Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, who says that global warming "demands aggressive action," last week signed an agreement with the United Kingdom "to share experiences and strategies" in the fight against rising temperatures. Given the diffuse language of the agreement, it would be easy to dismiss Doyle's climate diplomacy as a stunt, but there is in fact a great deal that Wisconsin can learn from Britain.
William Yeatman
An effort by Senate Democrats to let California regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles is drawing opposition from one of the party's traditional allies, the United Auto Workers, ahead of a pivotal vote Wednesday.
The world's biggest carbon offset market, the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM), is run by the UN, administered by the World Bank, and is intended to reduce emissions by rewarding developing countries that invest in clean technologies. In fact, evidence is accumulating that it is increasing greenhouse gas emissions behind the guise of promoting sustainable development. The misguided mechanism is handing out billions of dollars to chemical, coal and oil corporations and the developers of destructive dams – in many cases for projects they would have built anyway.
The environmental movement has never been short on noble goals. Preserving wild spaces, cleaning up the oceans, protecting watersheds, neutralizing acid rain, saving endangered species — all laudable. But today, one ecological problem outweighs all others: global warming. Restoring the Everglades, protecting the Headwaters redwoods, or saving the Illinois mud turtle won't matter if climate change plunges the planet into chaos. It's high time for greens to unite around the urgent need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
E&E News has an advance copy of Senate EPW Committee Chair Barbara Boxer’s summary of the newly revamped Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, and it is much, much worse than I had thought it would be.
Titles II-IV (“Capping Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Reducing Emissions through Offsets and International Allowances; Establishing a Greenhouse-Gas Emissions Trading Market) describe how a “cap and trade” program will take $5.6 trillion from American energy consumers through 2050.
Titles V-XI (Federal Program to Prevent Economic Hardship; Partnerships with States, Localities and Indian Tribes; recognizing Early Action by Companies; Efficiency and Renewable Energy; Low Carbon Electricity and Advanced Research; Future of Coal; Future of Transportation) apportion the $5.6 trillion to every conceivable special interest.
I had thought at least she would leave out those twin evils of modern society, oil and coal, but they are in fact well positioned at the trough ($34 billion and $16 billion, respectively, in adjustment payoffs). And it never occurred to me that the truckers would get 4 billion, or that natural gas processors would get $20 billion. This later giveaway is especially egregious because natural gas is a huge winner under any cap and trade, as coal—its main competitor for electricity generation—is priced out of the market.
In reworking the Congress’s leading climate bill, Senator Boxer’s staff took the spineless Farm Bill approach: print enough money to placate every objection. Woe to us all for having such crummy leaders.
Norma Love of the AP reports that New Hampshire’s Senate voted 16-8 Thursday to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a 10-state regional effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The House next considers changes made to the proposal, especially on how much money would go into a fund to promote energy efficiency.
According to the Arizona Daily Star, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano vetoed HB 2017 Thursday, which would have barred the state Department of Environmental Quality from enacting any regulations curbing greenhouse-gas emissions. Sen. Jake Flake, R-Snowflake, who wrote the legislation, said one possibility would be attaching its provision to other environmental legislation.
In Montana, the legislative Environmental Quality Council dismissed most of Governor Brain Schweitzer’s climate plan. The 54 point plan was written under the direction of the Center for Climate Strategies, an alarmist environmental non-profit whose prejudicial origins and operations are exposed by Paul Chesser of the Center for Climate Strategies Watch.
Hurricanes and tropical storms will become less frequent by the end of the century as a result of climate change, US researchers have suggested.
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne on Wednesday announced that he had decided to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. He also announced that the regulatory reach of the listing would be limited by invoking exemptions under section 4(d) so that it could not be used to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The Pacific Legal Foundation immediately announced that they would file suit to block the listing. Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council immediately sent out action alerts and fundraising appeals announcing that the listing was just the first step. Now they would have to sue to overturn the 4(d) limits, so that the listing could be used to stop oil and gas exploration and production in the Arctic and to challenge the construction of new emitting sources, such as coal or gas-fired power plants.
My view, and also that of Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok.), is that the decision is based on junk science—specifically, computer models that predict increased summer melting of the Arctic Ocean ice sheet. It has been shown empirically that these models lack predictive capability. The Department of the Interior should have applied the minimal standards required by the Federal Data Quality Act to disregard the model predictions.
Although the tide is turning against energy-rationing policies in the U. S. Senate (and in the European Union, especially in Britain), Senator John McCain (R-Az.) is staying true to the old religion in his presidential campaign. He laid out his global warming policies in a speech at a Danish company’s wind turbine factory in Portland, Oregon on Monday. McCain used the venue to say that, “When we debate energy bills in Washington, it should be more than a competition among industries for special favors, subsidies, and tax breaks. In the Congress, we need to send the special interests on their way….” The Energy Information Administration reported that wind power receives federal subsidies of $23.37 per megawatt hour of electricity produced. Coal gets 44 cents and natural gas 25 cents. However, the subsidies provided to wind and solar power are not enough to make them competitive without state and renewable mandates.
This morning, at the National Press Club in Washington D. C., Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of global warming alarmism. The complete list will be available at www.petitionproject.org at 10:00 AM.
During his 1999 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, the New York Times reported that John McCain told a group of college students that there was still a lot he didn't know about global warming. "I don't claim to be an expert on the issue," he said.
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