For years, Al Gore has steadfastly refused to debate the global warming issue. Most recently, he ignored a put-up-or-shut-up challenge on the Glenn Beck Show from climate policy expert Lord Christopher Monckton, a former British government adviser. The Competitive Enterprise Institute hopes to change all that with the release of a new video campaign. In it, CEI offers Mr. Gore a $500 check, together with the proceeds of a world-wide email pledge-a-dollar drive, all aimed at persuading Mr. Gore to accept Lord Monckton’s challenge.
Search: Monckton
Yesterday the Washington Times hosted a briefing, “Advancing the Global Debate over Climate Change Policy,” at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. The event featured four panels, one each for lobbyists, members of think tanks, Members of Congress, and foreign policy experts. This last panel included Czech President Václav Klaus, and his excellent remarks are below:
Václav Klaus, Washington Briefing: Advancing the Global Debate over Climate Change Policy, November 4, 2009.
“Many thanks for the invitation and for the courage to organize such an important gathering in the moment when political correctness tells you not to do it.
We are meeting one month before the Climate Change Copenhagen Summit and several weeks before the U.S. Senate hearing regarding the cap-and-trade scheme. For these reasons, today’s meeting can’t be an academic conference, even though the topic still needs academic discussion. There is no consensus – neither in science, nor in economic analysis or politics.
I left Prague after signing of the Lisbon Treaty and came here only a few minutes ago, which means that I missed most of your conference. I’m sorry for that.
I have already been at a UN Summit in Copenhagen before. It was in 1995 at the so called Social Summit. At that time, the Summit was attended by then US Vice President Al Gore who – so it seems – will be there again this year. I did also attend, as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, but I don’t plan to go there now. I don’t see any chance to influence the results or to be listened to.
In 1995, there were huge demonstrations there organized by all kinds of anti-establishment groupings – from socialists and greens to anarchists and anti-globalizationists. I have never seen such clashes between demonstrators and police and army forces before. The difference is that I don’t expect any demonstrations in Copenhagen now. The anti-establishment people have in the meantime become insiders and will be sitting in the main hall. This is a shift with far-reaching consequences.
My views on the doctrine of global warming and especially on the role of man in it are relatively known. My book with the title “Blue Planet in Green Shackles” has been already published in 12 languages and, two and a half years after its original publication, I don’t have any urgent need to rewrite it.
We should not forget how the doctrine of global warming came into being. In a normal case, everything starts with an empirical observation, with the discovery of evident trends or tendencies. Then follow scientific hypotheses and their testing. When they are not refuted, they begin to influence politicians. The whole process finally leads to some policy measures. None of this was the case with the global warming doctrine.
It started differently. The people who had never believed in human freedom, in impersonal forces of the market and other forms of human interaction and in the spontaneity of social development and who had always wanted to control, regulate and mastermind us have been searching for a persuasive argument that would justify these ambitions of theirs. After trying several alternative ideas – population bomb, rapid exhaustion of resources, global cooling, acid rains, ozone holes – that all very rapidly proved to be non-existent, they came up with the idea of global warming. Their doctrine was formulated before reliable data evidence, before the formulation of scientifically proven theories, before their comprehensive testing based on today’s level of statistical methods. [1] Politicians accepted that doctrine at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and – without waiting for its confirmation – started to prepare and introduce economically damaging and freedom endangering measures.
Why did they do that? They understood that playing the global warming game is an easy, politically correct and politically profitable card to play (especially when it is obvious that they themselves won’t carry the costs of the measures they implement and will not be responsible for their consequences).
I don’t see any problem with the climate now, or in the foreseeable future, and for that reason I am not sufficiently motivated to discuss the technicalities of the cap-and-trade scheme. I only protest against calling it a “market solution.” It reminds me of the communist planners who similarly talked about “using market instruments” when they finally came to the conclusion that “planning instruments” did not work. Markets can’t be used by anybody.
We should not deceive ourselves. Cap-and-trade scheme is a government intervention par excellence, not a “market solution.” How much “to cap” is the decision of the government (and the European failure several years ago – when too many carbon permits were issued – is I hope well known here). The size of the cap defines the price of carbon and this price is nothing else that a tax imposed upon citizens of the country. I agree with Lord Monckton that the cap-and-trade bill “is the largest tax increase ever to be inflicted on a population in the history of the world.” [2] How is it possible that such arguments are not used? Why does nobody argue that to tax energy means that the costs of anti-global warming policy will disproportionally fall onto the poor people? What bothers me is that to “trade” the artificial “good” – the permits – means that a new group of rent-seekers will arise who will make profits at our expense. Why doesn’t anybody say that the carbon permits have no intrinsic value other than by government decree? I could continue along these lines.
