President Barack Obama this week nominated John Bryson to be Secretary of Commerce.  Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) immediately announced that he would try to defeat Bryson’s confirmation by the Senate. It’s easy to see why Inhofe didn’t have to spend much time weighing Bryson’s qualifications.  Bryson is a model crony capitalist, lifelong professional environmentalist, and leading promoter of cap-and-trade legislation to raise energy prices.

Here is what Bryson said at a symposium at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009: “Greenhouse gas legislation – either with a tax or with a cap and trade, which is a more complicated way of getting at it, but it has the advantage politically of sort of hiding the fact that you have a tax, but at the same – you know that’s what you’re trying to do, trying to raise price of carbon….”  He went on to say that the Waxman-Markey and other cap-and-trade bills in Congress would not raise energy prices enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the required amount, so that he also favored federal regulations, such as renewable requirements for electric utilities, on top of cap-and-trade.  Later, Bryson referred to Waxman-Markey as a “moderate but acceptable bill.”

As a new graduate of Yale Law School in 1970, Bryson was one of the founders of the Natural Resources Defense Council and served as legal counsel in the group’s early years.  From 1976 to 1979, he was chairman of the California State Water Resources Control Board.  And from 1979 to 1982, he was chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission.  He was appointed to both positions by then-Governor Jerry Brown.  After practicing law, he then spent 18 years at Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison.  He retired as chairman and CEO in 2008.  In recent years, Bryson has served as an official adviser on energy and environmental issues to the Secretary General of the United Nations.

The American Northeast has attained metaphysical balance on energy rationing, thanks to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s (R)  announcement yesterday that he would withdraw the Garden State from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multi-state cap-and-trade scheme. After New Jersey leaves, the remaining nine participants will be: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Christie’s unexpected decision serves as the yin to New Hampshire’s yang. In late February, the New Hampshire House of Representatives  passed HB 519, legislation that would withdraw the Granite State from RGGI, by a 246 to 104 vote. At the time, it was widely thought that the Senate would quickly follow suit, as Republicans control the upper chamber. HB 519’s ultimate enactment appeared so certain, in fact, that Governor John Lynch (D) issued a pre-emptive veto. It should have been a futile gesture, because Republicans hold a veto-proof majority in both chambers of the legislature. Then the environmentalist lobby mobilized and frightened many members of the Senate. The bill was delayed. And in early May, the full Senate, where Republicans enjoy a 2 to 1 majority, voted to remain in the the regional energy rationing scheme. New Hampshire Republicans had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Gov. Christie has had a somewhat tortuous history with RGGI. During the press conference yesterday, he went to great lengths to state his belief that mankind is causing dangerous global warming, which is unfortunate. He justified his decision to withdraw from RGGI based on the fact that the regional cap-and-trade scheme was an energy tax that had no impact on the global climate, which is true.

Only a year ago, however, he was a climate skeptic. Back then, he expressed reservations about RGGI, but he nonetheless stayed in the program. The most likely reason that he waited so long to withdraw was because the cap-and-trade revenues were too good to pass up. Under state law (the 2008 Global Warming Solutions Fund Act), he was supposed to spend RGGI revenues, which are generated from quarterly sales of energy rationing coupons, on green energy. But Gov. Christie redirected those funds to deficit reduction.

Environmentalists have promised to litigate, but that looks like a dead end. From what I understand, the authorizing legislation explicitly gives the Governor the authority to join and withdraw from the regional pact. Unless the New Jersey Legislature enacts legislation to keep the state in RGGI, the greens’ hands are tied. Or so it appears to me, a non-lawyer.

Lastly, I’ll note that overall, Gov. Christie’s ideas on energy are awful, as is suggested by the title of yesterday’s address, “New Jersey’s Future Is Green.” The Governor is committed to wasting taxpayer money on expensive, unreliable green energy, and he also announced a moratorium on coal power. Read all about his crummy energy policies here.

