Obama’s new climate change regulations

[Flash Walken]

The cost of inaction is already greater than diversification would have been.

NORFOLK — At high tide on the small inlet next to Norfolk’s most prestigious art museum, the water lapped at the very top of the concrete sea wall that has held it back for 100 years. It seeped up through storm drains, puddled on the promenade and spread, half a foot deep, across the street, where a sign read, “Road Closed.”

The sun was shining, but all around the inlet people were bracing for more serious flooding. The Chrysler Museum of Art had just completed a $24 million renovation that emptied the basement, now accessible only by ladder, and lifted the heating and air-conditioning systems to the top floor. A local accounting firm stood behind a homemade barricade of stanchions and detachable flaps rigged to keep the water out. And the congregation of the Unitarian Church of Norfolk was looking to evacuate.

On May 6, the Obama administration released the third National Climate Assessment, and President Obama proclaimed climate change no longer a theory; its effects, he said, are already here. This came as no surprise in Norfolk, where normal tides have risen 11 / 2 feet over the past century and the sea is rising faster than anywhere else on the East Coast.

The more urgent question is what to do about it — and how to pay for it. For that, the White House has offered few answers.

The city hired a Dutch consulting firm to develop an action plan, finalized in 2012, that called for new flood gates, higher roads and a retooled storm water system. Implementing the plan would cost more than $1 billion — the size of the city’s entire annual budget — and protect Norfolk from about a foot of additional water.

As the city was contemplating that enormous price tag, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) last year delivered more bad news: If current trends hold, VIMS scientists said, by the end of this century, the sea in Norfolk would rise by 51 / 2 feet or more.

“Clearly, we’ve got more work to do,” said Ron Williams Jr., Norfolk’s assistant city manager for planning.

Options for dealing with the water are limited, and expensive. The city could protect itself with more barriers. Williams lamented, for instance, that a new $318 million light-rail system — paid for primarily with federal funds -- was built at sea level. With a little foresight, he said, the tracks could have been elevated to create a bulwark against the tides.

As it stands, the new rail system could itself be swept away, the money wasted. “Nowhere do we have resiliency built in,” he said.

A second option calls for people to abandon the most vulnerable parts of town, to “retreat somewhat from the sea,” as Mayor Paul D. Fraim put it in a 2011 interview, when he became the first sitting politician in the nation to raise the prospect.

For now, Williams said, retreat is not on the table “on a large scale,” though “you may look at localized hot spots.” The Dutch consultants, Fugro Atlantic, recommended buying out properties in Spartan Village, a bowl-shaped neighborhood that flooded during a rainstorm in 2009.

That leaves the third option: adaptation. Raising buildings, roads and other critical infrastructure. Last fall, the city council required all new structures to be built three feet above flood level, one of the strictest standards in the state.

“People right now are having trouble getting their arms around what needs to be done. And no one can fathom what it’s going to cost,” said City Councilwoman Theresa Whibley, who represents many pricey waterfront neighborhoods, including the Hague, where the plan calls for floodgates to block the surging tide.

“When we’re talking about floodgates and building bulkheads, then you’re talking about the big bucks that even the feds don’t have. And then you’re competing with New York, Miami — even Hampton.” Whibley paused. “I don’t sound very optimistic, do I?”

The problem is particularly urgent in Norfolk and the rest of Tidewater Virginia — which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has ranked second only to New Orleans in terms of population threatened by sea-level rise — due to a fateful convergence of lousy luck. First, the seas are generally rising as the planet warms. Second, the Gulf Stream is circulating more slowly, causing more water to slosh toward the North Atlantic coast. In 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey declared a 600-mile stretch of coastline, from North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras to Boston, a “sea-level rise hotspot,” with rates increasing at three to four times the global average.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...637_story.html

But guys, we don't want to do something that will negatively affect the economy.

[puckedoff]

Short coal, long boats?

[PsYcNeT]

Wait, since when does the POTUS dictate environmental policy?

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Wait, since when does the POTUS dictate environmental policy?

Bully Pulpit.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Wait, since when does the POTUS dictate environmental policy?

http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/ob...nowhere-close/

Obama has unilateral, executive-branch, rule-making powers under the federal Clean Air Act to go after coal-powered plants.

[St. Pats]

I don't get why it's always go after the sectors of the economy that got us here in the first place. We don't develop without using these resources. Instead of the stupidic blame game why not pump cash into alternative energy sources. Meanwhile wean us off coal etc. in an orderly fashion without the junk. What jobs are those workers going to have? Part of it should be training for them to switch over.

Obama goes after coal plants? Just seems idiotic to me. Obama puts tens of billions into alternative energy should be the headline.

[nik-]

How much could tax credits offset the cost to producers to take this hit? 20% of the cost? 15%?

How can this be incentivized?

