Richard Morrison, Jeremy Lott, and Jerry Brito bring you Episode 90 of the LibertyWeek podcast. This week we take a look at Robert Bryce’s work on the myths of green energy. Segment starts approximately 10:25 in.
Today, Senators Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman were expected to release their cap and trade bill. However, immigration reform put a damper on that. However, this is a bill that definitely should be on the radar screen.
When (if) the bill is introduced, there will be lots of fanfare about how oil companies and utility companies support the bill (or at least aren’t opposing it).
However, there’s a reason for this support. They are being provided all kinds of goodies as discussed in this recent Mother Jones article.
There will be government-backed loans for nuclear power plants, oil companies won’t be subjected to the same cap and trade requirements as others, there will be $10 billion in subsidies for carbon capture technology research, etc.
It doesn’t take much for businesses to use the lawmaking process to benefit themselves at the expense of the public and the economy.
So, when the bill is unveiled, don’t get fooled by the fanfare regarding how many companies support the bill. If you buy-off industries, then we’d expect those industries to support the bill.
While the environmental extremists and utility and oil companies benefit, the public will get harmed by a massive energy tax that will cut jobs, reduce personal income, and have a disproportionate impact on the poor.
The health care bill was bad enough. However, a cap and trade bill is far worse. Energy is an input into every good or service. That means the government will have its hands on almost every facet of the economy.
This bill should be (in a responsible Congress) dead on arrival–the very idea that we are going to impose a massive energy tax during this recession for no good reason is absurd. However, we don’t have a responsible Congress. As a result, this bill could have some serious legs.
In the News
The Coming Anti-Carbon Clampdown
Chris Horner, Energy Tribune, 23 April 2010
Alcoa Loves Green, But Not the Environment
Tim Carney, Washington Examiner, 23 April 2010
A Reality Check on the Neo-Malthusian World
Indur Goklany, MasterResource.org, 23 April 2010
Climate Scientist Sues Paper for Libel on Climategate Coverage
Dave Adam, Guardian, 22 April 2010
Cap-and-Trade = VAT
Chris Horner, Daily Caller, 22 April 2010
Climate Science in Denial
Richard S. Lindzen, Wall Street Journal, 22 April 2010
Two Energy Giants, a Difference in Approach
Institute for Energy Research, 22 April 2010
Why I Am Enlarging My Carbon Footprint
Robin of Berkley, American Thinker, 22 April 2010
A Happy Earth Day
G. Tracey Mehan, American Spectator, 22 April 2010
The Solar Power Scandal in Spain
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 21 April 2010
Buying Carbon Offsets May Ease Eco-Guilt, But Not Global Warming
Doug Struck, Christian Science Monitor, 20 April 2010
Fannie Mae Owns Patent on Residential “Cap-and-Trade”
Barbara Hollingsworth, Washington Examiner, 20 April 2010
Failure Would Have Many Benefits
Marlo Lewis, National Journal, 19 April 2010
News You Can Use
Tea Partiers Oppose Cap-and-Trade
More than 365,000 respondents voted online to determine the top three planks of the tea-party movement’s political platform. The second most popular of the 21 issues that were up for a vote: “Reject cap and trade: Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.”
Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell
Kerry-Graham-Lieberman: Payoffs for Everyone, Taxes for You-Know-Who
It appears that Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) are finally going to release a draft outline of their compromise, middle-of-the-road, some-payoff-for-everyone energy-rationing bill on Monday. Both Kate Sheppard on the Mother Jones web site and Juliet Eilperin on the Washington Post web site report that Senator Kerry shared details of the bill in a Thursday conference call held by the We Can Lead coalition of business leaders who hope to make a buck from energy rationing.
Sheppard and Eilperin both report that the draft bill will pre-empt the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act and also pre-empt States from setting lower emissions targets. Instead of a gas tax or a “linked fee,” the draft will require oil companies to buy ration coupons to cover the emissions of their products. Call it whatever you want, it’s still a tax.
