It’s Hot Out There, Except Where It’s Not

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on June 2, 2009

in Blog

Keeping up the global warming storyline, USA Today yesterday reported that “many regions already are sweating out unseasonably warm weather that promises plenty of dog days ahead.” Lots of regional stats, with forecasts that they represent “a sign of a toasty summer ahead, according to the Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md.”

Word of advice: Don’t trust any science or forecasting coming out of Maryland.

The only hope for finding unseasonably cooler weather this summer, according to the newspaper? Go to Minnesota or the Dakotas. As for you Yankees, “Hot often means dry, and 2009 has been the fourth-driest on record for the Northeast.”

Meanwhile, it’s pretty clear USA Today doesn’t read Drudge, or they would have seen yesterday that most of New York was under a frost advisory.

In the News

by William Yeatman on June 1, 2009

in Blog

Cap-and-Trade, All Cost and No Benefit
Martin Feldstein, Washington Post, 1 June 2009

In my judgment, the proposed cap-and-trade system would be a costly policy that would penalize Americans with little effect on global warming. The proposal to give away most of the permits only makes a bad idea worse. Taxpayers and legislators should keep these things in mind before enacting any cap-and-trade system.

How Obama Made Energy Platform ‘Pop’
Steven Mufson & Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, 31 May 2009

After a long day of campaigning on July 8, candidate Barack Obama arrived at his Chicago headquarters for a three-hour brainstorming session about a suddenly hot issue: energy and climate change.

The Breath Tax
Joseph C. Phillips, Bog Hollywood, 1 June 2009

The rationale for the “Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” otherwise known as Cap and Trade, is that environmental catastrophe awaits us if we do not control the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) flowing into the atmosphere. This hysteria has been propelled by alarmists using computer models to predict (not to prove) that what-used-to-be-called-Global-Warming-before-it-became-clear-that-the-earth-is-cooling-so-it-is-now-called-Climate Change is caused by man made emissions of carbon dioxide.

Corporate Welfare on a Vast Scale: Obama’s Cap-and-Trade Scam Threatens Economy

by Hans Bader on June 1, 2009

in Blog

One of Obama’s own advisers admits that the cap-and-trade energy-rationing scheme backed by the “Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats” would “have a trivially small effect on global warming while imposing substantial costs on all American households. And to get political support in key states, the legislation would abandon the auctioning of permits in favor of giving permits to selected corporations.”

Obama adviser Martin Feldstein notes that “the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the resulting increases in consumer prices” from capping the amount of carbon dioxide energy users can emit “would raise the cost of living of a typical household by $1,600 a year,” a figure that “would rise significantly” from year to year.

Meanwhile, politically-connected corporations would make a bundle, since the “bill would give away some 85 percent of the permits” to emit carbon dioxide to favored “businesses instead of selling them at auction.”

Feldstein, a Harvard economist who has advised Obama, earlier warned that “the barrage of tax increases proposed in President Barack Obama’s budget could, if enacted by Congress, kill any chance of an early and sustained recovery.” He compared Obama’s tax increases to the ones that contributed to the Great Depression and the “Lost Decade” of economic stagnation and decay in Japan.

Feldstein, who serves on Obama’s economic advisory board, has also “warned of serious inflation and higher taxes down the road” as a result of Obama’s policies.

Feldstein earlier noted that President “Obama’s biggest proposed tax increase is the cap-and-trade system of requiring businesses to buy carbon dioxide emission permits. . .CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf testified before the Senate Finance Committee on May 7 that the cap-and-trade price increases . . . would cost the average household roughly $1,600 a year, ranging from $700 in the lowest-income quintile to $2,200 in the highest-income quintile.”

That’s a highly regressive tax increase, since lowest-income earners don’t make a third of what highest-income earners make, but they would incur a third as much cost. It’s regressive in the same way as the 1932 excise tax increase by Herbert Hoover that deepened the misery of the Great Depression.

