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Doesn't requiring operators of coal plants to produce less electricity have the effect of reducing emissions from power plants a task that was given to the EPA.

Doesn't requiring operators of coal plants to produce less electricity have the effect of reducing emissions from power plants a task that was given to the EPA. > Imagine if the FDA showed up at your favorite restaurant and told them that they were only allowed to serve 70% of their current customers, unless they served Hungarian borsht to the other 30%. I do not get the borsht part. If the FDA had the task to reduce diabetics and science shows it needs stop the creation of new diabetics by 20xx. If we knew that a certain food chains menu causes diabetics at disproportionate rate (and there is no way to reduce that that restaurant can stay up after 20xx because thermodynamics) so that those goals would be reachable only by reducing that share in the market why can't the FDA enforce a diabetics creation rate limit by limiting the amount of diabetes causing food at worst diabetes creators under the mandate educe diabetics? I think that's what they do. That they have an additional incentive that selling low diabetic food increases the quota for selling high diabetics food, doesn't change that they are still reducing total diabetics creation rate.

edmcnulty101 4y ago
What if there was questionable science being used to back up the claim that this restaurant causes diabetes? What if a competing restraunt paid off the people in govt to put this company out of business? What about other other competing interests besides the FDAs mission? There's a bunch of real life questions here. As long as humans are involved it's never as black and white as: this causes X do we can shut it down with no other complications.
- freemint 4y ago
  > What if there was questionable science being used to back up the claim that this restaurant causes diabetes? There processes in involving pressure from domain experts. There are processes within the executive branch to address those. If those fail the legislative branch can update those process. It that fails the legislative branch can intervene with in that specific issue with new legislation. Counter question: What makes you think the supreme court is even vaguely qualified to settle whether science is questionable? > What if a competing restraunt paid off the people in govt to put this company out of business? We have legal procedures for that that don't involve the supreme court. Even the tobacco industry eventually fell to that. > What about other other competing interests besides the FDAs mission? There are processes with in a republic to fix that. > There's a bunch of real life questions here. Yes and they have been solved well enough for ages. > As long as humans are involved it's never as black and white as: this causes X do we can shut it down with no other complications. Literally no-one claims that. But what is claimed that if the consequences are weight turning of coal looks a lot less black then leaving coal running.
  - edmcnulty101 4y ago
    > Literally no-one claims that Humans being involved in anything are why a legal system exists.
db48x 4y ago
> Doesn't requiring operators of coal plants to produce less electricity have the effect of reducing emissions from power plants a task that was given to the EPA. Sure, along with other undesirable effects. But just as it is a mistake to decide what authority they have based on just their name, it would also be a mistake to do so based on just a one–sentence summary. We really should be quoting out of the enabling legislation. Suffice to say that this legislation is long and complex, but it specifically gives the EPA the authority to mandate design improvements to new power plants (prior to construction) so that they will operate at the best possible efficiency, and also the authority to mandate the installation of new systems to reduce the pollution put out by both existing plants and new ones. This has historically been things like scrubbers to remove pollutants from the waste stream. Think of new hardware devices that you can add to a plant or a factory that reduce the pollution while maintaining their function. The EPA tried to argue that they had devised a “system” under the meaning of the law that allowed them to shift power generation from coal to gas or renewable power. The Court pointed out that this would gut the word of all useful meaning, and that it would give the EPA the power to unilaterally decide the entire industrial policy of the country. They would be able to use the same language to simply ban almost anything they wanted, and it’s pretty clear that Congress never intended that. The EPA could use that new authority to reduce pollution by banning virtually all industrial activity, causing it all to be done in other countries, for example. There is another interesting aspect of the enabling legislation. It requires the EPA to investigate multiple systems that achieve the goal of reducing some specific pollutant from some specific source (such as soot from a power plant or whatever), then to determine how much reduction the best of those systems would achieve. Then instead of mandating that everyone has to install that specific system, they are allowed to mandate that everyone must achieve the same reduction by some means. This gives the operators a chance to beat the EPA on either cost or performance, and avoids forced mistakes. If the EPA accidentally selects the second–best system rather than the best, nobody is forced to use a sub–par means of reducing the pollutant. However, in the case of the EPA’s new generating–shifting “system”, everybody would be required to participate in the same way for it to work. The opinion states: “By contrast, and by design, there is no control a coal plant operator can deploy to attain the emissions limits established by the Clean Power Plan.” You should at least read the six–page syllabus to the opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf

edmcnulty101 4y ago

What if there was questionable science being used to back up the claim that this restaurant causes diabetes? What if a competing restraunt paid off the people in govt to put this company out of business? What about other other competing interests besides the FDAs mission? There's a bunch of real life questions here. As long as humans are involved it's never as black and white as: this causes X do we can shut it down with no other complications.

freemint 4y ago
> What if there was questionable science being used to back up the claim that this restaurant causes diabetes? There processes in involving pressure from domain experts. There are processes within the executive branch to address those. If those fail the legislative branch can update those process. It that fails the legislative branch can intervene with in that specific issue with new legislation. Counter question: What makes you think the supreme court is even vaguely qualified to settle whether science is questionable? > What if a competing restraunt paid off the people in govt to put this company out of business? We have legal procedures for that that don't involve the supreme court. Even the tobacco industry eventually fell to that. > What about other other competing interests besides the FDAs mission? There are processes with in a republic to fix that. > There's a bunch of real life questions here. Yes and they have been solved well enough for ages. > As long as humans are involved it's never as black and white as: this causes X do we can shut it down with no other complications. Literally no-one claims that. But what is claimed that if the consequences are weight turning of coal looks a lot less black then leaving coal running.
- edmcnulty101 4y ago
  > Literally no-one claims that Humans being involved in anything are why a legal system exists.

db48x 4y ago

> Doesn't requiring operators of coal plants to produce less electricity have the effect of reducing emissions from power plants a task that was given to the EPA. Sure, along with other undesirable effects. But just as it is a mistake to decide what authority they have based on just their name, it would also be a mistake to do so based on just a one–sentence summary. We really should be quoting out of the enabling legislation. Suffice to say that this legislation is long and complex, but it specifically gives the EPA the authority to mandate design improvements to new power plants (prior to construction) so that they will operate at the best possible efficiency, and also the authority to mandate the installation of new systems to reduce the pollution put out by both existing plants and new ones. This has historically been things like scrubbers to remove pollutants from the waste stream. Think of new hardware devices that you can add to a plant or a factory that reduce the pollution while maintaining their function. The EPA tried to argue that they had devised a “system” under the meaning of the law that allowed them to shift power generation from coal to gas or renewable power. The Court pointed out that this would gut the word of all useful meaning, and that it would give the EPA the power to unilaterally decide the entire industrial policy of the country. They would be able to use the same language to simply ban almost anything they wanted, and it’s pretty clear that Congress never intended that. The EPA could use that new authority to reduce pollution by banning virtually all industrial activity, causing it all to be done in other countries, for example. There is another interesting aspect of the enabling legislation. It requires the EPA to investigate multiple systems that achieve the goal of reducing some specific pollutant from some specific source (such as soot from a power plant or whatever), then to determine how much reduction the best of those systems would achieve. Then instead of mandating that everyone has to install that specific system, they are allowed to mandate that everyone must achieve the same reduction by some means. This gives the operators a chance to beat the EPA on either cost or performance, and avoids forced mistakes. If the EPA accidentally selects the second–best system rather than the best, nobody is forced to use a sub–par means of reducing the pollutant. However, in the case of the EPA’s new generating–shifting “system”, everybody would be required to participate in the same way for it to work. The opinion states: “By contrast, and by design, there is no control a coal plant operator can deploy to attain the emissions limits established by the Clean Power Plan.” You should at least read the six–page syllabus to the opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf