Obama is the “Outsourcer-in-Chief,” I explain at this link. He has moved thousands of American jobs to foreign countries, through subsidies and regulations. A classic example of how Obama used taxpayer money to outsource American jobs is through the green-jobs subsidies in the $800 billion stimulus package, which went overwhelmingly to foreign firms, as American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop and others have noted.
2012
In 2007, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) published Joel Schwartz and Steven Hayward’s Air Quality in America: A Dose of Reality on Air Pollution Levels, Trends, and Health Risks. This book is a powerful antidote to air pollution alarmism.
Although five years old, Air Quality in America is as relevant as ever. As public susceptibility to global warming alarmism has waned, EPA and its allies in the war on affordable energy rely increasingly on old-fashioned air pollution alarmism to sell their agenda.
You can still buy Air Quality in America from Amazon.Com. However, AEI no longer maintains a PDF version on its Web site. Because I make frequent use of the book, and want readers to be able to check my sources, I am posting a PDF copy on GlobalWarming.Org.
The Senate this week has an opportunity to check one of EPA’s worst regulations: the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards Rule, also known as the Utility MACT. On Wednesday, the upper chamber of Congress will vote on S. J. Res. 37, a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval that would effectively block the Utility MACT.
To read more about the merits of S. J. Res. 37, click here and here. Suffice it to say for this post, EPA’s Utility MACT would cost $10 billion annually, making it one of the most expensive regulations ever. It would also ban the construction of new coal-fired power plants. As against these compliance costs, the Utility MACT’s purpose is to protect a supposed population of subsistence fisherwomen, who consume 225 of pounds of self-caught fish, from exclusively the 90th percentile most polluted bodies of water, during their pregnancies. I sincerely doubt that these women exist. My doubts are exacerbated by EPA’s failure to identify a single member of this putative population. Instead, they are modeled to exist.
For Members of the Senate—but especially among Members of the Minority Party—a “yes” on S. J. Res. 37 should be a no-brainer. After all, the Utility MACT is all pain and no gain. Inexplicably, however, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has steadfastly opposed the bill. I say “inexplicably” because Sen. Alexander’s rationale for opposing S. J. Res. 37 makes no sense.
According to Sen. Alexander, the Utility MACT would help Tennessee by reducing upwind air pollution that crosses into the Volunteer State, thereby making more difficult compliance with federal air quality regulations. In a speech last week, Alexander explained his thinking:
“I believe the EPA is right…and the reason is that it will stop dirty air from blowing into Tennessee because they are gong to require utilities from other states to put on the same pollution control equipment that TVA is putting on and we are going to pay for. So if we are going to do it, then they should do it because they are the source of a lot of our air pollution.”
Simply put, this is nonsensical. For starters, Tennessee’s air shed is already protected from upwind pollution by the “Good Neighbor” provision of the Clean Air Act. As its name would suggest, this provision requires that upwind States mitigate any pollution that adversely affects air quality in downwind States. Pursuant to the Good Neighbor provision, EPA last summer promulgated the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, the purpose of which is to “stop dirty air from blowing into Tennessee” (to borrow Sen. Alexander’s terminology). Given that both the statute and code of federal regulations already protect Tennessee from upwind pollution, Sen. Alexander’s justification for supporting the Utility MACT is basically a call for duplicative regulation.
Sen. Alexander’s anti-S. J. Res. 37 reasoning is rendered even sillier by the fact that Tennessee is not currently victimized by out of state air pollution. If you follow this link to EPA’s website on the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, there’s an interactive map that demonstrates all the “linkages” between upwind pollution and downwind areas whose ambient air quality is in violation of Clean Air Act standards. If you slide your mouse over Tennessee, it becomes evident that there are no upwind-downwind linkages adversely affecting Tennessee. Rather, the arrows are all pointing outside of the State, meaning that it is Tennessee about which neighboring States should worry.
In light of the fact that Sen. Alexander’s avowed justification for opposing S. J. Res. 37 is wrong, I remain perplexed as to why he seems to be doing everything in his power to protect the Utility MACT.
