Myron Ebell

SOTU Watch: Energy Prices & Hidden Taxes

by Myron Ebell on February 24, 2009

While President Obama focuses on short-term economic recovery, he proposes long-term energy and global warming policies that will lead to economic decline. Federal subsidies for “green” jobs and mandates for renewable energy will raise energy prices and thereby suck money out of people’s pockets and jobs out of manufacturing.

But President Obama’s green jobs fantasy is only the beginning of the bad news he has in store for American consumers, workers, and taxpayers. He is also urging Congress to enact a cap-and-trade scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Cap-and-trade is another name for energy rationing. It is a sneaky tax that will benefit some big business special interests by raising people’s electricity, gasoline, and heating bills through the roof. It should not be a surprise that many big corporate CEOs support President Obama’s energy rationing policies. They stand to make huge profits, so why should they care what sharply higher energy prices will do to working American families struggling to pay their bills?

Public Lose Interest in Global Warming

by Myron Ebell on January 22, 2009

Andrew Revkin of the New York Times has just posted a piece on Dot Earth that discusses a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press that finds that global warming has dropped to the bottom of people’s concerns. Asked to rate their top priorities from a list of twenty issues, only 31% listed global warming as one of their top priorities. That’s down five percent from last year. The biggest drop was for protecting the environment, which dropped fifteen points to 41%. For comparison, the top concerns were the economy at 85%, jobs at 82, and terrorism at 76%.

That’s the background for trying to enact energy-rationing programs that can only work if they raise energy prices considerably. Perhaps Al Gore needs to raise more than the $300 million goal of his We can Solve It advertising campaign, which is designed to convince people that they agree with him that global warming is our most serious problem and demands immediate and radical action (such as replacing all the coal-fired power plants that supply half of America’s electricity within ten years). Although Mr. Gore has insisted that the American people already agree with him on global warming, this poll demonstrates that his mass media advertising campaign is going to be an uphill climb.

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