New Hampshire Senate Republicans have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on energy rationing policy. Two months ago, the State House of Representatives passed HB 519, legislation that would withdraw New Hampshire from a regional energy-rationing scheme known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), by a 246 to 104 vote. At the time, it was widely thought that the Senate would quickly follow suit, as Republicans control the upper chamber. Governor John Lynch (D) promised to veto the bill, but Republicans hold a veto-proof majority in both chambers of the legislature.

Then the environmentalist lobby mobilized and frightened many members of the Senate. The bill was delayed. Last week, the Senate Natural Resources Committee voted against HB 519 companion legislation. This week, the full Senate, where Republicans enjoy a 2 to 1 majority, voted to remain in the RGGI.

According to F. Scott Fitzgerald, the finest writer in American history, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” By this criterion, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) is a real genius, because he manages to function in the Congress, despite the fact that he thinks the price of gasoline should go up and down, simultaneously.

As one of the Congress’s foremost global warming alarmists, Rep. Markey believes that hydrocarbon energy is the cause of the supposed “problem” that is global warming. Due to this belief, he is a staunch supporter of energy policies designed to make hydrocarbon energy more expensive, so that Americans use less of it, and thereby fight global warming. For example, he co-authored the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a cap-and-trade energy rationing scheme passed by the House of Representatives in June 2009. (Thankfully, the bill died in the Senate.) Because the entire point of this policy was to “put a price” on carbon, it would have increased the price of gasoline, by design.

OK….So Rep. Markey supports higher gas prices to fight climate change. However, Rep. Markey is also a politician, in addition to being a global warming alarmist. And, like all American politicians, he gets the vapors when gas prices rise. The reason is simple: Americans get angry when they have to pay $4 a gallon, and nothing terrifies incumbent politicians like angry voters. This is why Rep. Markey last week told the press,

“Now, next week I will have legislation out on the floor that ensures that we do have a strategy to deploy the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. When President Bush 1 used it during the first Persian Gulf War, the price of oil went down 33 percent. When Bill Clinton used it in September and October of 2000, the price [of gas] went down 18 percent. When George Bush 2 used it after Katrina, it went down 9 percent.”

That is, he intends to introduce a policy to lower the price of gas.

The cynic in me thinks that Rep. Markey is trying to have it both ways, depending on the direction of prevailing political winds, which suggests his “green” principles are rooted in the thin soil of expediency. But perhaps he’s only trying to be a “first-rate intelligence.”

Republicans in the New Hampshire Senate continue to dither like a eunuch in a brothel lobby, more than two months after the State House of Representatives enacted HB 519, legislation that would withdraw New Hampshire from a regional energy-rationing scheme known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, by a 246 to 104 vote. In late February, after the Republican-controlled House acted, it was widely thought that the Senate would quickly follow suit, as Republicans hold a 2 to 1 majority in the upper chamber. However, the environmentalist lobby mobilized and frightened many Members of the Legislature. Last week, the Senate Natural Resources Committee voted against HB 519 companion legislation. Nonetheless, the full Senate is expected to enact the measure this week, although it is unclear that there will be enough votes to override a promised veto from Governor John Lynch (D), even though Republicans have a veto-proof majority.

Climate change is real. Climate change is manmade. Manmade climate change has happened within the last twenty-four months.

Leaders in the climate change debate have controlled the message for forty years since the adoption of the Clean Air Act. They have “approached climate change politics with an air of disdain,” according to Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense Fund (established in 1967).

Krupp addressed the changing political climate at Fortune Magazine’s Brainstorm Green Conference in early April and admitted that there is a “newfound hostility to climate policy.” He advised the environmental community to be “more humble” and “less arrogant.” He acknowledged the failure of a comprehensive energy and/or cap and trade policy.

Krupp is correct. With the falsification of climate records exposed—known as Climategate, the American people now see climate change as merely hysteria. Polls show they do not view it as a real problem that we need to address now.

At the same conference, Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, agreed. He said, “Cap and trade cannot be sold and must be reinvented,” adding that it was going to be hard to “resurrect cap and trade.”

Climate change legislation has been the holy grail of the environmental movement—but the climate has changed. Now the green movement is playing defense.

