October 2010

It Could Happen Here

by William Yeatman on October 25, 2010

in Blog

In 2007, the Spanish government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero passed a law that guaranteed solar power producers a price for power more than 10 times the 2007 average wholesale price paid to conventional energy suppliers. The generous subsidies sparked a rush to solar, and taxpayer costs mounted. Today, the government owes $172 billion to renewable energy investors, but it doesn’t have the means to meet its obligations in the face of rising budget deficits. As a result, more than 50,000 other Spanish solar entrepreneurs face financial disaster.

Green activists and allied rent seekers like to portray themselves as the underdogs against big business in their environmental causes.  The battle over Proposition 23 – the California ballot measure to suspend the state’s global warming law until unemployment is under control – is certainly no exception.    But they have David and Goliath backwards here; those spending to defeat the measure and keep California cap and tax in place have outgunned supporters of reform by at least 3 to 1.

Compared to the $9 million or so in favor of Prop 23, including most from oil companies, the $28 million to kill this measure has gotten relatively little attention.   Only a minor percentage of this amount has come in the form of small contributions from regular Californians – little wonder since it is defending a global warming policy that would drive up fossil fuel costs and kill jobs just as a similar policy has done in Spain. In fact, most of the money has come in the form of six and seven figure contributions from big environmental groups, Hollywood bigshots, and, most disturbingly, opportunists like venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, who hope to secure a guaranteed market selling alternative energy and vehicles far too expensive to compete otherwise.

Obama Convinces Wealthy Voters

by Myron Ebell on October 25, 2010

in Blog

President Barack Obama is still talking about how his policies are creating a new green energy economy, but he is aiming the message at smaller and smaller audiences.  On Thursday night he appeared at a $30,000 a plate fundraiser at the Palo Alto home of Google Vice President Marissa Mayer and her husband, Zachary Bogue, a real estate investor.  The San Francisco Chronicle reported the President’s brief remarks: “‘We’re taking on clean energy in ways that we haven’t seen before,’ made the largest investment in clean energy in history, and ‘we’re seeing solar panels and wind turbines’ all across the country, he said.”

The people who can get excited about the President’s vision are restricted to a relatively few wealthy individuals who are becoming wealthier from government subsidies and mandates for such things as solar panels and wind turbines.  No doubt, several were in the audience in Palo Alto.  The message doesn’t resonate as well with the vast majority being victimized by these redistributionist policies.  That’s why the President is spending less time talking to the public and more time talking to big donors to the Democratic Party, who are getting their money’s worth from this Administration.

An AB32 Primer

by Chris Horner on October 25, 2010

in Blog

So, we read that Hollywood, Al Gore’s group, rent-seeking industry and other green groups have been joined by the rest of the usual suspects-Google, Bill Gates-in opposing Proposition 23, a ballot initiative to delay their state’s energy rationing law which will soon take effect. That is, barring voter intervention putting a temporary stay on this economic suicide pact until the state’s economy recovers somewhat.

I should think that’s about all one needs to know about Proposition 23.

Still, all of that money to protect the global warming industry’s gravy train seems to be having an effect among telephone survey respondents. But it remains a close one. And that’s why they suit up and play the game.

The people who will be hurt most by this costly gesture by elites who for the most part will not feel the pinch of California sinking further down the drain, particularly Hispanic voters, support reclaiming voter sovereignty on an issue the political class has proven an inability to responsibly manage.

I suppose this is just fodder for so much more hand-wringing by the Left about the regular voter being too stupid for the elites to stomach. How dare those imbeciles not wildly fall for it! Remember, AB 32 was passed as a global warming law. When it began to dawn on people that now was not the time for foolish gestures, even in California, and since no one actually posits that AB 32 would ‘do something’ to the climate in any detectable way (or even close, accepting all of the alarmists’ assumptions), the party line promptly switched to it being a jobs bill. Yeah, that’s it.

And, now, as the truth is making the rounds that this “world’s first” scheme has in fact proven to be a job-killing bog in many places already, the global warming industry has now done its usual late-hour race to the bottom. One pressure group is blitzing the airwaves with shameful ads saying this is about (of course) childhood respiratory function. Not a word in the ad about global warming. Huh. This comes from the California chapter of a group long having had a difficult relationship with being straight on such matters (including, as Reason’s Joel Schwartz has pointed out on many occasions, about California-specific issues and, as I detailed in Red Hot Lies, about global warming).

Which begs the question, unless they are just torturing the facts and being alarmist (again), why wasn’t that the reason AB 32 was passed to begin with? Instead, it was (risible) state-specific computer-modeled scenarios of doom unless the people allowed the political class to strip them of ever more freedoms. It was the faddish “global warming” pony they sought to ride to the long-held desire to price energy out of the reach of the same average voters whose proliferation and attainment of automobility, vacations and the like the elites just couldn’t tolerate.

You will know them by their deeds, and the global warming industry’s have a pretty miserable record.

Can the Endangered Species Act (ESA) compel America to de-industrialize?

My colleague William Yeatman alludes to this question at the end of his post on yesterday’s Heritage Foundation symposium, “Saving the Polar Bear or Obama’s CO2 Agenda?”

The short answer is yes and no. Yes, because once the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) listed the polar bear as a “threatened species” on the supposition that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are melting the bear’s Arctic habitat, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) logically requires that people stop engaging in CO2-emitting activities. This is worrisome, because CO2 emissions come from energy use, which in turn derives from economic activity. There is hardly any economic activity in the modern world that does not, directly or indirectly, cause or contribute to CO2 emissions. Hence, almost any economic activity can be deemed to threaten the bear and, thus, violate the ESA!  

On the other hand, there are political limits to how far eco-activists can push this logic. The American people will not tolerate being regulated back into the dark ages. Al Gore and his allies know this, which is why they continually try to dress up their anti-growth agenda as a “green jobs” program.

But this means that, at a minimum, the ESA is a specter haunting our economic future, its potential for mischief held in check only by the vigilance of citizens and the political calculus of regulatory zealots.  

On May 14, 2008, when the FWS listed the polar bear as threatened, then Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne claimed the agency’s action “should not open the door to use the ESA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, power plants, and other sources.” Why not? Well, Congress never intended for the ESA to be used as a framework for climate policy. It is not designed for that purpose. The same can be said however about the Clean Air Act, yet in Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court, unable to resist the temptation to legislate from the bench, authorized and, indeed pushed EPA to begin regulating greenhouse gases (GHGs). EPA is now busy promulgating GHG regulations and setting climate policy for the Nation.

In short, former Secy. Kempthorne was whistling past the graveyard. From day one, regulating GHGs via the ESA was the objective of the eco-litigation groups who petitioned and sued the FWS into listing the polar bear. How do I know? They said so.

CBD Playbook

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) was the lead group petitioning the FWS and suing the Department of Interior to list the polar bear under the ESA. Along with Greenpeace and Natural Resources Defense Council, CBD filed the petition on “Kyoto Day” — February 16, 2005, the day the Kyoto Protocol went into effect. In the fall 2007 issue of Natural Resources & Environment, CBD’s Senior Attorney (Brendan Cummings) and Climate Program Director (Kassie Siegel) plainly stated their intent to use the ESA to suppress U.S. fossil energy use.

Consider this excerpt:

In the seminal ESA case, Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153 (1978), the Supreme Court held that the ESA’s unequivocal mandate that federal agencies “insure” that their actions do not “jeopardize” any species protected by the statute meant that a multimillion dollar dam project already near completion could not proceed because its completion threatened the existence of the snail darter, a small endemic fish of no know economic value. . . . In the nearly three decades since TVA was decided, courts enforcing the ESA have halted such activities as logging to protect threatened owls, commercial fishing and military activities to protect marine mammals, oil and gas development to protect wolves and grizzly bears, pesticide authorizations to protect imperiled salmon, and numerous other habitat-damaging activities that threatened a particular protected species. Whether GHG emissions can be halted to protect polar bears will be a test of the statute’s continuing relevance in the twenty-first century. [Emphasis added]

Ominously, Cummings and Siegel don’t say that the continuing relevance of the ESA depends on its ability to reduce or limit GHG emissions, but to “halt” them.

The authors go on to discuss Sections 7 and 9 of the ESA, and how those provisions can be used to block energy projects and control energy use.

Section 7 directs all federal agencies to consult with the FWS to ensure that “all actions authorized, funded, or carried out by such agencies are ‘not likely to jeopardize the continued existence’ or ‘result in the destruction or adverse modification of habitat’ of any listed species.” This means that “if the project [authorized, funded, or carried out by an agency] is determined to jeopardize a listed species or adversely modify its critical habitat, the statute can trigger modification or cancellation of the project so as to avoid such impacts.”

Quoting from the Code of Federal Regulations, Cummings and Siegel explain that “jeopardize” means “to engage in an action that reasonably would be expected, directly or indirectly, to reduce appreciably the likelihood of both the survival and recovery of a listed species in the wild by reducing the reproduction, numbers or distribution of that species.” Hence, if an action “appreciably” contributes to the GHG emissions believed to cause global warming, “that action could then be found to jeopardize a listed species.”

So which agency actions appreciably contributing to GHG emissions might be controlled or stopped under the ESA? The setting of fuel economy standards and the granting of offshore oil and gas leases are prime candidates, Cummings and Siegel opine, but many others would also come under carbon discipline:

The GHG emissions from numerous other actions present in the approval of new coal-fired power plants, oil shale leasing programs, limestone mines for cement manufacturing, and dozens perhaps hundreds of other projects are individually and cumulatively having an appreciable effect on the atmosphere. These are all agency “actions” as defined by the ESA, which “may affect” listed species, and therefore trigger the consultation requirements of Section 7.

The authors conclude: “There is no reason GHG emissions, which jeopardize polar bears, should be treated any differently than pesticides that harm salmon or logging that harms owls.”

Eventually, the ESA would also impose carbon discipline on the private behavior of firms and individuals. Section 9 of the ESA prohibits “any person,” including private individuals and corporations, from “taking” any endangered or threatened species. “Take” has several meanings, including “harass,” “kill,” and “harm.” “Harm” includes “significant habitat modification or degradation where it . . . injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding, or sheltering.” Polar bears breed, feed, and shelter on ice floes. If GHG emissions are melting the ice, then GHG emissions are “taking” polar bears. To repeat, almost any economic activity by almost any private entity directly or indirectly causes GHG emissions.

Finally, Cummings and Siegel argue, “The ESA requires that a recovery plan for the polar bear be prepared and implemented. There is no hope for recovery, much less survival, of the polar bear absent substantial reductions in GHG emissions. Any legally adequate recovery plan must therefore include mandates to reduce such emissions” (emphasis added).

So there you have it, straight from the source. The objective of listing the polar is to set the predicate for “mandates” to reduce GHG emissions.

What Next?

Under the ESA, a “threatened” species is one that is expected to become “endangered” in the future whereas an “endangered” species is one that currently faces extinction in part or all of its range. Although the ESA prohibits “takings” of both threatened and endangered species, if the species is listed as “threatened,” FWS has the option, under ESA Sec. 4d, “to relax the normal ESA restrictions to reduce conflicts between people and the protections” provided by the Act. On the same day that Secy. Kempthorne listed the polar bear as threatened, he issued a 4d rule that allows both “subsistence” hunting by native Alaskans and “environmentally sound” development of natural resources by oil and gas companies.

In May 2009, Obama Administration Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reaffirmed Kempthorne’s 4d rule, explaining that, “The Endangered Species Act is not the proper tool to deal with a global issue — with global warming,” adding: “We need to move forward with a comprehensive climate change and energy plan we can be proud of.” In addition to preferring “comprehensive” climate legislation à la Waxman-Markey, Team Obama may have wanted to protect EPA’s newly won power to call the shots on climate policy.

As you might expect, the CBD is challenging the 4d rule in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the Department of Interior should have listed the polar bear as “endangered.” Greenwire (subscription required), the online news service, comments: “If they [the polar bears] were reclassified as endangered, the 4(d) rule would no longer have any bearing and environmental groups would have greater leverage to argue that the government should require reduced greenhouse gas emissions in order to protect the bears.”

Several business groups (American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Mining Association, National Manufacturers Association, American Iron and Steel Institute)  and the State of Alaska have intervened in support of the 4d rule, arguing that the ESA should not be used to regulate GHGs. They may prevail, but it is entirely possible that, by listing the polar bear as threatened, the Department of Interior has painted itself into a legal corner.