During the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover damaged the economy, and impoverished the American people, with costly, artificial attempts to stimulate the economy through increased government spending, financed by heavy taxes like the Revenue Act of 1932.

Obama earlier admitted that “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” As Obama admitted, that cost would be directly passed “on to consumers” — just the way Herbert Hoover’s regressive excise taxes were in 1932. Although the tax’s supporters claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely increase them and also result in dirtier air.

In reality, Obama’s proposed “cap-and-trade” tax is likely to raise $2 trillion over the next decade, far more than even Feldstein anticipates. That’s far more than the $646 billion the Administration earlier estimated — amounting to at least $3,100 per family per year. And that figure may be dwarfed by the amount of money siphoned from consumers to well-connected corporations that have learned how to game “cap-and-trade” schemes.

In the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover raised marginal tax rates to 63%, and went on a deficit spending binge. Similarly, Obama has proposed higher marginal tax rates, which will produce another $1.9 trillion in tax increases.

In spite of its massive size, Obama’s carbon tax won’t begin to pay for all his spending increases, such as a budget that will generate $4.8 trillion in increased deficits, Obama’s trillion-dollar toxic-asset program, and his $800 billion, economy-shrinking “stimulus” package, all of which contradict Obama’s campaign pledge of a “net spending cut.”

These tax increases are breaches of Obama’s campaign promise not to raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 a year, which he earlier broke by signing into law the regressive SCHIP excise tax increase.

It’s part of a long line of broken promises, such as Obama’s pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” which he discarded by offering mind-bogglingly large budgets that will explode the national debt through $9.3 trillion in massively increased deficit spending.

Obama has spent on an unprecedented scale, such as for a stimulus package that has actually shrunk the economy and destroyed thousands of jobs, and an auto bailout that forces cash-strapped taxpayers to bail out high-paid union auto workers, whose pay remains much higher than that of the typical taxpayer, while saddling the car companies with politically-correct mandates that may kill their chance of survival.

Wasteful Obama Auto Bailouts Disturb Even Liberal Washington Post

by Hans Bader on May 30, 2009

Even the liberal Washington Post, which endorsed Obama and has not backed a Republican for president since 1952, is getting fed up with the Obama Administration’s wasteful and politicized bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler. Today, it laments the
“imminent transformation of General Motors into a government-owned company, infused with upward of $50 billion in federal money.” “It doesn’t take much imagination to forecast the political pressures that will buffet the government-as-auto-executive. We’ve seen one effect already in the preferential treatment of the autoworkers’ union at the expense of private creditors. . . . the union can boast that it has been promised no loss in ‘base hourly pay, no reduction in . . . health care, and no reduction in pensions,’” even though excessive union wages and benefits helped sink the company. And politics will now divert the company’s attention away from making cars consumers actually want. “Influential members of Congress will insist on jobs in their districts; environmentalists will want electric cars; overseas sourcing will be frowned upon. How such decisions affect profits could become secondary.”

That’s what happened in Britain in the 1970s. The government took over and attempted to bail out the country’s auto industry, and ruined it in the process, destroying whatever chance it had left to survive. The British auto industry ended up being run mainly to benefit the unions, and produced politically-correct cars drivers didn’t want.

Earlier the Post argued that Obama “should stop bullying the company’s bondholders”: “While the Obama administration has been playing hardball with bondholders, it has been more than happy to play nice with the United Auto Workers. How else to explain why a retiree health-care fund controlled by the UAW is slated to get a 39 percent equity stake in GM for its remaining $10 billion in claims while bondholders are being pressured to take a 10 percent stake for their $27 billion?” “If this were a typical bankruptcy, the company would be allowed by law to tear up its UAW collective bargaining agreement and negotiate for drastically reduced wages and benefits. That’s not going happen. Phrased another way: The government won’t let that happen.” Instead, the government is moving towards “financial engineering that ignores basic principles of fairness and economic realities to further political goals.”