This change of climate is not from carbon emissions—though it is manmade. At the same conference, former green jobs czar, Van Jones, didn’t “blame the environmentalists or the policy concept itself.” What brought about the change? How’d the debate get reframed and cause the death of cap and trade?   Something, Jones pointed out, no one in the room had heard of twenty-four months ago—“a right-wing populace movement” that the carbon emission supporters failed to take seriously: “the tea party.”

Man changed the political climate in just two years. After forty years, environmentalists are now on the defense because of some under-estimated “upstarts.”

This change of climate was evident during the recent legislative battles over the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions—which environmentalists believe causes climate change.

In late March/early April four bills were introduced in the Senate—each designed to limit the EPA’s authority. Not surprisingly, none passed in the Democrat-held Senate. However, the change of climate can be seen in the numbers. In the vote on April 6, the bills with the least restrictions on the EPA’s authority were trounced (Baucus Amendment 7-yes, 93-no; Rockefeller 12-yes, 88-no; Stabenow 7-yes, 93-no) while the strongest, the McConnell Amendment, came close to passing at 50-yes, 50-no. A similar plan passed the House 255 to 172.

While the climate has changed, the fight is not over. The battle continues. Following the Senate’s EPA skirmish, the New York Times said “Efforts to handcuff the environmental agency are not likely to end here.”

Admitting defeat on climate change legislation, Krupp encouraged the environmental movement to try “other approaches.”

As soon as Krupp’s suggestion surfaced, “other approaches” appeared. The next day (April 6) Senators Tom and Mark Udall (NM and CO, respectively) introduced legislation that retiring Senator Bingaman (NM) has been heralding for several years: The Renewable Energy Standard (RES). Simmering on the sidelines, the RES was ready and awaiting its moment. With the admitted death of cap and trade and animosity toward the EPA growing, it was time for something, as Krupp stated, “that might capture a bipartisan center.” The cousins Udall were all too happy to oblige with a bill that would set a federal RES of 6% renewable energy (wind, solar and “other renewable sources”) by 2013, reaching 25% by 2025. Both New Mexico and Colorado currently have state renewable energy standards—as do 27 others.

The Udall’s efforts, in this changed political climate, have so little chance of success, major news outlets ignored their announcement. The Colorado Independent said, “While the bill may be able to make it out of the Senate—although even that isn’t a certainty—it has almost no chance in the Republican controlled House.”

The RES should be seen as the “reinvention” of cap and trade—another approach. According to the New Mexico Independent, “The plan would allow energy suppliers to buy credits from other producers who produce renewable energy and allow producers to ‘bank’ the credits for up to four years and borrow credits for up to three years into the future.”

The RES would essentially achieve the same carbon emission reductions as a cap and trade plan by forcing the public to use more-expensive renewable energy—thus reducing energy consumption. (Generally states with a renewable energy standard have higher electricity rates.) Americans understand that when developing countries refuse to cut their energy use because it will hurt their economy, we shouldn’t be forced to cut ours either.

Despite the near certain failure of the Udall’s approach, don’t make the same mistake the White House made. Take these repeated “resurrections” seriously by keeping the green movement on the defense. They’ve been trying to make us replace economic energy that works for electricity that is expensive, intermittent, and ineffective. But America noticed. We woke up, showed up, stood up and spoke up.

You have changed the climate!

Known as the voice for energy, Marita Noon is the Executive Director at Energy Makes America Great Inc. the advocacy arm of the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy—working to educate the public and influence policy makers regarding energy, its role in freedom and the American way of life. She is a popular speaker, a frequent guest on television and radio, her commentaries have been published in newspapers, blogs and websites nationwide, and she has just completed her twentieth book: Take Away Energy, Take Away Freedom. Find out more at www.EnergyMakesAmericaGreat.org.

The House of Representatives this afternoon passed H. R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, by a vote of 255 to 172.  Nineteen Democrats voted Yes.  No Republicans voted No.  This is a remarkable turnaround from the last Congress when on 26th June 2009 the House voted 219 to 212 to pass the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

The Energy Tax Prevention Act, sponsored by Rep. Fred. Upton (R-Mich.), the Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and thereby put a potentially huge indirect tax on American consumers and businesses.   Coal, oil, and natural gas produce carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, when burned.  Those three fuels provide over 80% of the energy used in America.  Thus regulating carbon dioxide emissions essentially puts the EPA in charge of running the U. S. economy.

