October 2007

France is unlikely to meet its target of a fourfold reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050, according to a report by a government-appointed commission, business daily La Tribune reported on Monday.

The earth is too small to accommodate all the biofuels projects envisioned for the globe, and this raises doubts whether green fuels will ever play a big role in weaning the world off crude oil.

A strange, almost funny thing recently happened at the State Department.  This was unusual not solely because proceedings at Foggy Bottom generally prompt fits of sobbing rather than bemusement.  At a gathering for his “Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change”, President Bush stood before the media, representatives of more than a dozen European and other nations, plus antagonists from Capitol Hill and, buried in his speech, offered long-overdue if curiously lukewarm defense of U.S. performance on greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). 

All eyes are on Greenland's melting glaciers as alarm about global warming spreads. This year, delegations of U.S. and European politicians have made pilgrimages to the fastest-moving glacier at Ilulissat, where they declare that they see climate change unfolding before their eyes.

This was some good work. Pretty convincing.

This is even better. Kid's got impressive range. Maybe he could pick up a Nobel.

Of course, cavemen have much smaller carbon footprints.

>Today’s New York Times, noting that crude oil recently hit $83.32 a barrel on Sept. 20 and stayed above $80 a barrel for the next two weeks, provides some eye-popping numbers on how the high cost of crude is affecting transport industries:

Airlines worldwide expect to spent $132 billion for jet fuel this year, up from $40 billion in 2002. The industry estimates that the share of operating costs devoted to fuel has doubled in six years. Similarly, the American trucking industry expects to spend $107 billion on diesel fuel this year, up from $45 billion in 2002. This means that fuel eats up nearly twice as much of the industry’s annual revenue…

Fortunately, a boom in business has protected trucking’s bottom line. “Had this happened 10 years ago, the industry would have been decimated,” the Times quotes Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Association, as saying.

An obvious question that leaps to mind: How much higher can fuel prices go without ‘decimating’ the trucking and airline industries–or without triggering a recession?

This question is all the more pertinent given the enthusiasm on Capitol Hill for mandatory global warming policies. For example, John Dingell, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, recently advocated (a) a $50 tax on the carbon content of fuels, (b) a $.50 hike in federal motor fuel taxes, and (c) a cap-and-trade program adequate to reduce U.S. emissions 60 to 80 percent by 2050.

A $50 tax on the carbon content of fuels translates into a $.50 cents per gallon gasoline tax. So Dingell is effectively asking for a $1.00 per gallon hike in gasoline taxes. A cap-and-trade program, especially one tough enough to reduce emissions by 60 to 80 percent, would put an additional heavy constraint on petroleum supply, further inflating fuel costs.

So it is a real question whether the airline and trucking industries could remain profitable under the kinds of global warming policies Dingell and others are proposing–and whether the U.S. economy could continue to grow.

Although higher fuel costs would hurt consumers and the economy, emissions might still go up: economic pain for no environmental gain. Consider the European experience.

Because of high motor fuel taxes, Europeans in some countries pay $7.00 a gallon or more for gasoline. But where in Europe are all the zero-emission vehicles? Where is the miracle fuel to replace petroleum? Europe is not one mile closer than we are to achieving a “beyond petroleum” transport system. Indeed, EU transport sector emissions grew by almost 26 percent from 1990 to 2004.

Dingell is more up front than most pols about the costs of Kyotoism. But hiding the costs of climate policy has become a fine art on the Hill. The question a straight talker like Dingell should be raising is: How much higher than European level gasoline prices does Congress think Americans should have to pay to reduce emissions?

Last week (September 28), House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-MI) caused quite a stir by proposing global warming legislation that would directly and openly increase the cost of gasoline and home ownership.

As Dingell explained in a statement on his Web site, the proposed legislation would:

• Establish a $50 per ton tax on the carbon content of fuels, including coal, petroleum, and natural gas;
• Increase federal motor fuel taxes on gas, jet fuel, and kerosene by $.50/gallon; and
• Phase out mortgage interest tax deductions on homes larger than 3,000 square feet.