The automakers would have been better off simply filing for bankruptcy last fall rather than seeking a taxpayer-funded bailout. The bailouts have cost taxpayers tens of billions, but made it harder to fix the root causes of the crisis facing the Detroit automakers, such as excessive labor costs.

The federal government poured billions of dollars into Chrysler, which then went bankrupt and now is in the process of merging with Fiat. But Chrysler may never revive, thanks to absurdly generous compensation for the company’s union employees. The Obama Administration has refused to cut union wages substantially, though it had no compunction about ripping off the pension funds and other lenders who loaned money to Chrysler to try to keep it afloat. Even union members seem surprised by how little they were asked to sacrifice. (The Administration is also seeking to rip off GM bondholders to benefit the union).

Moderate Democrat Mickey Kaus, who reluctantly voted for Obama, notes that the federal bailout may yet fail because of Obama’s failure to reduce excessive labor costs:

“Before the deal, Chrysler’s UAW workers made $28 an hour. After the deal, they’ll make $28 an hour. They gave up a scheduled increase in wages, plus a couple of scheduled bonuses. That explains why Chrysler’s Belvidere, Illinois workers told TV station WIFR that ‘the plan is not nearly as drastic as they expected.’ …As for Chrysler’s ‘chance for long-term success,’ it appears vanishingly small. Italian manufacturer FIAT is supposed to save Chrysler with new products, but according to a recent Automotive News article, ‘four of the six new vehicles from Fiat will enter the small-car segment,’ which is highly competitive but ‘covers only 14 percent of the entire U.S. light-vehicle market.’ . . . Pathetically, Chrysler hopes that even if they don’t save the company the new small cars will ‘[b]urnish the environmental image of Chrysler brands,’ says Automotive News. Unfortunately, the pipeline for those brands’ other, larger, products–burnished or not–is pretty much empty. If Chrysler workers were paid, say, not $28 an hour instead of $24–still not bad–the firm might actually have a ‘chance for long term success’ through charging lower prices. But that wasn’t a sacrifice Obama was ready to ask (even if Belvidere workers were apparently willing).”

In addition to leaving General Motors and Chrysler saddled with excessive costs and union ownership, Obama harmed them by radically ratcheting up federal CAFE fuel-economy standards, which affect them more than their foreign competitors. 50,000 jobs could be lost. And his global-warming regulations will destroy countless jobs and cut “household purchasing power,” reducing auto sales and Chrysler’s chances of survival.

Diplomat Pelosi: A Denier’s Best Friend

by William Yeatman on May 29, 2009

China and the United States account for almost half of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is why Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) this week told the Sydney Morning Herald that ongoing negotiations between the two nations will “define” the upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen (where the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet in December to negotiate a successor global warming treaty to the failed Kyoto Protocol). According to U.S. Representative Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) the climate talks will be “one of the most complex diplomatic negotiations in the history of the world,” as reported by the New York Times.

If the Congressmen are correct, and climate negotiations with China are delicate diplomacy, then why did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California)-long an irritant to the Chinese government for her vocal criticism of the Communist regime’s human rights record-lead a delegation to China to try to find common ground on global warming? Pelosi told 200 students that climate change is “a place where human rights-looking out for the needs of the poor in terms of climate change and healthy environment-are a human right.” I’m not sure what this statement means, but I bet Chinese diplomats cringed.

Thankfully, U.S. Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) was there to remind reporters that negotiations with China are pointless, because the Chinese leadership already has decided growing prosperity and poverty reduction will not be hindered by expensive-energy climate treaties.

Does the ethanol mandate increase CO2 emissions?

by Marlo Lewis on May 27, 2009

That may seem counter-intuitive, because burning ethanol merely puts back into the air the carbon dioxide (CO2) that corn crops recently pulled out of it, whereas burning gasoline liberates carbon that had been stored in geologic deposits for millions of years.

But other factors come into play, such as the fossil energy inputs required to produce the corn, turn it into ethanol, and deliver the ethanol to market. 