Nonetheless, I see a bright future ahead. Recall that on June 10, all 41 Senate Republicans and six Democrats voted to overturn EPA’s Endangerment Rule, the trigger and precedent for a cascade of GHG regulations under the Clean Air Act. The resolution of disapproval lost by a mere four votes (47-53), and only because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) promised fence-sitters an opportunity to vote on Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s competing legislation to prohibit EPA regulation of GHGs from stationary sources for two years. It is a promise the Honorable Mr. Reid has not yet kept, though there might be a vote in the lame duck.

My point, though, is that the next Congress is expected to include many more members opposed to cap-and-trade and other stealth energy taxes. ESA regulation of GHGs is potentially much more costly than cap-and-trade proposals like Waxman-Markey. So in all likelihood, the next Congress will have even less patience than the current one with climate hysteria-inspired regulatory excess.

In the News

Biofuels or Bust?
Brian McGraw, Detroit News, 22 October 2010

Can the Endangered Species Act Compel America To De-Industrialize?
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 22 October 2010

Eight-Tenths of a Degree? Think of the Grandchildren!
Willis Eschenbach, WattsUpWithThat, 22 October 2010

Shock! Green-Posing Hollywood Hypocrite
Chris Horner, American Spectator, 21 October 2010

Pop Went the Climate Bubble
Steven Milloy, Human Events, 21 October 2010

Chunk It or Chuck It
Marita Noon, GlobalWarming.org, 21 October 2010

Restore the Balance between Energy and Environment
Washington Examiner editorial, 21 October 2010

The All-Electric Car: Think 132 Year Payback
Patrick Barron, MasterResource.org, 19 October 2010

The EPA’s Odd View of Consumer Choice
Patrick Michaels, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 17 October 2010

Renewables Will Add $1400 to Power Bills
Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, 16 October 2010

California Could Feel Spain’s Pain
Gabriel Calzada, Orange County Register, 15 October 2010

Global Warming Propagandist Shot Down
Lawrence Solomon, National Post, 14 October 2010

News You Can Use

Insightful Lecture by Czech President Vaclav Klaus

Czech President Vaclav Klaus on Monday gave the inaugural annual lecture at The Global Warming Policy Foundation in London. To watch Klaus’s lecture, titled “The Climate Change Doctrine,” click here. To read a transcript, click here. President Klaus wrote a related oped (“An Anti-Human Ideology“) in the National Post.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Obama Convinces Wealthy Voters

President Barack Obama is still talking about how his policies are creating a new green energy economy, but he is aiming the message at smaller and smaller audiences.  On Thursday night he appeared at a $30,000 a plate fundraiser at the Palo Alto home of Google Vice President Marissa Mayer and her husband, Zachary Bogue, a real estate investor.  The San Francisco Chronicle reported the President’s brief remarks: “‘We’re taking on clean energy in ways that we haven’t seen before,’ made the largest investment in clean energy in history, and ‘we’re seeing solar panels and wind turbines’ all across the country, he said.”

The people who can get excited about the President’s vision are restricted to a relatively few wealthy individuals who are becoming wealthier from government subsidies and mandates for such things as solar panels and wind turbines.  No doubt, several were in the audience in Palo Alto.  The message doesn’t resonate as well with the vast majority being victimized by these redistributionist policies.  That’s why the President is spending less time talking to the public and more time talking to big donors to the Democratic Party, who are getting their money’s worth from this Administration.

EPA Moves Ahead with Economy-Wrecking Regs

Robin Bravender in Politico reports that the Environmental Protection Agency will propose new rules for greenhouse gas emissions from big trucks and buses next week.  According to Dan Becker of the Safe Climate Campaign, EPA is going to require a 20% cut in emissions by 2018.  Bravender reports that Becker considers this goal too modest.  He favors 35%.

It is not clear how freight trucks are going to be re-engineered to comply.  It is clearly already in the interests of truck manufacturers and the freight industry to make trucks as fuel efficient as possible.  Perhaps with our new slimmer economy, they can just haul 20% less freight.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson also told reporters this week that the guidance document on what industry must do to comply with the Clean Air Act’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by stationary sources (such as power plants) will be released shortly.  EPA plans to start requiring PSD (Prevention of Significant Deterioration) permits from large emitters on January 1, 2011, so the several-month delay in issuing the guidance document is likely to create a regulatory mess in the new year.

