William Yeatman

In the News, 20 October 2010

by William Yeatman on October 20, 2010

in Blog

French President Orders Lifting of Fuel Depot Blockade:
“”Trying to reassert authority over the widespread protests against his plans to reform the pension system, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday that he had ordered the authorities to break up blockades of fuel depots that have left a third of the country’s gas stations dry .”

Obama Administration Says It Will Investigate China’s Green Tech Trade Policies:
“The Obama administration announced today that it is launching an investigation into China’s green technology trade policies. The investigation is in response to a lengthy petition filed last month by the United Steelworkers.”

Report: In Obama’s Chicago, stimulus weatherization money buys shoddy work, widespread fraud:
“Projects to weatherize homes are a key part of the Obama administration’s fusion of stimulus spending and the green agenda. But a new report by the Department of Energy has found serious problems in stimulus-funded weatherization work — problems so severe that they have resulted in homes that are not only not more energy efficient but are actually dangerous for people to live in.”

How President Obama’s Energy Policy Is Like the Bowl Championship Series

by William Yeatman on October 18, 2010

in Blog

On GQ’s blog, there’s an interesting interview with two acclaimed sports writers, about the Bowl Championship Series. As millions of Americans know well, the BCS is the complicated system that chooses a national champion in the billion dollar college football industry. There are more than 100 schools vying for the crystal football awarded to the BCS champion, so it’s not surprising that every year, more than 100 schools are dissatisfied with a system didn’t crown them #1. That is, the BCS is universally reviled.

So we all know and hate the BCS, yet even college football enthusiasts like me don’t know how it works. Somewhat paradoxically, this might be the very reason it persists, according to these two sports reporters,

GQ: What was the thing your reporting that surprised you the most or caught you off guard?

2 Sports Reporters: How little even the people in college sports know how this [BCS] works. It’s less of a conspiracy as much as it’s people just too uninterested or incapable of figuring out what the real deal is.

No one likes the BCS, but it fumbles on, because it’s too arcane to be bothered with. I think this dynamic is represented well by Kaiser Soce’s famous admission in the Usual Suspects that the devil’s best trick is to make people think he doesn’t exist.

Something very similar is going on with President Barack Obama’s energy policies. Americans don’t like energy taxes-especially ones they didn’t vote for-but they can’t be unhappy when they are oblivious. After all, ignorance is bliss. Undoubtedly, Obama’s energy policies will make energy more expensive (see here, here, and here), yet it is achieved primarily through the impossibly convoluted procedures of the regulatory state with which virtually no one is familiar. Behind this cloak, the President proceeds apace with his anti-energy agenda, without engendering unwelcome scrutiny.

In the News, 13 October 2010

by William Yeatman on October 15, 2010

in Blog

Global Warming / Environment / Energy:

Is climate change activism dead?:
“In a wood panelled room in East London more than 100 people, including Britain’s only Green MP Caroline Lucas, gathered earlier this week for the ‘Climate Rendezvous’. The meeting was organised by activists Climate Rush to discuss strategies for raising the profile of climate change before international talks in Cancun, Mexico next month.”

‘Dual flush’ toilets among conservation proposals OK’d by Council:
“Under a law passed by the City Council today, new toilets will have to be high water efficient or “dual-flush,” which allow users to choose between a high pressure flush for solid waste, and a low-pressure flush for liquid.”

Russia agrees to build nuclear plant in Venezuela:
“Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reached a deal with Russia on Friday to build a nuclear power plant in the South American country and negotiated several other agreements in energy and other areas.”

Reform of Toxic Chemicals Law Collapses as Industry Flexes Its Muscles:
“Fire retardants in baby blankets, nano-particles in cosmetics, plastics in water bottles and anti-bacterial agents in soaps.”

