A surprising development from a country not known for backing down from a fight:
In a sign that Paris has little stomach for a fight over global warming, Francois Fillon, the Prime Minister, urged the European Union to retreat over plans to tax airlines for emitting greenhouse gases.
His letter to Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, undermined the EU’s claims to be united in its drive to impose ecological virtue on the aviation industry. The plan to force airlines to buy pollution permits when flying in European airspace has been denounced as illegal by other capitals, notably Beijing, Delhi and Washington.
The so-called coalition of the unwilling is pledging to retaliate unless Europe backtracks. Chinese and Indian airlines have been told by their governments to boycott the scheme.
Their American counterparts filed a lawsuit before withdrawing it last month and calling on the Obama Administration to take the lead in pressuring Europe to drop its aviation pollution package.
In France, concern has been fuelled by Airbus, the European aircraft maker, which said that China had shelved orders worth $US14 billion ($13.5 billion) because of the dispute.
The company said that officials in China, which represents 20 per cent of Airbus sales, were withholding their signature on contracts for 35 long-haul A330s and 10 A380 superjumbo planes. [click to continue…]
According to a new Government Accountability Office audit, the military lacks proper safeguards to ensure that spending on politically fashionable green energy isn’t wasted. I am not shocked. After all, taxpayer investments in renewable energy are inherently wasteful, for reasons that I explain here and here. And military spending is mythically wasteful: It’s commonly held urban legend that Army screws cost $10 each. Together (investment in politically-favored energy sources + the military’s tendency to spend big), the only question is whether they engender a greater degree of waste than their mere sum would suggest. This GAO report indicates that such a synergy does indeed accelerate the flow of taxpayer money down the drain.
The Los Angeles Times takes a look at some infighting going on in the environmental movement, with local chapters of large environmental organizations feeling ignored by the large national groups pushing renewable energy projects. This specific controversy concerns a large solar panel project in the Mojave desert in southeastern California. Needless to say, I don’t think a vast array of solar panels should be built in the Mojave desert either, but likely for different reasons than the local environmental groups. Here’s the introduction:
AMARGOSA VALLEY, Calif. — April Sall gazed out at the Mojave Desert flashing past the car window and unreeled a story of frustration and backroom dealings.
Her small California group, the Wildlands Conservancy, wanted to preserve 600,000 acres of the Mojave. The group raised $45 million, bought the land and deeded it to the federal government.
The conservancy intended that the land be protected forever. Instead, 12 years after accepting the largest land gift in American history, the federal government is on the verge of opening 50,000 acres of that bequest to solar development.
Even worse, in Sall’s view, the nation’s largest environmental organizations are scarcely voicing opposition. Their silence leaves the conservancy and a smattering of other small environmental organizations nearly alone in opposing energy development across 33,000 square miles of desert land.
“We got dragged into this because the big groups were standing on the sidelines and we were watching this big conservation legacy practically go under a bulldozer,” said Sall, the organization’s conservation director. “We said, ‘We can’t be silent anymore.’ ” [click to continue…]
I didn’t think it was possible to loathe green cars any more so than I already did, but I was wrong.
For long I have hated electric vehicles because I, like all taxpayers, am forced to subsidize their purchase, to the tune of $7,500* per car (although some estimates of the taxpayers’ contribution are much, much higher). This galls me, because the only people who purchase electric cars are rich. For example, Brad Pitt bought a $100,000 luxury Tesla Roadster, and I had to help him. Of course, Mr. Pitt is super rich, so he didn’t need my help. Moreover, I’d prefer not to help him, as I have a trillion other priorities that take precedence over a movie star’s choice of car. I don’t think this arrangement is fair and, as a result, I disdain green cars. You could say that I hate the player, and I hate the game.
Now, in addition to taking my money, green cars are usurping Americans with disabilities. The photo above was sent to me on Wednesday by my colleague Christine Hall Reis. Look how close that spot is to the store! It must be a retrofitted handicap space.
*Since February, President Barack Obama has been pushing to increase the regressive taxpayer subsidy for electric vehicle purchases, from $7,500 to $10,000.
The most absurd aspect of the Environmental Protection Agency’s War on Coal is their repeated denials that it’s happening. No matter how many onerous rules they release, each time they claim that the regulation will not only save the environment, but also create jobs in the industry. For example, EPA’s Regulatory Impacts Assessment (RIA) for their mercury regulation known as the Utility MACT—which was (until possibly this week) the most draconian of the coal regulations—argues that the regulation will create almost 10,000 coal jobs.
Specifically, EPA’s Utility MACT regulation requires plants to install “maximum achievable control technology” (MACT)—otherwise known as scrubbers—to remove mercury and other toxins from exhaust. The rule is one of the most expensive in history: EPA estimates it will cost almost $11 billion annually to implement. Already, these compliance costs have led to the shutdown of dozens of coal-fired power plants. Yet, EPA supporters parrot EPA’s claim that this regulation will create thousands of jobs as if it had scientific authority.
EPA’s science is based on a Resources for the Future (RFF) study (Morgenstern, et al) of environmental expenditures in four industries in the 1980s—pulp and paper, plastics, petroleum, and steel—which found “a net gain of 1.55 jobs per $1 million in additional environmental spending” in those industries. EPA then took this formula and just multiplied times the estimated cost of the Utility MACT—$10.9 billion adjusted for inflation—to get their result. They show their work in this footnote on page 9-8 of the RIA:
Highly scientific! In other words, EPA took someone else’s paper, which studied environmental expenditures over three decades old (1971-1991), and applied them to a totally unrelated sector of the economy, the coal industry, and then utilized the old “plug and chug” method. This work wouldn’t survive peer review in a kindergarten class.
[click to continue…]
Senate Again Votes Against Renewing Wind Subsidies
The Senate voted this week not to invoke cloture and proceed to a final vote on Senator Robert Menendez’s bill, S. 2204, that would repeal tax subsidies (of around $4 billion per year) and standard business deductions (of around $20 billion a year) for the five biggest oil companies and extend tax subsidies for a variety of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency technologies, including the production tax credit for wind power.
The vote was 51 to 47, with 60 votes required to invoke cloture. Forty-nine Democrats and two Republicans—Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Me.) and Susan Collins (R-Me.)—voted for cloture. Forty-five Republicans and four Democrats—Senators James Webb (D-Va.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.)—voted against cloture.
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