I had to make a rare foray outside the Beltway to find out where the presidential candidates stand on global warming and energy rationing legislation. Top advisers for the Clinton, McCain, and Obama campaigns appeared together Thursday night at a conference at a fancy resort in Santa Barbara hosted by the Wall Street Journal.
The conference, which was called ECO:nomics, brought together around three hundred business leaders to discuss how to use government mandates and subsidies to turn green into gold. (There were ten or so free marketeers as well.) Naturally, the crowd was very receptive to the promises from all three campaigns to make cap-and-trade legislation a top priority in the White House.
The speakers were Gene Sperling for Clinton, Douglas Holtz-Eakin for McCain, and Jason Grumet for Obama. They were all intelligent, articulate, well-informed, and slightly dull. They agreed that what the economy needs is a good stiff dose of energy rationing, but each claimed that his candidate was more committed to the global warming agenda than the other two. The differences seemed to me to be mostly hair splitting, although Senator McCain favors nuclear power and is the only one of the three who has been a leader on the issue in the Senate.
I asked how the commitment to raising energy prices squared with complaints from the candidates that gasoline prices were too high. The answers were unconvincing, I thought. Jason Grumet said that Obama would pursue a centrist policy on energy and global warming policies that the vast majority of Americans in the middle, that is, between the extremes of CEI on the right and Grist magazine on the left, would support.
The audience was invited to vote on which candidate would be best on global warming. The first vote was Clinton 17%, McCain 41%, and Obama 42%. However, voting irregularities were alleged, so a re-vote was ordered. The second vote tally was Clinton 17%, McCain 42%, and Obama 41%.
A new study by NAM and ACCF projects the costs to consumers of the Leiberman-Warner cap and trade bill (S. 2191). Using the Department of Energy model and realistic estimates of the number of new nuclear power plants that could be built [approximately 10 plants (10GW) by 2030 in their High Cost Scenario and 25 plants in their Low Cost Scenario—in contrast, EIA projected 145GW new capacity, even though there hasn’t been a new reactor built since 1978], the well-respected Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) came up with these impacts on American consumers:
Job Losses: Between 1.2 and 1.8 million jobs lost by 2020; between 3 and 4 million lost by 2030
Disposable income decrease per household: Between $739 to $2,927 per year by 2020; between $4,022 to $6,752 by 2030
Gasoline price increase: Between 60% to 144% by 2030
Electricity price increase: Between 77% to 129% by 2030
Natural gas price increase: Between 84% to 146% by 2030
Reduced Gross Domestic Product: Between 0.8 percent and 1.1 percent off the gross domestic product in 2020 ($151 billion to $210 billion) and between 2.6 percent and 2.7 percent by 2030 ($630 billion to $669 billion).
Low income families will spend between 19% and 22% of their income on energy, compared to a projected 17% spent on energy without Leiberman-Warner.
If you’d like to know how Leiberman -Warner will affect your specific state, click here.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkgXa4_MWUw 285 234]
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