Weekend Media Roundup: EPA OAR Chief Gives Orwellian Interview; EPA Administrator Commits Freudian Slip, Greenpeace Gambles away Donor Trust

Platts Energy Week with Bill Loveless: EPA Office of Air & Radiation acting head Janet McCabe gave an Orwellian interview on Sunday morning’s Platts Energy Week with Bill Loveless. Below, I’ve parsed a few of her statements:

Janet McCabe opens the interview by saying, “Flexibility is really the key to this proposal, and it comes from the Clean Air Act itself.”

[Truth of the Matter: By “flexibility,” she means piling unfunded mandate upon unfunded mandate. The agency’s climate rule is based on 4 “building blocks.” The first, efficiency improvements at individual power plants, is in line with EPA’s historical interpretation of the Clean Air Act. The second, third, and fourth “building blocks”—environmental electric dispatch, green energy mandates, and demand-side management programs—comprise the preponderance of the standard, and each one is a discrete policy of the sort that has been the exclusive preserve of State governments since the New Deal. Of course, States would have the “flexibility” to use less energy to meet the goals based on these “building blocks,” either outright or indirectly via a cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme.]

Bill Loveless: “What happens if States don’t meet these goals in 2030? Would they be penalized in the end, if they were just short of those goals?”
Janet McCabe: “No. EPA approach is always to work with States to get them to be successful.”

[Truth of the Matter: What McCabe claims was indeed once true, before the Obama administration, which has demonstrated an unprecedented willingness to run roughshod over States.]

Bill Loveless: “Is there a risk that this plan would result in much higher electricity prices and much less reliability in electricity markets.”
Janet McCabe: “Of course, we’re very sensitive to that…We think that the costs are very reasonable, especially when you look at the economic and public health benefits.”

[Truth of the Matter: EPA is, in fact, insensitive to reliability. And the costs of the rule are very unreasonable, because there are no economic and public health benefits.]

Watch the whole interview below:

Real Time with Bill Maher:  Compared to Janet McCabe, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s appearance Friday evening on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher was less Orwellian and more Freudian. At the outset of the interview, she let it slip that the real purpose of EPA’s climate regulatory regime for existing power plants is to wage a war on coal. See for yourself:

Greenpeace Issues Bombshell Press Release: I’d be remiss if I failed to note that Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International on Sunday apologized for losing $5.2 million in donations on an ill-advised gamble on currency markets.