Clean Power Plan is about the future and our children

Before this plan, there were no limits to the amount of carbon pollution that coal power plants (we have seven in North Dakota) dumped into our atmosphere wreaking havoc on our health and climate.

Climate change has taken a back seat in most presidential and congressional campaigns, and was hardly mentioned in the 2012 election.

The impact of the final rule on the political map for 2016 is varied.

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a final rule requiring 35 states to revise implementation plans for emissions during SSM events.

While Indiana and Missouri have leaned Republican in recent presidential battles, Ohio is the electoral crown jewel of the Midwest that perennially helps to determine the outcome of hard-fought presidential contests. Do we develop our own state plan and be complicit in the federal government raising our energy prices and killing Missouri jobs? Likewise, Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio, and Wisconsin are also expected to sue even though they are making good progress toward Clean Power Plan compliance. The proposed rule will advance the shift away from low-cost coal generation and change our relative competitive advantage in electric prices. Colorado is home to a major clean air movement, and it will be hard for opponents of the new rule to get much traction there. The summit offers a unique networking platform for state regulators, policymakers and utilities to examine the final rule in its entirety, as well as how its effects will be felt both on state and national levels. “I will continue to fight regulations that are fundamentally bad for Wyoming and exceed the regulatory authority of the federal government”. The Clean power regulations likely would be a big environmental target for him if he makes it to the general election.

REUTERS/Mario AnzuoniDemocratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a Service Employees global Union roundtable on Home Care at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College in Los Angeles, California August 6, 2015.

“This rule is the most far-reaching energy regulation in the nation’s history, and the EPA simply does not have the legal authority to carry it out”, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said. “States need not adopt or implement a state plan, or be subject to a federal plan, that addresses carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants upon a determination that the plan would negatively affect: (1) economic growth, competitiveness, and jobs; (2) the reliability of its electricity system; or (3) electricity ratepayers by causing rate increases”. A plan that requires us to change our source of power so drastically and so quickly will be devastating to our economy.