Obama EPA Releases New Climate Rules

Of course Republicans are attacking the new climate rules.  This GOP believes that if Obama says it, they are obliged to be against it.  Remember, these are the same people who have spent the last 5 years insisting that health care for Americans is an abomination.  If they can’t be serious about anything, why should we take their theatrics seriously?  (…aside from the harm they’re doing, which is the real abomination.)

There’s lots more worthwhile stuff out there to learn about the EPA’s new rules.  I’ll list a few of the things I’ve found below, but here’s one that undermines the GOP nonsense pretty completely, from Grist’s “The Nine Things You Need to Know About Obama’s New Climate Rules“:

8.  Will it hurt the economy? No. As McCarthy noted in her remarks Monday, even the upper bound of projected cost increases for an average household’s utility bill will equal the price of a gallon of milk every month. Such a minor rate of increase is unlikely to cause many factories to pull up stakes and move to Mexico. Job losses in the coal industry will be offset by hiring in the construction and clean energy sectors. Lower rates of respiratory illness will save money on health care and improve productivity. EPA estimates that lower particle pollution from coal burning will reduce annual heart attacks, asthma attacks, premature deaths, hospital admissions, and lost days of work and school by the thousands. The economic value of these savings could outweigh increased costs by up to a factor of 10.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy

So, the costs will be trivial, the job losses will be few and offset by gains elsewhere and the health benefits will be enormous.  Sounds like a great deal to me.

…here are a few other things I’ve been reading over the last few days on this subject:  What have you seen?