Blog 1 - New Pollution Reguations?

How great would it be if the United States was able to cut its carbon emissions by 17% in the next six years? The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to do just that. Recently, President Obama announced that he wanted the E.P.A to write a draft for a regulation that will set the national standard for carbon pollution. This will affect our largest source of the greenhouse gas pollution: the 1,500 coal-sucking power plants. The biggest challenge with this new regulation is going to be how it is written. If the wording is written too loosely, there could be little to no environmental impact at all. But on the other hand, if the wording is to strict, then this might lead to coal companies being shut down before there is enough alternative power to replace them.
So, if lowering our carbon footprint is good, why is it so important that this regulation is absolutely perfect? Unfortunately, these coal companies will do anything to get out of paying more money. This also means that one option that many of coal companies have already done is moving to an underdeveloped country. These places have little to no regulations on pollution that makes our global carbon footprint even bigger. You would think that trying to prevent our inevitable doom of global warming a little longer would be enough for some of these companies to lower their emissions. A large number of scientific reports are saying that there is a clear link between the rise of carbon emissions and the rising sea levels, melting land ice, and an increase in hurricanes and droughts. We are already seeing one of the worst droughts in 500 years right in our own country. One thing these coal companies can do is start investing now in other alternative power. Not only will this help our green-house gasses, but also start securing their future for when we ether A. have no more coal, or it's too little and too expensive or B. the Earth cannot physically handle anymore carbon emissions. As everything steadily becomes worse, people are going to start realizing exactly how important Earth is, and this will spark a new shift in society.



Link -
[ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/us/epa-staff-struggling-to-create-rule-limiting-carbon-emissions.html?hpw&rref=science ]