This is just the first step in stopping the Obama Administration’s attempt to raise energy prices .  The House bill now heads to the Senate, where yesterday an attempt to add the Energy Tax Prevention Act (introduced in the Senate as S. 482 by Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma) as an amendment to another bill was defeated on a 50-50 vote.  Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s amendment would have required 60 votes to be attached to S. 493.  Four Democrats joined 46 Republicans in voting for the amendment–Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.  Senator Susan Collins of Maine was the only Republican to vote No.

The strong House vote in favor of the Energy Tax Prevention Act should build new momentum to pass it in the Senate later this year.  Of course, the White House has already issued a veto threat, which shows that President Obama is not interested in creating new jobs and restoring prosperity to America.  Congress has now rejected cap-and-tax resoundingly, but the President still hopes to achieve through backdoor regulation his goals of skyrocketing electric rates and gasoline prices at the $10 a gallon European level.

Yesterday, Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein posted about the President’s pitch for a so-called “Clean Energy Standard.” I don’t recommend his explanation; for a much more accurate description of the CES, check out this blog, by my colleague Marlo Lewis.

In this post, I intend only to rebut Klein’s mistaken claim that Congressional opposition to cap-and-trade is partisan. In fact, opposition to energy rationing schemes is one of the very few issues that enjoys support on both sides of the aisle in the Congress.

Klein started his post with “a quick history” of Congressional climate policies. Here’s what he said,

“In the beginning, there was the carbon tax, which would work by putting a price on carbon. But that had no political support. Then there was cap-and-trade, which would work by making producers purchase permits for the carbon they emitted, and in so doing, would put a price on carbon. But though John McCain actually had a cap-and-trade proposal in 2008, Republicans eventually turned on cap-and-trade—Sarah Palin’s first post-election op-ed was dedicated to decrying “cap-and-tax” as “an enormous threat to our economy…”

Later, Klein wrote,

“…Republican politicians who know perfectly well that a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system are desirable policy have refused to stand up to the right wing of their party. They are profiles in cowardice…”

In assigning credit for the death of cap-and-trade to the “right wing” of the Republican Party, Klein ignores an inconvenient truth: Opposition to energy rationing is bipartisan. Consider,

• On June 6 2008, in the immediate wake of the Senate’s rejection of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade, which had been extensively reworked by Senator Barbara Boxer, 10 Senate Democrats—about 20 percent of the caucus—sent Senator Boxer a letter explaining that they voted or would have voted against her cap-and-trade because it would cause “undue hardship” for their constituents.

• On June 26 2009, forty Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a cap-and-trade energy rationing bill co-written by Henry Waxman.

• During the 2010 summer, Senate Democrats held weekly caucus meetings to build support for a Senate companion bill to the American Clean Energy and Security Act. They failed (spectacularly), because few Democratic Senators were willing to vote for an energy tax during a recession.

If cap-and-trade truly were a partisan matter, then it would have been enacted in the last Congress, when the supposedly pro-cap-and-trade party was in charge of the White House and both Chambers of Congress. We should all be happy that Klein is wrong; bipartisanship in the Congress has saved us from energy rationing.

The chance that the Senate will pass a comprehensive energy-rationing (a k a climate) bill this year remains close to zero.  BP’s big oil spill in the Gulf changes very little.

The global warming movement peaked last June 26 when the House passed the Waxman-Markey bill.  When members went home for the Fourth of July, many who voted for it discovered that their constituents were angry and mobilized.

Seeing the public reaction, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) dropped plans to move a cap-and-trade bill before the August recess and turned to health care reform.  It’s been all downhill since then.

The Kerry-Boxer bill, which is very similar to Waxman-Markey, passed the Environment and Public Works Committee last fall, but it was clear that it couldn’t get 51 votes, let alone 60, on the floor.  That’s when Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) began working on a “middle-of-the-road” package with Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.).

