Last night I made my network debut on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. I wasn’t interviewed. Nor was I mentioned by name. Rather, NBC Nightly News ran a story on the light bulb ban featuring a snippet from a short film I appeared in last year, about a dystopian future in which incandescent light bulbs are only available for purchase in back alley, secondary markets. I play the role of a “black marketer,” as my character is introduced by the NBC reporter.
To see the NBC News segment, click here. Below is the short film featured in the segment, “The Future of the Light Bulb Ban.” And click here, here, and here for excellent commentary on the light bulb ban by my colleagues Sam Kazman, Brain McGraw, and David Bier, respectively.
Few laws epitomize the belief that government should micromanage the daily affairs of Americans more completely than Congress’ ban on incandescent light bulbs. It’s an intrusion into the most mundane aspect of our lives. It violates the rights of both consumers and producers. It forces Americans to buy a hazardous, mercury-laden alternative. It sets a precedent under which almost anything in our lives can be controlled by bureaucrats. Given one word for such an outrageous policy, what would you choose?
“Impressive,” says the Washington Post in an editorial released Wednesday. “[It’s] an easy way to save energy,” the article continues. “All Congress has done is set a national standard for how much power it takes to produce a certain amount of light. And there’s good reason to demand improved efficiency; about 90 percent of the energy that traditional incandescent bulbs use is given off as heat, not light.”
Consumers do demand efficiency, which is why light bulbs have improved so dramatically since the days of Edison. The belief that government can simply mandate improved efficiency, however, is just fanciful. Consumers know what is best for them, and they weigh their options accordingly. No consumer thinks, “How much electricity can I waste?” As long as consumers pay their own bills, they have incentives to save energy.
Indulge me for a moment, and imagine if an American president nominated the CEO of ExxonMobil to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Do you think that would fly with the public? I doubt it. Regardless of the nominee’s beliefs on environmental policy, it looks wrong. Yet the flip side also holds true: A rainbow warrior is an incongruous choice to head the Commerce Department. Again, it simply doesn’t look right.
This is why I’m amazed that President Barack Obama nominated John Bryson, co-founder of the environmental special interest Natural Resources Defense Council, to be the Secretary of Commerce. Mr. Bryson isn’t merely a discordant nomination; his record suggests he’s an awful one. Environmentalist lawyers, such as the ones employed by the NRDC, are a clear and present danger to job creation. At every turn, they litigate to stop employment opportunities that would benefit human beings, in order to protect insects, or minnows, or America’s supposed population of pregnant, subsistence fisherwomen. For environmental extremists like John Bryson, economic development—the purpose of the Commerce Department—takes a backseat to critters and phantom communities.
Regulating air quality under the Clean Air Act is like eating Pringels: Once you pop, you can’t stop. That is, the Clean Air Act is structured such that regulation begets more regulation. This chain reaction is a major reason why the Obama administration’s decision to regulate greenhouse gases pursuant to the Clean Air Act was either foolish or diabolical. In so doing, the Environmental Protection Agency opened Pandora’s Box. It wants to choose when and where it regulates greenhouse gases, but it doesn’t have this discretion. Environmentalist special interests can and will use the courts to force the EPA’s hand. By the same token, however, this means EPA can use such suits as political cover, claiming it does not want to regulate this or that industry, or does not want to regulate under this or that Clean Air Act provision, but has no choice because ‘the court made us do it.’
To wit, last week the Center for Biological Diversity, an extremist environmental organization, won a significant case against the EPA in the D.C. Circuit Court. The litigation stemmed from the Center for Biological Diversity’s desire for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation sector under the Clean Air Act. The first step towards such regulation is for the EPA to determine that greenhouse gases from airplanes “endanger” public health and welfare. In December 2007, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the EPA to make this “endangerment” finding. To date, the EPA has refused. So the Center for Biological Diversity sued to compel action.
For some reason, utility contracts in Scotland are written such that companies are paid for energy that the utility cannot use. In this case, The Telegraphestimates that the payments were worth up to 20 times the actual value of the electricity under normal conditions:
The payments, worth up to 20 times the value of the power they would have produced, raises serious concerns about such subsidies, which are paid for by the customer.
The six Scottish wind farms were asked to stop producing electricity on a particularly windy night last month as the National Grid was overloaded.
Their transition cables do not have the capacity to transfer the power to England and so they were switched off and the operators received compensation. One operator received £312,000, while another benefited by £263,000.
Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2012 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that would block EPA from using any funds to:
Develop greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles and vehicle engines manufactured after the 2016 model year; and
Consider or grant a Clean Air Act waiver allowing the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to establish GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles and vehicle engines manufactured after the 2016 model year.
Capital Alpha Partners, LLC, a firm providing political and policy risk analysis to institutional investors, rightly notes that the amendment, sponsored by Rep. Steve Austria (R-Ohio), could “shift the debate over fuel economy standards and pressure the administration to soften its 56.2 mpg target floated two weeks ago.” In addition, the measure “would slice two of the three currently-involved agencies [EPA and CARB] out of the rule-making loop,” leaving fuel economy regulation to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), “the one agency seen as ‘most reasonable’ by industry and other observers.”
Capital Alpha reckons the measure “has a 25% chance of enactment into law this year.” If enacted as part of the one-year EPA funding bill, the measure would expire on September 30, 2012. “However,” says Capital Alpha, “should it make it into law, opponents would be hard-pressed to strip it out in future years.” An exciting prospect for liberty-loving Americans! [click to continue…]
T. Boone Pickens went on Bloomberg to discuss the Pickens Plan:
Pickens claims that Koch is working for himself, while the pure hearted T. Boone Pickens is working for America. Now yes, Koch Industries has a financial incentive to not support federally built infrastructure for a fuel that competes with a product that he sells, but it also clearly aligns with a free-market perspective of not providing federal support for any particular energy sources. Furthermore, if it wasn’t obvious, Pickens would stand to make tons of money from increasing the use of natural gas in America, so its beyond disingenuous to pretend that he is solely “doing good.” [click to continue…]
Last Thursday I appeared on Fox Business News to discuss the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, the Obama administration’s latest salvo in its war on coal. See the segment here.
Truth be told, the Cross-State Rule is probably the least objectionable of this administration’s many anti-energy regulations. The Clean Air Act’s “good neighbor” provision (section 110(a)(2)(D)(i)(I)) requires upwind states to control emissions that affect the ability of downwind states to meet federal air quality regulations. In 1997, and again in 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency tightened air quality standards for ozone and particulate matter. Computer models suggest that emissions from 27 upwind states contribute to violations of these standards in downwind states. If the EPA did not regulate this interstate transport of ozone and particulate matter, downwind states would sue to force the EPA’s hand. According to the EPA’s economic analysis (which is almost assuredly a low-ball), the Cross-State Rule will cost the power industry in the eastern U.S. $6.5 billion through 2014. The coal-fired power industry will bear virtually all of these costs.
That said, the Cross-State Rule only can be described as “least objectionable” relative to the Obama administration’s other anti-coal regulations. For example, it’s not as bad as destroying the surface coal mining industry in Appalachia in order to protect a bug that lives for a day. Nor is it as egregious as the Utility MACT, one of the most expensive regulations ever, whose primary justification is to protect America’s supposed population of pregnant, subsistence fisherwomen. If, however, the Cross-State Rule is considered on its own, absent a comparison to other policies that are part of the current administration’s war on coal, then it is very objectionable. This is due to the EPA’s seemingly vindictive treatment of Texas.
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