Every time a new coal-fired power plant is proposed anywhere in the United States, a lawyer from the Sierra Club or an allied environmental group is assigned to stop it, by any bureaucratic or legal means necessary. They might frame the battle as a matter of zoning or water use, but the larger war is over global warming: Coal puts twice as much temperature-raising carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as natural gas, second to coal as the most common power plant fuel.
April 2008
There are strong suggestions circulating that President Bush is about to ask Congress to pass a bill on global warming. The story even made the front page of the Washington Times today. What's going on?
My hope is that this is actually a "trial balloon." As we used to say in the British government when leaking a potentially unpopular idea, "Let's run up a flag and see who salutes."
The purported reason for the call is because the Administration has correctly realized the extent of the mess it is in following the ridiculous decision by the Supreme Court last year (in Massachusetts v EPA) that the Clean Air Act can apply to carbon dioxide. For the legally minded, a good rundown of exactly why this was a bad decision can be found here. In any event, the Administration now faces a regulatory nightmare forced on the nation by the use of the Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Protection Act to take the action on global warming that environmental zealots want but Congress has been reluctant to take. The EPA has, very sensibly, announced a wide public consultation so that people can voice their concerns about what regulations under the CAA would mean for them.
So, one might argue, the President would be right to take this action and call on Congress to take action and avoid the regulatory morass. That'd be wrong. What the activists have done via their court actions is to say, 'Pretty nice economy you got there. Shame if someone came along and wrecked it.' This is policy extortion and the President should not give in to it. Any bill proposed by the White House is likely to be unacceptable to the zealots and their Congressional allies, but the President's concession that "something must be done" will stregthen their hand immensely. So what we are likely to end up with is a much stronger global warming bill that probably also leaves the regulatory nightmare unaffected, because they will not stand by and allow any teeth to be pulled from their precious CAA, ESA or NEPA. We'd end up with the worst of both worlds.
If this is a trial flag, first indications appear to be that House Republicans, far from saluting, want to tear it down and set it on fire. If so, that's a time I'd approve of flag burning.
President Bush is poised to change course and announce as early as this week that he wants Congress to pass a bill to combat global warming, and will lay out principles for what that should include. Specifics of the policy are still being fiercely debated, but Bush administration officials have told Republicans in Congress that they feel pressure to act now because they fear a coming regulatory nightmare. It would be the first time Mr. Bush has called for statutory authority on the subject.
Leaders in Haiti are looking for a new prime minister as the Caribbean nation tries to recover from a week of deadly food riots. Haitian lawmakers dismissed Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis on April 12, saying he had not done enough to improve the economy or to keep soaring food prices under control.
The diversion of food crops to biofuel production was a significant factor contributing to global food prices rocketing by 83% in the last year, and causing violent conflicts in Haiti and other parts of the world. Haiti was rocked by violent protests this week, leaving 5 dead, hundreds injured and resulting in parliament passing a vote of no confidence against Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis for failing to take enough action on high food prices. And food related civil unrest appears to be a growing, according to a study by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), which warned that food riots have also taken place in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Mauritania, Madagascar and the Philippines in the past month.
One of the most influential scientists behind the theory that global warming has intensified recent hurricane activity says he will reconsider his stand. The hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unveiled a novel technique for predicting future hurricane activity this week. The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.
Richard Sandor, president of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), said in an interview with E and E TV (subscription req), “I just want to see reductions.” CCX also owns 50% of the European Climate Exchange, which covers 85% of EU emissions credits.
It dawned on me after reading this paragraph from the Wall Street Journal’s “EU greenhouse-Gas Emissions Rose 1.1% Last Year” that investment banks and hedge funds actually don’t want EU companies to reduce their emissions:
"Hedge funds, investment banks and brokers trade carbon permits as they would any other commodity, like gold or oil. And while the data released Wednesday might fuel pessimistic predictions about the effectiveness of the scheme in holding back emissions, financial players were bullish about what it meant for the carbon market."
It’s in the financial interest of hedge funds and investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, for those emissions to keep rising. The less companies reduce emissions, the more carbon credits they need to buy. The lower the emissions cap, the harder for companies to meet the cap with actual reductions and the more money these banks and funds make through companies needing to purchase carbon credits for them.
As Sandor says about the lowering EU caps, “…lower is what we want, right?”
Henry Paulson, the current US Secretary of the Treasury and former Goldman Sachs CEO, co-founded with Al Gore, Generation Investment Management. GIM now manages $5 billion in “sustainable” investments. And Goldman Sachs owns 10% of the Chicago Climate Exchange. (See blog post entitled “Maurice Strong”)
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius's secretary of health and environment, Roderick Bremby, said in an Associated Press interview that he based his decision to deny air permits for two coal-fired power plants on last April's Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA. It appears that he understands that the court really did not mandate that EPA regulate CO2 emissions (Stevens: ""We need not and do not reach the question whether on remand EPA must make an endangerment finding. . . . We hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for actions or inaction in the statute."), but merely stated that EPA has the authority to do so should it determine it is an endangerment to public health. But nevertheless he grounded his decision based on the court's ruling, not on anything actually in the state law, the Clean Air Act, or in any EPA decision.
Bremby also said during an interview with The Associated Press that the concerns of eight other states also were important. And, he said, the decision took on a moral dimension as he considered his duty to protect Kansans’ health and the state’s environment.
But Bremby said the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision was crucial because the state’s air-quality laws are tied to the federal Clean Air Act. Deciding that CO2 wasn’t a factor would have created “a complete disconnect.”
Bremby decided in October to deny an air-quality permit to Sunflower Electric Power Corp. for the two plants.
“I think it was a typical permitting decision until the Supreme Court decision suggested that CO2 needed to be considered as a pollutant,” Bremby said. “The science was really insufficient for the decision. It was the science coupled with the interpretation of federal law by the Supreme Court.”
Meanwhile Gov. Sebelius plans to veto today a second attempt by the Kansas legislature to pass a law that would allow the new power plants to go forward, and the votes to override fall short by one. Apparently she will do so in North Carolina, where she is campaigning for (a cabinet post?) Barack Obama.
Today, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on the implications of climate change for human health. Malaria will top the menu, but so will ignorance and disinformation.
The law of unintended consequences has claimed many millions of victims over the centuries; the first decade of the 21st century is now demonstrating that governments have not lost the knack of destroying the livelihoods of the very people they purport to help.
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