I posted a couple of days ago about the first-ever EPA rules limiting carbon emissions, and the hysteria with which Indiana’s 19th-Century leaders greeted those rules.
Those leaders must have been really annoyed by a story in yesterday’s New York Times–that is, if they actually read the Times or other credible news sources.
The cries of protest have been fierce, warning that President Obama’s plan to cut greenhouse gases from power plants will bring soaring electricity bills and even plunge the nation into blackouts. By the time the administration is finished, one prominent critic said, “millions of Americans will be freezing in the dark.”
Yet cuts on the scale Mr. Obama is calling for — a 30 percent reduction in emissions from the nation’s electricity industry by 2030 — have already been accomplished in parts of the country.
At least 10 states cut their emissions by that amount or more between 2005 and 2012, and several other states were well on their way, almost two decades before Mr. Obama’s clock for the nation runs out.
Worse still for the naysayers, the states that have already begun to clean up their acts haven’t suffered the dire consequences predicted by apologists for Big Coal. The New England region has made some of the biggest cuts in emissions, and residential electricity bills there have fallen 7 percent since 2005. Meanwhile, economic growth in the region ran slightly ahead of the national average.
Oh, pesky evidence!
The Times also reported that Europe is considering a 43 percent cut in emissions by 2030.
So much for “we’re number one!”
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