In addition, as EPA argues in its proposed rule to implement the renewable fuel standard program established by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), expanding corn production into forest and grass lands can release substantial amounts of carbon stored in soils and trees.

Similarly, when U.S. farmers grow corn in areas previously used to produce soy beans, for example, farmers in Brazil have an incentive to convert forest land into soy plantations.

As you might expect, EPA’s use of life-cycle analysis, although required by EISA, drives the ethanol lobby and its congressional allies up the wall. They claim it is ridiculous to link increased corn production here to increased CO2 emissions in developing countries.

But, as my colleague, agricultural commodity analyst Dave Juday, demonstrates, the numbers paint a very clear picture. With Dave’s permission, I reproduce below an email he sent around earlier today.

*  *  *

With regard to GHG and the EPA’s RFS [renewable fuel standard] 2 rule, … the concept of “indirect land use changes” (ILUC) get criticized for being faulty, but it actually is pretty sound.  

Consider, if ethanol drives up US corn  plantings (which it did) and drives down US soybean plantings and production (which it did, because the US – the largest producer and exporter – has only so much farm land and not much tillable acreage to expand) and thereby raises the world price of soybeans, it raises the incentives to grow soybeans elsewhere in the world.  It just so happens Brazil – which is the world’s second largest producer and exporter – is the most likely place where additional soybeans will be grown on virgin land because that is where the virgin land is. 

The real weak link in this GHG lifecycle emissions concept is the ability to measure and value the carbon emissions and sequestration and the process by which “value” gets assigned to practices and manufacturing processes.  Yet, as might be expected from ethanol advocates, it is the simple, fundamental, and rational economic concept that is argued against.    Consider the perspectives shared by a lobbyist and a US Senator on the issue of “indirect land use changes” driven by US biofuel policy:

  •  Basically, the EPA has determined that the production of ethanol in America is forcing land use changes in Brazil and other foreign countries to destroy their valuable rain forests to produce farm commodities to make up for reduced exports of these commodities from the United States. Mr. Chairman, I have been in Washington for a long time, but I have never heard of a more bizarre concept. – Tom Buis, CEO, Growth Energy
  •  Every chance I get, I’m going to bring this issue up. It’s so obvious that the EPA’s rationale doesn’t meet the common sense test.  It’s ridiculous to think that Brazilian farmers are looking to see what Iowa farmers are doing to determine how they run their own business, and quite frankly it’s plain unfair to farmers. –  Honorable Charles Grassley, US Senator (R-IA)

Addressing these comments above is one of those cases where a picture is indeed worth 1,000 words:

corn-and-soy-us-and-brazil

SOURCE: USDA, Foreign Agricultural Service: Production, Supply, and Distribution Online

Added: May 29, 2009

Lisa Lerer delves into the ”life cycle analysis” controversy in the May 26 issue of Politico.  Farm state Democrats are threatening to oppose the Waxman-Markey bill if, as required by EISA, EPA considers the indirect impacts on land-use changes abroad when determining the life-cycle CO2 emissions of domestic ethanol production. 

The same lawmakers enthusiastically supported the EISA renewable fuel program as a global warming policy when they thought it would rig the market in favor of corn farmers. Now they’re threatening to derail Obama’s cap-and-trade initiative if EPA follows the law they helped enact. 

Obama campaigned on a platform of CHANGE, but he may find that in Washington still, Pork Rules and Corn Is King.

In the News

by William Yeatman on May 27, 2009

in Blog

The Biggest Tax Increase in World History
Myron Ebell, Human Events, 27 May 2009

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on the evening of May 21 passed the biggest piece of the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats’ agenda to put the federal government in charge of the American economy. On a 33 to 25 vote, the Committee approved the “American Clean Energy and Security Act,” H. R. 2454. The 946-page energy-rationing bill is better known as Waxman-Markey, named after its two chief sponsors, Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment.

