The Supreme Court has charged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with protecting us from ourselves, limiting the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions from sources like power plants, cars and trucks, and those methane factories known as cattle.
What does this mean in real terms? More expensive everything. Most of the power produced in this country is from fossil fuels, and cleaning these plants and/or implementing ‘cleaner’ solutions. Energy costs like that will ripple through our economy from top to bottom. Costs of production and OpEx for every company will rise.
What will this do to the auto industry? “So long, and thanks for all the fish…” If Detroit was on the best footing possible (as it was during the EPA reforms in the late 60’s and 70’s), it could weather it okay. As it is, it’s the death knell, IMHO. They don’t have the capital to absorb those sorts of changes on any sort of timescale. Even “clean” automakers like Honda will be streching to change/update their internal combustion offerings to match new regs.
Certain companies may benefit, but we have an economy highly optimized for cheap, plentiful energy. Witness “Just in time” inventory, next-day-air deliveries. Regs could double or triple every source now available: Electricity, natural gas, and fuel.
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Of course, the other side of this is, we either do this in a controlled fashion now, or we do it after Peak Oil and/or a terrorist action in the Middle East. This is the challenge for our generation, and we must face it.