EPA Regulations Could Devastate Black Community

Though opposed by several state governors, Republicans in Congress, and millions of conservatives, the EPA’s Clean Power Plan is set to go into effect this year. The new suite of regulations is intended to reduce America’s carbon emissions by 28 percent of the 2005 baseline by the year 2025. Doing this, we are told, will keep us from sliding headlong into a future filled with catastrophic storms, frozen waterways, and flooded coastlines.

In the meantime, though, these regulations could mean economic devastation of the type this country has never seen. And according to a new study commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce, black Americans are going to be among those hardest hit. “The study finds that the Clean Power Plan will inflict severe and disproportionate economic burdens on poor families, especially minorities,” said NBCC President Harry Alford in testimony before the Senate last month.

Indeed, the study found that the CPP regulations could increase black poverty by 23 percent by 2035. Approximately seven million jobs in the black community could vanish as a result of the regulations. Blacks won’t be the only minorities feeling the crunch, either; Hispanics are expected to get hit even harder with a 26 percent spike in poverty and the loss of 12 million jobs.

It is the ultimate irony that all of this comes from the man who was supposed to be the black community’s greatest champion. Blacks came out to vote for Barack Obama in record numbers, feeling as though they were fulfilling the dreams of their ancestors by making history. But one can assume that black voters expected to get something in return. They didn’t elect Obama for purely symbolic purposes; they did it because they expected he would sprinkle a bit of that Hope and Change magic on their lives.

Instead, Obama has proven himself to be a great threat to black Americans. His liberal economic policies have retarded growth, his amnesty declarations have endangered low-income Americans, and he has fanned the flames of racial discontent since arriving in the White House. And now this. It’s not a stretch to say that black Americans would be better off today if Barack Obama had never taken office. In fact, it’s almost impossible to argue otherwise.

It’s of course worth remembering that these regulations will do absolutely nothing to preserve the environment. Trends show that we would have likely met the EPA’s carbon goals with or without these heavy-handed regulations. Technological progress is giving us increased efficiency, fracking is giving the U.S. a new lease on energy production, and companies are eager to demonstrate how “green” they are to tree-hugging consumers.

But Democrats are never content to wait for things to play out in their own natural time. If a liberal were to sit down with a jigsaw puzzle, they would put it together wrong just to finish first. Obama believes that global warming is going to permanently destroy our Western way of life. So apparently, in true Democrat fashion, he wants to beat Mother Nature to the punch.