It appears that the cap-and-trade scheme for electric utilities is still in the draft, but according to both blogs, it now includes a price collar setting a floor and a ceiling on the cost of ration coupons. In addition, Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman have adopted the cap-and-dividend idea from the energy-rationing bill introduced by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Me.), S. 2877. Thus some of the additional costs of electricity will be rebated to consumers. I’m not sure how this squares with a story by Darren Samuelsohn in Environment and Energy Daily (and reprinted on the New York Times’s web site here) earlier in the week that the draft would give more free ration coupons to the electric utilities. Perhaps the free coupons will be distributed in the early years of the scheme and consumers will get their rebates in the later years.
Kerry claimed on the conference call that three major oil companies would support the bill in addition to the Edison Electric Institute. The three most likely are Shell, BP, and Conoco Phillips. He also said that they were still working on provisions to allow more offshore oil production.
Among the goodies will be an exemption for agriculture from emissions limits, loan guarantees for twelve new nuclear plants, $10 billion for research and development of carbon capture and storage for coal-fired power plants, “financial incentives” for natural gas and electric vehicles, and a four-year exemption for manufacturing industries. The bill will also include the anti-energy provisions marked up by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year. These include a renewable electricity requirement and new building energy efficiency standards.
As I mentioned last week, the three Senators do not plan to introduce a bill with actual legislative language, but instead will turn their draft over to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Reid will try to put together a package that he can bring to the floor and get sixty votes.
Voinovich Enters the Pre-Emption Fight
Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio) this week circulated a proposal to remove all authority from the executive branch and the States to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under any existing legal authority. This would include the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Clean Water Act, as well as the Clean Air Act. As Robin Bravender reported in Climate Wire (which was reprinted by the New York Times here), the proposal would also end all public nuisance lawsuits.
Voinovich could offer it as an amendment to the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman energy-rationing bill or to some other bill on the Senate floor. If enacted, it would mean that it would be up to Congress (the people’s representatives) to decide whether and how to deal with global warming.
At the same time, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) continues to try to figure out how to get 51 votes for her resolution of disapproval of the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. One major obstacle remains Senator John Rockefeller’s (D-WV) bill to delay EPA regulations for two years, which is meant to give some of his fellow Democrats an alternative to voting for Murkowski. One solution might be to offer Rockefeller’s bill, S. 3072, as an amendment to some bill on the Senate floor. If it fails, then these Senators will not have an excuse for voting against Murkowski’s resolution. If it passes, then Senators who voted for it will have to explain why they are going to flip and vote no on Murkowski’s resolution.
Across the States
Wisconsin
Major climate legislation was shelved in Wisconsin on Earth Day after both the Assembly and the Senate refused to vote on the measure before the legislative calendar ended. The bill would have mandated that 25% of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2025, and it failed because Wisconsin lawmakers feared the political fallout of adding expensive renewable energy to the state’s electricity portfolio-thereby increasing utility bills.
California
In late 2008, the California Air Resources Board was excoriated by a peer-review panel of economists for publishing a politicized economic analysis that exaggerated the benefits and minimized the costs of AB 32, California’s global warming law. As a result, CARB commissioned a new analysis by a supposedly non-partisan team of economists led by Stanford Professor Larry Goulder. The report was released a month ago, and it largely echoed CARB’s original conclusion that AB 32 will create jobs and is good for the economy. CARB claims that the new report vindicates its old report, but new evidence suggests otherwise. ClimateWire this week reported that Larry Goulder is on the board of directors of a non-profit that is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a political campaign to defeat a ballot initiative that would suspend AB 32. This is a clear conflict of interest, and it demonstrates (again) that CARB manipulates the evidence to support its political agenda.
Around the World
Bonn
The first United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations since the Copenhagen Climate Conference took place in Bonn, Germany, from April 9th to April 11th. Negotiators spent most of the meeting coming to an agreement on how many more meetings to convene before the 16th Conference of the Parties this September in Cancun, Mexico. After many hours of haggling, they agreed to hold two.
