In large part, the wide-ranging reaction to President Barack Obama's signature effort to cut power plant carbon emissions could have been written months in advance.
Key Republicans and many industrial groups decried it as a job-killing war on coal that would drive up power prices; environmentalists and many Democrats hailed it as a landmark measure making good on Obama's pledge to tackle climate change.
Behind the bombast, however, more measured voices found a proposal that was neither as severe as critics had feared nor as ambitious as proponents had hoped for. Basing the average 30 percent reduction on the year 2005 — near a high point for such emissions, before the economic recession reduced power use and the rise of shale gas dramatically curbed coal plant output — means much of that reduction has already occurred.
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