Cooler Heads Digest 28 August 2009

Announcements

This week the American Energy Alliance launched a four week American energy bus tour to build public awareness of what cap-and-trade is, how it works, and the extent to which it’s capable of inflicting serious damage to the American economy. Click here to learn more.

Freedom Action is a new political advocacy organization that aims to create a gathering of grassroots free market activists that will make their voices heard above special interests and big government advocates. Freedom Action’s first project is to Stop Al Gore’s Electricity Tax, and can be found here.

Americans For Prosperity is hosting grassroots demonstrations against cap-and-trade energy rationing in cities across the country. Learn more about the Hot Air Tour by clicking here.

The Center for Data Analysis (CDA) at the Heritage Foundation last week published state-by-state analysis of what the American Clean Energy and Security Act would cost consumers. Click here to find out how much cap-and-trade would raise energy prices in your state.

In the News

Carbongate
Investor’s Business Daily, 28 August 2009

Greens Threaten Native American Prosperity
William Yeatman & Jeremy Lott, Washington Examiner, 28 August 2009

Why the Electric Industry Supports Energy Rationing
Robert Peltier, MasterResource.org, 27 August 2009

Biofuels Are Going Bust
Ann Davis & Russell Gold, Wall Street Journal, 27 August 2009

GE’s Climate Scam
Timothy Carney, Washington Examiner, 26 August 2009

Carbon Baron Gore
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, 26 August 2009

EPA Looking To Shut Down Whistleblower’s Office
Gary Howard, GlobalWarming.org, 26 August 2009

Spiking the Road to Copenhagen
Deepak Lal, Business Standard, 25 August 2009

Counting the Costs
Paul Chesser, American Spectator, 25 August 2009

The Cap-and-Trade Bait and Switch
David Schoenbrod & Richard Stewart, Wall Street Journal, 24 August 2009

12 Facts about Global Warming That You Won’t See in the Mainstream Media
Joseph D’Aleo, Energy Tribune, 18 August 2009

Energy Workers Rally against Climate Plan
Tom Fowler, Houston Chronicle, 18 August 2009

5 Things Congress and the President Are Doing to Keep Gas Prices High
Ben Lieberman, Heritage Webmemo, 13 August 2009

News You Can Use

UN Exaggerates Global Warming 6 Fold

The UN has exaggerated global warming 6-fold, according to a recent peer-reviewed paper by Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Science and Public Policy Institute has reprinted this important new study, which is available here.

Inside the Beltway

Climate Science on Trial

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce this week threatened the Environmental Protection Agency with a lawsuit unless the EPA publicly defends the science it used to conclude last April that carbon dioxide “endangers” health and human welfare.

An “endangerment” ruling might sound like harmless bureaucratese, but it’s actually a clear and present danger to all Americans, because it would tripwire provisions of the Clean Air Act that would send the U.S. economy back to the Stone Age (to learn more about the possibility of this regulatory nightmare, click here).

Despite the far-reaching economic consequences of an “endangerment” ruling, there was virtually no transparency in the EPA’s decision-making process. Earlier this summer, the Competitive Enterprise Institute uncovered evidence that the EPA actually suppressed a dissenting voice from a career official for political reasons. In light of these troubling procedures and tactics, the EPA should grant the Chamber’s request, and put alarmist climate science on trial.

A Crestfallen Greenpeace Activist

Julie Walsh

I recently spoke to a pro-climate bill kid on the street. He had all of Greenpeace’s talking points down-climate refugees, wind and solar’s future, the European heat wave, etc-which I easily refuted.  When he came to Exxon’s past support of climate realists, he looked truly heartbroken when I told him that Exxon now supports Nature Conservancy and Conservation Fund. Using the alarmists’ logic, if we were shills then, they’re the shills now.

And I went on to explain how that, according to the draft, the current energy-rationing bill was “modeled closely” on the recommendations of big corporations-GE, Shell, Duke Energy, etc. I think I may have ruined his day.

This is why Poland’s new proposition cuts to the true motives of the Big Money behind this scheme: Poland may ban utilities from selling European Union carbon emissions permits many of them will get for free from 2013. No more windfall profits.