Washington, D.C.
In Washington, D.C. this week, representatives from 17 industrialized countries participated in the Major Economies Meeting, U.S.-led negotiations for a climate treaty that. The meeting served primarily to dampen expectations in Cancun this September for a legally binding successor treaty to the failed Kytoto Protocol. U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern told reporters, “We don’t want to let expectations far outstrip what can be done” in Cancun.
Cochabamba
The stalled negotiations in Bonn and Washington, D.C. angered the 15,000 participants to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which is occurring this week in Cochabamba, Bolivia. According to Reuters, Bolivian President Evo Morales kicked off the Conference by noting that, “We are gathered here because the so-called developed countries didn’t meet their obligation of establishing substantial commitments to cutting greenhouse gas emissions in Copenhagen.” Later, an official from the UN was jeered off the stage.
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.
Reuters reports that it used freedom of information laws to obtain a copy of text that was stripped from a December 2009 European Union study on biofuels. The hidden portion of the study found that biodiesel fuel made from North American soybeans has an indirect carbon footprint of 339.9 kilograms of CO2 per gigajoule — about four times larger than standard diesel from petroleum.
The suppressed analysis jibes with Fargione et a. (2008) and Searchinger et al. (2009), who found that CO2 emissions from the land use changes associated with biofuel production exceed the emissions avoided by combusting biofuels instead of petroleum-based fuels.
“The EU’s executive European Commission said it had not doctored the report to hide the evidence, but only to allow a deeper analysis before publishing,” Reuters reports. Uh huh. And if the analysts had found that biodiesel has a much smaller footprint than standard diesel, the Commission would have deep-sixed that study too pending a “deeper analysis.” Right!
“Given the divergence of views and the level of complexity of the issue … it was considered better to leave the contentious analysis out of the report,” the Commission said in a statement. Well, when it comes to energy — or health care, or financial industry reform, or almost any public policy issue you can think of — when isn’t there a “divergence of views” and a high “level of complexity”?
EU policymakers don’t want to be troubled by the facts — and they don’t want hoi polloi getting hold of information that calls their agenda into question.
And they wonder why public trust in the ‘climate science community’ is waning!
I’ve blogged before on the LA Times’s one sided coverage of AB 32, California’s first-in-the-nation climate change mitigation law. In a nutshell, the LA Times is a big cheerleader for the legislation, with a record of publishing favorable stories and ignoring negative ones.
Case in point: Today, the Times ran an opinion piece, “A Green Jobs Generator,” by two economists who claim that their economic analysis of AB 32 is being distorted by opponents of the legislation. The LA Times allowed them the space to set the record straight, and thus its editorial page again reassured readers that “doing something” about climate change will be easy because it will reduce energy costs and create “green jobs.” Of course, this is baloney-in fact, “doing something” about climate change will make energy more expensive and thereby kill jobs-but the LA Times has an agenda to push, so why sweat the details.
Also today, E&E ClimateWire broke the news that Larry Goulder, the lead author of a recent AB 32 economic analysis commissioned by the state, is on the board of directors of a non-profit that has given money to a political campaign to defeat a ballot initiative that would suspend AB 32. So it’s not surprising that he concluded that AB 32 would create jobs. Naturally, the LA Times covered Goulder’s favorable economic analysis when it was released a few weeks ago. But it has yet to report on his association with a pro-AB 32 political organization. Perhaps it will tomorrow, but I doubt it.
Goulder told ClimateWire that nothing is amiss, but it sure seems like a conflict of interest to me. If an Exxon staffer punched up an economic report suggesting that AB 32 would harm California’s economy, environmentalists would throw a hissy-fit. And the LA Times, no doubt, would try to discredit the report as “industry funded.”
That is the question posed this week on National Journal’s energy experts’ blog. My answer, available here, is that “failure” will have multiple benefits:
– The U.S. economy won’t be hit by virtual or outright energy taxes in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, improving prospects for a recovery.
