In recent testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, energy secretary Steven Chu makes a convoluted case for S. 1733, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, a.k.a. the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill.

Chu argues roughly as follows. Global investment in wind turbines and solar panels could reach $3.6 trillion by 2030. China is investing heavily. If we don’t ramp up our investment in “clean tech” products, we’ll be left behind, become increasingly dependent on foreign producers, and China will eat our lunch. The key to growing the U.S. clean-tech sector is to “put a price on carbon” — establish a “cap on carbon emissions that ratchets down over time.”

This is poppycock, as I explain today on MasterResource.Org, the free-market energy blog. 

Yes, China…

Yesterday the Washington Times hosted a briefing, “Advancing the Global Debate over Climate Change Policy,” at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. The event featured four panels, one each for lobbyists, members of think tanks, Members of Congress, and foreign policy experts. This last panel included Czech President Václav Klaus, and his excellent remarks are below:

Václav Klaus, Washington Briefing: Advancing the Global Debate over Climate Change Policy, November 4, 2009.

“Many thanks for the invitation and for the courage to organize such an important gathering in the moment when political correctness tells you not to do it.

We are meeting one month before the Climate Change Copenhagen Summit and several weeks before the U.S. Senate hearing regarding the cap-and-trade scheme. For these…

For background on this afternoon’s Senate Environment and Public Works mark-up hearing on S. 1733, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power act, read this post on Boxer’s Reckless Pace.

2:34, Hearing begins:

Boxer thanks her Democratic colleagues for attending and for their strong voices in the morning.

Boxer sits before stacks and stacks of pages. She says they are the economic analysis and modeling that she says had been used by EPA’s staff. This is her rebuttal to GOP claims that they don’t have sufficient analysis on the economic impact of the bill.

Boxer brings up her days growing up “in an inner-city.” There, when someone wasn’t right, she had to “call them out.” Presumably, she is “calling out” the GOP by sitting…

On Monday, October 26th, the Cooler Heads Coalition hosted Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Video of Dr. Lindzen’s presentation, “Deconstructing Global Warming”

Power point Presentation

Two EPA lawyers criticized the cap-and-trade energy bill passed by the House as a scam, noting in The Washington Post that it will be manipulated to profit politically connected corporations and reward certain kinds of pollution, while not cutting greenhouse gas emissions.  A similar scheme enacted in Europe in the name of fighting global warming enriched polluters, while not reducing emissions, which actually rose faster in most of Europe than in the U.S.

The Washington Examiner explains how the bill will lead to deforestation, and thus increase greenhouse gas emissions in the long run.

The bill, which is loaded with pork for special interests, is backed by Obama, who once admitted that under his cap-and-trade scheme, electricity and utility bills would “skyrocket” and coal-fed power plants would go “bankrupt.”  Treasury Department analysts estimated it could increase taxes…

I pay my power bill online, so whenever I get something from Dominion Virginia Power over snail mail it catches my attention. Usually, it’s some notice about utility work nearby. However, the mailing I got today was unusual. It was an appeal to sign up for Dominion’s Green Power initiative.

The scheme appears simple enough. The mailer says, “When you sign up for Dominion Green Power, you add a little extra to your monthly bill which Dominion will use to purchase certified renewable energy certificates on your behalf.”

And what does the consumer get in return? Well, that’s a good question. Dominion’s Green Power Web page features a video that features a family that “pays an extra 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour, and…