Obama Targets GOP States With Costly CO2 Regulations http://news.investors.com/ibd-edito...-co2-limits-hit-republican-states-hardest.htm Global Warming: When it comes to climate change, President Obama says we're all in it together. But when it comes to his plan to fight it, some states appear to be more equal than others. 'Americans across the country are already paying the price of inaction," Obama said in one of his multiple speeches on global warming. And cutting carbon dioxide emissions is "exactly the kind of challenge that's big enough to remind us that we're all in this together." Yet Obama's "clean power plan" — which the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled last week — lets some states largely off the hook while imposing deep cuts on others. And three states — Vermont, Hawaii and Alaska — are exempt. The EPA plan targets power plants, with the goal of cutting CO2 emissions per megawatt/hour of electricity. But it gives states the flexibility of targeting overall CO2 emissions, including an allowance for new power plants. By that latter measure, California can actually boost its CO2 emissions by 15% between 2012 and 2030, while Louisiana — which had roughly the same CO2 levels as California in 2012 — will have to cut its emissions by 17%, EPA state reports show. Odder still is that most of the states hit with the deepest CO2 cuts under the EPA's new rules just happen to be those that voted Republican in the last presidential election. At least, that's what the Manhattan Institute's Diana Furchtgott-Roth discovered when she took a closer look at the EPA's plan. "Of the 10 states that will have to reduce emissions the most, seven voted for Romney in 2012," she reports. At the other end of the spectrum, nine states will be able to increase overall CO2 emissions under Obama's plan. Of those, only two voted GOP. Plus, two of the three exempt states are Democratic. Looked at another way, the data compiled by Furchtgott-Roth show that red states will be responsible for for 66% of the total CO2 cuts under this plan; blue states, 34%. And because the rules are designed to let states group together as a region and trade CO2 emission credits, liberal states could end up making money off conservative ones, Furchtgott-Roth points out. (More at above url)
See, I told you Obama was a great president. Article doesn't mention coal once. IBD, what a surprise.