– Congress will not declare political warfare on coal, continuing America’s access to abundant, affordable base-load power.
– Congress will not adopt carbon tariffs, avoiding an era of trade warfare between the United States and emerging industrial powerhouses such as China and India.
– The U.S. Government will lack a bully pulpit for pressuring poor countries to ban coal-based power, allowing them to escape from energy poverty.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4BBKEyEiZc 285 234]
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCmI6Wl0dcE 285 234]
Christopher C. Horner, author of Red Hot Lies, has a new book out from Regnery Publishing. Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America is an exposé of the Green Movement’s rise to political power and the frightening consequences of Obama’s Green-friendly energy mandates. Horner reveals who in Washington is driving this expansion of environmentalist policy and analyzes how new restrictions will harm economic recovery and development in America.
From the Front Flap:
If Obama and his “green” coalition get their way, we’re headed for blackouts, skyrocketing energy prices designed to bankrupt disfavored industries, and even greater government control of our economy.
Obama’s green jobs agenda masks a declaration of war against America’s most reliable sources of energy-coal, oil, and natural gas. He seeks to shut them down and convert America to green energy-mostly wind and solar-in an irresponsible experiment that will guarantee an energy crisis and drive America from recession to depression. The Obama administration, working in collusion with green groups allegedly protecting the environment, unions protecting their paychecks, and local elites protecting their ocean views, is putting the special interests ahead of your interests.
From Chapter One:
“Under Obama’s economic and energy plans, conventional energy is punished by government policy in order to force the adoption of new, Obama-favored technologies. These plans will force us into energy poverty, a return to government-inspired uncompetitiveness, and a surrender of individual and economic liberties.
Modern environmentalism in a nutshell sounds something like this: impose energy taxes that serve as a rationing scheme (the “cap”), along with mandates of what sort of energy people can use, and in what amount. Environmentalists seek to use the state to create scarcity in order to further impose their will over our lives.”
From the Back:
“Power Grab exposes the incestuous relationships between the Obama administration and the piles of taxpayer money it wants to pipeline to the Big Green juggernaut consisting of Big Business and Big Labor. Horner shows that the green agenda isn’t so much about a clean environment as it is about redistributing income from us to them.”
– Stephen Moore, member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board
“Chris Horner was right in his bestselling The Politically Incorrect Guise to Global Warming and Environmentalism. He was right in his book Red Hot Lies that exposed the cover-ups, lies, and intimidation of the global-warming alarmists. And he’s right again in his new book Power Grab, which exposes what the extremists are really after: power over you, your wallet, and even your right to self-government. Power Grab is essential reading for fighting back.
– Congresswoman Michele Bachmann
In the News
Krugman Wrong on Climate Economics
Jim Manzi, National Review Online, 16 April 2010
Krugman Wrong on Climate Science
Robert Murphy, MasterResource.org, 16 April 2010
Climate Change: Always Room for Doubt
Telegraph editorial, 15 April 2010
AB 32 Is a Losing Bet
Margo Thorning, San Jose Mercury News, 14 April 2010
What It Takes To Be a Coal Miner
Iain Murray, In Character, 13 April 2010
Lyin’ for Climate Indoctrination
Paul Chesser, American Spectator, 13 April 2010
EPA Is Choking Freedom
Mark Landsbaum, Orange County Register, 9 April 2010
News You Can Use
Peer Review?
A new report from NoConsensus.org calculates that 21 of 44 chapters in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Nobel-Prize winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cite peer-reviewed sources less than 60% of the time
Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell
Cap-and-Tax Update
It was first reported this week that Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Lieberman (I- Conn.) planned to release a draft of their energy-rationing bill next Tuesday. But today Environment and Energy Daily reports (subscription required) that they will now release it on 26th April. Why? Here’s what Darren Samuelsohn reports: “The trio originally hoped to unveil their proposal during the week surrounding the 40th anniversary of Earth Day next Thursday. But Kerry said that was not the message he wanted to get across. ‘This is not Earth Day-related,’ he said. ‘This is a jobs bill. This is an energy independence, national security bill. It’s not wrapped to one week or another.’
