Your State Could Lose Big Bucks by Stalling on Clean Energy
By Nick Stockton, Wired.
Let's talk about climate change, for once without politics. Instead, money.
That’s right. Forget the red and blue, the heated tempers and rising rhetoric. Instead think about the coal factories that still power much of the country, and who pays for every pound of carbon they add to the atmosphere. Right now, your state is making bets on its future economy, by choosing whether or not to change those factories by acting preemptively on a contested emissions rule.
That rule is the Clean Power Plan, which is currently locked up in a Washington, DC circuit court pending legal review. The rules were set to go into effect in June, which would have required every state to submit their plans to cut emissions to the EPA by September 2016, or September 2018 with an extension. Last month, though, the Supreme Court decreed that states would not be obligated to comply with the rule until after it wins in court. And if it loses, never.