Cooler Heads Digest 31 July 2009

Announcements

The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Marlo Lewis’s new film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, is now available at globalwarming.org. There will be a screening of Policy Peril on Monday, August 10^th, at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. To RSVP, click here.

The Heritage Foundation this week published “The PERI Report on Clean Energy: The Wrong Question and a Misleading Result,” a new study by Dr. Karen Campbell that debunks a misleading report on green jobs from the Political Economy Research Institute.

Last week the Science & Public Policy Institute introduced “Climate Money,” a new study by Joanne Nova that documents the billions of dollars in taxpayer money that the U.S. federal government has spent on alarmist global warming science.

In the News

The Cost of Waxman Markey
Ben Lieberman, testimony before Western Caucus, 31 July 2009

Top 10 Most Influential Climate Skeptics
Joe Wiesenthal, Business Insider, 30 July 2009

Obama’s Science Czar: Give Trees Standing in Court
Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, 30 July 2009

Arctic Fact Sheet
Marc Morano, ClimateDepot.com, 30 July 2009

Those Little Green Jobs
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 30 July 2009

Climate Sanity from the Indian Subcontinent
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr, American Spectator, 30 July 2009

Unanswered Questions on Climate Bill
Drew Thornley, Investor’s Business Daily, 30 July 2009

Africa’s Real Climate Crisis
Fiona Kobusingye, Townhall, 29 July 2009

The Future of Coal
Bill Archer, Bluefield Daily Telegraph, 28 July 2009

Resisting Green Tariffs
Wall Street Journal editorial, 28 July 2009

Did Goldman Sachs Rig Cap-and-Trade?
PR-Newswire, 27 July 2009

News You Can Use

Cap-and-Trade Energy Tax: All Pain and No Gain

According to environmental scientist Chip Knappenberger at the Master Resource blog, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (the massive cap-and-trade energy tax that the U.S. House of Representatives passed in June) would avert .5 inches of sea level rise through 2100 based on the IPCC’s predictions.

Inside the Beltway
Political Blowback for Waxman Markey Supporters
The Huffington Post reported this week that yet another House Member is hearing from voters for voting for the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill. The article says Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ohio) is backing away from his vote and expressing doubts about voting for it again. It quotes an interview Kirk gave on the Big John and Cisco show on Chicago radio station WIND:  “If this comes back-and I don’t think it will, I think this bill has died in the Senate-I will be going through every detail and thinking about all of my constituents who got ahold of me on this issue. Because there has been an issue that I’ve heard nothing else about in the last couple of weeks.”

Also quoted in the Huffington Post article is an interview that Kirk gave on a television news show, Fox Chicago Sunday: “I’ve always backed energy independence policies, but I’ve heard from people on this issue like no other. The energy interests of Illinois are far broader and deeper than my North Shore district.” Kirk, a moderate Republican from the Chicago suburbs, is planning a run for the Senate in 2010 to replace Senator Roland Burris (D-Ohio), who was appointed by former Governor Rod Blagojevich to fill the remainder of the term of then-Senator Barack Obama. H. R. 2454 passed the House on June 26th on a 219 to 212 vote, but has stalled in the Senate.

Dueling Petitions

According to an article in Greenwire (subscription required), New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity filed a petition this week that asks the Environmental Protection Agency to begin writing the rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles now and not wait to finalize the endangerment finding.  The public comment period on Administrator Lisa Jackson’s April 16th finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare ended June 23rd, and EPA is currently going through the comments that were filed.  On the other side, it is worth mentioning again that the U. S. Chamber of Commerce filed a petition on June 23rd that asked the EPA to comply with President Obama’s requirements that the regulatory rulemaking process in his administration be transparent and based on the scientific evidence.

The Chamber’s petition also asks for a formal evidentiary hearing before a neutral panel to assess the scientific data upon which the EPA is basing its endangerment finding.  As William Kovacs, the Chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology, and regulatory affairs, said, “In the endangerment proposal, EPA routinely ignores relevant, credible scientific information that contradicts its findings, including information generated by EPA’s own staff.  If they’re going to move forward with their regulatory cascade to regulate almost every aspect of the economy from lawn mowers to large churches and ranchers with over 25 cows, then they need to be open and transparent about the justification and impacts.”  That, after all, is what President Obama promised.

Across the States

California’s Climate Concern Cools

A poll from the Public Policy Institute of California found that support for climate legislation is falling under economic pressure.  The number of Californians who support their state’s global warming legislation has fallen seven percent from one year ago to 66%. Support for immediate implementation of AB 32 has slipped from 57% a year ago to 48% today, while 46% now say that the State should wait. Meanwhile, the state’s lower house killed the section of the budget deal that would have allowed expanded off-shore oil and gas production within state waters off Santa Barbara.

The Cooler Heads Digest is published weekly by the Cooler Heads Coalition.  The latest news and opinion may be found on the Cooler Heads Coalition’s web site, www.globalwarming.org.