William Yeatman

A few things came to mind about the new Al Gore ad campaign, and his appearance with wife Tipper on CBS’s 60 Minutes last night. The first was the confused nature of the claimed target of this largest ad campaign ever, at least according to the Washington Post. Gore has repeatedly insisted (and 60 Minutes reiterated the claim) that the public are overwhelmingly with him, and that it is therefore the too-timid lawmakers who must be influenced; but the ad spokesman says it is aimed at influencing the public.

They are indeed walking a fine line here, because for their own reasons they need to say the public is with them: they can’t risk the appearance that Gore seems to bring along with him on this and related issues of being out on the fringe, and also have admitted that people are swayed when they think others have been swayed already. After all, why does someone need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remind people how much they agree with them?

Second is that the $100 million ad campaign has gone to $100 million per year for three years, half of which — $150,000,000 — the New York Times says has been raised.

Remember, from where one receives funding dictates one’s opinions and legitimacy. The alarmists, and specifically Gore, tell us so.

So I particularly noticed when Tipper rushed to interject that the Gores had also tossed in, on top of the litany of pots of money which Gore claims he dedicated to this project, the $750,000 “cash component” of the Nobel Peace Prize which she said they also matched from their personal, recently swelled fortune. Add it up, and the Gore’s still come in around $100 million short of what they’ve raised.

So, where is it coming from? Tipper clearly didn’t want that question to fester, and Lesley Stahl either wasn’t interested, got the hint, or left it on CBS’s cutting room floor.

It’s worth noting that waaaaaaay down on the campaign’s FAQs page we are told that the funding came from Gore himself, via book and film profits plus Nobel prize, and his own contributions . . . “and has since received additional support in the form of private donations from those concerned about solving the climate crisis.” You’ll notice that this wording allows for corporations, hedge funds, and the like to be captured under its ambit.

It is clear that they actually desire the message to be that this is Al Gore’s project, funded as well as run by him, which is of course a little inconsistent with the warmists’ complaints that we’re focusing on him in our own efforts to focus on Gore’s hypocrisies. Why do we focus on Gore? Because as my colleague and fellow PG’er Iain Murray notes, “he is, unquestionably, the main financial as well as ‘moral’ driving force behind this crusade.” Dare we say, he’s their Big Oil.

Or, is he? They don’t want to talk about who is funding it. It might be their “partner” the Climate Action Network (certainly not the Girl Scouts, also a partner), which happens to be a bunch of businesses pulling an Enron and designing ways to make money off of carbon regulation. But the fact they don’t want you to know where the $100 mil-plus is coming from is a pretty good sign that we should ask. 60 Minutes clearly won’t.

A new twist has emerged in the desperate scramble to achieve some sort of agreement among the EU-25 (2 EU countries are exempt from Kyoto) as to who must actually engage in what emission reductions to meet their collective post-2012 promise of -20% below 1990 GHG emission levels.

According to the Guardian, it seems the UK wants to redefine what sort of credit it gets for what its companies do under Kyoto’s “flexible mechanisms” – or FlexMex such as Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation, under which credit is obtained for “clean” projects in other countries. The UK green groups are beside themselves, which tends to be their default stance anyway.

This move would be revolutionary because these illusory “reductions” – if, let’s face it, no more illusory than the extant pan-European claim of “reducing emissions” by paying China to slow down HFC production that it ramped up simply for that purpose – are now not counted toward an EU country’s (domestic) renewable energy promise. That’s what the UK wants to change, thereby reducing what it actually must do domestically to comply with the grandiose EU promises.

All of which is simply another way of reminding policymakers of the games people play when entering such arrangements as Kyoto or the EU’s own scheme. These rackets scream out for gaming by well-heeled constituencies which often include nation-states. In this particular case, it pits rent-seeking constituencies in the UK – “clean coal” vs. wind power being the example highlighted by the Guardian – against each other as to whose case the country will plead at the EU level.

• In Kansas, the fate of two proposed coal fired power plants is still up in the air as lawmakers in both chambers of the state legislature count votes to determine whether they have a veto-proof margin to override Governor Kathleen Sebelius’s decision to ban coal power.

• Governors from around the country will meet in Connecticut next month to review state programs to combat global climate change and develop a strategy for future action.

EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson this week told Congress how EPA would respond to the Supreme Court’s decision last April in Massachusetts  v EPA.  The Court over-ruled EPA’s decision that it lacked authority to regulate CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA) and ordered the agency to consider whether and how carbon dioxide emissions from new vehicles should be regulated under the CAA.

In letters to Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Representatives John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Joe Barton (R-Tex.), Johnson explained that EPA would make an Advance Notice of Proposed Rule-making (ANPR), which would open the whole issue to public comment.

Johnson explained that regulating CO2 emissions from autos under the CAA raised so many complex issues within the workings of the Act that careful consideration was necessary.  As Johnson wrote in his letter: “Such an approach makes sense because, as the Act is structured, any regulation of greenhouse gases—even from mobile sources—could automatically result in other regulations applying to stationary sources and extend to small sources, including many not previously regulated under the CAA.”

This is to say that Johnson and EPA have recognized that ruling that CO2 emissions endanger public health and welfare would almost certainly create a regulatory nightmare.  Therefore, they are going to solicit expert opinion. 

Johnson said that the ANPR would be issued this spring.  Then after reviewing the comments received, the EPA Administrator can make a decision.  That decision will almost certainly be made in the next administration.