Word: coaling
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...initial House proposal triggered opposition by many of the biggest polluters, including electric utilities and industries that burn carbon-heavy coal. They would have to obtain permits for each ton of warming gases - chiefly carbon dioxide - limited by the cap. The bill didn't specify how the permits would be allocated or how much those permits might cost. Environmentalists wanted the government to auction them, with the proceeds used to lighten ratepayer utility bills inflated by the higher costs of running power plants and to subsidize energy efficiency measures. (See pictures of this fragile earth...
...Democrats devised a permit allocation system to line up committee support. To woo lawmakers from districts powered by coal-fired utilities in the Midwest and Southeast, the agreement would give away 35% of the permits to electric utilities until 2025 while they make a transition to cleaner fuels or develop carbon capture technology. Research for such technology would be subsidized by billions of dollars raised from government auctions...
...starkest example of the problems with the analysis is the time horizon. When the EPA studied a reasonable 30-year time period, even with its generous assumptions, soy biodiesel and corn-ethanol plants powered by coal or natural gas actually produced more emissions than gasoline; corn ethanol only passed the stress test (and just barely) when powered by the cleanest possible power. And that analysis assumed it's a good trade-off to accept massive emissions today in exchange for reductions over 30 years, when in fact massive emissions today could help trigger devastating ice melts and other feedback loops...
...considered a rare green coup. Since the ESA mandates the government protect endangered species from hazards, listing the polar bear as threatened by global warming would appear to require Washington to control carbon emissions. Some green groups even thought the ESA could be used to fight new coal plants and other big emitters of greenhouse gases, on the grounds that they would accelerate warming and harm the polar bear. (See Germany's latest polar bear celebrity...
...call for comprehensive climate legislation, Salazar essentially made the same argument that his predecessors had: that the ESA was meant to deal with local threats to species, not global ones. It would be impossible, for example, to directly link the increase in carbon emissions caused by a new coal plant to the polar bears' melting habitat. But environmental groups, several of which had fought in the courts for years to force the Bush Administration to list the polar bear, found Salazar's logic faulty. "From a scientific standpoint they're wrong," says John Kostyack, senior counsel at the National Wildlife...