CEI’s Myron Ebell appeared on E&E-TV this morning to discuss the upcoming vote on Senator Inhofe’s (R-OK) CRA vote to end the EPA’s mercury and air toxic’s rule. You can watch the video here. Here is a snippet of the conversation:
Monica Trauzzi: Myron, the Senate is expected to take up a measure this month that would change the future of EPA’s mercury and air toxics rule. There are two proposals that are actually being discussed on the Hill right now and the first is by Senator Inhofe and that would scrap the rule entirely. The second is by Senators Alexander and Pryor, and that would give utilities a little extra time to comply with the rule. What’s your take on the proposals and the overall impact on industry?
Myron Ebell: Well, first, the House has already passed legislation with a quite significant majority to block the utility MACT rule. Senator Inhofe’s resolution is brought under the Congressional Review Act and, therefore, it only requires a majority of those voting and it cannot be blocked by the Majority Leader or require a 60 vote, procedural vote. So, his is actually doable in the Senate. The Alexander Pryor legislation, I think Senator Alexander, who we might think of as the next Dick Lugar, is trying to provide cover for Democrats in tough election races to say that they’re voting for something that has absolutely no chance of passage, because their bill would take 60 votes, whereas Senator Inhofe’s much better resolution, which would block the rule entirely, only takes 50. The Alexander-Pryor legislation would only delay the implementation by a couple of years. So, instead of giving utilities four years, they would have six years in order to shut down their coal-fired power plants essentially.
Monica Trauzzi: But isn’t that a good thing? I mean couldn’t that help industry if they had a little extra time to comply and apply some of these technologies?
Myron Ebell: Sure, it could, but the fact is that there is no technology that will help these coal-fired power plants comply. So, we’re just essentially extending the killing off of coal-fired power plants. This bill has no chance of passage. That’s the key thing. It’s only being introduced to try to peel votes off of the Inhofe resolution.
Monica Trauzzi: So, you’re talking about the Alexander-Pryor bill?
Myron Ebell: Yes, it has, it would require 60 votes and there aren’t, if there aren’t 50 votes for the Inhofe resolution, there certainly aren’t going to be 60 for the Alexander bill.
Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) announced this week that he will bring his resolution to block the Utility MACT Rule to the Senate floor for a vote on Wednesday, 20th June. Senate Joint Resolution 37 is a privileged motion under the Congressional Review Act, which means that it requires only a majority of those voting to pass.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Utility MACT (for Maximum Achievable Control Technology) Rule requires steep reductions in mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. A new study by my CEI colleagues Marlo Lewis, William Yeatman, and David Bier shows that the rule will have miniscule health benefits and enormous costs. Electric utilities will be forced to close many coal-fired plants, which will raise electric rates for consumers and manufacturers and threaten electric reliability in major areas of the country. Op-eds by Lewis and Bier summarize key findings of their study.
Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) have announced that they plan to introduce a bill to extend the time utilities have to comply with the rule from four years to six years. Their bill has no chance of passing because sixty votes would be required. It is meant to provide cover for several Democrats engaged in tight re-election races. They can vote against the resolution of disapproval (which could pass with fifty votes), but then explain to voters that they support another measure to make the rule less onerous.
Alexander and Pryor’s mischief means that Inhofe’s resolution is likely to be defeated. Note that Alexander, a Republican, is helping Democrats get re-elected.
Here at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, we have been busy trying to inform Members of the Senate about S. J. Res. 37, legislation that would block EPA’s outrageous new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards Rule, also known as the Utility MACT.
EPA’s Utility MACT, simply put, is an affront to common sense. Industry and EPA agree that it would cost electricity ratepayers almost $10 billion per year, making it one of the most expensive regulations ever. Worse, it would effectively ban the construction of new coal-fired power plants, by establishing mercury emissions limits that are a third of detectable levels. Because pollution control equipment vendors cannot even measure the emissions limit required by the Utility MACT, they cannot offer a guarantee that new coal-fired power plants will be in compliance with the regulation. And without such a guarantee, utilities are unable to raise capital to build new coal-fired electricity generating units.
