Obama's New Rules for Coal Plants Are a Big Deal. The Ensuing Political Fight May Be Even Bigger. - New Republic

On June 2 Obama will unveil a new set of federal regulations on power plants, designed primarily to keep coal-fired plants from spewing so much carbon into the atmosphere.  The hope is that these new regulations will slow down climate change—at first incrementally, by reducing emissions from existing plants in the U.S., and then more dramatically, by providing the Administration with more leverage to negotiate a far-reaching, international treaty on emissions from multiple sources.

Most important of all, doing nothing about carbon emissions imposes its own, very real, and very significant costs.  It costs money to clean up after natural disasters.  As my colleague Danny Vinik has written, it will cost even more—way, way more—to protect or abandon coastal cities like Miami that can’t withstand significant increases in sea level. “We’re going to pay for climate change one way or another,” says Kyle Aarons, a senior fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.  “We can pay to migrate coastal populations, build sea walls, transport water to regions in drought conditions, or we can put a cost on carbon to drive us to more sustainable resources.  Ultimately we’ll have to pay both mitigation and adaptation costs, but mitigation is projected to be much more cost-effective.”

The NRDC has actually put a number on the savings that its proposal, or something like it, would generate.  According to its latest estimate, the net savings to society would be between $25 and $53 billion in 2020.  You don’t have to take those figures at face value to think that, on balance, regulating power plant emissions will save more money than it costs.

Obama's New Rules for Coal Plants Are a Big Deal.  The Ensuing Political Fight May Be Even Bigger. - New Republic