So I’m coming off some weird kind of flu and spent Sunday evening upgrading the server; new OS along with new versions of Perl, PHP, and MySQL.
I’m pretty sure everything is back on track, but please let me know if you find anything that doesn’t seem quite right.
President Bush thinks Clinton got it wrong about mercury emissions; they should be regulated, sure, but at the level of substances that cause things like smog and maybe acid rain, not the really toxic stuff like, oh, I don’t know… mercury? Mercury is a known neurotoxin; it’s the reason we’re warned not to eat too much of the fish we catch here on the Far Edge.
According to Shrub logic, mercury should be removed from the list of the most closely regulated pollutants—stuff like asbestos, chromium, and lead, substances that are known to be toxic to humans—because it “would be a more efficient and faster way to reduce mercury in the environment.” Or at least that’s what The New York Times reported today.
Coal-burning electricity generating plants are responsible for about 40 percent of all mercury emissions (estimated at 48 tons annually) and the power plants’ mercury emissions are not currently regulated by the federal government at all. Under the proposal, the plants would be able to buy and sell mercury emission rights just like the existing sulfur dioxide “market.” According to a report in today’s Washington Post, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently found that 8 percent of women of childbearing age had mercury in their blood exceeding levels deemed safe by the EPA.”
The proposal would limit mercury emissions to 34 tons annually—about 30 percent lower than current emission levels—but Bush’s own “Clear Skies” initiative called for a 26-ton emission limit.
Scott Segal, a spokesperson for the electricity generation industry, told the Times, “If you were to regulate mercury in an overly inflexible way, the result would be substantial fuel switching from coal to natural gas.” Well, gosh, Scott, I don’t know quite how to put this in words you can understand: A short-term switch from burning coal to natural gas to create electricity is exactly what we would like to happen until more renewable clean energy generators (solar, wind, biomass, etc.) can be developed.
No way am I ready to support Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean, but his call yesterday for comprehensive re-regulation of American business certainly got my attention.
Best of all, Dean cited the need to protect workers as one of the main reasons to exert regulatory controls on corporations. According to the Washington Post report, Dean listed “utilities, large media companies, and any company that offers stock options” as fair targets for re-regulation. Dean also favors broadened unionization rights and strengthened transparency requirements for corporations.
Calling for a “new social contract for the 21st century,” Dean said that “in order to make capitalism work for ordinary human beings, you have to have regulation. Right now, workers are getting screwed.”
Dean’s awakening to the need of corporate reform and regulation is something of a reversal. As governor of Vermont, Dean was a fairly strong advocate of deregulation in general.
The full text of Dean’s Houston speech, “Enron Economics,” is available on his Howard Dean for America website.
Wow. Some pictures really are worth a thousand denials....
Answering the timeless question: Spit or swallow?
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