[jeremyt]

Typical NYT article.

Vague and handwringing up front.

Then the truth is buried at the bottom where nobody is going to find it.

Turns out, the rule was passed in 2011. It was challenged in court, and the Supreme Court upheld the challenge. It appears the Obama administration was using dubious logic to calculate the "co-benefits"... which is what everybody knows is going on anyway.

This is just a fancy justification to let the Obama administration kill coal power plants. I'm not for or against it, but it seems obvious.

If a previous administration passed a rule, I don't know what argument we can use to say that a future administration can't change that rule.

And anyone knows that it's pretty easy to lie with statistics and estimates, so the Obama administration surprisingly decided that the rule brought more benefits than costs, and the industry surprisingly says that the rule costs $1500 for every $1 in benefits. The truth is somewhere in between. I don't know what the truth is.

The only thing I know is that the NYT isn't helping us get there and appears to think the truth is irrelevant.

[Latteland]

Economics killed coal, because of natural gas being so cheap, but now solar power and wind power and competitive. We shouldn't forget what the acid rain was doing before we started reducing sulfur emissions. Mercury is another thing we don't necessarily want more of. in you opinion, how should we approach controlling emissions of things like mercury that are known to be unhealthy in certain amounts. It's not like the obama admin invented this idea.

[njarboe]

The sad thing is that the only thing that might save the higher tropic fish like tuna from extinction is increasing the mercury levels to make eating them so bad for human health that we quit eating them. Unfortunately, the the mercury level needed to keep the Japanese from having a nice sushi dinner may be higher than the lethal mercury level for tuna. Only time will tell I guess.

[akvadrako]

> If a previous administration passed a rule, I don't know what argument we can use to say that a future administration can't change that rule.

This is what's going through the courts now with the DACA program. It isn't a law but something the Obama administration came up with. Up til now the courts have said the current administration doesn't have good enough reasons to rescind it.

So there are a few legal arguments that prevent rule changes.