But we should return to the beginning. Despite huge scientific efforts and spending, it has not been proved that the human effect on the climate is statistically significant. Once again Lord Monckton: “the correct policy to address a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.”
This country, my country, as well as the rest of the world face many real issues. We do not need to solve non-existing problems. I don’t think the real issue is temperature and/or CO2, but a new utopian vision of the world. We have only two ways out: salvation through carbon capping or prosperity through freedom, unhampered human activity, productivity and hard work. I vote for the second option.”
[1] The IPCC doesn’t speak about testing. They prefer to use the term “verification” instead – they do not try to invalidate their models, they seek supporting evidence only.
[2] Interview with Lord Christopher Monkton, EIR, June 12, 2009, p. 47
Announcements
The Science and Public Policy Institute invites Congressional staff to a briefing with the Viscount Monckton of Benchley on Wednesday, September 9th, from Noon-1:30 PM, in Dirksen 215 Senate Office Building. Lord Monckton is one of the world’s most sought-after public speakers, and a formidable international expert on the science and economics of “global warming.” Lunch will be served. To RSVP, email Bob Ferguson at bferguson@sppinstitute.org.
Freedom Action is a new political advocacy organization that aims to create a gathering of grassroots free market activists that will make their voices heard above special interests and big government advocates. Freedom Action’s first project is to Stop Al Gore’s Electricity Tax, and can be found here.
Americans For Prosperity is hosting grassroots demonstrations against cap-and-trade energy rationing in cities across the country. Learn more about the Hot Air Tour by clicking here.
The American Energy Alliance has launched a four week American energy bus tour to build public awareness of what cap-and-trade is, how it works, and the extent to which it’s capable of inflicting serious damage to the American economy. Click here to learn more.
In the News
Terms of Endangerment
Wall Street Journal, 3 September 2009
Jobs for Bugs in Coal Country
William Yeatman & Jeremy Lott, Investor’s Business Daily, 3 September 2009
Can We Trust the Models?
Jonah Goldberg, Houston Chronicle, 2 September 2009
French President Hammered over Energy Tax
Emma Charlton, AFP, 2 September 2009
India’s Emissions To Triple by 2031
Hari Kumar, DotEarth, 2 September 2009
Smart Grid Is Dumb Policy
William Yeatman & Jeremy Lott, Forbes, 2 September 2009
Is a ‘Death Spiral’ for Climate Alarmism Ahead?
Kenneth Green, MasterResource.org, 1 September 2009
The Democrats’ Cap-and-Traitors
W. James Antle, American Spectator, 1 September 2009
Quite a Load of Toro
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 1 September 2009
EPA Considers Closing Whistle Blower’s Unit
Sam Kazman, GlobalWarming.org, 27 August 2009
News You Can Use
A new United Nations study says that meeting the UN’s greenhouse gas emissions targets would cost $20 trillion over the next two decades.
Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell
Senate Delays Climate Bill
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee announced on Monday that it would not have a draft energy-rationing bill ready to release on 8th September, as promised earlier. Although the Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has the votes to get almost any cap-and-trade bill out of committee, this delay means that it is highly unlikely that Boxer will meet Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev) deadline of 28th September. That is when all committees of jurisdiction are supposed to have their pieces of comprehensive energy-rationing legislation ready to go to the Senate floor. Senate action on cap-and-trade this fall looks less likely now.
EPA Proposes an Illegal Rule
The Environmental Protection Agency has sent rules for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act to the White House for review and approval. According to several news stories, EPA is proposing to regulate only those entities responsible for 25,000 or more tons of CO2-equivalent per year. The Clean Air Act says clearly that 250 tons is the threshold amount that triggers regulation of a listed pollutant. Read my colleague Marlo Lewis’s analysis of EPA’s obviously illegal proposed regulations here.
Announcements
CEI’s Iain Murray and H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, this week released a new report, “10 Cool Global Warming Policies,” on measures that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase wealth creation. To read NCPA’s report, click here.
In “Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present a comprehensive and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals. Click here to get the report.
The Science & Public Policy Institute has released a series of state climate change policy papers. Each study examines an individual State and addresses four topics: observed climate change over time; impacts of climate mitigation measures; costs of federal mitigation legislation; and a list of state scientists who reject the man-made global warming hypothesis. To read more, click here.