And for what? The regulatory purpose of the Utility MACT is to protect a supposed population of subsistence fisherwomen, who eat 225 pounds of self- or family-caught fish, from exclusively the 90th percentile most polluted fresh, inland water bodies, during their pregnancies. Notably, EPA has never identified a single member of this putative population; rather, they are modeled to exist.
To be sure, politics, not science, is the impetus for the Utility MACT. Environmental special interests form one of President Obama’s core constituencies. They have made no secret of their desire to close every single coal-fired power plant in America. The Sierra Club, for example, runs a “Beyond Coal” campaign that boasts of shutting down almost 43,000 megawatts of coal-fired electricity generation. While campaigning for the Oval Office, then-Senator Barack Obama openly identified with the anti-coal sentiment of his green base. In 2008, he infamously told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board that he would, as President, “bankrupt” the coal-industry. Now, his EPA is fulfilling this promise.
In order to rein in EPA’s anti-coal agenda, Senator James Inhofe introduced S. J. Res. 37, legislation that would block the Utility MACT. The vote is expected by next Wednesday at the latest, and it could happen as soon as this week.
Yesterday, CEI published a study intended to inform the Senate debate on S. J. Res. 37, titled “All Pain and No Gain: The Illusory Benefits of the EPA’s Utility MACT.” It was authored by my CEI colleagues Marlo Lewis and Dave Bier, and also me.
Last evening, Forbes published an oped about the new study by Marlo Lewis. In the following excerpt, he explains the absurd cost-benefit ratios of the Utility MACT:
The EPA estimates that implementing the Utility MACT Rule will cost $9.6 billion in 2016. The agency also estimates that the required mercury reductions will provide $0.5 to $6 million in health benefits in the same year…For the HAP reductions that are the Rule’s statutory purpose, estimated costs exceed estimated benefits by 1,600 to one or even 19,200 to one.
In this morning’s Washington Examiner David Bier has a piece exposing EPA’s fraudulent economic analysis of the Utility MACT. The following passage aptly summarizes his point:
EPA’s conclusion that the Utility MACT will create coal jobs is based on a single paper by Resources for the Future’s Richard Morgenstern, which studied four industries in the 1980s — pulp and paper, plastics, steel and petroleum — and concluded that for every million dollars they spent on environmental compliance, 1.55 jobs were created in those industries.
Agency officials simply took this finding and plugged in the Utility MACT’s regulatory costs. If this sounds simplistic, they actually show their work in a footnote of their RIA — 1.55 jobs times $10.9 billion adjusted for inflation.
Using this formula, EPA can impose infinite costs on any industry and always claim that it will create jobs. Even if a rule costs trillions of dollars, EPA could still claim job growth!
How does EPA get away with this? With a little help from friendly environmental special interests, that’s how. Here’s how it works: Whenever lawmakers deliberate on a measure that would rein in EPA (be it a vote on EPA’s climate power grab; or its Clean Water Act power grab; or its Regional Haze power grab, or any of its power grabs), well-funded green groups like the Sierra Club, NRDC, or the League of Conservation Voters, immediately take to the airwaves to equate a vote against EPA with child abuse. This is a topic I’ve discussed before on this blog—see here, here, and here. Of course, these ads are nothing but lies. However, they are effective lies. No politician worth his or her salt wants to be accused of harming children. Thus, these green special interests have distorted the debate on environmental policy, such that common sense rarely prevails. As a result, EPA is free to implement the President’s political goals.
Utility mact presentation
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Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) has announced that he will bring a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval of the EPA’s Utility MACT (for Maximum Achievable Control Technology) Rule to the Senate floor for a vote on or before Monday, 18th May. Since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is trying to hold as few votes on tough issues as possible before the November elections, this could be the most important vote on an energy or regulatory issue that the Senate takes this year.
Under the Congressional Review Act, the resolution of disapproval, S. J. Res. 37, is a privileged motion. A vote cannot be blocked by the Majority Leader or filibustered and requires only a simple majority to pass.
