June 2010

It is a measure of the weakness of the case against Sen. Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval (S.J.Res.26) that opponents keep trying to change the subject.

They want to pretend that a vote for S.J.Res.26 is a vote for Big Oil in general and for BP’s oil spill and all the associated ecological and economic damage in particular.

To say it again, if they really think oil is so bad that America should pay any price, bear any burden, and endure any sacrifice to get “beyond petroleum,” then they should follow the Constitution and try to assemble legislative majorities capable of enacting their agenda.

They know they can’t, so they want EPA — an administrative agency — to enact their agenda for them. That this makes a mockery out of our constitutional system of separated powers and democratic accountability doesn’t seem to bother them one whit.

The vote on S.J.Res. 26 is not “about oil.” The endangerment rule, which the Murkowski resolution would overturn, would not create a single tool or authority that could have averted the BP oil spill. It would not tighten a single petroleum industry safety standard or improve a single emergency response program. It would not create a single incentive that might have made BP more diligent in implementing safety standards.

The only way greenhouse gas regulations could stop oil spills is by making deep water drilling unprofitable. That, however, would make America more dependent on IMPORTED oil (duh!). Is that want opponents of S.J.Res.26 want?

They’ll say, no, their goal is to ”set America free” from dependence on petroleum as such. But that is not possible at reasonable cost, which is why despite decades of anti-petroleum agitation, fuel economy standards, and government support for alternative technologies and fuels, U.S. petroleum consumption and imports continue to increase.

At most, EPA’s greenhouse gas emission standards can only decrease the rate at which U.S. petroleum consumption increases. More accurately, EPA’s standards would only complicate and reduce the efficiency of the fuel economy program Congress created and amended via the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act and 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. As the National Automobile Dealers Association explains in a letter in support of S.J.Res.26, overturning the endangerment rule would help restore a more efficient approach: “a single national fuel economy standard, with rules set by Congress.”

Finally, the notion that oil is bad and hence that government can’t do too much to restrict petroleum production is benighted. Members of Congress who espouse this view either deliberately mislead the public or are ignorant of oil’s historic and continuing massive contribution to the improvement of human health and welfare.

A recent post on a blog called The Intellectual Activist eloquently explains the common sense of the matter. I reproduce it below.

TIA Daily • June 4, 2010
FEATURE ARTICLE
Oil Is Good
by Jack Wakeland
I appreciated the pro-industrialism in last Friday’s edition of TIA Daily:

I also think that we need to return to a more old-fashioned attitude toward industrial accidents. Today, they are considered utterly unacceptable catastrophes for one reason: a large segment of the culture does not accept that it is legitimate for heavy industry to exist at all and has a particular animus toward industries that generate power—including oil and coal. So they exploit every accident to promote their pre-existing agenda of shutting down all oil exploration. But if we accept that the Industrial Revolution is a good thing—that it has roughly doubled the average lifespan and vastly increased our quality of life—then we accept that the oil industry has to exist and that occasional accidents are just part of the cost of living.

With continuous 24-hour headline news coverage of this supposedly “unprecedented” disaster—in fact, it was preceded by the 10-month-long, 140 million-gallon Ixtoc 1 blowout off the gulf coast of Mexico in 1979—Rob Tracinski and Sarah Palin are among a tiny minority of American commentators who have voiced the opinion that industrial development is essential for civilization. Unfortunately Sarah Palin and almost all conservatives agree 100% with conservationism—the pre-New-Left version of environmentalism. They say that energy development as a “dirty” business—a necessary evil—that produces “dirty” messes. But we must endure the ugly mess if we are to enjoy the benefits of living a civilized existence.

Of all of the hundreds of commentaries written about the BP oil spill, I can’t recall one single editorial that endorses oil drilling as good.

It is good for oil company stock holders. Good for industrial producers. Good for automobile and truck drivers. Good for people who travel by ship, railroad, or aircraft. Good for people who don’t want to be limited to living out their whole lives without ever traveling farther than 100 miles from the village in which they were born.

Oil is good for people who buy products that are shipped to them from out of town. Good for producers who buy parts and supplies that are shipped in from out of town. Good for the specialization of industrial production that is made possible by mass shipment of parts and materials. Good for the geometrical growth of world-wide industrial productivity made possible by the specialization of production and trade.

Oil is good for farmers who use machines to plant and reap and store and dry and ship and process all of the food we eat. Good for farmers who use fertilizer and other agri-chemicals made from oil to boost the productivity of the land. Good for anyone who doesn’t enjoy enduring bouts of malnutrition and starvation—and the occasional famine.

