On this morning’s Platts Energy Week with Bill Loveless, FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller gave a bombshell interview regarding the clear and present danger to electric reliability posed by the EPA.
By way of background, “FERC” stands for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and included among its responsibilities is helping to ensure that the lights stay on. While regional transmission organizations bear the primary burden for maintaining the reliability of the grid, the 2005 Energy Policy Act authorizes FERC to establish mandatory reliability standards for interstate power transmission. As such, Commissioner Moeller is well-positioned to assess threats to the grid. And according to him, EPA’s ridiculous Utility MACT has created the possibility of rolling blackouts. Excerpted transcript and video are posted below:
FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller: “We’re closing an enormous amount of coal generation, through a variety of rules, and a good number of those plants are set to retire next April. (Editor’s note: here, Moeller is referring to EPA’s absurd Utility MACT, which threatens to retire up to 25% of the nation’s coal fleet, starting next spring). But most people would say about 90% of that capacity was running and used and necessary during the polar vortex events. So the question is: Are we going to have mild weather for the next 2-3 years? If so, we can probably get through it. But if we have more extreme weather events, like we had this winter, and that power is no longer available, we could be in a real situation that’s not good for consumers.
Platts Energy Week: Are regional blackouts a possibility?
FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller: They are a possibility.
You’ve probably heard about Years of Living Dangerously, the big-budget, nine-part documentary on the supposedly dire threat posed by global warming.
Part three airs this Sunday on Showtime, and it stars Republican Representative Michael Grimm (NY). The story arc follows Rep. Grimm’s conversion from global warming skeptic to believer. In a nutshell, here’s the plot: Grimm had been a denier, but then he talked to former South Carolina Representative Bob Inglis,* and now he’s really scared of climate change.
This afternoon, only 48 hours before Rep. Grimm was to take his star turn on episode three of Years of Living Dangerously, Politico Breaking News sent out the following headline: “Michael Grimm Expected To Be Indicted.” Reportedly, the charges will include mail and wire fraud. What versatility! Denier, alarmist, mail fraudster, wire fraudster–what role can’t he play?
Snark aside, I think it’s safe to say that Rep. Grimm’s credibility has been damaged. By extension, the same can be said for this week’s episode of Years of Living Dangerously.
A new study by the Fraser Institute in Canada finds that economic freedom is an important cause of air quality improvement.
The study compares average airborne concentrations of particulate matter and economic freedom in 105 countries around the world. The authors, Joel Wood and Ian Herzog, find that in 2010, the 20 countries that were most economically free had average concentrations of particulate matter that were nearly 40% lower than the 20 least-free countries.
Of course, correlation does not prove causation, and other variables often associated with economic liberty, namely wealth and democracy, also foster air quality improvement. Nonetheless, the authors find a “robust” relationship between economic freedom and air quality after controlling for other factors:
After controlling for the effects of income, political freedom, and other confounding variables, we find that a permanent one-point increase in the Economic Freedom of the World index results in a 7.15% decrease in concentrations of fine particulate matter in the long-run, holding all else equal. This effect is robust to many different model specifications and is statistically significant. This effect is in addition to a general 36% decrease over time due to unidentified factors.
The study is based on urban concentrations of airborne particulate matter smaller than 10 microns in diameter (PM10) from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators and on the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World (EFW), which in turn is largely based on data from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Economic Forum. The EFW index “reflects the size of government; the quality of the legal system and strength of property rights; soundness of money; freedom to trade; and burden of regulation.”
So why does economic freedom promote air quality improvement?
Property rights defined and secured through a strong justice system enable people to protect themselves and their property from pollution.
In contrast, government regulations that preempt private, court-enforced “negotiations between those benefiting from and those being hurt by a polluting activity” prevent “an efficient distribution of the right to the environmental resource” and “cause inefficient levels of pollution.”
Freedom to trade “is key to ensuring that new, cleaner technologies can be adopted across borders.”
“Bureaucratic inefficiency, the influence of special-interest groups, and the prevalence of state-owned enterprises can all hinder the ability of a government to improve the environment effectively.”
State-run firms shielded from market discipline are wasteful resource consumers.
The last point is more important than generally realized. In this connection, I’m pleased to post Hoover Institution scholar Mikhail S. Bernstam’s splendid out-of-print book, The Wealth of Nations and the Environment. Published in 1990, the book is something a post mortem on the Soviet Union. The Soviet empire collapsed largely because it went bankrupt. Economic decline however did not mean less pollution but more. Our worst ecological nightmares were daily realities of people living in the USSR and other eastern bloc countries. Why is that? [click to continue…]
Does a recent science paper say it’s okay to lie about climate change if that’s what it takes to ratify climate treaties? No. But the study is quite silly, going to heroic mathematical lengths to prove what most of us learned on the playground: liars can win friends and influence people — until they get caught.