[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

The cost of inaction is already greater than diversification would have been.

But guys, we don't want to do something that will negatively affect the economy.

Good report here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...-iea-says.html

"Investments in renewables, nuclear power and CCS would offer more benefits than costs, according to the agency. It said spending $44 trillion would yield more than $115 trillion in fuel savings."

I don't think that we need to have prosperity or abundance suffer under a reality of clean and safe power generation. On the contrary, using the right technology, we can have quality of life explode for the balance of the planet who largely live without.

It is not an either or situation here.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

Good report here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...-iea-says.html

"Investments in renewables, nuclear power and CCS would offer more benefits than costs, according to the agency. It said spending $44 trillion would yield more than $115 trillion in fuel savings."

I don't think that we need to have prosperity or abundance suffer under a reality of clean and safe power generation. On the contrary, using the right technology, we can have quality of life explode for the balance of the planet who largely live without.

It is not an either or situation here.

The problem is transition period and finding people affected new jobs. Fighting global warming is great, but to the "average joe" employee of a coal plant or oil company feeding your family is more important.

How long does it take to transition to the new economy?
What is done for people who lose employment as a result of regulation?

These are the most important short term questions. I don't see something that's approached answering them. It would be great to always be able to think long term, but the bank won't give a #### that you're making the future better when it forecloses on your house because you have no job.

[NuclearPizzaMan]

I can't wait until Obama learns that climate change isn't even real! The look on his face when he realizes he's made the world a better place for nothing will be priceless...

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by nik-

The problem is transition period and finding people affected new jobs. Fighting global warming is great, but to the "average joe" employee of a coal plant or oil company feeding your family is more important.

That's not the problem. Yeah, it'll be a problem for them, but it's not the real problem.

The writing has been on the wall here for a long time. It's going to be on there for years to come because we all know how much talk there has been about this and how little has actually been done.

If someone finds himself out of a job at a coal plant or whatever, he should have seen it coming for years. If not decades. If he didn't, well, that sucks, but what are you gonna do?

[nik-]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

That's not the problem. Yeah, it'll be a problem for them, but it's not the real problem.

It's not the main problem, but it's still a big problem.

The writing has been on the wall here for a long time. It's going to be on there for years to come because we all know how much talk there has been about this and how little has actually been done.

If someone finds himself out of a job at a coal plant or whatever, he should have seen it coming for years. If not decades. If he didn't, well, that sucks, but what are you gonna do?

Well, "shoulda seen it coming" isn't going to feed people. So it doesn't matter how harsh you want to be with it, they need a solution for this. Honestly, your attitude towards it is ####ing terrible.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by nik-

It's not the main problem, but it's still a big problem.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not a big problem at all. It's really the least of our worries.

Originally Posted by nik-

Well, "shoulda seen it coming" isn't going to feed people. So it doesn't matter how harsh you want to be with it, they need a solution for this.

I guess I have a solution -- they can find another job. Start looking now. There is plenty of time.

Do you have a better solution?

We're not going to keep an entire industry going just to keep these people employed if there is a better solution. We all know that.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Nik-, why don't they pick up a hammer and help build homes for the millions of people that will be displaced from cities like Miami, Boston and New York by rising sea water levels? Not a tonne of skill involved there.

Not impossible to imagine government investing in re-training programs, either. It's not like operating a boiler in a coal plant is all that conceptually different from running one that is fueled by natural gas, or even fission.

At any rate, people are resilient and the US is a place where labour is very mobile and there are a lot of options. People who lose these jobs will find other ones, that's the way a place like the US works.

People who live in island nations who are watching their home nations literally vanish off the map are among some of the poorest in the world. The bank has no property to take from these people, they have no jobs to lose. They also have no means of going elsewhere. What happens to those folks?

[nik-]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

In the grand scheme of things, it's not a big problem at all. It's really the least of our worries.



I guess I have a solution -- they can find another job. Start looking now. There is plenty of time.

Do you have a better solution?

We're not going to keep an entire industry going just to keep these people employed if there is a better solution. We all know that.

It's an option in Calgary. Not everywhere is Calgary. Go tell some coal miner or coal plant worker in some tumbleweed town that he should have been training for a new job because he should have known.

Global Warming is a serious problem for us as a species, but do we just tell hundreds of thousands of people "sorry, it's for the greater good that you're going to lose everything".

I don't have a better solution, I'm saying they need to find one. Changing this is going to involve lifestyle re-engineering on a scale so massive that it's barely comprehensible.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

Nik-, why don't they pick up a hammer and help build homes for the millions of people that will be displaced from cities like Miami, Boston and New York by rising sea water levels? Not a tonne of skill involved there.

Not impossible to imagine government investing in re-training programs, either. It's not like operating a boiler in a coal plant is all that conceptually different from running one that is fueled by natural gas, or even fission.