The Carbon Cycle and Royal Society Math:
“The recent “rebellion” by senior members of the Royal Society (RS) forced it to revise their guide “Climate change: a summary of the science”. The new guide, published on 30 September 2010, has a single paragraph under the heading The Carbon Cycle and Climate. In that, it says:”

Cooler Heads Digest 15 October 2010

by William Yeatman on October 15, 2010

in Blog, Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

Time To Get Real about Climate Change
Tom Harris, Washington Times, 15 October 2010

Renewable Energy Standards Are Climate Policy in Disguise
E. Calvin Beisner, Washington Times, 15 October 2010

Pachauri To Stay on at IPCC
Louise Gray, Telegraph, 15 October 2010

Is It Time To Drop Cap-and-Trade?
Myron Ebell, Politico Energy Arena, 14 October 2010

Embarrassing Volt Charges
Eric Peters, American Spectator, 14 October 2010

Flaws in Liberal Claims about Economic Impacts of Climate Policies
Jim Manzi, New Republic, 13 October 2010

Another Proposed Energy Tax
Daren Bakst, MasterResource.org, 13 October 2010

Obama’s Energy Regs Are Invading Your Home
Ben Lieberman, New York Post, 11 October 2010

News You Can Use

“No Trend” in Global Hurricane Activity

World Climate Report this week summarized a new peer reviewed study demonstrating that there has been “no trend” in global tropical cyclone activity from 1965 to 2008.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

When Lifting a Moratorium is Keeping a Moratorium

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar this week lifted the moratorium on deep-water oil exploration off the Louisiana and Texas coasts.  However, the moratorium is still in practical effect until the Department of the Interior starts granting new drilling permits.  That is not likely to happen quickly because the Department is formulating stricter safety rules that must be complied with before any permit will be issued.

What’s more, Salazar has used BP’s deep-water offshore oil leak as cover for drastically reducing shallow-water drilling permits.  Since the BP disaster in April, the Department has been issuing shallow-water permits at about a tenth the normal rate.  It’s becoming clearer every day that the Obama Administration is slowly strangling domestic oil production-onshore as well as offshore.  This will mean higher oil imports and the decline of America’s oil industry.  Here’s what Tom Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research said about the lifting of the Gulf moratorium, and here’s what I wrote for Politico’s Energy Arena.

Ethanol Follies

The Environmental Protection Agency this week approved the use of E15-that is, gasoline with 15% ethanol-for vehicles produced in the 2007 model year and later.  They will also study whether to approve E15’s use in older vehicles.  Currently, gasoline can be sold with no more than 10% ethanol.

Auto manufacturers contend that using E15 can damage engines.  The reason for approving E15 is that the huge ethanol mandate contained in the 2007 anti-energy bill is ramping up.  In the near future, refiners will be required to buy more ethanol than they can blend in E10.  My CEI colleague Ben Lieberman has written about the EPA’s decision here.

It is rumored that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is soon going to announce that the Obama Administration supports continuing the 45 cents per gallon tax credit for ethanol and the 54 cents per gallon tariff on imported ethanol.  The credit and tariff are set to expire at the end of the year unless the Congress votes to extend them.  There has been some disagreement in the ethanol industry over what types of federal taxpayer handouts should be pursued.  A confidential memo that CEI has obtained reveals that the major industry groups have now agreed on what they want.  They want every type of handout that they can think up.

No doubt Congress will give Big Corn most of what’s on their list.  But there is no reason why taxpayers should continue subsidizing ethanol after three decades of subsidies.  There is also no good reason for the mandate, but that’s a battle for another year.  This year, the Congress can simply say, It’s time to drop the ethanol subsidy and the tariff.

Across the States

Polling Hijinx

Two weeks ago, a LA Times/Public Policy Institute of California poll indicated that the vote on Proposition 23, a November ballot initiative to suspend the State’s global warming law until unemployment dropped to 5.5%, would be very close. According to the poll, 43 percent of likely voters favored Proposition 23, 42 percent opposed it and 15 percent didn’t know how they would vote. Last week, Reuters/Ipsos released a poll on the same topic, but with very different results: 49 percent of those polled opposed the initiative and 37 percent favored it. Although the divergent results initially were interpreted as a swing in public opinion against Proposition 23, Reuters has since pulled the poll due to biased questioning that cast doubt on its accuracy.

Around the World

China

Last Friday, preparatory negotiations for the 16th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change concluded in China amid recriminations between the host and the U.S. delegation. After top U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern criticized China’s refusal to agree to binding emissions cuts, the Chinese delegation likened the U.S. to a pig preening itself.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

Report of the French Academy of Sciences Looks Devastating to the IPCC

by William Yeatman on October 14, 2010

in Blog

This morning we received an update from friend at the Institut Hayek in France. Evidently, the French Academy of Sciences soon will release a paper that eviscerates the “beautiful certainties” espoused by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. To read Drieu Godefridi’s brief on the imminent report, click here. To visits the Institut Hayek website, click here.

