Summary: The head of the EPA makes an interesting admission in the Q&A at the House Joint Committee hearing about the Fiscal Year 2017 EPA Budget on March 22. She explains what she sees as the big gain from the CPP. Video below; this starts at 2:14.

David McKinley (R- WV): “If it {Clean Power Plan} doesn’t have an impact on climate change around the world, why are we subjecting our hard-working taxpayers in the coal fields for something that has no benefit?”

He refers to estimates that CPP will produce a tiny (~1%) reduction in world CO2 emissions (although it will have a significant effect on other forms of US pollution). The Administrator does not deny this, and gives a curious justification for such an expensive and wide-reaching regulation: It’s marketing!

Gina McCarthy (Administrator, EPA): We see it as having had enormous benefit in showing domestic leadership as well as gathering support around the country for the agreement we reached in Paris.

Conclusions

Coal is a dirty fuel to mine, to burn, and to dispose of the resulting toxic waste. Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) provides many benefits beyond reducing the emission of CO2. But the confused and often daft justifications for it weaken the public’s support for actions to protect the environment. Administrator’s McCarthy’s statement provides an extreme example.

If the courts strike down key parts of the CPP, much political capital will have been burned fruitlessly. It will be another chapter in the incompetently conducted 28-year-long struggle to craft a successful policy to fight (or at least mitigate the effects of) climate change.

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