Across the States

Ben Lieberman

Megabucks Behind Effort To Stop Prop 23

Green activists and allied rent seekers like to portray themselves as the underdogs against big business in their environmental causes.  The battle over Proposition 23 – the California ballot measure to suspend the state’s global warming law until unemployment is under control – is certainly no exception.    But they have David and Goliath backwards here; those spending to defeat the measure and keep California cap and tax in place have outgunned supporters of reform by at least 3 to 1.

Compared to the $9 million or so in favor of Prop 23, including most from oil companies, the $28 million to kill this measure has gotten relatively little attention.   Only a minor percentage of this amount has come in the form of small contributions from regular Californians – little wonder since it is defending a global warming policy that would drive up fossil fuel costs and kill jobs just as a similar policy has done in Spain. In fact, most of the money has come in the form of six and seven figure contributions from big environmental groups, Hollywood bigshots, and, most disturbingly, opportunists like venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, who hope to secure a guaranteed market selling alternative energy and vehicles far too expensive to compete otherwise.

Around the World

It Could Happen Here, Part 1

In 2007, the Spanish government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero passed a law that guaranteed solar power producers a price for power more than 10 times the 2007 average wholesale price paid to conventional energy suppliers. The generous subsidies sparked a rush to solar, and taxpayer costs mounted. Today, the government owes $172 billion to renewable energy investors, but it doesn’t have the means to meet its obligations in the face of rising budget deficits. As a result, more than 50,000 other Spanish solar entrepreneurs face financial disaster.

It Could Happen Here, Part 2

Next year Germany’s renewable energy tax will increase to 3.5 cents/kWh. For comparison, that’s more that’s 30% of the average kWh price paid by Americans.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.GlobalWarming.org.

This afternoon I attended an informative panel, “Saving the Polar Bear or Obama’s CO2 Agenda?,” on how the Endangered Species Act is easily manipulated by environmentalist lawyers intent on gumming up economic activity. The panel was videotaped, so you can see it for yourself at the Heritage Foundation’s website. If, however, you don’t have an hour, then here are the highlights:

  • Robert Gordon of the Heritage Foundation cited the Iowa Pleistocene snail. Seemingly, the snail is a smashing success story. It was listed as an endangered species in 1978, and after implementing protections, the snail recovered. Indeed, it far-exceeded the criteria first set out to de-list. Nonetheless, the Obama administration upgraded its peril. Why? Because, the Obama administration says, the snail is threatened “in the long term” by global warming! This example supported Mr. Gordon’s conclusion, that the Endangered Species Act is a “tool for those that wish to constrict economic activity.”
  • The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s R.J. Smith questioned which section of the Constitution authorizes the government to favor animals and insects over humans. He joked that the 3rd amendment prohibits the government from forcing Americans to quarter soldiers, yet the Endangered Species Act can force Americans to give quarter to snails.
  • I asked Reed Hopper of the Pacific Legal Foundation to flesh out the regulatory consequences of listing the polar bear as an endangered species due to climate change, and his response was sobering. According to Mr. Hopper, a citizen suit provision of the Endangered Species Act means that anyone could sue anyone for harming the polar bear by emitting greenhouse gases. He said it would be “unprecedented.”

At today’s press conference announcing new Obama administration biofuel initiatives (see here, here, and here), Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack mentioned that USDA has a memorandum of understanding with the Federal Aviation Administration to develop bio-based alternatives to jet fuel. Vilsack’s press release describes the MOU as follows:

The Secretary also announced jointly with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) a five year agreement to develop aviation fuel from forest and crop residues and other “green” feedstocks in order to decrease dependence on foreign oil and stabilize aviation fuel costs. Under the partnership, the agencies will bring together their experience in research, policy analysis and air transportation sector dynamics to assess the availability of different kinds of feedstocks that could be processed by bio-refineries to produce jet fuels.

About when will these “non-food” renewable jet fuels become competitive with conventional petroleum-based fuels? Secy. Vilsack did not venture to say. My guess is — quite a long time. Maybe even longer than it takes to make competitive auto fuel out of switch grass, corn stover, and wood waste.