I agree. Governments need to start planning for this transition seriously. They're not, and until that starts, all this talk is just pie in the sky.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by nik-

It's an option in Calgary. Not everywhere is Calgary. Go tell some coal miner or coal plant worker in some tumbleweed town that he should have been training for a new job because he should have known.

If he doesn't know, he shoulda known. I don't care where he lives. This isn't a secret or a surprise party.

If that's it, the only job he can get is in a coal mine, whaddya want from me? Should we keep the coal mines open so this guy can continue working there?

Originally Posted by nik-

Global Warming is a serious problem for us as a species, but do we just tell hundreds of thousands of people "sorry, it's for the greater good that you're going to lose everything".

Well if you put it that way, then, umm, yes. The greater good is obviously more important than the livelihoods of a few hundred thousand people (though I don't know where you got that number).

Of course you are also assuming that the people doing those jobs right now won't be required to do something else. I don't know where you are getting that either.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

If he doesn't know, he shoulda known. I don't care where he lives. This isn't a secret or a surprise party.

If that's it, the only job he can get is in a coal mine, whaddya want from me? Should we keep the coal mines open so this guy can continue working there?



Well if you put it that way, then, umm, yes. The greater good is obviously more important than the livelihoods of a few hundred thousand people (though I don't know where you got that number).

Of course you are also assuming that the people doing those jobs right now won't be required to do something else. I don't know where you are getting that either.

This response didn't say anything except more of the same from your last response. I already get your stance and hard line opinion. What I'm saying is that your stance and opinion won't fly, so they need to have those jobs in place for these people before they kill their industry.

Because as much as you want to stomp your feet and say "they should have known, good of the many", even though technically it's correct, no government body or politician is going to implement changes like this to just cut off tons of people from employment.

These solutions have to be found or this is going to spin it's wheels forever. Whether it's right or wrong, that's the way it is.

Governments need to grab their balls and start doing programs to address the labour transition now.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by nik-

This response didn't say anything except more of the same from your last response. I already get your stance and hard line opinion. What I'm saying is that your stance and opinion won't fly, so they need to have those jobs in place for these people before they kill their industry.

Because as much as you want to stomp your feet and say "they should have known, good of the many", even though technically it's correct, no government body or politician is going to implement changes like this to just cut off tons of people from employment.

These solutions have to be found or this is going to spin it's wheels forever. Whether it's right or wrong, that's the way it is.

Governments need to grab their balls and start doing programs to address the labour transition now.

It sounds like you think this is going to happen overnight. It won't.

No industry is going to be "killed" with the stroke of a pen, leaving hundreds of thousands suddenly out of work. We're still going to need electricity and fuel, even if it doesn't come from fossil fuels. We're still going to need to move around. To ship stuff around. Build stuff. Fix stuff. We're still going to need to, you know, keep going.

And the transition will take decades.

So yeah, if they rolled in and locked up all the coal mines and oilfields one day and everyone was turned out, that would be bad. I'm with you there. But it's not going to happen that way. It can't.

Hell, if a guy has a couple of kids right now and he's thinking "I won't be able to feed my family if we can't use coal anymore...", his kids will be grown up by the time we aren't using coal. He should probably tell his kids to look into another industry though.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by nik-

This response didn't say anything except more of the same from your last response. I already get your stance and hard line opinion. What I'm saying is that your stance and opinion won't fly, so they need to have those jobs in place for these people before they kill their industry.

Because as much as you want to stomp your feet and say "they should have known, good of the many", even though technically it's correct, no government body or politician is going to implement changes like this to just cut off tons of people from employment.

These solutions have to be found or this is going to spin it's wheels forever. Whether it's right or wrong, that's the way it is.

Governments need to grab their balls and start doing programs to address the labour transition now.

It's not a switch that gets flicked and suddenly the job the guy had on friday doesn't exist on monday. It will take a decade or more to begin to start phasing in serious alterations to the power infrastructure of the country.

Many of these jobs are artificial anyway and exist because of societal support and a real, definable underwriting of the cost of doing business.

There used to be an ice exporting industry in the north east. Huge blocks of ice carved up and shipped all over the world. It employed nearly 100 000 people!

Now though, we have machines that dispense fresh ice for us in a manageable size whenever we want.

I get what you're saying about people won't vote for something that kills their job, but that sort of goes into the whole social fabric thing which we've been destroying for decades. It's more efficient to pay to retrain someone than have them collect paltry assistance cheques.

Why can't a power engineer work for a public transportation company or a geothermal generation plant instead of on a SagD site?

I can't think of many careers that would be too adversely affected from a switch from one kind of power generation into several kinds. Geoscientists, maybe?

It's all a big 'won't somebody think of the children' that comes across more like "I fear change".