In the News
Climate Conspiracy
Christopher Monckton’s Speech to the Heartland Institute’s 3rd International Climate Conference in Washington, D.C., 2 June 2009
Climate Bill Sparks Lobbying Frenzy
Steven Mufson, Washington Post, 5 June 2009
Little Chance the U.S. Will Sign a Climate Treaty
L.A. Times editorial, 4 June 2009
Green with Guilt
George Will, Washington Post, 4 June 2009
Steep Cost of Renewables
Paul Chesser, GlobalWarming.org, 4 June 2009
Politics, Economics and Green Jobs
J.T. Young, American Spectator, 3 June 2009
Clean Air Act Regulation of CO2: Rough Road Ahead
Marlo Lewis, MasterResource.org, 3 June 2009
Gore-Backed Hara Sees Big $$ in Climate Policy
David Lawsky, Reuters, 1 June 2009
Pelosi’s Chinese Climate Change
Wall Street Journal editorial, 1 June 2009
Cap-and-Trade: All Cost and No Benefit
Martin Feldstein, Washington Post, 1 June 2009
Indiana Wants No Part of Energy Tax
Elisabeth Meinecke, Human Events, 1 June 2009
Now the World Faces Its Biggest Ever Bill
Christopher Booker, Telegraph, 23 May 2009
News You Can Use
Gore Hijinx
Reuters reported this week that Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins invested $6 million in Hara, a “one stop shop for greenhouse gas management,” with the endorsement of former U.S. Vice President Gore, who is a partner at the firm. Gore has lobbied for the Waxman-Markey Clean Energy and Security Act, a major climate change mitigation bill that would create a market for Hara’s services.
Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell
Bingaman Moves Forward with Senate Anti-Energy Package
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week held another mark-up of Chairman Jeff Bingaman’s (D-NM) comprehensive anti-energy bill. Bingaman plans to finish next week. The title on energy efficiency standards was amended to provide more financial assistance for retro-fitting historic buildings with energy-saving features. The title would require States to adopt building codes that would reach 30 percent energy savings through 2010 compared to 2006 standards, and then 50 percent by some future date to be determined later.
A number of amendments were offered to the renewable electricity standards title, but most were defeated on an 11 to 12 vote. The title would require that 15 percent of electricity must be generated by defined renewable sources by 2021. The committee wrangled over how nuclear power should be treated. An amendment to take new nuclear power out of the baseline from which the 15 percent is calculated was approved. Thus nuclear does not count as renewable, but new nuclear power plants will not increase the requirement to produce other renewables.
Waxman-Markey Heads to Floor?
The House Democratic leadership had a different story to tell every day this week on the schedule to bring H. R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill, to the floor. Their intentions may change again several times, but right now it looks as if they plan to debate and vote on the bill before leaving for the Fourth of July recess. I think Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) have come to the same conclusion I did: their chances of passing it are better sooner rather than later. To rush such a huge and momentous piece of legislation to the floor in a month is going to take a huge effort. It could easily slip to July or even past the August recess. But for now, we should expect a weeklong floor debate the week of 21st June.
The Alternative to Waxman-Markey
Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) on 7th May introduced what can be seen as the comprehensive alternative to Waxman-Markey. Rather than rationing energy in the name of saving us from global warming, the American Energy Innovation Act would increase access to all kinds of energy, especially on federal lands and offshore areas. Bishop, the chairman of the Western Caucus, was joined by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, in introducing the bill. H. R. 2300 currently has 59 co-sponsors. Price and Bishop have both written articles promoting this joint effort of the Western Caucus and the Republican Study Committee and contrasting it with the Waxman-Markey bill. The American Energy Innovation Act is too big a bill with too much in it to be perfect, but it’s a good start toward rational (rather than rationing) energy policy. It’s going to be a long journey to get even halfway there.
Heartland’s Climate Conference
The big event in Washington this week (besides the unveiling of the Reagan statue in the Capitol’s Rotunda) was the Heartland Institute’s International Climate Conference. All the talks will soon be posted here. A good place to start will be with Professor Richard Lindzen’s excellent opening address. Lindzen’s analysis of the politics of global warming in the scientific community is most perceptive, and his demonstration that the climate is not nearly as sensitive to CO2 levels as the climate models assume looks definitive.
GE: General Extortion
Julie Walsh
GE, currently the 22nd largest company in the world-down from 10th last quarter-has been lobbying for Cap and Tax. Julia Seymour at Business and Media Institute in her piece “Networks Ignore Trillion-Dollar Price Tag of Climate Cap Bill“ writes:
GE is the largest wind turbine generator maker and according to an “O’Reilly Factor” investigation the company “stands to make billions” from cap-and-trade.
And Vladimir at Redstate has a continuation on Tim Carney’s expose on the lobbying of General Electric:
GE also controls the message through its ownership of the media. That includes NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Universal Studios, 10 major-market NBC affiliate stations, 16 Telemundo stations, plus many of the popular cable TV networks: A&E, History Channel, Sundance Channel, Weather Channel (my emphasis), Bravo, USA Networks, on and on. Have you noticed how hard the Green Agenda is being pushed in all the media?
A savvy capitalist hedges his bets. GE is one of the biggest players in the high-return business of energy lending – financing the capital needs of oil and gas firms.