One of my posts from a few months ago, on CEI’s OpenMarket.Org, goes straight to the point, so I recycle it below for your edification and amusement.

Bio-Jet Fuel — The Real $600 Toilet Seat?

The custom-designed $600 toilet seat for P-3C Orion antisubmarine aircraft — often depicted as the epitome of government waste — is an urban legend.

The “seat” was actually a plastic molding that fitted over the entire seat, tank, and toilet assembly, for which the contractor charged the Navy $100 apiece.

However, in the subsidy-driven world of biofuels, government can flush lots of your tax dollars down the gurgler.

DOD’s Quadrenniel Defense Review Report (QDR) crows that in 2009, the Navy “tested an F/A-18  engine on camelina-based biofuel” (pp. 87-88). Camelina is a non-edible plant in the mustard family.

On Earth Day 2010, an F/A-18 taking off from the Warfare Center in Patuxent River, Maryland, became the first aircraft to ”demonstrate the performance of a 50-50 blend of camelina-based biojet fuel and traditional petroleum-based jet fuel at supersonic speeds,” enthuses Renewable Energy World.Com.

At the event, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said: “It’s important to emphasize, especially on Earth Day, the Navy’s commitment to reducing dependence on foreign oil as well as safeguarding our environment. Our Navy, alongside industry, the other services and federal agency partners, will continue to be an early adopter of alternative energy sources.”

Renewable Energy World also reports that the Navy ordered 200,000 gallons of camelina-based jet fuel for 2009-2010 and has an option to purchase another 200,000 gallons during 2010-2012. Sounds impressive, but let’s put those numbers in perspective. In just three months in peacetime, the flight crew of a single vessel — the USS NASSAU, a multi-purpose amphibious assault ship – flew more than 2,800 hours and burned over 1 million gallons of jet fuel.

Neither Renewable Energy World nor the QDR mentions how much camelina-based jet fuel costs. Hold on to your (toilet) seat! According to today’s ClimateWire [June 28, 2010; subscription required] the price is $65.00 per gallon. That’s about 30 times more expensive than commercial jet fuel.

Those who wonder why government can’t just mandate a transition to a “beyond petroleum” future should contemplate those numbers.

Chunk It or Chuck It?

by Marita Noon on October 21, 2010

in Blog

Chunk it or chuck it?

Following the demise of cap and trade, a key initiative touted during his campaign, President Obama has admitted defeat on his proposed climate change legislation. Two main problems exist. First America’s citizens are fearful of his plans to “fundamentally change America.” Then, the topic has been in the public debate for the two years of attempted passage and people have come to see it as a hidden tax. At a time when the country is in an economic war, people know we can ill-afford additional costs.

After Harry Reid announced that cap and trade is dead, the President has begun talking about doing the same basic legislation in “chunks“-think bits and pieces that will slip through unnoticed by a battle weary public. The “chunk” strategy is one more attempt to go around the will of the people. Here a chunk, there a chunk, and before you know it you have cap and trade-or some other policy that digs deep into the taxpayer’s pockets.

Instead of “chunking it,” President Obama and congress, should “chuck it.”

Just released, the “Post-Partisan Power” report, acknowledges the need for a new approach. The collaborative effort is supposedly the result of a “yearlong dialogue” between three well-known think tanks: the American Enterprise Institute (conservative) and the Brookings Institute and Breakthrough Institute (liberal-leaning). Yet, their solutions seem to be rooted in the pre-recession economy. The authors presume that people will be content with fees on imported oil, surcharges on electricity, and paying “slightly more” (all report suggestions). Yet, according to MotherJones.com, most Americans aren’t willing to suffer even bare-minimum level of sacrifice for the good of the planet.  The “secure funding,” “new appropriations,” and “dedicate revenues” ideas miss the most important point: America is in an economic crisis, not an energy crisis!

Within the report are several viable solutions if America was flush with cash but they fall short when viewed through the filter of borrowing from China to make them happen.

