rj40 wrote:IntLibber wrote:The government is already putting coal out of business. This spring, the EPA is going to delicense about 20% of the coal power plants in the country due to mercury emissions. They are using mercury regulations, drafted without congressional oversight, to achieve curbs in CO2 emission, again without congressional approval. So by the time polywell is capable of commercial operation, there will be hundreds of vacant coal power plants on the auction block waiting to be bought up on the cheap to have polywell systems installed.
My question is, is it constitutional?
Does this come into play?
Article 1, Section 8 states:
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence **and general Welfare of the United States**; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."
Mercury is a poison. This isn't even scientifically disputable. Different forms of mercury compounds are more toxic than others.
I know of one woman, the dean of the chemistry dept at Dartmouth College, who, while wearing rubber gloves, spilled a single drop of methyl-mercury on a glove. Problem is the glove wasn't rated to protect against this compound, and the nanoscopic amount that leaked through the rubber glove and through her skin, rotted her brain and killed her within a few months.
In other forms, like the liquid form used to refine gold, is often handled by hand in 3rd world countries by people panning nanogold out of rich muds and clays. This causes a number of maladies and shortens life, but is not immediately fatal.
Similarly, top predators in the ecosystem develop high concentrations of mercury in their bodies from simply being in the top of the food chain if the ecology has mercury compounds existing in it. Swordfish, tuna, mackerel, salmon and other high level species in the oceans see this sort of concentration, but there is dispute about how concentrated it gets and how harmful it can be. Actor Jeremy Piven claims his doctors attributed an illness he suffered in the last decade to eating too much canned tuna leading to mercury poisoning.
Mercury is found in coal, as are other heavy metals, some of which are radioactive, but unlike those other compounds, it is very hard to scrub mercury fumes from the exhaust gases compared to scrubbing other heavy metal fly ash simply because mercury's boiling point is so low.
However, the average person is likely at greater risk from mercury from handling compact fluorescent light bulbs than from being downwind from a coal plant.
The current changes in mercury regulation are not legislated, they have been court ordered due to a suit about the mercury issue against coal power companies. Any coal plant that does not have the proper, but expensive, mercury scrubbing technology, and is meeting new mercury emissions targets, installed by May 1 will be shut down. This amounts to 20% of the current coal fired power generation capacity in the US.
The Obama administration is intentionally using this level of regulation to meet their CO2 emissions reduction goals despite not having congressional approval of any CO2 regulation scheme. This isn't a conspiracy theory either, Carol Browner has openly stated that this is the goal.
As a libertarian, I consider pollution to be a negative externalities that entities impose on others without compensation. A libertarian business is a zero emissions business that pays to have all of its pollutants properly disposed of.
I do NOT consider C02 a pollutant. It is plant food. Mercury, however, IS a pollutant and deserves to be regulated, but government should focus on the greater risk factors, number one being compact fluorescent light bulbs.
