when he came home and it was gone from his room.

Think about how priceless it would be if he had no light in his bedroom or bathroom...and don't forget to black out the window too.

[HairOfTheDog]

Global Climate Change Regulations Instituted in the US

"As president, and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our children to a planet that's beyond fixing.

President Barack Obama is using his executive authority to take his strongest action yet against climate change -- proposing new EPA regulations. An Environmental Protection Agency proposal announced Monday would cut carbon emissions from power plants by 30%.

"Nationwide, by 2030, this rule would achieve CO2 emission reductions from the power sector of approximately 30 percent from CO2 emission levels in 2005," the proposed regulation says. "This goal is achievable because innovations in the production, distribution and use of electricity are already making the power sector more efficient and sustainable while maintaining an affordable, reliable and diverse energy mix."

The EPA says the regulation will also "reduce pollutants that contribute to the soot and smog that make people sick by over 25 percent." The agency projects the reductions will avoid 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths and 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children.

States will have a variety of options to meet the goal, including improving energy efficiency both inside and outside plants, changing how long the plants operate each day, and increasing the amount of power derived in other ways through clean energy.

Asked about criticism that the move won't make much difference in global climate change efforts without India and China doing the same, Carney said, "The United States has to lead, first of all, and this is an indication that the United States will lead on this very important challenge posed by climate change and global warming."

"We can lead this fight," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said Monday at an event announcing the plan. "We can innovate our way to a better future. That's what America does best."

By acting through a regulation rather than proposing a law, the president skirts Congress.

What does this mean? Depends on who you ask...

Some Republicans say the requirement will kill jobs in the coal industry. "The administration has set out to kill coal and its 800,000 jobs," Sen. Mike Enzi said in the GOP weekly address Saturday. "If it succeeds in death by regulation, we'll all be paying a lot more money for electricity -- if we can get it."
----------------------
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business federation, estimated the new regulations will cost the economy $50 billion a year.
----------------------
The EPA offered a very different picture, saying the proposal will cost as much as $8.8 billion annually in 2030, but "will lead to climate and health benefits worth an estimated $55 billion to $93 billion per year in 2030." McCarthy also said the plan will ultimately make the average electricity bill in the United States 8% lower.

"We'll need thousands of American workers in construction, transmission and more to make cleaner power a reality," McCarthy said Monday. "The bottom line is: We have never, nor will we ever have to choose between a healthy economy and a healthy environment."
---------------
"All the major legislative and regulatory proposals to combat global warming kill jobs and disproportionately hurt lower income people and minorities," the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research argued in a list of "top ten reasons Washington should not impose new global warming laws or regulations."
---------------
Rep. Steve Scalise, the Republican vice chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power, slammed the proposal. "Once again, this administration is trying to impose unachievable standards on our nation's power plants that have no basis in reality. If allowed to go into effect, this rule will cost millions of Americans their jobs and cost the economy over $500 billion in lost economic activity."
------------------
White House spokesperson Carney wrote off job loss claims as a "doomsday scenario. That's what they said when regulation was put in place in 1990 over acid rain. And it wasn't true then." The regulation, he argued, will create "huge benefits when it comes to enhancing our energy security and creating opportunities -- entrepreneurial opportunities."
------------------
Environmental advocates hailed the administration's decision.

Full story: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/02/politi...emissions/

The new requirements on businesses are gonna cost business owners a lot of time and money. There are guidelines and plans from which we can choose to become governmentally-compliant by June 2016 (and extension requests available).

[crash]

Isn't it interesting that some of the first comments to surface are all about the money.

[Mohammed]

It's ALL about the money.

[Maggot]

Cool now China can fire up a few more factories belching filth into the sky.

[HairOfTheDog]

President Obama's new climate change push was reaffirmed on Thursday when the Department of Energy announced that it will make $4 billion in loans available to clean energy projects.

In a statement, US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said:

“As the President emphasized in his Climate Action Plan, it is critical that we take an all-of-the above approach to energy in order to cut carbon pollution, help address the effects of climate change and protect our children’s future. Investments in clean, low-carbon energy also provide an economic opportunity. Through previous loan guarantees and other investments, the Department is already helping launch or jumpstart entire industries in the U.S., from utility-scale wind and solar to nuclear and lower-carbon fossil energy. Today’s announcement will help build on and accelerate that success.”

[Cynical Ninja]

The sad thing that no one wants to talk about is its already too late, I'm afraid we are fucked as a species.

Case in point - there are adverts in the UK to save electricity, unplug stuff, don't have your tv on standby mode, use energy efficient bulbs blah blah blah.

Ok I'll do that. But then I go to the town centre and the massive council building switches all its lights on and leaves them on all night! Thereby making little savings I'm trying to make utterly pointless!

We've poisoned and raped the Earth cutting down all the trees polluting the air and oceans. Now we have fracking! We want to fuck up and destroy the very earth beneath our feet as well.

Sorry we are fucked.

[HairOfTheDog]

You don't say?!