Climate Smart Aid Is Anything But
William Yeatman, International Affairs Forum, 27 May 2009

Now here’s an inconvenient truth: curbing the planet’s carbon footprint necessarily slows economic growth, the primary engine of human well-fare. International aid organizations need to carefully consider the impact of the climate “solutions” they advocate, lest they do more harm than good.

German Minister on Copenhagen: “No real advances”
DPA, 26 May 2009

The much-anticipated UN Climate Change Conference scheduled to take place in December in the Danish capital Copenhagen is heading for disaster, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Tuesday in Paris. “There is no movement,” Gabriel complained just before the conclusion of a two-day preparatory meeting of ministers from 16 industrial nations in the French capital. “The expectations we all had… have not been fulfilled.”

Compare and Contrast

by Iain Murray on May 26, 2009

in Blog

Bjorn Lomborg, November 2007:

…although it may seem almost comically straightforward, one of the best temperature-reducing approaches is very simple: paint things white. Cities have a lot of black asphalt and dark, heat-absorbing structures. By increasing reflection and shade, a great deal of heat build-up can be avoided. Paint most of a city and you could lower the temperature by 10C.

Steven Chu, May 2009:

Professor Steven Chu, speaking at the opening of the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, for which The Times is media partner, said this simple and “completely benign” approach to “geo-engineering” could have a vast impact at low cost. By lightening all paved surfaces and roofs to the colour of cement, it would be possible to reduce carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, he said.

I ask you to compare and contrast because one of these men is an “evil delayer” (or worse), and the other a planetary savior.  Yet the savior is now adopting a policy advocated for two years by the “delayer.”

Perhaps there is hope for the global warming debate yet.

Editorial Cartoon Backfires

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on May 26, 2009

Unless I’m totally misunderstanding the sketch of today’s editorial cartoon by the Washington Post‘s Tom Toles, which unimaginatively illustrates climate change “deniers” like a head-in-the-sand ostrich, he also also has drawn a huge sun which apparently is throwing intense heat on the “deniers” (which are supposed to be Republicans, I guess).

But in drawing the sun Toles has unwittingly made a case for solar activity being a stronger climate driver than greenhouse gases. I think Harvard solar scientist Willie Soon would love it.

Cooler Heads Digest 23 May 2009

by William Yeatman on May 26, 2009

Announcements

The Heartland Institute’s Third International Conference on Climate Change will be held in Washington, DC on June 2, 2009 at the Washington Court Hotel, 525 New Jersey Avenue, NW. It will call attention to widespread dissent to the asserted “consensus” on various aspects of climate change and global warming. Register here.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a new video campaign–Al Gore, 1984. The web page links to a joint CEI-National Taxpayer Union project that allows you to email your Member of Congress about the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill.

In the News

Study Estimates 2.3 Billion Lost Jobs with Waxman-Markey
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 22 May 2009

Waxman-Markey Bill Jury-rigged for Special Interests
Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, 22 May 2009

The Climate-Industrial Complex
Bjorn Lomborg, Wall Street Journal, 20 May 2009

Democrats May Make Trouble for Climate Bill
Lisa Lerer and Patrick O’Connor, Politico, 22 May 2009

Waxman-Markey Full of Unpleasant Surprises
The Washington Examiner, 22 May 2009

Warnings from the Left Coast
Rep. Tom McClintock, 21 May 2009

California’s Sorry State Points to America’s Future
Iain Murray and William Yeatman, Fox Forum, 20 May 2009

Cap and Trade is a License to Cheat and Steal
William O’Keefe, San Francisco Examiner, 18 May 2009

Cap and Trade or Coaches and Horses
Financial Times, 18 May 2009

Waxman-Markey Will Wreck U.S. Economy
Washington Examiner, 18 May 2009

Is Wind the Next Ethanol?
Ben Lieberman, Washington Times, 17 May 2009

Mark Mills: Prophet in His Own Time?
Marlo Lewis, MasterResource.org, 15 May 2009

News You Can Use

What Happens When You Give Away the Ration Coupons?

