National Public Radio squeaks its liberalism in almost every sentence. Take a Tuesday night report on Obama's "Clean Power Plan."
AILSA CHANG, anchor: There was a dramatic pullback today for the cornerstone of President Obama's plan to fight climate change - his plan to rein in emissions from coal-fired power plants.
The Environmental Protection Agency today proposed a new rule to replace the Obama plan with what it is calling the Affordable Clean Energy Rule. It would give individual states more authority to regulate carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. The EPA says the new rule restores the rule of law and empowers individual states to act on greenhouse gas emissions. Critics of the rules say the Trump plan would increase carbon emissions, speed up climate change and cause hundreds of premature deaths every year.
That was the "fair and balanced" fraction of the segment. They call the show All Things Considered, but just consider the liberal things.
Chang turned for analysis to the hard-left World Resources Institute and its Obama-loving director, Dan Lashof. After asking about the Trump administration's contention that its actions won't really affect overall emissions, Chang went right to the Left's usual talking point: conservatives will kill people with their failure to be eco-socialists:
CHANG: I want to talk about the potential health effects of this proposed rule. The Trump administration's own documents acknowledge that their plan would contribute to health problems such as asthma or pulmonary disease. Do you have a sense of how quickly these health risks could become real if this rule goes into effect?
LASHOF: Well, thousands of people die prematurely from breathing fine particulates every year. That number has been decreasing because of actions that the Environmental Protection Agency has taken to curb emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide and other policies that have promoted a switch from coal-fired power to cleaner energy sources. So by slowing that process down, the Trump administration is going to increase the relative number of excess deaths and exacerbated asthma attacks compared with what would happen otherwise by an amount that will grow every year. So...
CHANG: So how do they explain away this incredible health risk that's being posed?
LASHOF: Well, they go through a lot of machinations to try to call a question of the health studies. But they published them anyway, fortunately, because I think, basically, you have dedicated civil servants at the EPA who are saying this is the methodology. This is what the data show. You can put spin around it. But we're still going to publish what our best science tells us the effect will be.
Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute offered the free-market perspective that NPR couldn't locate:
“The EPA’s proposed replacement rule is a huge improvement over the so-called Clean Power Plan, which is almost certainly illegal and would be incredibly costly to consumers if implemented. The new rule provides minimal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants and will therefore result in only small increases in electric rates. It will also do no more harm to the coal industry, which still supplies 30% of America’s electricity at the lowest costs...
The ‘Clean Power’ Plan was a key part of the Obama administration’s war on affordable energy and based on the finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. However, the best and most recent science undermines that claim and therefore reconsideration is warranted.”