No wonder the real story on the costs of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill isn’t getting out.
Around the World
Bonn: New Conference, Same Deadlock
Delegates from 180 countries met in Bonn this week for negotiations in advance of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change this December in Copenhagen, where the UN hopes to adopt a successor global warming treaty to the failed Kyoto Protocol.
According to the International Energy Agency, it would cost $45 trillion through 2050 to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. U.S. President Barack Obama wants rapidly developing nations such as China and India, which will account for the preponderance of future increases in global emissions, to share this tremendous economic burden. His top climate envoy, Todd Stern, told the Associated Press, “I would not say that the United States is going to race forward with major players like China on the sidelines.”
Under the Kyoto Protocol, however, rapidly developing nations are exempt from binding emissions cuts that would slow poverty reduction by making energy much more expensive. Delegates from these nations want to maintain this “right to develop,” so they reject Stern’s logic. China’s climate ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters, “Instead of introducing new concepts, controversial concepts, unfair concepts, the world would be better served if we could focus on what is already agreed upon…”
The deadlock in Bonn is nothing new. For two years, the climate negotiators have been meeting at five star resorts around the world, and they have made no progress on the core dispute: the U.S. won’t act on climate change without China, which won’t act under any circumstance. Thankfully, this impasse appears to be intractable.
Bonn Bombshell
Besides deadlock, the only other news out of Bonn was the European Union’s apparent reversal on its unilateral pledge to reduce EU greenhouse gas emissions 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. On Monday, German environmental minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters that, “If the others don’t join in, we cannot uphold this target.”
In the News
The Real Danger of Global Warming
Vaclav Klaus, RealClearWorld.com, 1 May 2009
Obama’s Plan “Necessarily” Skyrockets Energy Bills
Paul Chesser, DC Examiner, 1 May 2009
Back to the Good Old Days
Paul Driessen, GlobalWarming.org, 1 May 2009
CO2 Fantasy
Deroy Murdock, Indianapolis Star, 30 April 2009
Make Believe World of Cap-and-Trade
Vincent Carroll, Denver Post, 29 April 2009
Al Gore Is Wrong on Arctic Ice
Kenneth P. Green, MasterResource.org, 30 April 2009
A Primer for Deniers
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, 30 April 2009
Chevy Volt Not Ready To Roll
Charles Lane, Washington Post, 29 April 2009
Al Gore’s Morals vs. Your Pocketbook
Morning Bell, Heritage.org, 27 April 2009
News You Can Use
- Sea ice around Antarctica has been increasing at a rate of 100,000 sq km a decade since the 1970s, according to a new study by the British Antarctic Survey, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (reported in The Australian).
- A new Zogby Poll shows that 57% of Americans oppose cap-and-trade schemes.
- Charles River Associates released a study this week estimating that President Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme would kill 1.9 million jobs by 2020.
Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell
Waxman-Markey Update
After cancelling this week’s scheduled subcommittee mark-up, Representatives Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) have spent the week trying to gain enough support to pass their energy rationing bill out of committee. Very few details have emerged from these backroom sessions, and so it is not clear that Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Waxman and Energy and the Environment Subcommittee Chairman Markey have yet made enough concessions to win over Democrats representing districts that produce oil or coal, rely on coal for electricity, or have energy-intensive manufacturing. These Democrats are: Mike Ross (Ark.), Gene Green (Tex.), Charles Melancon (La.), Mike Doyle (Penna.), Rick Boucher (Va.), Bart Stupak (Mich.), John Barrow (Ga.), Bart Gordon (Tenn.), Jim Matheson (Utah), G. K. Butterfield (NC), Baron Hill (Ind.), and Zack Space (Ohio). Thus whether the committee holds a mark-up next week is still up in the air as I write this.
Highlights from Hearings
In the meantime, I have been thumbing through the transcripts of last week’s three long days of hearings on the Waxman-Markey draft bill. The highlights would fill many pages. Let me just mention a few.
The panel of witnesses representing the U. S. Climate Action Partnership, a big business special interest coalition of companies that wrote the cap-and trade title of the bill, naturally all testified in favor of the Waxman-Markey bill. However, they were asked by Representative Joe Barton (R-Tex.), the ranking Republican on the Committee, whether they would support the cap-and-trade program if all the ration coupons were auctioned rather than given away free to them. No, sorry, they would then have to oppose the bill. From which I conclude that global warming is a crisis as long as you think you can get rich off it.
Former Vice President Al Gore was the star witness of the hearings, but former House Speaker Newt Gingrich stole the show. I am far from being a fan of Gingrich, but he did a great job attacking the premises of the bill. Gingrich was a fill-in witness after Chairman Waxman refused the Republicans’ request to invite Christopher, Viscount Monckton to testify.
