-America's electricity infrastructure is bursting at the seams, as demand for juice outpaces the grid's capacity to accommodate the flow. Massive investment in new wires and transmission towers is necessary to avoid an increasing threat of system-wide failures of the sort that left 10 million in the Northeast without power during the summer of 2003, warns the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation, an industry watchdog.
And so the great climate change circus moves on. Over the past few days we have had the European Union climate summit in Brussels and the United Nations climate summit in Poznan.
In the News
Congressional Motors Announces Its 1st Car for 2012: The Pelosi
Now Public, 12 December 2008
Getting Warmer
NRO, 12 December 2008
Truth, Economics, Politics
Paul Chesser, American Spectator, 12 December 2008
Browner and Greener
Max Schulz, NRO, 11 December 2008
Greens Against Growth
Chris Reed, American Spectator, 11 December 2008
A Bad Climate Trade-off
Wall Street Journal Asia, 11 December 2008
UN Climate Chief: Global Warming Is Not an Imminent Danger
CBC news, 9 December 2008
News You Can Use
650 Scientists Contest GW Consensus
The minority staff of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week released a compilation of the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the alarmist establishment view of global warming. To view the report, click here.
Inside the Beltway
Energy/Environment Picks
Myron Ebell
President-elect Barack Obama has reportedly settled on his environment and energy team, with the exception of Interior Secretary. Newspapers, citing sources in the Obama transition team, have reported that Carol M. Browner will be appointed to the unofficial (and hence not subject to Senate confirmation) position of White House energy and global warming czar. Lisa Jackson, currently serving as Commissioner for Environmental Protection for the State of New Jersey, is Obama’s choice for Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. For Secretary of Energy, Obama has picked Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winner. And Nancy Sutley, Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles for energy and the environment, will be Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
This is a very capable, experienced, and energetic group of people. Browner headed the EPA during the full eight years of the Clinton-Gore Administration. She also worked for Al Gore when he was in the Senate and helped with the research and maybe the writing of Earth in the Balance. Jackson worked at EPA for 16 years in senior enforcement positions in the Washington, DC headquarters and in the New York regional office. Chu heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is funded by the Department of Energy. Before that he was professor of physics at Stanford University, where he won the Nobel in 1997. Sutley has held a number of other appointed positions at the federal, state, and local levels. She was a senior policy adviser to Browner at EPA and also worked for former California Governor Gray Davis.
It’s too bad they’re so capable, experienced, and energetic because the energy and global warming policies that President-elect Obama wants them to pursue are radical, economically disastrous, and pointless. As the Washington Post sub-headlined David A. Fahrenthold’s article on Obama’s picks, “Their goals will be radical, but the three officials tapped to lead effort are experienced regulators.”
The fact that three of the four are experienced regulators should not be taken to imply that some or all of them don’t also share Obama’s radical views. Browner worked closely with Gore, and Chu is a global warming true believer.
The only good news is that the global warming fad has clearly peaked. Reality is setting in around the world, as temperatures continue flat and efforts to reduce emissions prove costly and ineffective. Let’s hope that our elected leaders in Congress see what’s happening before they turn off the lights.
Deep Background
The Oil Addiction Myth
Marlo Lewis
Every day some pundit, politician, activist, business leader, or academic claims that America’s “oil addiction” endangers U.S. national security and, indeed, the habitability of our planet. Champions of this message now include defense intellectuals, who have joined forces with global warming campaigners to demand new taxes or regulations on fossil energy use.
How refreshing, therefore, to find that not everybody in the Pentagon buys this message! A new report by the Joint Forces Command (The Joint Operating Environment 2008: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force, November 25, 2008) presents a very different perspective.
In a nutshell, the JFC report argues that the performance of the global economy will be the most important factor affecting international stability and national security in the coming decades, and that sustained economic growth will require accelerating oil production both domestically and worldwide. To read a detailed summary of the report, click here.
Across the States
California
On Thursday, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) approved a detailed program to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger applauded CARB’s decision, and predicted that fighting climate change would benefit California’s economy. As we reported last week, Governor Schwarzenegger bases this claim on an economic analysis performed by CARB that has been repudiated by respected economists, among whom there is a consensus that reducing emissions also reduces economic growth. This economic consensus should worry Californians, who were warned this week by Governor Schwarzenegger that the Golden State faces a “fiscal Armageddon” due to its ballooning deficit.