However, we should borrow a few things from China. First, they realize that abundant, available, and affordable energy is essential to growth. So they are building power plants at dizzying rates. Next, the power plants they are building are cleaner and more technologically advanced than anything we have in America-both coal-fueled and nuclear. It has been years since America built a new power plant and the technology, often originating in America, has passed us by while we’ve been trying to push so-called alternative power and increasing the costs of traditional fuels.

The report is critical of America’s dependence on “the same fossil energy sources that have powered our nation since the 19th century” but fails to acknowledge that these same fuels are now used far more efficiently, effectively, and cleaner. We produce more with less energy and manufacture more responsibly than any other country on earth. We have an abundance of these fuels and our wise use and innovative technologies have expanded the resource. Why are we depending on foreign countries for energy when we have it all here within our borders-especially those who despise us?

“How a limited and direct approach to energy innovation can deliver clean, cheap energy, economic productivity and national prosperity,” is the report‘s subtitle.

How about this for a limited, direct approach:

  • Expedite the permitting process for the newest technology in proven coal-fueled and nuclear power plants.
  • Open up access to America’s energy resources.
  • Use our abundant oil and natural gas for transportation fuels.

This will bring “economic productivity and national prosperity.”

Tell Congress, “don’t chunk cap and trade, chuck it!”

Marita Noon is the Executive Director of Energy Makes America Great Inc., the advocacy arm of CARE (Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy), the New Mexico nonprofit organization advocating for citizens’ right to energy that is abundant, available, and affordable. CARE works on energy issues state, region and nationwide. Find out more at www.EnergyMakesAmericaGreat.org.

Yesterday on this site I explained why a “Do Nothing Congress on Ethanol Would Do a Lot of Good.” I also mentioned that today, a coalition of free market groups would be publishing an open letter advising Congress to let the clock run out on tax favoritism and trade protection for corn ethanol.

The groups issuing the joint letter are the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Freedom Action, the American Conservative Union, Freedom Works, National Center for Public Policy Research, and National Taxpayers Union.

CEI’s press release appears below. It includes commentary by yours truly on Obama Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s announcement of new biofuel initiatives at a press conference this morning, a link to the coalition letter, and a link to video excerpts of a speech in 2006 by then Gov. Tom Vilsack. The video illustrates the famous French adage, plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose (loosely translated, “The more things change, the more special-interest politics stays the same”).
 

CEI’s press release follows:

 

Contact:
Nicole Ciandella, 202.331.2773
 
Tax-Subsidized Ethanol Boondoggle Set to Expire
Coalition Urges Congress to End Tax Breaks Tariff Protection for Ethanol

 

Special tax credits and tariff protection for ethanol are set to expire at the year’s end. To counter the corn ethanol lobby, which urges Congress to reauthorize these special-interest giveaways plus enact new mandates and subsidies, a coalition of free-market groups advises Congress to “do nothing” and let the clock run out on the tax credit and tariff.

The domestic ethanol industry currently enjoys a 45¢ per gallon “Volumetric Ethanol Tax Credit” (VEETC), which costs taxpayers $5-6 billion annually, and a 54¢ per gallon protective tariff, which prevents lower-cost Brazilian ethanol from competing in U.S. markets.

“Congress has a rare opportunity to avoid $25-30 billion in new deficit spending, ease consumers’ pain at the pump, and scale back political manipulation of energy markets by literally doing nothing,” the coalition told Congress in a letter today.

The groups issuing the joint letter are the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Freedom Action, American Conservative Union, Freedom Works, National Taxpayers Union, and National Center for Public Policy Research.

The coalition released its letter today because Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack held a press conference this morning announcing new Obama Administration biofuel initiatives.

Vilsack said the VEETC should be extended on a “short-term, fiscally responsible” basis, but would not define what that means. Similarly, he said the tariff should “eventually” expire, but would not propose a timetable for phasing it out.

“In 2006, when Secy. Vilsack was Governor of Iowa, he said the exact same things – that the tariff and tax credit eventually had to end,” said Marlo Lewis, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Gov. Vilsack didn’t say then when the phase out should start – and Secy. Vilsack is still not saying.” A video excerpt of Gov. Vilsack’s 2006 remarks on ethanol is available on Youtube.

“For fiscal, humanitarian, and environmental reasons, the ethanol tariff and tax credit must go,” said Lewis.

Read the full coalition letter here.