Behold the Power of King Corn

by William Yeatman on October 14, 2010

in Blog

Humor me for a moment and imagine that I am a superhero who is part of a Super Friends team at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. We have sworn to use our superpowers only to combat a particular form of evil: rent-seeking. Naturally, we’d need a nemesis. This caricature of evil would represent everything we stand against; it would be the ultimate political panhandler.

Without a doubt, our nemesis would be King Corn.

Fantasies aside, the corn lobby, a.k.a King Corn, is unbeatable inside the beltway. In the 1980s, it secured federal giveaways to NOT grow corn. The lobby has since moved on to the ultimate boondoggle: corn fuels. By playing up jingoistic fears of “energy dependence,” King Corn has convinced the Congress that ethanol, a motor fuel distilled from corn, is a national security imperative, despite the fact that it increases gas prices, it’s awful for the environment, it contributes to asthma, and it makes food costlier.

So, in 2007, the Congress passed a Soviet-style ethanol production quota that forces Americans to use corn-fuel in their gas. Thanks to this mandate, American farmers devoted a third of this year’s corn crop to ethanol. Thus corn, soy, and cotton (the three crops grown on corn-hospitable soil in the U.S.) have become recession-resistant.

You’d think that a production quota, along with generous subsidies (to the tune of 51 cents a gallon), would be enough, but there can never be “enough” for King Corn. Now it has its eyes on an even higher production quota. There was, however, an intermediate step to this higher goal-the EPA had capped the percentage of ethanol that could be included in regular gasoline at 10%, due to concerns about engine harm beyond that point. For years, the corn lobby has been trying to lift that cap to 15%. Yesterday, the EPA relented.

Raising the ethanol cap was opposed by the oil industry, the environmental lobby, and the public health lobby. These are K-street titans, and they were vanquished by King Corn.

Behold, the power of King Corn.

Rep. Max Tyler Is Wrong about Wind Power

by William Yeatman on October 13, 2010

in Blog

[originally published at the Independence Institute’s Energy Center]

When it comes to renewable energy, Colorado politicians are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. In February, the General Assembly passed HB 1001, a law requiring that Xcel use 30% renewable energy by 2020. To be sure, renewable energy is more expensive than conventional energy, but lawmakers promised that the costs would be held in check by a 2 % rate cap codified in the legislation. You see, Colorado politicians believed they could establish a Soviet-style renewable energy production quota AND Soviet-style price controls.

In early September, the Independence Institute‘s Amy Oliver Cooke and I took this silliness to task in a Denver Post oped. Specifically, we explained the regulatory machinations employed by the Ritter Administration to get around the rate cap.

Nearly a month later, Rep. Max Tyler, the lead sponsor of HB 1001, replied to our oped with a letter in the Post. Rep. Tyler’s missive ignored our arguments, and instead boasted of the ancillary benefits of government picking which energy sources Coloradans must use. Along these lines, he noted that wind power in Colorado:

  • Creates more than $2.5 million for farmers and ranchers who lease land for wind generation
  • Supports 1,700 construction jobs and 300 permanent jobs in rural areas;
  • Generates $4.6 million in annual property tax revenue for local schools, roads, etc.

Of course, Rep. Tyler missed the point: These “benefits” aren’t a net positive for the State. Rather, they are paid for by Xcel consumers, in the form of higher energy bills, which means that Xcel ratepayers (primarily in Denver, Grand Junction, and Boulder) are subsidizing the rural development showcased by Rep. Tyler. This is a classic case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

In his letter, Rep. Max Tyler stated that, “Colorado currently generates 1,244 megawatts of wind power.” That sounds like a lot, but it’s not. Because the wind doesn’t always blow, Xcel can rely on only a fraction of its wind generation’s nameplate capacity. In practice, 1,244 MW of wind is only 124 MW of real power. That’s about half of the coal power capacity that Xcel agreed to shutter in its most recent electric resource plan.

The problem for Colorado is that this small amount of wind power costs a large amount of money. According to the Public Utilities Staff, Xcel “identified wind energy costs for 2009 of $147,431,000 and 2010 of $155,462,000.”[1] That’s about 5% of Xcel’s 2009 and 2010 sales-or more than double the 2 % rate cap that Rep. Tyler trumpets in his letter (he wrote, “Another important fact: When developing new energy resources, utilities have a 2 percent increase rate-cap on retail customer bills”).

By highlighting localized gains, Rep. Max Tyler missed the big picture. Forcing Xcel customers to pay more for less energy hurts the State’s economy. Period.

[1] February 4 2010, “Answer Testimony and Exhibits of William J Dalton, Staff of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission,” p 14-15, Docket No 9A-772E

Government Did Not Develop the Internet

by William Yeatman on October 11, 2010

in Features

Post image for Government Did Not Develop the Internet

Proponents of green energy subsidies[1] are quick to claim that the U.S. government created the internet as we know it. Their reasoning is as follows: If only Uncle Sam would do for solar power what it did for the internet, then we could achieve the clean energy breakthrough that will deliver America to a carbon-free energy future.

This line of thinking is misguided, because it conflates “research” and “development.”

“Research” is the “diligent  and  systematic  inquiry  or  investigation  into  a  subject  in  order  to  discover  or  revise  facts,  theories,  applications,  etc,” according to dictionary.com. This process of discovery is amenable to top-down control. A priori, a research team sets out to investigate a particular phenomenon. “Development,” however, is different. This is the process by which a technology becomes valued by consumers. It is recalcitrant to top-down controls; rather, it is a function of tinkering by myriad actors.

To put it another way, government research created the internet, but it took many, many smart, opportunistic people to develop the internet.

Consider a brief history that serves to clarify my point. From 1965-1989, the US military and the National Science Foundation created the internet. In 1989, a private telecommunications company, MCI, gained commercial rights to use the internet. Then, “During the 1990s, it was estimated that the Internet grew by 100 percent per year, with a brief period of explosive growth in 1996 and 1997. This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.” (from Wikipedia)

So, government had zero to do with commercializing internet. Indeed, the internet grew by leaps and bounds only after it was loosened from the grip of the state.

Green energy enthusiasts claim that government can do R&D, and they point to the internet as evidence for this assertion. They are mistaken. While it’s debatable whether government should do the “R,” it is irrefutable that government can’t do the “D.”

[1] Most recently, the much-ballyhooed “post partisan” climate plan released today by the Breakthrough Institute, the Brookings Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.

Cooler Heads Digest 8 October 2010

by William Yeatman on October 8, 2010

in Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

EPA Climate Doc Held up over Costs
Robin Bravender, Politico, 8 October 2010

Gross Overestimate Fueled California’s Landmark Diesel Law
Wyatt Buchanan, San Francisco Chronicle, 8 October 2010

The Green behind Big Green
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 7 October 2010

Green Investment Fund Is a Vested Interest in the Battle over Prop 23
Ann McElhinney, Big Government, 7 October 2010

Sen. Baucus, I Salute You. OK, I Salute You If…
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 7 October 2010

Sen. Bingaman’s Insidious National Renewable Electricity Standard
Glenn Schleede, MasterResource.org, 6 October 2010

Splattergate Filmaker Giddy before Release
Paul Chesser, AmSpecBlog, 6 October 2010

Environmental Endgame
Matt Purple, American Spectator, 5 October 2010

Washington’s New War on the West
Ben Lieberman, OpenMarket.org, 4 October 2010

Schwarzenegger Wrong To Demonize Tesaro, Valero
Greg Goff & Bill Kleese, San Jose Mercury News, 1 October 2010

News You Can Use

It Could Happen Here

Britain’s top energy regulator this week said that it would cost the average household more than $1200 a year to meet the country’s green energy goals, according to the Daily Mail.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

President Peron

In the issue of the Digest published immediately after the election of Barack Obama in November 2008, I wrote that it wasn’t clear to me from the campaign whether he wanted to be Tony Blair or Juan Peron. It’s been clear for some time that Peron is Obama’s model. He has pursued policies on a broad front designed to cause constant economic crises and thereby make people much more willing to depend on government and to take orders from government.

