THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 188, August 1, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
NAACP & EPA INFLICT HEAT PROSTRATION & DEATH:
This Kind of "Environmental Justice" We Can Do Without
By Niger Innis & Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED
PEOPLE, & GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF THE ELECTRICAL POWER INDUSTRY: IN THE MIDST OF A LONG, SEARING
HEAT WAVE, EPA & THE NAACP WORKING HAND-IN-HAND TO PROMULGATE EPA'S TOUGH NEW POWER PLANT
REGULATIONS -- THE HARMFUL EFFECTS THAT THOSE RULES WILL HAVE ON JOBS & ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE ELECTRICITY
& AIR CONDITIONING, ESPECIALLY FOR POOR, MINORITY, ELDERLY, & OTHER VULNERABLE MEMBERS OF AMERICAN
SOCIETY -- CLOAKING THESE HARMFUL REGULATIONS IN THE GUISE OF CIVIL RIGHTS & "ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE," WHEN
THEIR ACTUAL EFFECTS WOULD BE THE ANTITHESIS OF THOSE IDEALS
FULL STORY:
From New York, Washington and Atlanta to Chicago, St. Louis and Dallas, America is baking in a furnace. As millions
swelter and gasp, they thank their lucky stars for air-conditioned cars, homes, offices, and other places of refuge. And
for the reliable, affordable electricity that makes AC possible.
Previous generations weren’t so fortunate. When a record heat wave slammed the nation in July, 1936, Midwest
temperatures hit 100-107 for a week. With most homes and businesses lacking even fans in this pre-AC era, millions
suffered heat prostration. In Wisconsin, 449 died. Nationwide, thousands perished.
Now the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People want
to send America back to the “good old days.” Under a perverse notion of “environmental justice,” they are promoting
tough new air quality rules that would shut down dozens of coal-fired power plants that make affordable AC possible
for millions of poor and minority families.
According to them, coal-based electricity is “racist.” Minorities are more at risk because they often live near
“dangerous,” older, more polluting power plants.
There is no excuse for the ridiculous “racism” and “justice” rhetoric, or the way EPA used cherry-picked data and
computer models to conjure up health risks and benefits that exist only in virtual worlds. (Visit www.AffordablePowerAlliance.org
for details.) Worse, the agency refused to consider the disastrous effects its draconian regulations will impose on
families and businesses, due to skyrocketing electricity prices.
EPA’s rules will reduce electricity availability and send costs soaring 12% to 60% by 2015 – especially in the 26 states
that depend on coal for 48-98% of their electricity. Families and businesses in those states currently pay less than half
as much per kilowatt hour as those in low-coal, high-tax, hyper-regulated states. That means jobs, profits, balanced
budgets – and protection against life-threatening heat and cold.
Under EPA/NAACP rules, all that would end. Power plant closures will cause deadly electricity shortages during
periods of peak demand. Millions of poor and minority families will be unable to afford air conditioning when electricity
is available. Our elderly will be particularly at risk, especially in inner cities, because energy costs hit them
disproportionately and they are least able to survive heat and heatstroke.
This Summer’s blistering heat wave is a forecast for what lies ahead. Dozens have already died, including a Kansas man
who had air conditioning but was concerned about paying his electricity bill, and so didn’t turn it on. How many more
will face this life-or-death choice, after the EPA and NAACP succeed in closing power plants and driving electricity
prices through the roof, no one can say. But in Chicago, a 1995 heat wave killed 700 people – and local papers predict a
40-60% price hike by 2015.
Shops, restaurants, groceries, dry cleaners, and bakeries will see electric bills soar by thousands a year. Hospitals,
school districts, internet providers, hotels, and factories will be forced to pay tens or hundreds of thousands, even
millions in added electricity costs. Factories that now pay $1 million for electricity could see an extra $600,000 added to
their annual operating costs.
Each $30,000 increment is equal to another entry-level job that won’t be “created or saved.”
Chicago public schools will need an extra $2.7 million a year for electricity by 2014, the Chicago Tribune has
reported. That translates into dozens of terminated sports programs, teachers, and administrators.
Steel and paper mills, aluminum and petroleum refineries, car and aircraft factories will see annual electricity costs soar
by millions of dollars. That could mean massive layoffs and entire operations shuttered or moved overseas.
Management Information Services calculates that EPA’s rules will cost six Midwestern manufacturing states a
combined 3.5 million jobs and $42-82 billion in annual GDP.
Do the EPA and NAACP suppose their rules will end heat waves? Or that unemployed workers and their families will be
better able to afford air conditioning the next time temperatures climb above 100 degrees? Or that newly impoverished
state and local governments will be better able to provide energy welfare – perhaps via another $1 trillion in federal debt?
Power plant emissions have been falling for decades. They have hardly morphed into a health-threatening crisis that
suddenly justifies this EPA power grab and power plant shutdown. There is no basis for imposing stratospheric
electricity costs that will kill millions more jobs – and put millions more people at risk from heat stroke and other ravages
of government-inflicted poverty.
It would be nice if we could wave a magic wand and find billions of dollars to tear down and replace older power plants
– or retrofit them with new pollution control and monitoring equipment, cover the extra annual operating and maintenance
expenses, pay for “stranded investments” from facilities that will be shuttered long before the end of their useful life, and
build or upgrade transmission lines from new power plants, wind farms, and solar arrays.
It would be wonderful if wind and solar facilities could actually replace the NAACP and EPA’s detested coal-burning
power plants – without needing billions in federal subsidies, duplicative gas-fired backup generators, thousands of miles
of new transmission lines, hundreds of thousands of acres, and millions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass, and
rare earth metals.
It would be fabulous if they actually generated electricity anywhere near their rated capacity and worked 24/7/365, instead
of maybe 8/5/300 – and their electricity didn’t cost three times the coal-based alternative.
It would be incredible if EPA permit quagmires and environmentalist lawsuits did not stymie virtually every proposal for
new coal, gas and nuclear power plants, transmission lines, natural gas drilling, and even wind farms and photovoltaic
arrays, to replace coal-fired generators.
But that is not the world we live in.
Instead, we remain bogged down in an interminable recession, with intractable unemployment. We have incurred
monumental debt. We have created a morass of legislation, regulation, and litigation that ensures old power plants will be
gone, replacements won’t be built anytime soon, and “smart meters” will let bureaucrats shut off AC power anytime
electricity demand exceeds supply. We are killing jobs, businesses, investment, and innovation – and will soon be killing
our own citizens.
America’s workers, poor, and minorities now face the prospect of skyrocketing energy prices and even more
unemployment – accompanied by recurrent blackouts, rolling brownouts, misery, heatstroke, and unnecessary deaths
during future heat waves.
One shudders to think that NAACP is so misguided, so ideologically hidebound, so beholden to government grants that it
cannot recognize this – or realize it is the NAACP and EPA that are inflicting “energy racism” and “environmental injustice”
on our nation’s most vulnerable citizens.
Reliable, affordable energy is the foundation for jobs, modern living standards, health, opportunity, and civil rights
progress. The NAACP needs to join the Affordable Power Alliance and Congress of Racial Equality in protecting
Americans against further job losses and future heat waves.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Science, Ethics, & Human Health:
Human Health & Public Policy
Niger Innis and Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., are co-chairs of the Affordable Power Alliance, a coalition of civil rights,
religious, and social issues groups representing African American, Hispanic, poor, and elderly constituents.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity