March 2009

Not Al Gore, but a local alarmist:

“Global Warming: Is the Kyoto Agenda Warranted?”

Noted Scholars Debate the Environmental, Economic, and Political Impact of Past and Present International Climate Efforts

March 25, 2009 – This April, the public is invited to hear Dr. James White and Christopher Horner discuss opposing views on the global climate debate, specifically in regard to the Kyoto Protocol. Sponsored by the Centennial Institute of Colorado Christian University, the debate is scheduled for April 8, 7:30-9:00 p.m., in the Lakewood Cultural Center, 470 S. Allison Pkwy., Lakewood, 80226.

The debate topic will be “Global Warming: Is the Kyoto Agenda Warranted?” Dr. White, taking the affirmative, is a professor of geological sciences as well as a fellow and the director of INSTAAR at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He specializes in global change, paleoclimate dynamics, and biogeochemistry. Christopher Horner, taking the opposite position, is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in Washington, D.C. As an attorney, he has represented CEI, scientists, and members of the U.S. House and Senate on matters of environmental policy in federal courts, and he is the author of two books on the climate issue.

Ought to be at least as good as William Schlesinger vs. John Christy.

Cap-and-Trade Would Raise Energy Prices 30%
Reuters, 24 March 2009

U.S. electricity prices are likely to rise 15 to 30 percent if a national cap on carbon dioxide emissions is instituted, according to a report by Moody’s Investors Service.

Senate Spurns Cap-and-Trade
Lisa Lerer, Politico, 25 March 2009

The budget debate on Capitol Hill has exposed deep splits among Democrats over combating climate change, a major priority of President Barack Obama, with moderate lawmakers opposing a bold legislative gambit to pass the administration’s cap-and-trade proposal through the budget reconciliation process.

Obama’s proposed “cap-and-trade” carbon tax on energy use and utility bills is expected to raise up to $2 trillion, more than the $646 billion the Administration earlier estimated. The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney explains how this hidden tax works.

(Before his election, Obama explained that electricity bills would “skyrocket” under his Administration, but the press by and large wasn’t interested in reporting it).

The $2 trillion raised by Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme may be dwarfed by the money made, at consumers’ expense, by well-connected corporations that have learned how to game such schemes.

It won’t put much of a dent in the $4.8 trillion in additional debt resulting from Obama’s proposed budget, or the $8 trillion in spending commitments incurred by the Obama Administration (not counting another trillion dollars for the toxic-asset buy-up program and $800 billion for the economy-shrinking “stimulus” package), all of which contradict Obama’s campaign pledge of a “net spending cut.”

But you sure will notice it in your electric bills if it becomes a reality.

Congressional Dems To Shelve Obama’s Energy Rationing Plan
Darren Samualsohn, New York Times, 23 March 2009

Capitol Hill Democrats are expected to bypass the fast-track budget process for global warming legislation but plan to keep the option open later this year if they cannot win bipartisan support on one of President Obama’s signature agenda items.

A Green Clash of Civilizations?
Reuters, 23 March 2009

China’s steel industry should face fees on its exports into the United States if Washington adopts greenhouse gas cuts and Beijing does not, U.S. steel industry officials and advocates said.

Global Warming Is Running out of Hot Air
Phyllis Schlafly, Townhall.com, 24 March 2009

The coldest winter in a decade in many places, with snow in unlikely cities such as New Orleans, has deflated some of the hot air in global warming. And a heavy snowfall that paralyzed Washington, D.C., upstaged a mass demonstration scheduled to promote global warming.

This week CEI announced the creation of Human Achievement Hour (HAH) to be celebrated at 8:30pm on March 28^th 2009 (the same time and date of Earth Hour).

Our press release described ways people might celebrate the achievements of humanity such as eating diner, seeing a film, driving around, keeping the heat on in your home—all things that Earth Hour celebrators, presumably, should be refraining from. In the cheekiest manner, we claimed that anyone not foregoing the use of electricity in that hour is, by default, celebrating the achievements of human beings. Needless to say, the enviros in the blogosphere didn’t take to kindly to our announcement.

Matthew Wheeland, an environmental journalist called the holiday “mind-blowingly strange” and pondered if Earth hour folks are including in their numbers people in countries that don’t have enough electricity to make the choice to turn out their lights. Of course, they don’t have the choice to acquire electricity whereas anyone can choose to stop using human technology if they wish.

In fact, one might even say that they are seething about it–lighting up the various green-oriented blogs with comments such as this sarcastic gem from Jon Petherbridge:

Human achievement hour. Another great idea. I’ll remember how great we all are as I watch the heat mirages rising from the surrounding hoods as my arm hangs out the window during my next July traffic jam.

Or maybe I’ll remember it the next time an American attack aircraft blows up a wedding party in Afghanistan. At least in that example we don’t have to feel bad for the dead Afghanis as they have a sexist culture that we are morally obligated to obliterate, quite literally if necessary. I reckon I’ll celebrate human achievement hour when everybody’s divorced or bisexual and drinking coca-cola in traffic jams on their way to work folding sandwiches for the lawyers and the bankers who we will worship for allowing us to support them by paying on our credit cards.

Go human achievement hour. Pile it on. Diversify, equalize, refinance and over qualify.

I’m feeling better already.

I love and will not give up my electric toothbrush.

They are also attempting to erase any attention directed at HAH, such as the Wikipedia article.

Of course, there are people out there who appreciate what we are trying to say. For example, Rajesh in India writes on his blog:

Coming from India where we routinely suffer power cuts due to mixed-market policies of the government, I found this post from The New Clarion fantastic…Lets use the wavelength of both light and philosophy to keep darkness at bay.

Green and private conservation are fine. We have no problem with an individual (or group) that wants to sit naked in the dark without heat, clothing, or light. Additionally, we’d have no problem with the group holding a pro-green technology rally. That’s their choice. But when this group stages a “global election” with the express purpose of influencing “government policies to take action against global warming,” we have every right as individuals to express our vote for the opposite

If our Human Achievement Hour is at all a dig against Earth Hour, it is so only by the fact that we are pointing out what Earth Hour truly is about: it isn’t pro-earth, it is anti-man and anti-innovation. So, on March 28^th I plan to continue “voting” for humanity by enjoying the fruits of man’s mind.

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce unveiled a NIMBY-Watch Web site called Project No Project .

With case studies from more than 30 states, Project No Project  chronicles how NIMBY (”not in my backyard”) activists “block energy projects by organizing local opposition, changing zoning laws, opposing permits, filing lawsuits, and bleeding projects dry of their financing.” Many of the projects blocked are not coal plants but alternative energy projects or infrastructure often touted as “green.”

The site invites readers to provide examples from their own locales of NIMBY efforts to block or stall energy-related projects.

Proponents of “green jobs” should be concerned as much as free-market and property-rights advocates, because ”stimulus” projects are vulnerable to the same NIMBY tactics that, for example, have immobilized the Cape Wind Project in Nantucket, Mass.

Although Project No Project does not mention it, we also know from  comments submitted by the U.S. Chamber and allied groups on EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, that NIMBY forces will aquire powerful new litigation tools if EPA, in response to the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision, establishes greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles. (For more background, see my recent post on MasterResource.Org.)

In a nutshell, vehicular GHG emission standards will make carbon dioxide (CO2) a “regulated air pollutant” under the Clean Air Act (CAA). That, in turn, will automatically make CO2 “subject to regulation” under the Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program. 

The cutoff for regulation as a “major stationary source” under PSD is a potential to emit 250 tons per year (TPY) of a CAA-regulated air pollutant. Approximately 1.2 million previously unregulated entities (office buildings, hotels, big box stores, enclosed malls, even commercial kitchens) actually emit 250 TPY. All would be vulnerable to new regulation, monitoring, paperwork, controls, and penalties if EPA establishes GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles.

To qualify for a PSD permit, major stationary sources must comply with “best available control technology” (BACT) standards. Even part from any investments required for BACT compliance, the PSD permitting process is costly and time-consuming. In 2007, each permit on average cost $125,120 and 866 burden hours for a source to obtain. No small business could operate subject to the PSD administrative burden.

So NIMBY forces must be licking their chops at the prospect that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson plans on April 30 to issue an “endangerment finding” for GHGs. An endangerment finding  is the prerequisite to establishing GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles and, thus, the critical first step to making CO2 a CAA-regulated “air pollutant.” 

When and if EPA regulates CO2, expect a surge of litigation demanding that EPA impose PSD and BACT requirements on developers proposing to build or renovate big box stores, strip malls, fast-food restaurants, or other projects NIMBYites deem undesirable or contrary to “smart growth.”

Bottom line: Applying PSD and BACT to CO2–the inexorable consequence of establishing vehicular GHG emission standards–will turn the CAA into a gigantic Anti-Stimulus package. Is Team Obama paying attention?

Tomorrow, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the national security threats from melting Arctic ice. Greenwire (subscription required), the Online environmental news service, explains the rationale for the hearing:

 In a report last year, the European Commission warned that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization must be prepared for an intensified “scramble for resources” as melting glaciers and sea ice open up previously inaccessible areas to exploitation. The report explicitly expressed concerns over “long term relations with Russia,” (ClimateWire, April 2, 2008).

Now, opening up ”previously inaccessible” areas to oil and gas development could also be a font of economic and national security benefits. One thing we know for sure about Arctic mineral resources–they aren’t owned by Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Venezuela, and never will be controlled by OPEC.

Yes, there will be competition for those resources, but since when is competition an automatic negative for the USA?

Clearly, there are opportunities here as well as risks–opportunities to create thousands of high-paying U.S. jobs, boost GDP by tens to hundreds of billions of dollars, and generate billions in deficit-reducing tax revenues and royalties.

More pertinently, exploitation of previously inaccessible resources could significantly diversify U.S. oil and gas–a longstanding objective of U.S. energy security policy.

But Gorethodoxy demands blind obedience by its votaries. Discussing the potential benefits of global warming is strictly verboten.