One of these policies is of course cap-and-trade. Since the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997, I have felt that the energy-rationing policies required to achieve the Kyoto targets for reducing emissions were the greatest threat to our prosperity and freedom. But that has not been the case for some time. President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress are pursuing a number of policies that are just as threatening as energy rationing and have enacted a couple of them.

Cap-and-trade is now dead for the foreseeable future, but this does not mean that the Obama Administration has given up on policies that will constrict our energy supplies and raise energy prices, which will make us poorer and drive energy-intensive industries out of the country. They are working mightily to reduce domestic oil production and to block new coal mines and new coal-fired power plants.

The alternative to using the energy sector to foster perpetual economic stagnation would be to use the energy sector to underpin a new era of prosperity.  All we need to do to undertake this radical change of direction is to take President Obama’s advice and follow China’s good example: clear away the regulatory obstacles to energy production, open federal lands and offshore areas to oil exploration, and start building coal-fired power plants.

Across the States

Kentucky, West Virginia

The Louisville Courier-Journal reported this week that the EPA has objected to 11 Clean Water Act permits issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection to surface coal mines in Floyd, Bell, Pike, Knott and Harlan counties. As the Cooler Heads Digest has reported in past issues, the EPA is going after coal production in Appalachia by claiming that Clean Water Act permits issued by state regulators are unacceptable because they insufficiently protect the mayfly, an insect, from saline effluent discharged from surface mines. The mayfly is not an endangered species.

Regarding the same topic, West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin (D), the Democratic Party candidate for Senator, this week instructed his Department of Environmental Quality to sue the EPA for allegedly violating the Administrative Procedures Act when it issued guidance documents last April detailing how state regulators in Appalachia can better protect the mayfly from surface coal mines.

Around the World

China Rejects Emissions Controls, Again

At preparatory negotiations in Tianjin, China, for the upcoming 16th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the lead Chinese negotiator stated that his country will reject binding greenhouse gas emissions reductions. China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases, is building two coal fired power plants every three weeks.

Obama, Take Note: Even the EU Rejects Drilling Moratorium

The European Union, which is often thought to be more sclerotic than the United States and which claims to be committed to stopping global warming, this week voted not to place a moratorium on deepwater oil drilling. They are apparently not yet ready to kick their addiction to oil.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

Cooler Heads Digest 1 October 2010

by William Yeatman on October 1, 2010

in Cooler Heads Digest

Announcements

Cambridge Energy Research Associates have just published an important study on the competitiveness of America’s petroleum industry titled “Fiscal Fitness.”  You can find it here:

The Washington Examiner has been running a big series this week on “Big Green” featuring many articles on a wide variety of topics.

The Clapham Group and Roadside Attractions invite you to a private preview of the controversial new film, “Cool It” next Tuesday at 4 PM at the Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20002. Click here to RSVP

The Senate and House Western Caucuses have just released a report on “The War on Western Jobs.”

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Minority Staff this week issued a report on “The EPA’s Anti-Industrial Policy.”

In the News

Interior Department’s Other Drilling Moratorium
William Yeatman, Politico Energy Arena, 1 October 2010

Peanuts, Crackerjacks, and Elitist Transportation
Henry Payne, Planet Gore, 1 October 2010

Top Science Body Cools on Global Warming
Graham Lloyd & Matthew Franklin, The Australian, 1 October 2010

The Sorry Green Giant
Jonathan Adler, National Review Online, 1 October 2010

International Cap-and-Trade Taxation: US Beware!
Matthew Sinclair, MasterResource.org, 30 September 2010

UK Renewable Energy Production Falls for 2nd Time
Juliette Jowit, Guardian, 30 September 2010

Where EPA is Public Enemy #1
Robert James Bidinotto, American Spectator, 30 September 2010

New EPA Rules Will Cost More than 800,000 Jobs
Hans Bader, GlobalWarming.org, 28 September 2010

Electric Cars Aren’t Going To Save Us
Walter Russell Mead, American Interest, 28 September 2010

News You Can Use

What We Are Up Against

In an apparent effort to be witty, the alarmist advocacy group 10:10, which describes itself as “a global campaign to cut carbon 10% a year starting in 2010,” produced and posted a revolting video that features blowing up anyone who disagrees, including school children. Although the disgusting video was soon replaced on the 10:10 website with an apology “to anybody we have offended,” the extremist message was clear: You don’t get with the program, you get exterminated. For more, click here and here.

