2014

Last Friday, May 9th, the Competitive Enterprise Institute submitted a set of comments on EPA’s “Carbon Pollution Standards.” The regulation, which was proposed January 8th, would effectively ban the construction of new coal-fired power plants, by requiring the installation of carbon capture and sequestration, an exorbitantly expensive technology that isn’t yet market viable. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy concedes the rule would have no impact on global temperatures.

My colleague Marlo Lewis made the following points,

• The current proposal is a de facto fuel-switching mandate, which Congress clearly never intended.

• A leaked OMB document and environmental group analyses indicates that the real purpose of the regulation is to establish the legal predicate for suppressing existing coal power plants via carbon cap-and-trade programs.

• Public trust in government is in free fall. EPA cannot continue to steamroll through congressional gridlock and dictate climate policy without de-legitimizing itself.

And my comments included the following points:

• The Carbon Pollution Standards would actually increase greenhouse gas emissions. To be precise, a typical coal plant in compliance with EPA’s Carbon Pollution Standards would emit 1.3 million more kilograms of CO2 annually.

• Carbon capture and sequestration is neither “adequately demonstrated” nor “achievable,” and is, therefore, an impermissible basis for the Carbon Pollution Standards.

Finally, in a separate comment, I collaborated with Darin R. Bartram and Justin J. Schwab, of BakerHostetler in Washington, D.C., to rebut EPA’s argument that the Carbon Pollution Standard doesn’t conflict with the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Below, I’ve posted each of the comments in full. [click to continue…]

Reports the LA Times,

President Obama capped a weeklong focus on climate change with a push for greater energy efficiency, a pitch particularly attuned to reaching two groups: big-dollar donors in the green movement and activists once inspired by his 2008 ambition to heal the planet. Both groups will play a role in turning out Democratic voters in November, a crucial factor for the party’s hope to retain control of the Senate.

The President’s green pivot is, in fact, the essence of political cynicism. It should put the lie, once and for all, to any notion that “Hope” and “Change” were ever anything more than empty campaign slogans.

Remember, President Obama wouldn’t touch green politics with a ten-foot pole when he was running for reelection in 2012. During the second debate, the President actually argued that he was to the right of Mitch Mitt Romney on energy policy. That Obama—the one trying to win the general public—loved fossil fuels (including coal!), global warming be damned. Indeed, he—the guy debating Mitt Romney—didn’t even mention global warming. Of course, that’s what he had to do to win. Poll after poll demonstrates that the preponderance of Americans give high priority to economic growth and low priority to  global warming.

Present-day Obama doesn’t have to win a national election. Instead, he’s got to motivate his base for a mid-term election, for which his party’s odds are long. So he’s desperate. And what does he do? He goes green, in order to get millionaire & billionaire environmentalists to spend money in support of candidates fielded by the Democratic Party. (Citizens United, Picketty, and all that be damned!). It is, therefore, evident that the President’s energy/environment beliefs are wholly dependent on the immediate politics at hand. Again, this is the apotheosis of political cynicism.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing this week at which it was revealed that one senior civil servant at the Environmental Protection Agency spent much of his office time watching pornography over the internet.  The career employee admitted to the EPA’s Inspector General’s Office (OIG) that he spent two to six hours a day watching porn videos.  This included four straight hours at a site called, Sadism Is Beautiful, according to news reports. The OIG discovered 7,000 pornographic videos downloaded to the employee’s computer.

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked the EPA officials testifying whether this conduct was illegal and whether the civil servant had been fired.  Yes, it is illegal, but Deputy Administrator Robert Perciasepe admitted that he had not been fired and confirmed that he was still being paid over $120,000 a year and in addition had received performance awards in cash.

Deputy Assistant Inspector General Allan Williams also testified about other misconduct that has been revealed by the OIG’s wider investigation launched after the John Beale scandal came to light.  For example, the director of the EPA’s Office of Administration, Renee Page, ran a retail business out of her office and had hired 17 family members over the years as paid interns.  Page received a $35,000 Presidential Rank performance award.

These are some of the juicy bits, but the really explosive testimony came from Deputy Inspector General Patrick Sullivan:

The EPA OIG’s Office of Investigations is being impeded from fulfilling its responsibilities by actions of the EPA’s internal Office of Homeland Security (OHS), a unit within the Office of the Administrator. OHS is overseen by Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming, who serves as Chief of Staff to Administrator Gina McCarthy.

