Block’s Indicator of Sustainable Growth

by Ray Block

It must have been an odd scene in the small courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925, when the agnostic attorney, Clarence Darrow, defended the twenty-four year old general science teacher, John Scopes,  accused of teaching evolution theory in the Scopes monkey trial. 

Scopes was using the state approved text book,  Hunter’s A Civic Biology, based on Darwin’s two landmark books-The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. The state of Tennessee had passed legislation making it illegal to “teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals.”

The prosecution was led by the creationist William Jennings Bryan, whose followers had succeeded in getting anti-evolution laws on the statute books of 15 states.

The Scopes trial didn’t solve anything. Indeed, the controversy over evolution is still being played out in some American states, with a more sophisticated form of creationism in intelligent design, which is flourishing in some areas.

The US Chamber of Commerce, the biggest business lobby in the world now wants to put Climate Change on trial, in much the same way as William Jennings  Bryan put evolution on trial.

The Chamber along with the National Association of Manufacturers,and  the front group for coal interests, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity are strong supporters of hydrocarbons.

The front group was formed from two other fronts, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, and the Center for Energy and Economic Development.

The business lobbies are not particularly concerned with the Climate bills in Congress, which are currently tied up.

Their immediate enemy is the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA  have gone well beyond their regulatory move in May 2009, when for the first time cars and trucks in the US will be required by 2016 to reach an average fuel economy of 35.5 miles per gallon (15 kilometres per litre).

The business lobbies are spreading the story that the EPA will use sweeping powers to regulate American companies much more than ever before. The powers are under the 1970 Clean Air Act.

The EPA had been effectively neutralised during the Bush era, unable as they claimed to have any influence on greenhouse gases from the major polluting companies.

This was despite the Supreme Court ruling in 2007 in the case Massachusetts v EPA, that the Clean Air Act  gave the agency authority to regulate CO2 emissions, and that the EPA must review whether such emissions pose a threat to public health or welfare.

Taking advantage of the court’s ruling, the Obama appointed EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson submitted an endangerment finding to the White House in late March 2009, indicating that human health and welfare are indeed threatened by CO2 emissions.

September 22 2009 saw the EPA mandatory greenhouse gas reporting rule promulgated. About 10,000 facilities, equal to about 85 per cent of the total US GHG emissions are covered by this final rule.

The EPA now provides that  facilities with annual emissions of 25,000 tons and over  must begin collecting data on carbon and other GHG emissions on January1 2010. The first annual emissions report for 2010 will be issued on March 31 2011.

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2007, 95 proposed coal fired power plants inthe US have been cancelled or postponed. The only new coal fired power plants to be approved in the future will be those that will be carbon capture ready. That is, the new coal fired plants will be required to be  integrated with the new carbon capture storage technology.

Given that the EPA is at this stage only seeking accurate statistics on the volume  of US greenhouse gases, it makes a mockery of the claims of the business lobbies, that the EPA should be required to defend its scientific conclusions in front of any administrative law judge. Another Scopes trial indeed!