In a condemnatory speech last week against the Obama administration’s new Environmental Protection Agency carbon emission regulations, Kentucky state Sen. Brandon Smith (Republican, pictured above) claimed that man-made climate change is scientifically implausible because Mars and Earth share “exactly” the same temperature.

During a Natural Resources and Environment Committee meeting yesterday, Smith, the Senate majority whip, said:

As you [Energy & Environment Cabinet official] sit there in your chair with your data, we sit up here in ours with our data and our constituents and stuff behind us. I won’t get into the debate about climate change but I’ll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.

Makes perfect sense.

Except that...........according to NASA, the average temperature on Earth is 57 degrees Fahrenheit -- 138 degrees above Mars' average of -81 degrees.

Oh, by the way, Smith just happens to own a coal mining company, Mohawk Energy.

Unintentionally hilarious greedy motherfucker.

[HairOfTheDog]

Australia Ditches Environmental Carbon Protection Initiative

Prime Minister Tony Abbott's conservative coalition government rose to power last year on the promise of getting rid of the tax, assuring voters that removing it would reduce household electricity bills. He plans to replace the measure with a taxpayer-financed AU$2.55 billion fund to pay industry incentives to use cleaner energy.

Abbott: "Today, the tax that you voted to get rid of is finally gone: a useless, destructive tax which damaged jobs, which hurt families' cost of living and which didn't actually help the environment."

Australia is one of the world's worst greenhouse gas emitters per capita, largely because of its heavy reliance on the nation's vast reserves of cheap coal for electricity.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten lashed out at Abbott after the vote, dubbing him an "environmental vandal."

"Today, Tony Abbott has made Australia the first country in the world to reverse action on climate change," Shorten told reporters. "History will judge Tony Abbott very harshly for refusing to believe in genuine action on climate change. Tony Abbott is sleepwalking Australia to an environmental and economic disaster."

Big businesses and industry groups across Australia rallied behind the tax's abolition, including the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which dubbed the levy a dead weight on the economy.

"It really did impact on the competitiveness of many Australian businesses and of course it put up the price of power," the group's CEO Kate Carnell said. "So it's a good step forward for competitiveness and also for employment in Australia."

In a fiery speech ahead of Thursday's vote, Sen. Christine Milne, leader of the Greens, called it an "appalling day for Australia." "A vote for the abolition of the clean energy package is a vote for failure," she said. "If this parliament votes to abandon the clean energy package, you are voting against the best interests of the nation."

Full story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17...ostpopular

[aussiefriend]

Our environmental minister also cited Wikipedia when explaining their position on the environment at one stage. It's embarrassing.

[crash]

The people of this country have only themselves to blame. Well the 'majority' of them anyway. They set themselves on this path when they put popularity before policy when they cast their vote.

On the flip side, there's more than a fair dose of propaganda the other way in this argument. The truth always lies halfway in between, I guess..

[aussiefriend]

Oh that's crap Crash, you mean 97% of the scientists are wrong. You obviously don't watch #QandA. It's not a propaganda tool, it's fucking fact. These arseholes are denying it and going as far as lying about it for a quick buck.....for themselves of course.

[crash]

Are you this bombastic in your everyday life? Do you read a sentence, see what you want to see, get outraged and have an OTT reaction all the time?

I didn't say that the argument from Labor or the Greens was pure propaganda or even untrue. My inference was the way they are spreading some if their facts, is in a propagandistic manner. They are very much playing the man, not the ball.

[aussiefriend]

Listen here bigshot, I have just finished a 10 hour night shift in the psychiatric intensive care unit, the patients there were better behaved last night there than your outburst right now. In fact, if you were in the ward I would call the Code Black team and have them hold you down whilst I inject you. I can read between the lines, i am not taking sides politically, I am talking about what the experts say.

[Maggot]

The Washington Post: The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.
Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.
Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.
I apologize, I neglected to mention that this report was from November 2, 1922, as reported by the AP and published in The Washington Post 90+ years ago.

[crash]

the patients there were better behaved last night there than your outburst right now.

Only one of us is prone to outbursts, Loosey Loo, and stop fucking blaming having to work night shifts and all the other problems that the rest of the people here, and the general population, seem to be able to accomplish and function normally.

I worked two thirty six hour shifts, twelve hours apart, dealing with a bunch of dudes that act like two year olds and carry on with more work place politics than Parliament House and you wouldn't have even known if I hadn't told you..

If your job affects the rest of your life that badly, get a new fucking job..

[crash]

I apologize, I neglected to mention that this report was from November 2, 1922, as reported by the AP and published in The Washington Post 90+ years ago.

And was no doubt compiled by experts akin to those in QandA..

[aussiefriend]

If your job affects the rest of your life that badly, get a new fucking job..

No way, I will be running around like Donald Trump on payday.

[aussiefriend]

And for the record your beloved David Suzuki was on Q and A Mother Earth!

[crash]

He's a good guy, you'd like him. Not sure if the feeling would be mutual..

How are you going to be able stand yourself when you get paid like Donald Trump? Maybe you can donate it to Greenpeace. Or even better, buy 500 copies of the Big Issue every week and hand them out to the homeless people...or start your own political party, I mean PUP made it?