Potpourri -- Cleaning Out The Mailbox -- Nothing About The Bakken -- For The Archives; If The President Really Wants To Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions, He Needs To Push US Toward Deep Recession

Bloomberg is reporting: EPA told to enforce rules nationally after court loss.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can’t enforce rules inconsistently across the country, bypassing a region where it lost a lawsuit and putting companies in the rest of nation at a competitive disadvantage, an appeals court ruled.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington today set aside an EPA directive to regional officials saying they should subject pollution permits for industrial facilities to a laxer standard in four states covered by a decision of the U.S. Appeals Court in Cincinnati. The existing, stricter regime continued to apply in the rest of the country. 

As soon as I read that, I thought of another US District Court case in which the judge ruled for North Dakota in the case regarding Minnesota's 2007 Next Generation Energy Act.

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Speaking of North Dakota, The Washington Post, in an editorial says that "North Dakota is the best state in America, based on it economic recovery. A huge thanks to Steve for sending me this link; I never would have seen it, otherwise.

The numbers show that North Dakota is rebounding best. The state’s unemployment rate fell from an already low 4.1 percent to 2.6 percent, the lowest in the nation. The median income increased 4 percent, placing the state in the top five in income growth. The median home price rose 16 percent, from $112,300 before the recession to $130,500 just after, by far the sharpest percentage increase in the country.

Other states deserve credit for making a comeback: But no state has pumped up more in all three categories than North Dakota.

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For the archives. While listening to the president's speech on Monday announcing his executive actions on greenhouse gas emissions, you might want to have this fairly-recent-WSJ article within arm's reach:

U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions have fallen dramatically in recent years, in large part because the country is making more electricity with natural gas instead of coal. Energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that is widely believed to contribute to global warming, have fallen 12% between 2005 and 2012 and are at their lowest level since 1994, according to a recent estimate by the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the U.S. Energy Department. 

According to the article, if President Obama really wants to cut global greenhouse gas emissions he needs to push the US into a severe recession, and hope the recession spreads globally, especially in India and China. A huge decrease in GDP will probably do much more than anything any president can do with executive orders. History suggests that the biggest positive correlation to decreasing CO2 emissions is a recession, the more severe the better.

I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love With You, Linda Ronstadt and Emmy Lou Harris