William Yeatman

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, Reason Foundation, National Taxpayers Union, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and Natural Resources Defense Council sent a joint letter to members of Congress urging them reject the unprecedented linking of onshore and offshore oil and gas revenue with the Highway Trust Fund. In their letter, the groups note that creating this new revenue stream would undermine the longstanding user-pays/user-benefits highway funding principle that has guided infrastructure investment for nearly six decades. Further increasing the reliance of the Highway Trust Fund on revenue streams not connected to use, they argue, would threaten the future health of America’s highways.  My colleague Marc Scribner has made the case against the “drilling for roads” proposal in a previous post.

Last November, I warned the President that he would come to regret green energy Stimulus spending, because venture socialism is inherently wasteful, and therefore prone to failed investments. I predicted that indications of failure would pop up every week in the run up to November 2012, like a slow drip media nightmare. And since I wrote that, I’ve been proven right (see: Amonix, Evergreen Solar, local reporting of “green jobs” training failures, Beacon Power, the ongoing Solyndra saga, underperforming electric vehicle sales, Ener1).

In only the last week:

• Fisker Automotive, a manufacturer of luxury eco-cars and Stimulus-beneficiary, announced that it was firing 26 workers because it ran out of government money. Fisker’s teetering has put its battery supplier, A123 Systems, on the brink. A123 Systems also received Stimulus handouts.

• The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is reviewing the Port of Los Angeles’s decision to use $489,000 in green energy stimulus funds to retrofit the Angelena II, a 70-ft. Port-owned yacht used for publicity tours.

• Arizona-based First Solar announced plans to idle half of its German factory and put about 1,200 employees there on a part-time work schedule. The reason? Declining subsidies in Europe. This demonstrates the riskiness of predicating your business plan on favorable political winds. Forbes’s Ucilia Wang reports that First Solar stock fell 70 % in 2011. According to the Arizona Republic, First Solar received Stimulus-funded loan guarantees for the Antelope Valley Solar Ranch and the Desert Sunlight projects in California.

In light of the fact that green energy Stimulus spending has been a magnet for bad press, I was shocked two weeks ago during the State of the Union address, when the President announced that he would “double down” on green jobs spending. That’s like doubling down on a six when the dealer is showing an ace. I thought perhaps the President was merely rallying the base with empty rhetoric, but with today’s release of the White House budget, it seems that he is putting our money where his mouth is. According to Politico’s Morning Energy, the Department of Energy—whence the worst, most wasteful stimulus spending—is getting a raise:

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Below is a letter I sent yesterday to ClimateWire, an energy policy trade publication that I usually enjoy, about this article. Normally, ClimateWire requires a subscription, but the article was picked up this morning by RealClearEnergy.

Here’s the back story: In late January, Ohio-based utility FirstEnergy Corp. announced that it was closing six coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The company blamed the closings on environmental regulations, in particular the Mercury and Air Toxics rule. The majority party in the House of Representatives has since used the plant closures as evidence of the economic harm inflicted by EPA’s regulatory war on conventional energy production. Talking points beget response talking points: such is the dialectic of political communication. Accordingly, the minority party claims that the plant closures caused by a number of factors, in addition to environmental regulations. To my eyes, yesterday’s ClimateWire story reported the House minority party’s talking points. Its thesis is that “energy experts” believe that a number of factors caused the closings; ergo, the House majority party is telling half-truths when it claims that FirstEnergy Corp.’s decision to shutter six power plants is evidence of EPA’s regulatory overreach. In the letter below, I question whether the article’s thesis is misguided.

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Over at the American Spectator, my colleagues Vincent Vernuccio and Matt Patterson have an excellent piece about how the President’s Keystone punt has been received by organized labor. Here’s a roundup of reactions noted in their oped:

• Terry O’Sullivan, head of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), has called Obama’s action “politics at its worst,” saying that “once again the President has sided with environmentalists instead of blue collar construction workers.” O’Sullivan angrily vowed that “workers across the U.S. will not forget this.”

• Mark H. Ayers, president of the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO has publicly hammered the jobs issue. In a January 18th press release, Ayers voiced the frustration of many union workers, saying “…with a national unemployment rate in construction at 16 percent nationally, it is beyond disappointing that President Obama placed a higher priority on politics rather than our nation’s number one challenge: jobs.”

