An effort by Senate Democrats to let California regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles is drawing opposition from one of the party's traditional allies, the United Auto Workers, ahead of a pivotal vote Wednesday.
May 2008
The world's biggest carbon offset market, the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM), is run by the UN, administered by the World Bank, and is intended to reduce emissions by rewarding developing countries that invest in clean technologies. In fact, evidence is accumulating that it is increasing greenhouse gas emissions behind the guise of promoting sustainable development. The misguided mechanism is handing out billions of dollars to chemical, coal and oil corporations and the developers of destructive dams – in many cases for projects they would have built anyway.
The environmental movement has never been short on noble goals. Preserving wild spaces, cleaning up the oceans, protecting watersheds, neutralizing acid rain, saving endangered species — all laudable. But today, one ecological problem outweighs all others: global warming. Restoring the Everglades, protecting the Headwaters redwoods, or saving the Illinois mud turtle won't matter if climate change plunges the planet into chaos. It's high time for greens to unite around the urgent need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
E&E News has an advance copy of Senate EPW Committee Chair Barbara Boxer’s summary of the newly revamped Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, and it is much, much worse than I had thought it would be.
Titles II-IV (“Capping Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Reducing Emissions through Offsets and International Allowances; Establishing a Greenhouse-Gas Emissions Trading Market) describe how a “cap and trade” program will take $5.6 trillion from American energy consumers through 2050.
Titles V-XI (Federal Program to Prevent Economic Hardship; Partnerships with States, Localities and Indian Tribes; recognizing Early Action by Companies; Efficiency and Renewable Energy; Low Carbon Electricity and Advanced Research; Future of Coal; Future of Transportation) apportion the $5.6 trillion to every conceivable special interest.
I had thought at least she would leave out those twin evils of modern society, oil and coal, but they are in fact well positioned at the trough ($34 billion and $16 billion, respectively, in adjustment payoffs). And it never occurred to me that the truckers would get 4 billion, or that natural gas processors would get $20 billion. This later giveaway is especially egregious because natural gas is a huge winner under any cap and trade, as coal—its main competitor for electricity generation—is priced out of the market.
In reworking the Congress’s leading climate bill, Senator Boxer’s staff took the spineless Farm Bill approach: print enough money to placate every objection. Woe to us all for having such crummy leaders.
Norma Love of the AP reports that New Hampshire’s Senate voted 16-8 Thursday to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a 10-state regional effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The House next considers changes made to the proposal, especially on how much money would go into a fund to promote energy efficiency.
According to the Arizona Daily Star, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano vetoed HB 2017 Thursday, which would have barred the state Department of Environmental Quality from enacting any regulations curbing greenhouse-gas emissions. Sen. Jake Flake, R-Snowflake, who wrote the legislation, said one possibility would be attaching its provision to other environmental legislation.
In Montana, the legislative Environmental Quality Council dismissed most of Governor Brain Schweitzer’s climate plan. The 54 point plan was written under the direction of the Center for Climate Strategies, an alarmist environmental non-profit whose prejudicial origins and operations are exposed by Paul Chesser of the Center for Climate Strategies Watch.
There seems to be one question in which the green advocates and climate realists agree, and it is this. Green advocates are failing in the climate debate.
Mark Seal is concerned about the climate. So he decided to create the TalkClimateChange forums where all the fantastic green arguments will be collected. He was afraid that there would be no skeptics. Finally, he summarized his experience on La Marguerite.
"When I launched the TalkClimateChange forums last year, I was initially worried as to where I would find people who didn’t believe in global warming. I had planned to create a furious debate, but in my experience global warming was such a universally accepted issue that I expected to have to dredge the slums of the internet in order to find a couple of deniers who could keep the argument thriving.