As former Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag (now Obama’s Office of Management and Budget Director) said, “If you didn’t auction the permits it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States. All of the evidence suggests that what would occur is that corporate profits would increase by approximately the value of the permits.”

Rep. Jay Inslee, Washington Democrat, said lawmakers should not repeat the mistakes of the European Union, which gave away its first round of permits to affected industries free of charge: “When they started the cap-and-trade [plan], they gave away all the permits,” Mr. Inslee said. “It created less controversy and it was a spectacular disaster.” From an article on the hearings by Tom LoBianco published in the Washington Times on 22nd April.

H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, as passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on 21st April gives away 85% of the ration coupons to special interests.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

House Committee Passes Waxman-Markey, 33-25

The House Energy and Commerce Committee early Thursday evening voted to send the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill, H. R. 2454, to the House floor by a vote of 33 to 25. One Republican, Mary Bono Mack of California, voted yes. Four Democrats voted no: Mike Ross of Arkansas, Charles Melancon of Louisiana, John Barrow of Georgia, and Jim Matheson of Utah. Republican Nathan Deal of Georgia was not there to vote, but was opposed to the bill.

Final passage came after four long days of considering amendments. The Democratic majority defeated every Republican attempt to put upper limits on the economic damage the bill could do. They defeated amendments that would have suspended the Act if electricity prices double, gasoline reach five dollars a gallon, or unemployment exceeds fifteen percent. An amendment to suspend the Act if China and India don’t reduce their own emissions was rejected on a straight party-line vote.

They also defeated Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s (R-Tenn.) amendment (based on her bill-H. R. 391) that would have removed greenhouse gases from the list of pollutants regulated by the Clean Air Act. Rep. Edward Markey said in opposing the amendment, “We might as well say that the Earth doesn’t revolve around the sun or the dinosaurs never roamed the Earth as to say that carbon isn’t a pollutant.” (I wrote that down as I listened on C-Span, so it may not be an exact quote.) Yes, there’s no doubt in the U. S. Congress that a naturally-occurring trace gas necessary for life on Earth is a pollutant. As far as I can tell, defeat of the Blackburn amendment means that the cap-and-trade scheme in the bill will run in tandem with regulation of greenhouse gases under some sections of the Clean Air Act.

The debate became more and more unreal as it went on. Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) argued that the purpose of giving away 85% of the ration coupons to big businesses was to protect consumers from higher energy prices. But cap-and-trade can only reduce emissions if prices go up. Higher prices force consumers to use less and bring otherwise uncompetitive alternatives, such as wind power, onto the market. Of course, everyone realizes that the real purpose of giving away the coupons is to buy support from big businesses. Jim Rogers of Duke Energy is now looking forward to a big retirement package.

It’s actually unlikely that the bill if enacted will reduce emissions, at least for twenty or thirty years. That’s because nearly all the cuts required can be met by buying offsets, as an analysis by the Breakthrough Institute shows. Many offsets are a scam. Most of the ones that aren’t entirely bogus don’t deliver their emissions offsets until decades after they are purchased. For example, you can buy to have a forest planted with young trees, but they won’t sequester much carbon until they grow much bigger.  A Republican amendment to ban foreign offsets, which are especially hard to monitor and verify, was defeated.

Prospects for Waxman-Markey

Four moderate Democrats voted against H. R. 2454. That spells difficulties when it reaches the House floor, but not insuperable ones. My guess is that the bill can probably pass the House if the Democratic leadership can get it to the floor quickly. But I wouldn’t bet on it passing if the vote occurs after the August recess. That’s because it’s ramshackle (as is any thousand-page bill) and will start falling apart as people begin to explore what’s in it. Right now, the momentum is provided by the big businesses that stand to gain windfall profits from getting free ration coupons.