Gore’s testimony was much less impressive. He is still making scientific claims that are not supported or have been discredited in the scientific literature. He also claimed that it is possible to remake America’s energy sector even more quickly than the targets in the bill, but doesn’t see that the first obstacle to doing this is the regulatory structure that can delay building new transmission lines, wind farms, etc. for decades. And while the doomsday clock is running, he still wants to think about nuclear power as something we should consider.
In reply to a question from Representative Marsha Blackburn (D-Tenn.), Gore assured the Committee that every penny he had earned from his investments in renewable energy and from his movie and book had been donated to his non-profit group, the Alliance for Climate Protection. He did not mention that his tax deductible donations to the Alliance for Climate Protection are being used to promote policies that would increase the value of his investments. Nor did he promise that all future pennies earned would also be donated to some worthy cause. That’s the real point. The real profits from investments in renewable will come if energy-rationing legislation is enacted. So Al could still be set to make hundreds of millions, perhaps even billions, of dollars for himself and his partners at Generation Investment Management and Kleiner Perkins.
Renewables Can’t Compete
Julie Walsh
The Energy Information Agency sent us their calculations for the levelized costs of different power sources in 2016, minus any incentives, under an adjustment that simulates a $15 per ton CO2 emissions fee. (rounded)
Natural gas advanced combined cycle: 8 ¢/kwh
Conventional coal: 9.3 ¢/kwh
Advanced nuclear: 10.5 ¢/kwh
Biomass: 11.3 ¢/kwh
Wind: 11.6 ¢/kwh
Advanced coal with carbon capture and sequestration: 11.5 ¢/kwh
Offshore wind: 22.5 ¢/kwh
Solar thermal: 25.8 ¢/kwh
Therefore the “rush to gas” fears are justified and renewables would still require massive subsidies.
(Email Julie Walsh at jwalsh@cei.org for EIA’s excel spread sheet calculations and notes. Source: Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook, 2009 DOE/EIA-0383(2009).)
Across the States
EPA Revokes Permit for Navajo Power Plant
Last week the Environmental Protection Agency withdrew an air quality permit for a proposed coal fired power plant in the Four Corners administered by the Navajo Nation. The EPA reasoned that “complete analysis” had not yet been performed when it issued the permit last summer. Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley said in a statement the decision was further proof that the U.S. government isn’t “honest and truthful in its dealings with Native America.”
California
On Monday, the California Air Resources Board approved a Low Carbon Fuel Standard that requires the State’s fuel supply to achieve a 10% reduction in “carbon intensity” by 2020. CARB’s Mary Nichols said that the measure will break California’s petroleum habit, but Severin Borenstein, director of the Energy Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Miami Herald that there’s no certainty alternative fuels will be ready to meet the demand.
Maryland
The DC Examiner reports this week that Montgomery County (Maryland) officials want to scale back some of the county’s ambitious efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to help bridge a budget gap of more than $550 million.
Around the World
Canadian Emissions Increase
Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions jumped 4% from 2006 to 2007, according to Environment Canada. Since it signed the Kyoto Protocol, Canada’s emissions have increased every year for which there is data available.
Green Jobs for China
Lewis Page of the Register reports that international wind-turbine maker Vestas announced it will lay-off 600 employees in the United Kingdom. The day after that decision, the company announced new investments to expand existing Chinese plants, which likely are powered by coal.
Corrections
The article last week entitled “Arctic Ice Recovers” should have been titled “Arctic Ice Recovering.” Also, the graph that best show the Arctic ice increasing since the low in 2007 referred to (here) is from “The Cryosphere Today,” run by the Polar Research Group in the Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Announcement
- Click here to see Global Warming Apocalypse? No!, a Congressional staff and media briefing by Lord Christopher Monckton, Chief Policy Advisor, Science and Public Policy Institute.
- The Heartland Institute has posted videos of the keynote speeches from the second International Conference on Climate Change.
In the News
Obama Budget Will Bring Back $4 Gas
Andrew Moylan, DC Examiner, 20 March 2009
Cap-and-Trade Promises Disaster
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Washington Times, 20 March 2009
Clean Coal Won’t Be Dirt Cheap
Jeffrey Ball, Wall Street Journal, 20 March 2009
How Can Greens Make Themselves Less White?