I’m not creative enough to make stuff like this up. What’s more, the Terrific Trio are not going to introduce their draft as a bill and have it referred to a committee. Instead, they’re going to hand it over to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to see if he can come up with the sixty votes needed to pass some version of it on the Senate floor.
Obama on Graham’s Gas Tax
The Hill reported that the White House claims that the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill does not contain an increase in the gas tax and that it is not being discussed. That doesn’t quite close the door, however, since Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are calling the gas tax in their bill a “linked fee.” Apparently, neither the White House nor the three Senators consider it a gas tax. But it seems highly unlikely that they can’t get away with it even if they call it a linked fee. Gas prices have gone up by more than a dollar a gallon since Barack Obama was sworn in as President. His administration is pulling the plug on plans put together by the Bush Administration in 2008 to increase oil and gas production in federal offshore waters and on federal lands. If gas prices continue to climb, this could be a potent campaign issue in the fall.
Obama Meets with Enviros
President Obama is continuing to push for a comprehensive energy-rationing bill. This week, the White House held a meeting with heads of a number environmental pressure groups in order to urge them to get behind Kerry-Graham-Lieberman. Some of the environmental pressure groups that aren’t fronts for big business are not going to go along no matter how much Obama pleads. That’s because they see that Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Graham-Lieberman have very little to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They are mostly about transferring vast amounts of wealth from consumers to politically-favored big businesses.
Senate Democrats Push a Trade War
Eight Democratic Senators from States that still have some manufacturing wrote a letter to Sens. Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman, stating that a condition of their supporting energy-rationing legislation such as Kerry-Graham-Lieberman is that it include carbon tariffs or something equivalent to protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competitors that can use less expensive energy from fossil fuels to produce their goods.
Climategate Update
Myron Ebell
The University of East Anglia “international panel” released its report on the ClimateGate scientific fraud scandal today. At eight pages, it’s not even a thorough whitewash. They don’t even make a minimal effort to rebut the obvious appearance of widespread data manipulation, suppression of dissenting research through improper means, and intentional avoidance of complying with Freedom of Information requests. However, the report makes one concession, which is quite damning: “We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians.” In fact, the handling of the historical temperature data and production of the Hadley/CRU temperature record by Jones et al. and the handling of the paleoclimatological data and fabrication of the hockey stick by Michael Mann et al. was only possible because they hid their data and methods from professional statisticians. When professional statisticians were able to look at Mann’s methods and data, the result was the Wegman report, which was devastating.
Across the States
Connecticut
The Connecticut General Assembly’s Energy and Technology Committee has passed R.B. 463, which would lower the State’s renewable portfolio standard (a requirement for minimum electricity generation from renewable energy) from 20% by 2020 to 11.5% by 2020. Proponents of the bill argue that renewable energy is too expensive.
California
Los Angeles is teetering on bankruptcy because no one wants to pay for expensive renewable energy, according to the Wall Street Journal. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proposed electricity rate hikes of 9% to 28% to finance LA’s renewable energy agenda, but the City Council refused. As a result, the Department of Water and Power, which needs the rate hikes to buy expensive renewable energy, withheld $74 million of the $221 million surplus revenue it was expected to transfer to the city. But without the $74 million, city controller Wendy Greuel warns that LA won’t be able to pay its bills within a month.
Washington
Washington Governor Christine Gregoire (D) boasts of having created more than 99,000 “green jobs,” but a new study from the Washington Policy Center puts the lie to the Governor’s claim. In fact, there was little or no difference in the work done by green employees and the non-green employees for 71,000 of the reported green jobs. So taxpayers are paying around $2,400 per trainee to acquire green job skills no different than skills needed for existing non-green jobs.
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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