But there are losers as well, and the losers are going to realize that and then will begin to complain about it. The entire real estate and building industries lose big under Title II.  Even among industries that gets lots of free ration coupons, there are winners and losers. For example, utilities get 35% of the coupons, but in some States utilities get more coupons than their current emissions and in some States they get fewer coupons. How many coupons will Rep. Jay Inslee of Washington be willing to transfer from utilities in his State to some other State in order to gain a vote?

So I think that the momentum is going to change directions fairly quickly. Major far-left environmental pressure groups are opposing the bill largely because it gives away the ration coupons to “polluters.” See here and here.(“Far-left” is not only my adjective. When Greenpeace USA, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen sent out a press release criticizing Waxman-Markey, that’s how Greenwire described them.) They will mobilize their supporters as floor action approaches.

Public opinion has already turned strongly against the bill. An in-depth poll conducted by Lauer Johnson Research for the National Rural Electric Co-operative Association in early April found that 58% of those surveyed would oppose any bill to combat global warming that would raise their electricity bills by any amount. We have posted the poll results on the Cooler Heads Coalition web site, globalwarming.org. Waxman and Markey are not going to be able to conceal the likely price increases for long. Initial estimates by the Heritage Foundation, Charles River Associates, and the Congressional Budget Office show much higher costs to consumers than the EPA found in their obviously flawed estimate of 13 cents per person per day. Environmental pressure groups that support Waxman-Markey are using the EPA study, even though one of the reasons it finds such low compliance costs is that it assumes that a lot of new nuclear plants are going to be built.

Obama Raises Car Prices

President Barack took a politically popular step this week in announcing higher fuel economy standards for new cars and trucks. The anti-energy bill enacted in 2007 by the Democratic-controlled Congress and enthusiastically supported by President George W. Bush raised Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards to 35 miles per gallon for new cars by 2020 (and included the huge increase in the ethanol mandate as well). President Obama raised that to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016 (higher for cars, lower for light trucks).

It’s popular because vast efforts have been made to make people assume that they can still buy the same vehicle with the same size and performance at the same price, but after government waves a magic wand it will now get more miles per gallon. That is of course not the case. Big cars and trucks are still going to be produced, but the automakers aren’t going to meet these higher CAFÉ standards if they sell very many of them. Thus prices are going to go up for all cars, but much more for bigger, safer models.

While I’ve been concentrating on the Waxman-Markey bill for the past few weeks, things have also been happening in the Senate. Next week, I’ll catch up on the hi-jinks in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Around the World

Kyoto II

A draft of the negotiating text for the fifteenth Conference of the Parties to be held in Copenhagen in December has surfaced. It incorporates entirely new approaches to regulate greenhouse gases. It appears that binding time tables and actions are out, while mandatory “official development assistance” is in.

Yet China will be submitting their own position to the United Nations in one week. While the specific details of the document are unknown, Bejing demanded Tuesday that rich countries cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 from 1990 levels and help pay for reduction schemes in poorer countries, including China, with 0.5 to 1 percent of their annual economic worth. And such developing countries should curb emissions only on a voluntary basis, and only if the cuts “accord with their national situations and sustainable development strategies”.

The Chinese government didn’t say whether they would be willing to loan us the hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars they want us to pay them to reduce their emissions.

In the States

Utah

Utah may be getting a new governor who is more sceptical about climate change policies than the current one. Lieutenant Governor Gary Herbert will replace Governor Jon Huntsman if the Senate confirms President Obama’s nomination of Huntsman to be our Ambassador to China.

It Costs Only 13 Cents Per Day!

Julie Walsh
If you’ve heard environmentalists claim that the Waxman-Markey bill will only cost each person 13 cent a day, they are relying on information from a recent EPA study. However, the EPA’s analysis includes this rather large assumption: “Nuclear power generation is allowed to increase by ~150% from 782 billion kWh in 2005 to 1,982 billion kWh in 2050” (page 27). There have been no new orders for nuclear plants since the 70s, yet we are supposed to believe that environmental pressure groups will allow dozens of new reactors to be built.

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