January 2008
Iain Murray, CEI, posted on National Review Online
Jim Geraghty stirred up a minor hornet’s nest yesterday with this post on Republican tactics on global warming. After coming in for some pretty heavy criticism from none other than Rush Limbaugh, he posted again here and here. Roy Spencer, who advises Rush on the science, weighed in below, but to my mind the reason why the debate has become so fractious is because the left has been so successful at muddying the waters over global warming.
When people say that there’s a hoax about global warming, what do they mean? Do they mean that there is no evidence that temperatures are increasing? Probably not — no one I know disputes that fact, although there are serious question marks over the reliability of the surface temperature measurements. Yet the satellite record is clear that the world is warming.
No, what is objected to is the idea that global warming will be catastrophic unless we do something about it now that involves a complete abandonment of affordable energy and a return to central planning. As Margaret Thatcher, who was the first world leader to express concern about global warming, said, global warming is proving to be “a marvelous excuse for international socialism.” It’s that excuse angle that is the crux of the matter. Things are being exaggerated, as the British High Court found with Al Gore’s film, in the name of this realignment. That’s where conservatives see the penny disappearing in this particular game of three-card monty, and they need to call foul when they see it.
Moreover, as Jim concedes, the American public’s worries about global warming are skin deep. In point of fact, when you get a bunch of Americans together and the facts are explained to them, they tend to become more skeptical, as happened with even with the Manhattan elite at the IQ2 debate last year, where an audience that was going to vote against the motion “Global warming is not a crisis” voted for the motion after hearing the arguments. The swing was 30 points. So the evidence is against Jim’s contention that, “If you put the finest skeptical scientists and researchers from the Competitive Enterprise Institute and American Enterprise Institute into a room with a couple hundred Americans, and let them talk until they’re blue in the face, I’m not sure how much you would move the dials.” They quite clearly do move the dials, significantly, if the dials are measuring government action, which is all a Presidential candidate should be talking about. If National Review would like to sponsor such an event to test Jim’s contention I know Chris Horner for one is biting at the bit.
So if a generic candidate (Republican or Democrat) who is opposed to significant government action on global warming allows his or her opponent (Democrat or Republican) to say, “The world is heating up, we must cut emissions now,” then they must call them on it. They must call attention to the exaggerations and the hyperbole that surrounds the issue, cut through the PR fog and concentrate on the issue and what fast and deep emissions reductions really mean to Americans and the world: less growth, lower living standards, higher unemployment, more poverty, more death. Conceding that argument is, to my mind, not just bad politics but positively immoral.
Yes, there’s a good argument that technology will make the question moot in the end, but not in the short term, and that is where the battle is being fought right now. There are a host of no-regrets policies like those Jim Manzi has outlined that can help, but any concession to the idea that deep and fast emissions reduction is necessary is a concession to central control of the economy in the name of an exaggerated threat. Any candidate who does that deserves opprobrium.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Part of my work with Climate Strategies Watch is to inquire with various states about the status of their processes on global warming policy and to try and determine the nature of their relationship – if any – with the Center for Climate Strategies, an environmental advocacy group disguised as an objective management consultant.
The state of Idaho so far is one that has resisted hiring CCS and has yet to start a climate change commission of its own. But that doesn’t mean CCS has not tried to get its foot in the door, as revealed in an email exchange between executive director Tom Peterson and Idaho Department of Environmental Quality head Toni Hardesty. The excited memo sent by Peterson to Hardesty requires a bit of explanation, though:
Memo: “Toni, we want to congratulate you on the recent Executive Order by Governor (Butch) Otter calling for the development of an Idaho Climate Action Plan and related policies and assessments.”
Translation: “Yes, we love executive orders because it allows CCS to get its foot in the state’s door through its environmental bureaucracy, instead of having to make a case for action based upon valid science and real economics with a bunch of elected legislators.”
Memo: “We would be happy to support you with implementation of these actions through our CCS team. We may also be able to provide significant cost share through our existing base of donors given the importance of Idaho to regional and national management of greenhouse gas emissions.”
Translation: “Please hire us – please? We need to dupe more and more states into getting us to run their climate commissions so our Big Socialist advocacy grant makers will continue to fund us, and I can continue to justify my six-figure salary.”
Memo: “We would be happy to visit you, Governor Otter, and other key parties in Idaho to discuss this approach personally if it would be helpful. We also can provide you a detailed work plan and description of a (sic) Idaho Climate Action Planning process on short turnaround….”
Translation: “We have done this so many times we could do it in our sleep. Don’t sweat it, we know what we’re doing. Just close your eyes and leave the driving to us…."
News of a January 31 “teach-in” on more than 1,000 college campuses nationwide strikes me of just one more example of the growing desperation of the environmental movement that has bet its credibility and influence on global warming.
Mark your calendar for any news about a March 2-4 conference in New York that is expected to draw between 400 and 500 global warming skeptics, i.e., scientists, economists, and policy experts.
It’s not often that I find myself recommending a French state-owned industry as the answer to major U.S. problems, but I guess there’s an exception to every rule.
In this case the exception is the French nuclear energy company Areva, which provides about 80 percent of the country’s electricity from 58 nuclear power plants, is building a new generation of reactor that will come on line at Flamanville in 2012, and is exporting its expertise to countries from China to the United Arab Emirates.
On December 19, 2007, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied California a waiver, under the Clean Air Act, to set first-ever carbon dioxide (CO2) emission standards for new motor vehicles. Today, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing on EPA’s denial of the California waiver. Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) will no doubt pillory EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson as a betrayer of the Clean Air Act, the Planet, and the Children. Instead, she should thank him for averting an economically- and environmentally-debilitating regulatory morass. [link to press release]
If the EPA had granted the waiver, allowing California and other states to adopt CO2 emission standards for new motor vehicles, CO2 would become a pollutant “subject to regulation” under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) program. That, in turn, would compel EPA and its state-level counterparts to regulate CO2 from hundreds of thousands of stationary sources, spawning a red-tape nightmare as detrimental to the environment as to the economy.