Some climate skeptics speculated that Dingell, who butted heads with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Henry Waxman, and other global warming crusaders earlier this year, was actually trying to pour cold water on climate policies of the Al Gore variety. Gore is a leading proponent of cap-and-trade regulation, the centerpiece of the Kyoto climate treaty he negotiated.

For politicians eager to avoid blame for the burdens they impose on the public, cap-and-trade offers significant advantages. Most Americans have no familiarity with cap-and-trade, so it does not arouse their fear or anger. More importantly, because cap-and-trade programs are regulatory, their costs are indirect or hidden, unlike gasoline taxes, which come clearly labeled at the pump.

So some skeptics hoped that Dingell was issuing a wake up call to a public already upset about high gas prices and worried about the collapsing sub-prime mortgage market.

Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking. Dingell offered his proposed legislation as one element of a package that also includes “an economy-wide cap-and-trade program.” Economists generally view carbon taxes and cap-and-trade as competing alternatives, not as complementary. Indeed, from a climate skeptic’s viewpoint, a carbon tax has redeeming social value only if it replaces all climate-related regulation—not just cap-and-trade but also renewable portfolio standards, bio fuel mandates, and fuel economy standards.

Instead, Dingell offers carbon taxes as an add-on. The carbon tax/mortgage elimination bill is just one step towards reducing “greenhouse gas emissions 60 to 80 percent by 2050.”

Even as a civics lesson, the bill is of limited value. If Dingell’s real aim were to expose the costs of Kyotoism, he should have called for a $5.00 per gallon increase in gasoline taxes, a $500 per ton carbon tax, and outright elimination of home mortgage deductions. Such burdens are much closer to what it would take reduce emissions by 60 to 80 percent.

That Dingell (sadly) has no interest in being a spoiler is evident from the white paper he issued yesterday, the first in a series on cap-and-trade legislation. In both the white paper and an accompanying memorandum, Dingell reiterates that his goal is to reduce emissions 60 to 80 percent by 2050. He says that although carbon taxes and technology programs are “valuable tools, they do not fall under the province of the Committee and will therefore not be the focus of these papers.” In the policy mix Dingell envisions, carbon taxes are at most a side show, not the main event. The White Paper could not be clearer on this point:

Based on the hearings earlier this year, the Committee and Subcommittee Chairmen [i.e. Dingell and Rick Boucher of Virginia] have reached the following conclusions: The United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by between 60 and 80 percent by 2050 to contribute to global efforts to address climate change. To do so, the United States should adopt an economy-wide, mandatory greenhouse gas reduction program. The central component of this program should be a cap-and-trade program … The Subcommittee and full Committee will draft legislation to establish such a program.

Climate Change Workshop

Myron Ebell and Julie Walsh, Competitive Enterprise Institute and James Taylor , Heartland Institute

There are many serious objections to LOST, but one of the chief is that it provides a backdoor route to implementing UN environmental treaties, including the Kyoto protocol.  

Here's how I think it would work. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere will increase the acidity of the oceans as some of the added CO2 is absorbed by the oceans. Some biological scientists have predicted dire consequences from increasing acidification. (These effects, by the way, are a direct effect of more CO2 and are unrelated to whether or not CO2 causes any global warming.)

Complaints could be filed with one of the international tribunals created by LOST. If the tribunal decided that CO2 emissions were damaging the oceans, then the tribunal could decide that those emissions must be reduced. While most countries would probably just give lip service to this edict, such a response is not possible in the U. S.

According to the Constitution, ratified treaties have the same force as the Constitution. Under our citizen lawsuit provisions, a private citizen, such as an environmental pressure group, could then go to federal court and force the federal government to enforce the ruling of the LOST tribunal. The ruling could go far beyond the emissions reduction targets and timetables in the Kyoto Protocol.