Naomi Riley, Wall Street Journal, 19 March 2009
Human Sacrifices to Global Warming God
Jay Ambrose, The Daily Sentinel, 19 March 2009
Cap-and-Trade’s Economic Impact
William Yeatman, Council on Foreign Relations, 19 March 2009
Global Warming Ranks Last in Public Concern
Thomas Cheplick, Environment and Climate News, 19 March 2009
CO2 Regulation under the Clean Air Act: Legislative Thuggery
Marlo Lewis, MasterResource.org, 19 March 2009
Exposing Cap-and-Trade Energy Rationing in Obama’s Budget
Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Senate Floor Speech, 18 March 2009
Climate Hype: Let the Backlash Begin
Iain Murray, DC Examiner Opinion Zone, 17 March 2009
White House Admits Cap-and-Trade Costs Triple Its First Estimate
Phil Kerpen, FoxNews.com, 17 March 2009
Elitist Enviros Hurt Blue Collar Americans
Joel Kotkin, Forbes, 17 March 2009
UK Halts Green Investments
Ashley Seager, Guardian, 16 March 2009
News You Can Use
Attention Congress:
For the first time in Gallup’s 25-year history of asking Americans about the trade-off between environmental protection and economic growth, a majority of Americans say economic growth should be given the priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent, according to Gallup’s Frank Newport.
Inside the Beltway
CEI’s Myron Ebell
The True Cost of Cap-Trade-Trade Energy Rationing
Tom LoBianco reported in the Washington Times this week that a top White House official estimates that President Barack Obama’s plan to create a cap-and-trade scheme to ration energy would raise two to three times the estimate in the President’s budget of $646 billion in its first eight years. Jason Furman, the deputy director of the National Economic Council, let the cat out of the bag at a private briefing for Senate staffers last month.
Even in these days of trillion fatigue, nearly two trillion dollars still seems like quite a lot of money. I wonder what the Congress and the Administration will do with all that money? Oh, that’s right, they’re going to give it back to “us.” Well, some of us, anyway. Somehow, I think it’s going to be hard to convince most people that they will be among the lucky us who get their money back.
A Real Stimulus Package
Senator David Vitter (R-La.) and Representative Rob Bishop (R-Utah) last week introduced the No Cost Stimulus Act of 2009. The bill is numbered S. 570 in the Senate and H. R. 1431 in the House. The bill is really much better than no cost. It would create hundreds of billions of dollars of economic activity and hundreds of thousands of jobs while providing a steady revenue stream into the federal treasury.
The Vitter-Bishop bill would open federal offshore areas and the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration and expedite the procedures for environmental review and preparing leases for competitive auction. The lease sales would produce at a minimum a few billions of dollars. Once production started, royalty payments would start flowing to the Treasury.
The No Cost Stimulus Act would also streamline the permitting of new nuclear plants, encourage leasing on federal lands for oil shale production, limit reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act to 270 days so that NEPA cannot be used to delay projects indefinitely, and prevent the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and prohibit using the Endangered Species Act to regulate emissions. The bill has already attracted a number of co-sponsors in both the House and the Senate. It’s so good that it has no chance of going anywhere as long as the Democrats control the Congress.
Around the World
Energy Chief Threatens Trade War
Fran Smith
Just as the World Bank released a report on increased trade protectionism in the world, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu came out in favor of using carbon tariffs as a “weapon” against countries that aren’t taking steps to reduce their carbon emissions and as a way to protect U.S. manufacturers.
He seemed not to notice that the day before China’s top climate change official Li Gao had warned that carbon tariffs imposed on developing countries would be a “disaster” and perhaps start a trade war. Chu also doesn’t seem to remember that the European Union likes the idea of carbon tariffs against such countries as-gasp-the U.S.
Read more about the dangers of a carbon tariff: Click here for commentary from CEI’s Marlo Lewis, on how a cap-and-trade scheme is inherently protectionist.
Announcements
- Sign up here for the Cato Book Forum on “Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know” on Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 12:00 PM (Luncheon to Follow). The Forum features “Climate of Extremes” coauthor Patrick J. Michaels, Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute with comments by David Legates, Delaware State Climatologist and Director of the Delaware Environmental Observing System.
- The Cooler Heads Coalition and the Science and Public Policy Institute will sponsor a briefing by Joanne Nova and David Evans on Friday, 13 March, from noon to 1 PM in 406 Senate Dirksen Office Building. Nova and Evans are prominent global warming skeptics in Australia. RSVP to Julie Walsh at jwalsh@cei.org.
- The Cooler Heads Coalition and the Science and Public Policy Institute will host a talk by Christopher Monckton (third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley) titled “Global Warming Apocalypse? No!” on Monday, 16 March, in 1334 Longworth House Office Building, from Noon to 1:30 PM. Lunch will be served. Rsvp to William Yeatman at wyeatman@cei.org.
- RSVP here for “An Update on the Science, Economics, and Geopolitics of Global Warming,” featuring Christopher Monckton, Chief Policy Advisor of the Science and Public Policy Institute, and hosted by Ben Lieberman, the Heritage Foundation’s Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and the Environment. The event will be held at noon on Wednesday, March 18th at the Heritage Foundation.