Global Warming Policy Reaches America’s Kitchens

Ben Lieberman

On September 27th, the Department of Energy issued its proposed new energy efficiency standard for refrigerators. Buried in the agency’s analysis is its prediction that the stringent new rule will be a money loser for a majority of consumers-that is, the higher purchase price of refrigerators meeting the new energy use limits won’t be earned back by the reduction in electric bills. DOE nonetheless justifies this anti-consumer regulation by including “the social cost of carbon” and calculating that “the estimated value of the CO2 emissions reductions” makes it all worth it.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Senate and House Adjourn until after the Election

Having passed almost nothing since returning from the August recess, the House and Senate adjourned this week after agreeing to a continuing resolution to fund the federal government through 3rd December.  The Congress has not sent a single appropriations bill to the President so far this year for Fiscal Year 2011, which begins today, 1st October.  The Senate and House plan to return the week of 15th November to take up the appropriations bills and possibly a number of other bills on a wide variety of topics.  One bill that could reach the Senate floor in a lame-duck session is the Bingaman-Brownback renewable electricity standard bill, S. 3813.  Four Republicans and 28 Democrats are now co-sponsoring the bill, which would require that electric utilities provide at least 15% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2021.

Salazar Announces Tough New Rules for Offshore Deepwater Drilling

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Thursday announced that there would be tough new safety rules on offshore drilling that would have to be complied with fully by existing operations before new drilling permits would be issued.  In a dull speech at the Smithsonian Institution’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Salazar hit the standard Obama Administration themes, including the pledge to win the race with China for clean energy technologies.  It amazes me that the idea that there is such a race has been repeated so often that it is now accepted as given.  It would be news to the Chinese.  China is in a race with the U. S., and they are winning it.  It is the race for abundant and affordable conventional energy.

While China is now installing nearly as many windmills every year as the U. S., they are constructing at least twenty times’ as many coal-fired power plants.  About 80% of China’s electricity comes from burning coal, which is why the wind turbine and solar panel manufacturers are closing factories here and in the EU and building new ones in China.  The cost of manufacturing anything depends primarily on the costs of capital, labor, and natural resources-and usually the most important natural resource component is energy.  Assuming comparable capital costs, China has lower energy costs as well as lower labor costs than the U. S.  If the U. S. wishes to remain competitive with China and insists on using higher-cost energy, then the only way to do it is to lower labor costs dramatically.  The future that the Obama Administration is promoting will require low wages in this country-that is, if there are any manufacturing jobs left.

Landrieu Takes on the White House over Gulf Drilling Moratorium

Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, is doing everything she can to fight the Interior Department’s continuing moratorium on new drilling permits in the Gulf.  She placed a hold last week on the nomination of Jacob Lew to be Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget and announced this week that she will block a vote on the Senate floor to confirm Lew until the Obama Administration starts issuing drilling permits again.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called Landrieu’s action “sad” and “outrageous.”  Landrieu responded that it was outrageous that the Administration didn’t care about the thousands of people in the Gulf who were losing their jobs, whom she called hostages.  Michael R. Bromwich, the director of the Interior Department’s new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, said, “There’s no chance that we’ll lift it sooner because of political pressure of any sort.”

Used Car Prices are Going Up

Recently, some environmental pressure groups suggested that the next round of increases in Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards for cars and light trucks should be 60 miles per gallon by 2025.  Today, the Obama Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation told the press that they were considering requiring increases of between 3 and 6 percent per year in fuel economy after the 35.5 miles per gallon average for cars and light trucks goes into effect in 2016.  Six percent per year between 2017 and 2025 would get to 62 miles per gallon by 2025.

The 35.5 miles per gallon standard by 2016 is going to cause a major car crash.  If the manufacturers somehow manage to produce a lot of cars that meet the target, it is unlikely that many consumers are going to want to buy them.  The automakers will be forced to sell their tiny cars very cheaply and to raise prices on larger cars dramatically in order to meet the 35.5 mpg average.  This is a recipe for bankrupting all the automakers and for a second bailout that will makes the taxpayer bailout of GM and Chrysler look cheap.  To then raise the standard to 60 miles per gallon by 2025 is sheer fantasy.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.globalwarming.org.

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