Climatewire reports that the researchers — Fuhai Hong of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Xiaojian Zhao of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology — issued a statement online saying their objective was only to explain why certain parties have incentives to exaggerate climate change damages, not to justify lying about climate change.
Critics may have read only the study’s abstract, most of which does seem to take a permissive or even approving view of deliberate exaggeration (i.e. lying):
It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare.
But the concluding sentence of the abstract hints that honesty may be the best policy after all:
From the ex ante perspective, however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.
What are we to make of this kerfuffle?
The study is heavily mathematical, one might say gratuitously so, because the overall conclusion is so obvious: “Information manipulation” — that is, lying — can sometimes fool people into giving you what you want, but it can also backfire and discredit you. The story of the boy who cried wolf leaps to mind (although Hong and Zhao don’t mention it).
Secretary of State John Kerry: “Climate change can now be considered the world’s largest weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even, the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” It is, moreover, “the greatest challenge of our generation.”
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy: “If we don’t start dealing with climate change, which is the biggest public health challenge we face, as well as the biggest economic challenge we face…then I think we’re losing for the next generation and also for our own, frankly.”
MSNBC host Chris Hayes: “The scientific consensus is that human civilization cannot survive in any recognizable form a temperature increase this century more than 2 degrees Celsius.”
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy kicked off a jet-fueled, week-long tour to raise alarm about climate change with an appearance Monday on Comedy Central’s Daily Show (video below the break).
Of course, it’s a comedy show, but the host famously skirts the line between real and fake, and near the end of the segment, he asked Administrator McCarthy a very topical question: What would she do to fix the climate, if she had her “druthers.”
Below is her answer:
We’re going to regulate [greenhouse gases] under the Clean Air Act…we’re going to make it [greenhouse gas regulations] flexible, but you’re going to get significant greenhouse gas reductions out of it…We’re not talking about taking any fuel out of the system, we’re talking about making things more efficient, we’re talking about investments in efficiency [and] renewable energy.
Our job is to try to drive those reductions nationally, but to make sure that every state is differently positioned. Some have already done really impressive energy efficiency work. You know what? They could do a lot more.
In her answer, Administrator McCarthy is discussing EPA’s pending Clean Air Act §111(d) guidelines to control greenhouse gases from existing coal-fired power plants. The guidelines are due in June (although there is mounting evidence that the rulemaking is in disarray), and its contents are the subject of heavy speculation. To this end, looking at McCarthy’s quote, I’m struck by how often she stresses “efficiency.”
Political spending by the fossil fuel industry has soared in recent years, and companies have been rewarded with billions of dollars in federal subsidies for oil, gas and coal projects, according to a report released today by environmental groups.
Contributions from the oil and gas industry increased by a staggering 11,761 percent from 2008 to 2012, according to a report released today by the Sierra Club and Oil Change International.
Conspicuously absent from E&E PM’s article is mention of the fact that Sierra Club took millions from the natural gas industry to attack the coal industry, DURING THE SAME TIME PERIOD THAT IS COVERED BY THE REPORT!!!
As I noted in February 2012,
Bryan Walsh in Time Magazine this week broke the big story that the Sierra Club received over $25 million from the natural gas industry to serve as a corporate shill and attack the coal industry. Walsh wrote: “TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010—and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations—the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club’s independence and its support of natural gas in the past.”
Last Friday, President Barack Obama again delayed a decision on whether the Keystone XL Pipeline is in the national interest.
Many have speculated that in doing so, the President is pandering to green special interests and their big-pocketed benefactors.
But not DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz.
In an interview with David Gregory on Sunday’s Meet the Press, she said that politics “doesn’t factor into [the President’s] decision” on whether to proceed with the pipeline. Watch her response below:
However, two nights ago on Hardball with Chris Matthews, which is a functional outpost of the DNC, guest host Joy Reid adopted a perspective on the matter that is entirely at odds with that taken by party leader Wasserman Shultz.
According to Reid, the President’s decision, far from being apolitical, was in fact perfect politics, because it benefits ALL democrats.
STEYER – I’M NOT THE KOCHS: Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer insisted Tuesday that he’s not the left’s version of the Koch brothers. “That is not something I embrace. I think there are real distinctions between the Koch brothers and us,” Steyer said in an interview with POLITICO and The Washington Post taped for C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers,” which will air on Sunday. Steyer, who hopes to use his vast personal fortune to make climate change a top priority in the upcoming midterm elections, said he’s not entering politics for personal gain. Charles and David Koch’s priorities “line up perfectly with their pocketbooks – and that’s not true for us,” Steyer said.
Steyer’s claims are, in fact, disputable. For starters, as I understand it, the Kochs have given scores of millions to the ACLU, public television, and hospitals, and I don’t believe it’s possible to logically argue that these priorities “line up perfectly with [the business interests of Charles and David Koch].”
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