Even if he does finally release a draft of the measure this week, it’s still not going anywhere.  Whether Graham is on board doesn’t matter because he doesn’t bring any other Republicans with him.

Kerry’s draft has restricted cap-and trade to electric utilities only.  And he’s stopped calling it cap-and-trade because the American people have figured out that it is an indirect tax on them.  Now it’s “pollution reduction and investment.”  Similarly, a gasoline tax has been renamed “linked fee.”  Call it whatever you want, it’s still a tax that consumers will have to pay.  Adding some offshore oil or nuclear incentives or clean coal research can’t hide the fact that prices will go up when energy is rationed.

What’s become increasingly apparent is that this legislation no longer has much to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  It’s a monstrous collection of payoffs to big business special interests, ranging from Goldman Sachs to Duke Energy to General Electric.

(This piece originally appeared on the New York Times’s Room for Debate web site. )

It’s not clear what Al Gore has been doing the past three months since the Climategate scientific fraud scandal broke–perhaps doing a bit of interplanetary travel or hanging out in a remote cave discussing how to de-industrialize America with his fellow global warming alarmist, Osama bin Laden.  No matter, Gore has returned to his global warming crusade with an op-ed in the Sunday New York Times.  And what an op-ed!   “We can’t wish away climate change” is 1896 words, or about three times the length of most op-eds.  Unfortunately, the leader of the forces of darkness hasn’t learned a thing during his mysterious sabbatical.

Gore begins by claiming that “it would be an enormous relief” if global warming turned out not to be a crisis.  This is undoubtedly true for most people, but Gore can’t resist piling on: “I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion.”  Oh, really?  Can anyone believe that the man who has remade himself from a losing presidential candidate into the savior of the planet wants it all to go away?  And who stands to make hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars from investments in green technology if energy-rationing policies are enacted?  Would he give back his Oscar and his Nobel Peace Prize?

Gore then summarizes Climategate as “the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”  Yes, at least two mistakes.  One that he doesn’t mention is the systematic manipulation of data in order to make the 1930s and ’40s appear cooler and the 1990s and 2000s warmer in the surface temperature record.  Another is the conspiracy to cover up the Medieval Warm Period with the infamous hockey-stick graph.  Nor does Gore mention that Professor Phil Jones, the central figure in Climategate, conceded in a recent interview that there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995.

For Gore, the scientific case for alarmism is exactly as it was before Climategate, except that it’s “clearer and clearer” that things are actually worse than scientists thought.  This is a refrain Gore trots out every few months, and it is  the main reason he continues to lose credibility.

From misrepresenting the science Gore moves on to describe the political obstacles to global energy rationing.  He correctly summarizes the obstacles as formidable, but can’t resist telling another tall tale.  He claims that China “had privately signaled last year that if the United States passed meaningful legislation, it would join in serious efforts to produce an effective treaty” in Copenhagen.  But when the Senate failed to pass cap-and-trade, “the Chinese balked.”  This “private signal” is sheer fantasy.  The Chinese government have made it clear in the most direct, undiplomatic language at every international global warming pow-wow for years that they will not commit to mandatory emissions reductions.

Gore concludes with a long, incoherent rant about why he and his fellow doomsters have so far failed.  It all started with the fall of Communism.  This allowed “market fundamentalists” to convince ignorant voters that, “Laws and regulations interfering with the operations of the market carried a faint odor of the discredited statist adversary we had just defeated.”

So what is to be done?  Here Gore becomes totally unglued.  “…[W]hat is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.”  The point about a regime of laws in particular and politics in general is that they cannot be instruments of human redemption.  Gore’s global salvationism (to use English economist David Henderson’s insightful term) is not far removed from the totalitarianism of Communism and National Socialism, as he makes clear in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance.

And where does Gore put his hopes for human redemption?  Hilariously, Gore is counting on Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), who may release a draft energy-rationing bill this week that Gore hopes “will place a true cap on carbon emissions.”

This shows that Gore can still get a laugh now and then, but he’s become another illustration of the old adage that even the best vaudeville acts eventually wear out.  It’s time for Al Gore to hang up the soft shoes and shuffle off the stage.