Oil is good for people who don’t want to endure freezing indoor temperatures in the winter. Good for all producers and end users of lubricants, paints, plastics and other petro-chemical-based products. (Half of the volume of a barrel of crude oil ends up going to make fertilizers and plastics.)

Oil is good for powering all of the ships, trucks, aircraft, helicopters, communications equipment and base electrical systems, and all of the fighting vehicles that the US military use for our national defense. (Ask yourself why it was that when the US Army Air Force decided to destroy the entire nation of Germany in 1944—why was it that they bombed the oil refineries? Why was it that they bombed all modes of transportation to limit shipment between factories of unfinished industrial products?)

Oil drilling isn’t a “dirty” business. It isn’t a necessary evil. It is good. It is a life-giving good. It is an unqualified good.

The problems of an occasional industrial accident in which fewer than a dozen men are killed fades to nothing in comparison with the great comfort and prosperity and scope of life—including the operation of the mechanized agriculture and industrial production upon which the bare survival of the vast majority of the 6.5 billion human beings currently living on this earth depends.

Senator Kerry just said during the debate on SJRes 26, the “Murkowski resolution” to disapprove EPA’s rule relating to greenhouse gas regulation that the USA pays President Ahmadinejad of Iran $100m a day for oil.

This is absolutely, unequivocally false.  Iran is subject to sanctions that specifically target the Iranian oil industry.  This is from the Energy Information Administration’s website:

As per the Iran Transactions Regulations, administered by the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), U.S. persons may not directly or indirectly trade, finance, or facilitate any goods, services or technology going to or from Iran, including goods, services or technology that would benefit the Iranian oil industry. U.S. persons are also prohibited from entering into or approving any contract that includes the supervision, management or financing of the development of petroleum resources located in Iran. See OFAC’s Iran Transactions Regulations page for more information.

Add another one to the list of patently false objections to the resolution.

Sen. Durbin claims S.J.Res.26 presents the Senate a choice between “real science” and “political science.” Not by a country mile. See my previous posts on this point.

Actually, as a colleague reminds me, it is a misnomer to call EPA’s regulatory trigger the endangerment “finding” rather than the endangerment “rule.”  The Senate is voting on the “legal force and effect” of the endangerment rule, not trying to determine scientific truth via a head count.

Durbin claims that EPA made its endangerment rule after consulting with “scientists across America.” In fact, as the endangerment rule acknowledges, EPA largely based the rule on the IPCC reports. As the Climategate scandal reveals, the IPCC reports do not meet U.S. Government transparency and accountability standards.

If Sen. Durbin thinks greenhouse gas emissions are so dangerous, then he should follow the Constitution and do the hard work of trying to assemble legislative majorities capable of turning his agenda into law. 

Instead, Durbin wants EPA to ‘enact’ his agenda on its own authority, knowing that EPA won’t have to answer to his constituents for the economic impacts at the ballot box.

Sen. Boxer now compares Sen. Murkowski’s resolution to an attempt to repeal the Surgeon General’s famous report in 1964 linking cigarette smoking to cancer.

She ignores the fact that the Surgeon General’s report was purely an assessment of the medical literature. It had no legal force and effect. Indeed, the Surgeon General’s report did not even provide policy recommendations.

If EPA’s endangerment finding were simply one agency’s review of the scientific literature, the Senate would not have any business voting on it either. However, unlike the Surgeon General’s report, the endangerment finding is both trigger and precedent for policy changes potentially affecting millions of businesses and homes and trillions of dollars in cumulative GDP.

Congress never intended for the Clean Air Act to be a framework for climate policy, never voted for EPA to use the Act as such a framework, and never signed off on the far-reaching regulatory cascade the endangerment finding triggers.

Therefore it is entirely proper for the Senate to debate and vote on the ”legal force and effect” of the endangerment finding. Indeed, overturning the endangerment finding is a constitutional imperative.

Sen. Boxer (D-Calif.) is now speaking against the Murkowski resolution (S.J.Res.26). Her demagoguery knows no bounds.

She asks us to imagine a hundred Senators, who are not scientists, who are not health experts, presuming to determine which pollutant is dangerous and which is not. “It is not our expertise, it is not our purview.” “It is ridiculous.” “It is the height of hubris.” “What are we going to do next, repeal the laws of gravity?” “Maybe we’ll say the Earth is flat and will argue that one too.” “We could pass a resolution that says there shouldn’t be any more rain, and then I guess there wouldn’t be any more rain.”

Boxer ignores — and conceals — the simple fact that the Murkowski resolution would overturn the “legal force and effect” of the endangerment finding, not its scientific reasoning or conclusions.

