GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is no fan of President Obama’s plan to cut back on emissions from power plants.
Fiorina told a forum hosted by news organization RealClearPolitics, and sponsored by a coal industry group, that she would repeal the entire package of Environmental Protection Agency emission rules once in the White House.
“They’re terrible. Every single one of them should be repealed,” Fiorina told the forum on Friday during a question-and-answer session.
The EPA rules she would repeal seek to regulate power plant emissions that many scientists say are to blame for manmade climate change. The most sweeping of the regulations is the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which directs the states, rather than individual power plants, to cut emissions 30 percent by 2030.
The coal industry, in particular, argues that the emission rules represent an assault against coal-fired power and will drive up electricity rates and harm grid reliability.
The coal industry, including the sponsor of Friday’s forum, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, is vehemently opposed to the plan. The coalition has said it plans to sponsor a number of forums with prominent politicians in the runup to the 2016 presidential elections.
Fiorina’s statements come as the White House Office of Management and Budget is conducting its final review of the plan before it becomes law, expected in August.
She said she would repeal the climate rules based on a fallacy of global warming that environmentalists and EPA are adhering to in support of the regulations.
She said environmentalist “will never talk about … what else the scientists say” about climate change, that it is “impossible to make any difference at all.” She said scientists say manmade climate change can’t be reversed without a multi-trillion dollar “global effort” over several decades, in which a country’s individual efforts won’t matter unless there is international buy-in.
She said it’s a given that China and India won’t stop using coal, so why should the United States place its economy and competitiveness at risk with regulations that will have little impact on global warming?
She called Obama’s deal in November with China to lower emissions a “complete sham.”
“It was all show,” she said. “I get very angry about … destroying people’s livelihoods … on the altar of ideology.” She said her former home state of California has its own version of the EPA’s climate rules, which are “destroying livelihoods” amid a drought that is crushing the agriculture industry in the Golden State.
“It will make no difference at all” to have the regulations in place, Fiorina said. “Instead of shutting down coal [plants],” she said she would get the coal industry to invest in “clean coal technology” if she were president.
She said “wind [energy] is fine,” but it is a very small piece of the energy mix.
“Meanwhile, it is slicing up birds day after day after day.”