• James T. Callahan, president of the International Union of Operating Engineers, agrees, complaining to the Washington Post that Obama’s decision was “…a blow to America’s construction workers,” who are struggling in “the sector hardest hit by the recession.”

Read the whole thing here.

Thanks to the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, motorists are subject to a Soviet-style production quota for biofuels. Every year, Americans must purchase greater volumes of biofuels–motor fuels distilled from corn, soy, and plant matter–until 2022, when the production quota tops out at 36 billion gallons. Fifteen billion gallons of that figure would come from corn ethanol. Most of the rest must come from cellulosic ethanol, a fuel that doesn’t yet exist. (That’s right, the U.S. Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, a bill that requires the production of 16 billion gallons of an imaginary fuel). For biodiesel, the Energy Independence and Security Act requires the production of 500 million gallons in 2009, 650 million gallons in 2010, 800 million gallons in 2011, and 1 billion gallons this year. Thereafter, the biodiesel mandate remains at 1 billion gallons, although EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has the discretion to increase the quota.

Last year, EPA proposed to use its authority to increase the biodiesel mandate in 2013 to 1.28 billion gallons—a 28% increase over the statutory minimum. In December, however, EPA postponed the announcement of the 2013 production quota for biodiesel, and the Agency left open the possibility that it would keep the biodiesel mandate at 1 billion gallons. Naturally, EPA’s reticence outraged the biodiesel industry. According to Energy & Environment GreenWire (subscription required),

“There’s no question that the production capacity is there. The biodiesel industry can do it, and there’s no question that the 1.28 can be met,” said Ben Evans, director of federal communications at the National Biodiesel Board. “It’s really surprising to us that there would be this hesitation and the potential for moving it back to a billion. To us, it would really be a devastating blow.”

Of course, the effect would be “devastating” because the biodiesel industry simply cannot compete on an open fuel market. Don’t take my word for it! Even biodiesel producers are willing to concede that their product is inferior. From the same GreenWire article:

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To be sure, I’m a staunch defender of wealth creators, and I begrudge no one for his or her riches…as long as he or she doesn’t say silly things like “The focus on profit has caused significant negative, unintended consequences.”

I have two problems with Sir Richard Branson’s commentary. First, it’s wrong. Profits incent wealth creation, which, in turn, improves the environment, because wealthier societies are friendlier to the environment. More importantly, wealthier societies are healthier societies.

Second, having a billionaire say that profits are secondary—after he earned his money—is akin to Sir Branson raising the drawbridge immediately after gaining entry into the castle, while the peasant throngs stand on the other side of the moat.

Dumping on Al Gore’s hypocritical, hysterical climate change posturing is like bitching about metro service here in the nation’s capital: It’s trite, but nonetheless gratifying. Having acknowledged as much, I draw your attention to an excellent editorial in yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily, about the former Vice President’s plan to go on a star-studded cruise to Antarctica. Here’s a snippet:

Al Gore, who invented global warming hysteria, has most recently been found planning a trip to Antarctica where he will surely find evidence that man is overheating the planet.

This clearly insecure man who so desperately needs an audience that approves of his world-saving efforts says he will be taking with him “a large number of civic and business leaders, activists and concerned citizens from many countries.”

He expects them “to see firsthand and in real time how the climate crisis is unfolding in Antarctica.”

For Gore’s reading material on this trip, we suggest he look at some data released by Great Britain’s Met Office. He would find himself meeting head-on a terribly inconvenient truth.

According to the data, there’s been no warming for more than a decade. The global temperature that Gore and the rest of the alarmist tribe are so concerned about was about one full degree cooler (as measured in Celsius) last year than it was when temperatures peaked in 1997.

Of course 2012 could be warmer than 2011 just as 2010 was warmer than 2008 and 2009.

Or it could be cooler. Who knows?

Read the whole thing here.

Last week, 16 scientists published an oped in the Wall Street Journal about how global warming isn’t a big deal. Yesterday, 38 scientists published a letter in the same paper, about how global warming is a big deal. Tomato, tamato.

Personally speaking, global warming is the last of my concerns. This is the predominate view among Americans. So my eyes glazed over the science squabbles in the two letters. I did, however, find it interesting that the second letter, representing the “consensus” view, contradicted itself.

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