Sullivan continued in no uncertain terms:

[click to continue…]

My colleague Chris Horner appeared on Cavuto last night to talk about the politics of climate change and green energy. Video below.

On April 30th, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait authored an uninformative article about environmental cases before the Supreme Court, in which he penned this whopper: “In 2007, the Court not only allowed but actually ordered the EPA to regulate heat-trapping gasses.”

By erroneously claiming that the Supreme Court directed EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, Chait commits a mistake commonly rendered by cheerleaders of the President’s climate agenda. (As an aside, this is the second occasion of late that we’ve taken the time to correct an energy/environment policy mistake by Chait.)

Here’s the background: During the Bush administration, States and environmentalists petitioned the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. EPA refused, claiming that it didn’t have the authority to do so, because greenhouse gases do not constitute a “pollutant” as defined by the Act. The States and green groups then sued, and the case ultimately went before the Supreme Court. In a 2007 ruling, Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court found that greenhouse gases are indeed Clean Air Act “pollutants” and, therefore, that the agency possesses the authority to regulate.

However, the Supreme Court did NOT “order the EPA to regulate heat-trapping gases.” Regarding whether to proceed with a Clean Air Act regime for greenhouse gases, the Massachusetts v. EPA Court concluded:

[O]nce EPA has responded to a petition for rulemaking, its reasons for action or inaction must conform to the authorizing statute. Under the clear terms of the Clean Air Act, EPA can avoid taking further action only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do.

I’ve formatted the key part: EPA doesn’t have to act on greenhouse gases if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot. The agency’s rationale, moreover, must be grounded in the statute.

Finding a “reasonable explanation” in the Clean Air Act for not regulating greenhouse gases isn’t difficult, because the statute wasn’t written with global warming in mind. Rather, Members of Congress drafted the law to mitigate conventional pollution, like nitrogen oxides or sulfur dioxide. Greenhouse gases, on the other hand, are an entirely different problem; their ubiquity (relative to conventional pollution) does not comport well with the means established by the Clean Air Act. As a result, if one earnestly applied the letter of the law to greenhouse gases, EPA would have to regulate the construction of every edifice larger than a mansion. Taken to its logical conclusion (i.e., a National Ambient Air Quality Standard for greenhouse gases), climate change regulations under the Clean Air Act would necessitate de-industrialization. [click to continue…]

As I write this post, White House energy and environment adviser John Podesta is speaking at a conference held by Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, and he just said that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology is “a ways off in my opinion,” as tweeted by Amy Harder of the Wall Street Journal. This is a significant concession because one of the Obama administration’s top priorities, a proposed regulation known as the Carbon Pollution Standard, would require all new coal-fired power plants to install CCS. However, under the Clean Air Act, EPA is not authorized to impose pollution control technologies that are not yet “adequately demonstrated.” As we’ve long argued, EPA’s Carbon Pollution Standard, which is due to be finalized this summer, is illegal as proposed, because CCS is not yet market viable. It’s nice to hear that Obama’s top climate adviser agrees.

A new study by researchers at Brigham Young University finds that the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s barely makes the top 10 list of the worst droughts of the past 576 years in southern Utah. The study also finds a 17th century wet period that exceeds any period of heavy rainfall in the 20th century and “dwarfs the 1980s wet period that caused significant flooding along the Wasatch Front.”

From the abstract:

We present a 576-year tree-ring-based reconstruction of streamflow for northern Utah’s Weber River that exhibits considerable interannual and decadal-scale variability. While the 20th Century instrumental period includes several extreme individual dry years, it was the century with the fewest such years of the entire reconstruction. Extended droughts were more severe in duration, magnitude, and intensity prior to the instrumental record, including the most protracted drought of the record, which spanned 16 years from 1703 to 1718. Extreme wet years and periods are also a regular feature of the reconstruction. A strong early 17th Century pluvial exceeds the early 20th Century pluvial in magnitude, duration, and intensity, and dwarfs the 1980s wet period that caused significant flooding along the Wasatch Front.

BYU’s press release, which provides more detail, follows. It includes a short video in which lead author Matthew Bekker explains how his team extracts and analyzes tree ring samples to estimate drought conditions prior to modern stream flow records. [click to continue…]