The resolution is a referendum not on climate science but on who shall make climate policy: Elected lawmakers who must answer to the people at the ballot box or politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges appointed for life?

Boxer champions the endangerment finding because it empowers EPA to implement policies that she and other members of the greenhouse faction have been unable to secure the old fashioned way — by ratifying treaties and enacting laws.

Opponents of S.J.Res.26 will do and say anything to avoid restoring political accountability to climate policymaking.

Today, the Senate will debate and vote on S.J.Res.26, Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval to overturn the legal force and effect of EPA’s endangerment finding, which is both trigger and precedent for sweeping policy changes Congress never approved.

The Obama Administration and the Auto Alliance strongly oppose S.J.Res.26, claiming that it would harm the auto industry by blocking implementation of the joint fuel economy/greenhouse gas emission standards rule that EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) finalized in March.

The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) demolishes the Administration’s argument in a letter sent to U.S. Senators yesterday afternoon.

If Congress wants NHTSA to tighten fuel economy standards, the agency already has all the authority it needs under the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act as modified by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA). NHTSA’s authority does not come from the Clean Air Act and in no way depends on EPA’s endangerment finding.

Under the EPA/NHTSA joint rule, three different agencies will set fuel economy standards — NHTSA, EPA, and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Enactment of S.J.Res.26 would indeed block implementation of the rule. But that would benefit the auto industry by helping to “restore a single national fuel economy standard, with rules set by Congress.”

“Opponents of S.J.Res. 26 fail to explain how being regulated by three different fuel economy standards with three different sets of rules administered by three different agencies is more beneficial than a single national fuel economy standard,” the NADA letter points out.

The letter provides a detailed chart showing that there are important differences and inconsistencies between NHTSA’s fuel economy standards and EPA’s greenhouse gas emission standards, as well as inconsistencies between the federal standards and the CARB standards.

NADA’s letter concludes:

The EPA and CARB fuel economy standards in effect today have been foisted on the American people by bureaucratic fiat. It is extremely unlikely any Senator would even propose a three-different-fuel-economy standards framework, especially one filled with exemptions, lower standards for some, and conflicting policies, Passage of S.J.Res. 26 would partially correct this onerous and redundant policy.

Columnist Tim Carney notes that BP, responsible for the massive oil spill, is “a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company’s bottom line.” It lobbied for President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, the “cap-and-trade” global-warming bills backed by Obama, and “the Wall Street bailout” that Obama voted for.  “BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans.”  Obama is the biggest recipient of campaign cash from BP executives.

Obama’s global warming legislation expands ethanol subsidies, which cause famine, starvation, and food riots in poor countries by shrinking the food supply, and also result in deforestation, soil erosion, and water pollution. Subsidies for biofuels like ethanol are a big source of corporate welfare: “BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels . . . that cannot break even without government support.”

The $800 billion stimulus package is using taxpayer subsidies to replace U.S. jobs with foreign green jobs. It is also destroying jobs in America’s export sector.

Obama falsely claimed that the stimulus package was needed to prevent “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that it would actually shrink the economy “in the long run.”  Unemployment has skyrocketed past European levels, as big-spending countries have fared worse than thrifty ones.  As the Examiner notes, “If his stimulus program was approved, Obama promised, unemployment would not go above 8 percent . . . The reality is that it passed 10.3 percent.”  In 2008, Obama promised a “net spending cut,” but as soon as he was elected, he proposed massive spending increases.

Obama’s global warming legislation would also drive jobs overseas, since it would impose a costly cap-and-trade carbon rationing scheme on American industry, while leaving foreign plants operated by multinational corporations unregulated.  That’s one reason why many big companies with plants overseas are lobbying for the global-warming legislation, which would give them an advantage over competitors that make their products largely in America.  The legislation would result in a tax increase for American consumers of up to $200 billion a year or $1,761 per household.

Unlike other oil companies, which have good records of safety and avoiding spills when it comes to oil drilling, BP has a bad record, earning it the label of “serial environmental criminal” from critics.  The Obama administration granted BP a waiver of environmental regulations in April 2009, yet it blocked Louisiana from protecting its coastline against the oil spill by delaying rather than expediting regulatory approval of essential protective measures.  It has also chosen not to use what has been described as “the most effective method” of fighting the spill, a method successfully used in other oil spills.  Democratic strategist James Carville called Obama’s handling of the oil spill “lackadaisical” and “unbelievable” in its “stupidity.”

Obama is now using BP’s oil spill to push the global-warming legislation that BP had lobbied for.