William Yeatman

Counterbalancing the recent declaration from the Southern Baptist Environment & Climate Initiative, a group of conservative leaders have sent a letter to every U.S. senator, opposing climate-change legislation.  Among those signers are Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

The letter cites studies showing federally mandated CO2 reductions in the Warner-Lieberman bill would increase the price of food (costs borne most heavily by the poor), eliminate millions of jobs, raise household costs for families, raise energy prices (including gasoline and electricity prices), and slow economic growth.

Not exactly prudent care for Creation — at least not the human part of it.

Japan’s Minister of Trade released a study this week that estimates Kyoto would cost the Land of the Rising Sun $500 billion over a decade.

And for what? According to climatologist Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and professor at the University of Virginia, “if every nation on Earth lived up to the United Nation’s Kyoto Protocol on global warming, it would prevent no more than 0.126 degrees F of warming every 50 years.”

Three cheers for Representative Michele Bachman, who this past week introduced the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act (H.R. 5616), which would repeal the mandated phase-out of the incandescent light bulb. 

Last December, Congress passed, and the President signed, an abomination of an energy bill, that, among other things, bans the incandescent light bulb because it is too energy inefficient.

But some consumers, like me, prefer incandescent light bulbs because they make our pasty white skin look tan at bars and restaurants. Other consumers don’t want to have to go through the hassle of cleaning up broken energy efficient light bulbs, which contain mercury, and are therefore difficult to dispose (the EPA has published a 7 page instruction manual on cleaning up a broken CFL).

Whatever the reason, let’s applaud Rep. Bachman for her efforts on behalf of consumer choice.

Stephen Power’s “EPA Says Carbon Caps Won’t Harm Economy Much,” in today’s Wall Street Journal, discusses Friday’s EPA report that the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill will not significantly harm the U.S. economy. I guess the truth of this depends on your definition of “significantly.”

I wonder if the EPA would consider the following (from the recent NAM/AACF report on the economic impact of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act) “significant.” Under the Lieberman-Warner bill:

• The U.S. would lose between 1.2 million and 1.8 million jobs by 2020, and as many as 4 million by 2030;
• Additional costs per household of $739 to $2,927 per year by 2020, increasing to $4,022-$6,752 per year by 2030;
• Gasoline price increase of up to 144 percent, electricity price increase of up to 129 percent, and natural gas price increase of up to 146 percent by 2030;
• GDP reduced by $151 billion to $210 billion per year by 2020, and by $631 billion to $669 billion per year by 2030; and
• Reductions in the production of coal and electricity of  35 and 12 percent, respectively.

Is it significant that the CBO reported (Page 8, Table 1) that a 15-percent reduction in CO2 emissions will cost the poorest 20 percent an extra $680 per year, in 2006 dollars? Significant that Lieberman-Warner doesn’t propose merely a 15-percent reduction in emissions by 2020, but 30 percent and 70 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 and 2050, respectively? “Significant” that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama say they will cut emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050?

Try to minimize it all you want, but drastic CO2 emissions reductions will inflict serious harm upon our economy, and we will all foot the bill.

It was a big weekend for the delicate diplomacy of climate change.

In Brussels, EU ministers met to try to figure out how to slash greenhouse gas emissions without concomitantly putting their economies at a serious competitive disadvantage to countries that have not adopted costly emissions controls. Fortunately, French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s “solution,” to start a carbon trade war with the US and China, was quickly discarded as too protectionist.

Ultimately, the conferees backed a plan hashed out by Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that would exempt EU heavy industries from emissions controls, so that they can compete on a level playing field on the global marketplace. Brown supported Merkel’s proposal in exchange for her support of his climate scheme, which entails the manipulation of the tax code to give European businesses an incentive to reduce emissions.

Of course, it is not clear what, if any, good can come from a climate plan that exempts the heaviest emitters.

Meanwhile, over in Japan, diplomats met to discuss climate policy and industry. This was Tony Blair’s first public appearance in his new role, as a roving, international climate ambassador, and he took the opportunity to urge all nations to agree to reduce emissions. This is essentially the US position, and it has proven unpopular, so you have to admire the former Prime Minister’s temerity.  

Of course, developing nations were quick to object to Blair’s idea. Chinese representatives agreed to act as soon as the west agreed to pay for it, and by the second day, the two sides—rich and poor—regressed into the sort of finger pointing that always characterizes these international climate confabs. Needless to say, the Japanese conference did not produce anything in the way of tangible results.

 As I have noted elsewhere, international climate diplomacy will always end in failure, because sovereign states have never demonstrated the capacity to share privation. There is no reason to expect them to start now, to solve an invisible “problem” that would manifest itself over centuries.