The first few days were slow going, but following a brief write-up of my site by Junk Science I was swamped by climate skeptics who did a good job of frightening off the few brave Greens who slogged out the debate with. Whilst there was a lot of rubbish written, the truth was that they didn’t so much frighten the Greens away – they comprehensively demolished them with a more in depth understanding of the science, cleverly thought out arguments, and some very smart answers. If you want to learn about the physics of convection currents, gas chromatography, or any number of climate science topics then read some of the early debates on TalkClimateChange. I didn’t believe a word of it, but I had to admit that these guys were good.
In the following months the situation hardly changed. As the forum continued to grow, as the blog began to catch traffic, and as I continued to try and recruit green members I continued to be disappointed with the debate. In short, and I am sorry to say it, anti-greens (Reds, as we call them) appear to be more willing to comment, more structured, more able to quote peer reviewed research, more apparently rational and apparently wider read and better informed.
And it’s not just TalkClimateChange. Since we re-launched the forums on Green Options and promoted the “Live Debate“ on Nuclear Power, the pro-nuclear crowd have outclassed the few brave souls that have attempted to take them on (with the exception of our own Matt from TalkClimateChange). So how can this be? Where are all these bright Green champions, and why have I failed to recruit them into the debate? Either it’s down to poor online marketing skills, or there is something else missing. I’ve considered a range of theories as to the problem, none of which seem to fit – such as:
Greens are less educated? Nope.
Greens have less time? Nope.
Greens are a little reticent? Nope.
Greens are less intelligent? Definitely nope.
Greens are less passionate? Absolutely nope.]
Greens have less at stake? Clearly not.
The only feasible explanation that I can come up with so far is that perhaps Greens are less invested in the status quo, and therefore less motivated to protect it? The other possibility is that we are all completely wrong and we’re deluded – please tell me this isn’t so. So I am hoping that La Marguerite, with its insightful host and enlightened readership may be able to help shed some light on this peculiar phenomenon?"
Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Via Tom Nelson.
Let us try to figure out what are the main reasons why the skeptics are more well-informed and better debaters. Here is a poll that will expire in 2 weeks, around May 24th. Incidentally, if you want to answer that the Greens are bad in these exchanges because they are religiously motivated, you should vote for "Greens are overwhelmed by their big plans that don't allow them to see the details." If you think a bit, I believe you will agree it is essentially the same thing.
(See http://motls.blogspot.com/ for the poll.)
While no one knows who first uttered the sentiment "It’s better to say nothing and seem a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt," Republican presidential hopeful John McCain’s speech this week on climate change certainly supports the phrase’s validity.
McCain spoke at the facilities of Vestas Wind Technology, an Oregon-based firm that manufactures wind-power systems. The irony of the setting was rich given McCain’s outspoken opposition to pork-barrel spending.
Evangelicals and other religiously-inclined are now uniting their voices against ruinous policies on climate change. The “We Get It!” campaign seeks one million signers to their declaration and will probably get it with such illustrious partners as Dr. James Dobson, Family Research Council, WallBuilders, Concerned Women for America, Janet Parshall, senators and congressmen, and nearly a hundred pastors, Christian leaders, policymakers, theologians, and state organizations.
Their press conference yesterday included choice comments. Cal Beisner, the leader of the campaign and the national spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance, believes there have been attempts to portray a major shift of evangelicals towards embracing catastrophic global warming, which is simply not true. Representing the Southern Baptist Convention, Barrett Duke asked, “How can you create policy on unsettled science?” He also pointed out that, more than on any other issue, polls show evangelicals aren’t following the US mainstream on global warming—they are rejecting the alarmists’ predictions.
Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), a white Republican, and Bishop Harry Jackson (High Impact Leadership Coalition), a black Democrat, were promoting their new book “Personal Faith, Public Policy” and suggesting that one can be green without being gullible. Jackson called global warming a civil rights issue because the poor have “no microphone and their interests are considered last.”
The declaration can be signed at www.We-Get-It.org, and may also be forwarded to interested friends.
Hurricanes and tropical storms will become less frequent by the end of the century as a result of climate change, US researchers have suggested.
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