Attorneys Peter Glaser and John Cline provide an eye-popping analysis of the economic and administrative burdens that would be created by extending the PSD program to CO2 in a November 8, 2007 testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Under the PSD program, no new or existing “major” stationary source may be built or modified (if the modification increases emissions) unless the source first obtains a PSD permit. A source is defined as “major” if it is either in one of 28 listed industrial categories and emits at least 100 tons per year of an air pollutant, or is any other type of establishment and emits at least 250 tons per year. “This latter category is particularly troublesome,” warns the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 18 other business associations in a December 12, 2007 letter to Congress, because hundreds of thousands of small-to-mid-size firms emit 250 tons of CO2 per year.
Two hundred and fifty tons may sound like a lot of “pollution.” It is for traditional pollutants like sulfur dioxide and particulates. But 250 tons is a miniscule amount of CO2—roughly the quantity emitted each year by two dozen average homes.
“Major” CO2 sources would include “most large buildings heated by furnaces using fossil fuels (office and apartment buildings, even some very large homes), or buildings of any size using natural gas as a cooking source in a commercial kitchen (such as restaurants, hotels, for-profit hospitals and nursing homes, malls, sports arenas), or businesses that generate or use CO2 naturally as a component of its operations (soda manufacturers, bakers, breweries, wineries),” notes the Chamber letter. All such establishments “may exceed the 250-ton-per year threshold for CO2 emissions.
The PSD permitting process is costly and time-consuming. As the Chamber letter observes, “It is not uncommon for PSD permits for major sources to cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars and take years to complete.” Glaser and Cline caution that, “No small business requiring a moderate-sized building or facility heated with fossil fuel could operate subject to the PSD permit administrative burden.”
To obtain a PSD permit, a regulated entity must install “best available control technology” (BACT). Nobody knows yet what BACT for CO2 entails. States enforce BACT through case-by-case determinations based on their Clean Air Act State Implementation Plans (SIPs). It could be years before states adopt and EPA approves SIPs with new BACT requirements for CO2. In the meantime, every major source would operate in regulatory limbo, creating what Glaser and Cline describe as “considerable, and perhaps fatal, uncertainty for businesses.” Indeed, “since BACT determinations for CO2 have no regulatory history at this time, and can vary by type of facility and from state-to-state, businesses wishing to construct new sources or modify existing ones would have no basis for planning what the regulatory requirements will be.”
The real “California Adventure”—also known as PSD Hell—begins once states start making BACT determinations for CO2. The flood of permit applications from potentially hundreds of thousands of “major” stationary sources would overwhelm the state agencies that administer the PSD program. As already noted, determining whether a major source complies with BACT and merits a PSD permit is done on a case-by-case basis and can take years to carry out. Regulating CO2 under PSD would likely not only shut down most construction activity in the United States, it would also cripple the state agencies that enforce the Clean Air Act.
In a December 17, 2007 letter to President Bush, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and 20 other free-market advocates pointed out the obvious fact that the Clean Air Act’s motor vehicle provisions are not a mandate to debilitate either the economy or environmental enforcement.
Congress did not intend for provisions dealing solely with emissions from new motor vehicles to suppress construction activity throughout the land. Nor did Congress intend for the California waiver provision to squander state agency resources on inconsequential CO2 emission reductions to the detriment of high-priority, statutorily-prescribed Clean Air Act responsibilities.
Chairman Boxer should applaud, not condemn, EPA for following the real will of Congress and protecting both the economy and environment of California and the nation.
Rumors are flying that President Bush may propose to cap CO2 emissions from electric power plants in the upcoming state of the union speech. It's deja vu all over again.
Back in September 2000, the Bush-for-President campaign proposed to cap CO2 emissions from electric power plants. Not long after the presidential inauguration in January 2001, rumors were flying that Bush would propose CO2 caps in the state of the union message. The Competitive Enterprise Institute and other free-market groups urged President Bush to abandon that ill-considered proposal. A conservative pundit who weighed in was former Reagan official Alan Keyes. His hard-hitting column, "Bush's road to an energy tax," is available here.
Along with CEI and its allies, Keyes pointed out that Bush's advocacy of CO2 caps for power plants was inconsistent with his opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. He noted that enacting carbon caps would undermine bi-partisan congressional efforts to prevent "backdoor" (regulatory) implementation of the non-ratified climate treaty. Most importantly, Keyes warned that carbon caps would function as energy taxes at a time when energy prices were soaring and the economy was sliding into a recession. All those objections against carbon caps remain valid today.
Fortunately, Bush decided to disavow the campaign proposal and stick to pro-growth energy policies in 2001. As White House press secretary Ari Fleisher explained at a March 15, 2001 press briefing, a December 2000 report by the Energy Information Administration found that imposing carbon caps on power plants "would lead to large increases in the price of electricity. And given where California is today and where our nation may be facing in terms of high energy bills and a looming energy crisis, the President does not think it would be wise to proceed."
Kyoto proponents like Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) professed to be outraged at Bush's "breathtaking betrayal." It was all mighty silly. They fumed as if Bush had hoodwinked them into supporting him instead of Gore, only to find out that he was not really their man on CO2! Bush could not honor both his "promise" to promote energy abundance and prosperity and his "promise" to cap CO2. He wisely chose to keep the energy abundance/prosperity promise.
But will he stay the course this time around? Or will Bush's legacy end up being to take slings and arrows for seven years opposing Al Gore's anti-energy agenda only to enact that agenda at the end of his second term? Stay tuned.
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