Around the World
EU
The European Union held negotiations this week to finalize the third and final phase of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The first two phases of the EU’s cap-and-trade program were turned into boondoggles by influential business lobbies, according to a recent article in the New York Times.
Industry lobbyists again triumphed this week in Brussels. Coal-fired power plants in East and Central European countries won the right to a delayed payment schedule for emissions credits. German industry won the right to future concessions if a study deems that the EU ETS renders them less competitive on the global market. Although it was never entirely clear what Italy wanted (some believed that the Italian delegation threatened to veto the package to win concessions for the Italian car industry in upcoming negotiations), Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told AFP that “Italy is on the way to getting all it wants.” The gutted agreement infuriated environmentalists.
This was a predictable result. Almost two years ago, CEI president Fred Smith testified before the U. S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and warned that cap-and-trade is a lobbyists’ dream, because its complexity creates ample space to negotiate concessions for individual companies.
COP-14
Last Friday we reported that negotiators could not agree on anything during the first week of the fourteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a 12 day conference to hammer out a “shared vision” on climate policy. The stalemate persisted this week up through the end of the meetings. On Tuesday, a group of wealthy nations led by the European Union offered to commit to drastic greenhouse gas emissions cuts by 2050 if developing countries agreed to reduce their emissions 15% by 2020, but developing countries refused, and substantive negotiations ended there. Not even a speech by Al Gore could motivate the delegations to agree. Gore accused developed countries of caring more about celebrities than global warming. Thankfully, he’s right. On the penultimate day, UN General Secretary Ban-ki Moon conceded failure to the Chinese press, saying that “the meeting is not to come to final decisions.”
Every day some pundit, politician, activist, business leader, or academic claims that America’s “oil addiction” endangers U.S. national security and, indeed, the habitability of our planet. Champions of this message now include defense intellectuals, who have joined forces with global warming campaigners to demand new taxes or regulations on fossil energy use.
How refreshing, therefore, to find that not everybody in the Pentagon buys this message! A new report by the Joint Forces Command (The Joint Operating Environment 2008: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force, November 25, 2008) presents a very different perspective.
In a nutshell, the JFC report argues that the performance of the global economy will be the most important factor affecting international stability and national security in the coming decades, and that sustained economic growth will require accelerating oil production both domestically and worldwide.
One point the JFC makes repeatedly is that globalization fosters expectations that only a strong global economy can meet. By dashing expectations, a weak global economy sets the stage for violence within and among nations:
Serious violence, resulting from economic trends, has almost invariably arisen where economic and political systems have failed to meet rising expectations … Thus, the real danger in a globalized world, where even the poorest have access to pictures and media portrayals of the developed world, lies in a reversal or halt to global prosperity. Such a possibility would lead individuals and nations to scramble for a greater share of shrinking wealth and resources, as occurred in the 1930s with the rise of Nazi Germany in Europe and Japan’s “co-prosperity sphere” in Asia. [Page 15]
The JFC also clearly affirms the dependence of U.S. military power on the health of the U.S. and global economies:
A central component of America’s global military posture is its massive economic power. This power is predicated on a financially-viable, globally connected domestic economy. Should this central feature of American power be weakened, it is highly likely that military capabilities will be diminished or otherwise degraded as a result. [Page 16]
JFC then argues that maintaining U.S. and global economic growth critically depend on increasing oil production:
To meet even the conservative growth rates posited above [2.5% growth for the developed world and 4.5% for developing countries], global energy production would need to rise by 1.3% per year. By the 2030s, demand would be nearly 50% greater than today. To meet that demand, even assuming more effective conservation measures, the world would need to add roughly the equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s current energy production every seven years. [Page 16]
The JFC indicates that our real oil problem is largely self-inflicted:
New sources (Caspian Sea, Brazil, Colombia, and new portions of Alaska and the Continental Shelf) could offset declining production in mature fields over the course of the next quarter century. But without drilling in currently excluded areas, they will add little additional capacity. [Page 16]
To avoid a disastrous energy crunch, together with the economic consequences that would make even modest growth unlikely, the developed world needs to invest heavily in oil production. There appears to be little propensity to consider such investments. [Page 17]
The JFC cautions that biofuels cannot replace oil on the scale required to sustain global prosperity but could endanger global food security:
Production could increase to approximately 3 MBD-equivalent, but starting from a small base, biofuels are unlikely to contribute more than 1% of global energy requirements by the 2030s. Moreover, even that modest achievement could curtail the supply of foodstuffs to the world’s growing population, which would add other national security challenges to an already full menu. [Page 16]
Finally, the JFC is skeptical about the scientific bona fides of claims linking energy use to an impending climate catastrophe:
The impact of global warming and its potential to cause natural disasters and other harmful phenomena such as rising sea levels has become a prominent—and controversial—national and international concern. Some argue that there will be more and greater storms and natural disasters, others that there will be fewer. In many respects, scientific conclusions about the cause and potential effects of global warming are contradictory. [Page 21]
So much good sense in one document! It restores belief in the phrase “military intelligence.”
