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He's a science denier, Biden is, and that's part of the danger. Scientists agree that atmospheric CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels reflect dangerous heat back to the earth, but not that we will thereby be wiped out. Biden uses the phrase "existential threat" as if climate change will exterminate humankind. Most scientists agree that the hotter it gets, the worse life will be, but don't go that far.
The power plants can supposedly use their own CO2 solution, although the possibilities are limited, and one recommendation of the Environmental Protection Agency sounds like a command: carbon capture. Here is a truly great idea that has been lousy in action but could be an element of progress if shutdowns weren't in the path.
What the technology poorly does at far more than the current cost of producing electricity is remove CO2 from the fossil fuel fumes. It then transports the wicked pollutants thousands of miles through wretchedly expensive pipelines to underground, fortified captivity. Lobbyists have told reporters the plants can't meet the deadlines for this aspiration. The same is true with other possibilities. Experts cite the extreme difficulty of mixing hydrogen with natural gas to thwart CO2, something that vastly outprices natural gas by itself.
The total transition cost could be unaffordable even with subsidies, and the already overregulated plants reduced CO2 more than is sought in this required undertaking by switching from coal to natural gas on their own. If they can't meet the EPA deadlines and are forced to shut down, imagine candles replacing light bulbs and the matter summed up by the industrial system going back to the Middle Ages and modernity on a stretcher.
The whole thing could be unconstitutional anyway. The federal government can't just march around the country telling everyone what to do, least of all without congressional backing. President Barack Obama tried to tell states how much to cut emissions with the Supreme Court finally saying forget it. Some think the Inflation Reduction Act will rescue this plan from the court except bunches of state attorneys general say it won't.
Biden, however, sees this project as the only way to meet his promises of truly significant emission cuts by 2030, and the question for some of us is why something less disastrous than outright shutdowns wasn't put forward if things don't work out.
Yes, carbon capture has its magic. If made workable, it would save fossil fuels of which we have plenty. It might also address the health issue the Biden team worries about, namely power plant smokestacks killing hundreds of people and inflicting thousands of illnesses by what they pump into the air. Without governmental threats of blowing up what previously did the job, Texas is beginning to show that renewables can work and Norway has achieved amazing results of producing electricity with ocean tides and waves.
Biden has to be carefully watched, as in his having cut down on our production of fossil fuels before replacements were available and forcing us to purchase them from foreign countries. We lost money and did nothing to lessen climate change threats.
Please remember that none of our already strenuous efforts will halt earthly climate change unless adversarial China gets in line, and meanwhile we could cheat ourselves out of the economic means necessary for later dealing with climate change effects, such as building embankments as oceans rise.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.