In the News
Climate Change Lobby Has Regrets
Kimberley Strassel, Wall Street Journal, 6 March 2009
Gore Dodges Climate Policy Debate with Lomborg (Again)
Keith Johnson, Environmental Capital, 5 March 2009
Wind: Energy Past, Not Energy Future
Robert Bradley, Master Resource, 4 March 2009
Hansen Belittles Models, Cap-and-Trade; Calls for Coal-Destroying Carbon Tax
Marlo Lewis, Open Market, 3 March 2009
Kyoto’s Failure Means Heat Is on True Believers
Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 March 2009
Podcast: Deconstructing Alarmism
Patrick Michaels, Cato Daily Podcast, 3 March 2009
Obama’s Cap-and-Trade Scheme Imposes Huge Energy Tax
Chris Horner, Human Events, 2 March 2009
A Tax To Weaken America
Iain Murray, DC Examiner, 2 March 2009
Using the Polar Bear To Impose Costly Measures
Ben Lieberman, Heritage WebMemo, 2 March 2009
The Anti-Green Ecologist
Myron Ebell, Standpoint, 1 March 2009
Congress Abandons Carbon Neutral Effort
David Fahrenthold, Washington Post, 1 March 2009
News You Can Use
Now He Tells Us!
At Junkscience.com, CEI Adjunct Scholar Steven Milloy reports that Senator John Kerry (D-Mass) said “the best” climate regulations would fail to stop “catastrophic and irreversible climate change.” While we can all agree with Mr. Kerry that climate regulations are useless, his alarmism is unfounded. After all, it hasn’t warmed in almost a decade, despite a steady increase in greenhouse gas emissions, and now the Discovery Channel reports that scientists are saying it won’t warm for another 30 years.
Inside The Beltway
CEI’s Myron Ebell
Reid Plans a Two-fer
Darren Samuelsohn and Ben Geman reported today in Environment and Energy Daily (subscription req.) that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirmed in an interview that he planned to wrap cap-and-trade legislation into a larger anti-energy bill and try to bring it to the floor before the end of the year. The larger bill would include, most notably, a renewable portfolio standard for electric utilities. Reid had said several times in the past few weeks that cap-and-trade and other anti-energy provisions would be brought to the floor in three separate bills. His reversal puts the Senate on the same track as the House, where Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, has convinced Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to put all the energy-rationing legislation produced by the several committees of jurisdiction into one big bill. There are differing views of what this means for the prospects for enacting cap-and-trade. My own view is that cap-and-trade is sinking fast and that putting it into a larger bill might make it slightly easier to pass.
Failed Advice
A team of prominent European promoters of energy rationing and global warming alarmism came to Washington this week to speak at a conference on Capitol Hill, give briefings to members of Congress, and meet with Obama Administration officials. They included Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Edward Miliband, the UK’s climate minister. No doubt they explained how well the European Union is doing reducing its emissions while maintaining economic growth. The current economic downturn is already so severe that emissions probably are falling rapidly, which means that many EU countries now have a chance of meeting their Kyoto targets. As I told the Washington Post, the only thing that’s been demonstrated to reduce emissions is economic collapse.
Showdown at the Capitol Power Plant
Capitol Climate Action held a “massive” anti-coal protest in front of the Capitol power plant on Monday. Six to seven hundred people, most of them university students, marched down the street and shouted while the snow fell. The Capitol Police were out in force, and the organizers’ intention to provoke them into arresting the demonstrators was not realized. About thirty of us gathered on the sidewalk right next to the Greenpeace truck and trailer (yes, sad to say, but Greenpeace prefers motorized vehicles to bullock carts) for a counter-demo to Celebrate Coal and Keep Energy Affordable! The Greenpeace truck had a big solar panel, but it was covered with three or four inches of snow, so they had to run a generator instead to power the PA system.
A number of groups belonging to the Cooler Heads Coalition besides CEI were represented at Celebrate Coal!, including the National Center for Public Policy Research, Freedom Works, and Americans for Prosperity. Also attending were Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, the Irish film makers whose new documentary about global warming, Not Evil Just Wrong, will premiere in the next month or two. In terms of comparing our per capita carbon footprints, most of the Capitol Climate Action protesters were university students who flew to Washington for the protest and also to attend the Power Shift 2009 conference last weekend. Most of us took the subway and a few walked to our Celebrate Coal! rally.
Unfortunately, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wrote a letter to the anti-coal zealots last Friday announcing that they would direct the Capitol power plant to switch over to run entirely on natural gas. This will increase the cost of the electricity and heat used by the Congress substantially, but I guess the only people who might care about that are taxpayers.