The high priests of climate change are wrapping up their latest meeting today in Poznan, Poland, where the United Nations is hosting a conference on global warming. But don't expect a real solution to emerge. While most of these politicians and negotiators concur global warming is a man-made problem, there is still fierce opposition to the quickest method for spreading man-made solutions: free trade.
Ms. Carol Browner's appointment to the informal White House post of global warming and energy 'czar' would be a most unfortunate decision. The federal government doesn't need another czar. And if President-elect Obama decides there must be one, then Carol Browner is a bad choice. She worked for Al Gore and shares many of his wildest opinions. Although the Senate won't have a chance to vote on her appointment, someone needs to ask her whether she agrees with Mr. Gore, for example, that all coal-fired power plants must be replaced by renewable energy within a decade. Or whether sea levels are going to rise twenty feet in the next four decades.
Dr. Steven Chu is well qualified to serve as Secretary of Energy. However, Dr. Chu's nomination would signal President-elect Obama's unfortunate commitment to continue pouring billions of dollars into renewable energy boondoggles. Special interests have received tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money over the past thirty-five years. The effect of all the subsidies has been to turn promising renewable energy technology companies into corporate welfare dependents.
During the October 7 debate at Nashville’s Belmont University, after a summer in which gasoline prices topped $4 per gallon, Senator Barack Obama declared that the highest priority facing the next president was the nation’s energy crisis.
Ever since he signed California's 2006 law to reduce emissions linked to global warming, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has made the transition sound startlingly easy.
Under normal circumstances, November 2008 might have been remembered as a key moment in the American climate-change policy debate. Two independent evaluations were made public that analyzed California's groundbreaking, path-setting 2006 law dictating a sharp state increase in the use of cleaner, costlier energy — specifically Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's repeated assertions that not only would the law not be a drag on the economy; it would actually make the state's economy healthier. Similar claims are common in Washington and many state capitals, which are all considering California-style regulations.
President-elect Barack Obama made centrist choices for cabinet positions that deal with economics and national security, but yesterday he went off the deep end with his energy picks.
Secretary of Energy has traditionally been a cheerleader for domestic energy producers in the coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear industries, as noted last week by Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal.
Obama took a different tack by selecting Steven Chu to run the Department of Energy (DOE). Dr. Chu is a Nobel Prize winning physicist, which is great. But he is also a big advocate of throwing taxpayer money at renewable energy to save us all from climate change, which is very bad.
Daniel J. Weiss, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said that a Chu-led DOE “is like going to a Mensa meeting after eight years of being trapped in the Flat Earth Society."
Mr. Weiss’s endorsement should come as no surprise given that his boss, John Podesta, is in charge of the team that selected Dr. Chu. Weiss’s snarky comment is, however, illuminating. It reflects well the statist’s faith in the expert’s ability to fix any problem, social or natural, real or imagined. Whenever, I hear this statist refrain, I always think of the Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam’s wonderful report on the fallibility of the handsome geeks who thought they were smart enough to manufacture, execute and win a war in Vietnam.
For the newly created energy czar position, Obama selected Carol Browner. She, too, has chugged the green kool aid. She once told reporters that, “Taking action now [ie, enacting statist energy policies to fix the earth] will allow us to avoid the worst climate impacts and will drive the creation of a clean energy economy, in which we exchange carbon-dependency for greater energy independence and new clean energy jobs.”
Both choices indicate that the President-elect is serious about his campaign pledge to price coal out of the market. This willingness should be terrifying for anyone paying attention to America's inadequate electricity supply.
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