The Utility MACT Rule would regulate mercury and some other emissions from coal-fired power plants. The proposed limits are so stringent that utilities will be forced to close many coal-fired power plants. This will raise electric rates and threaten electric reliability in many States.
CEI this week published a paper by Marlo Lewis, William Yeatman, and David Bier titled, All Pain and No Gain: the Illusory Benefits of the Utility MACT. It shows that the health benefits claimed by the EPA are non-existent, while the costs to consumers and manufacturers are huge.
The vote on the resolution is likely to be very close. Right now, it looks like it will lose narrowly. Senator Inhofe appears to have the support of forty fellow Republicans and four Democrats. The Democrats are Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
Five Republicans oppose the resolution or are leaning no. They are Lamar Alexander of Tennessee (whose opposition has been outspoken), Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Susan Collins of Maine, and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. A number of Democrats are not publicly committed. They include: Jon Tester of Montana, Max Baucus of Montana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Jim Webb of Virginia, Mark Warner of Virginia, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.
Senator Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) is still recovering from a stroke, so is not expected to vote. That means that if all other Senators vote, the resolution will need fifty votes to pass. As I see it, Senator Inhofe needs to gain the support of at least two more Republicans and then focus on getting three Democrats who are in tough re-election races in States that mine or use a lot of coal.
Ron Bailey of Reason took a closer look at one of the many reports out there written to discredit those organizations (and corporations) that remain skeptical of plans to dramatically scale back the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. What the report intended to insinuate was that corporations were hypocritical: they claimed to publicly support policies to combat climate change but privately gave money to those organizations whose aims were to undermine support for such policies. While I can certainly believe that some corporations will want to present a happy face to the public while also being more privately concerned with the impact new legislation has on their profitability, upon closer inspection the report wasn’t quite what it seemed:
In line with the findings of the UCS, the L.A. Times specifically declared, “General Electric has backed six environmental and non-partisan research groups that accept the scientific consensus on climate change, including the Brookings Institution and the Nature Conservancy. At the same time, it has funded four organizations that reject or question the consensus, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation.” Based on the UCS report, The Guardian (U.K.) stated, “Some of America’s top companies are spending heavily to block action on climate change or discredit climate science, despite public commitments to sustainable and green values.” The Guardian specifically mentioned that UCS had identified General Electric as being two-faced about climate change. According to the UCS report, among the four GE-supported organizations that “misrepresent” climate-change science is the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.
So what vast sums of money did the duplicitous executives at General Electric lavish on the Reason Foundation in 2008 and 2009 to support an implied campaign to traduce climate science? Exactly $325. How much did GE spend on matching and direct grants on the six think tanks identified by the UCS as being pro-climate consensus? That would be $497,744. At least with regard to General Electric’s contributions, it appears that the Union of Concerned Scientists has salted a follow-the-money trail with pieces of fool’s gold, which certain unwary news outlets obligingly picked up and reported as real bullion.
You can read the entire report here. It’s mostly documentation of various corporations and their perceived support or opposition towards climate change legislation. It separates groups into what seems to be “good” and “bad,” with most of the fossil fuel energy making the bad group.
The noteworthy part is the way in which the media swallowed the conclusions without doing any work of their own. Bailey points out that the only funding Reason received from General Electric was to the tune of roughly $300, and only because G.E. has a company wide policy that matches donations made by employees to groups like the Reason Foundation or the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The report didn’t mention that GE’s support was not actually corporate funding, but rather a very small match towards employee contributions. Keith Kloor offers sympathetic commentary.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute attended the 7th International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by the Heartland Institute and held in downtown Chicago on May 21-23. We at CEI are deeply indebted to the Heartland staff for all the hard work that went into putting on this event. The conference ran smoothly and I thought it was well attended despite the recent public kerfuffle over the incident with Peter Gleick and Heartland’s billboard campaign. CEI’s Myron Ebell and Chris Horner participated in a panel on the social and economic impacts of climate change and climate change policies. A videos of Myron’s panel is embedded below, and Chris Horner’s can be watched at this link.
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