Around the World
Obama “Climate Envoy”: Bush’s Climate Approach Is Too Ambitious
CEI’s Chris Horner, Planet Gore
According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama “climate envoy” Todd Stern “said the road map of greenhouse-gas emission reductions laid out at a 2007 summit in Bali was simply too ambitious. ‘We need to be very mindful of what the dictates of science are, and of the art of the possible,’ he said. The Bali targets – a 25% to 40% cut by industrialized nations by 2020 – were simply too ambitious. ‘It’s not possible to get that kind of number. It’s not going to happen’.”
“Bali” would be the “Bali roadmap” that the Bush administration agreed to as a parting shot. Was this merely some cheeky move by Bush to leave his successor with a pickle?
No. It’s a double standard. The first confirmation of this was found within weeks of the election, when UN officials said that of course Obama wouldn’t be held to the standard to which Team Global Governance had–sometimes with extreme nastiness–held the Bush administration for eight years: you must sign on to a global warming treaty now or the world will end and you killed it . . . and, well, you know the rest, if you weren’t living on an island somewhere, enjoying a nice warm climate during the Bush-era global cooling….
Click here to read the rest of Horner’s piece at Planet Gore
Across the States
Arizona
Arizona State Representative Andy Biggs (R) this week introduced a bill to remove Arizona from the Western Climate Initiative, a regional cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme. Seven states and four Canadian provinces have agreed to participate in the WCI, but Rep. Biggs wants Arizona to withdraw because it would increase energy prices for consumers. According to a study by the Western Business Roundtable, the WCI would cost the average family $2,300/year by 2020. Governor Jan Brewer (R) has since said that Arizona will continue to participate and that the legislature must approve the State’s participation in a cap-and-trade.
California
California State Senator Bob Dutton (R) this week introduced a bill that would delay implementation of AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. AB 32 mandates a 20% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020. Like all greenhouse gas reduction policies, however, it is designed to raise the price of energy, and Senator Dutton argues that expensive energy policies are unwarranted at a time when the state’s unemployment rate is above 10%.
Maryland
The Maryland State Senate passed Governor Martin O’ Malley’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act this week. The bill mandates steep greenhouse gas reductions that would result in a net economic benefit for the State’s economy. Of course, that’s impossible, because the “solution” to climate change is expensive energy, which is a job killer.
This undoubtedly will shock readers, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a tendency to shade the truth. And only in one direction. It seems … drumroll, please! … that the member governments have their own agendas and aren't above lying to the people to achieve their ends.
With activists and politicians continuing to push draconian energy control schemes even with no net increase in temperature over the past decade, it is ever more important for the public to understand the myths being presented as facts.
The article is a bit old, but is worth rereading. Writing from Bali, Christopher Monckton, who contribiuted to the 2007 IPCC report, explained:
As a contributor to the IPCC’s 2007 report, I share the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Yet I and many of my peers in the British House of Lords – through our hereditary element the most independent-minded of lawmakers – profoundly disagree on fundamental scientific grounds with both the IPCC and my co-laureate’s alarmist movie An Inconvenient Truth, which won this year’s Oscar for Best Sci-Fi Comedy Horror.
Two detailed investigations by Committees of the House confirm that the IPCC has deliberately, persistently and prodigiously exaggerated not only the effect of greenhouse gases on temperature but also the environmental consequences of warmer weather.
My contribution to the 2007 report illustrates the scientific problem. The report’s first table of figures – inserted by the IPCC’s bureaucrats after the scientists had finalized the draft, and without their consent – listed four contributions to sea-level rise. The bureaucrats had multiplied the effect of melting ice from the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets by 10.
The result of this dishonest political tampering with the science was that the sum of the four items in the offending table was more than twice the IPCC’s published total. Until I wrote to point out the error, no one had noticed. The IPCC, on receiving my letter, quietly corrected, moved and relabeled the erroneous table, posting the new version on the internet and earning me my Nobel prize.
The shore-dwellers of Bali need not fear for their homes. The IPCC now says the combined contribution of the two great ice-sheets to sea-level rise will be less than seven centimeters after 100 years, not seven meters imminently, and that the Greenland ice sheet (which thickened by 50 cm between 1995 and 2005) might only melt after several millennia, probably by natural causes, just as it last did 850,000 years ago. Gore, mendaciously assisted by the IPCC bureaucracy, had exaggerated a hundredfold.
Recently a High Court judge in the UK listed nine of the 35 major scientific errors in Gore’s movie, saying they must be corrected before innocent schoolchildren can be exposed to the movie. Gore’s exaggeration of sea-level rise was one.
Others being peddled at the Bali conference are that man-made “global warming” threatens polar bears and coral reefs, caused Hurricane Katrina, shrank Lake Chad, expanded the actually-shrinking Sahara, etc.
The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."
In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."
The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity – the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.
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