EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen is dead against the current plans by the European Commission to reduce CO2 emissions for new cars. He is warning against rules that interfere in the private life of citizens.
May 2008
A senior EU official said Sunday that a European Union deadline to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new cars by 2012 was unrealistic, according to an interview with a German newspaper.
According to an article in today’s Greenwire, Concentrating Solar Power technology has a bright future if
1. federal renewable tax credits are extended;
2. a federal 25% by 2025 renewable portfolio standard for electric utilities is adopted;
3. a carve-out specifically for solar is included in the 25% RPS;
4. European-style "feed-in" tariffs are adopted;
5. more transmission lines to remote areas with high solar resources are built:
6. a multibillion-dollar federal fund is created;
7. a national cap on greenhouse gas emissions is enacted.
If this level of government support were given to horse-drawn carriages and wagons, the era of the automobile would soon be a brief interlude in the age of the horse.
You may have wondered why there has been no Congressional effort to actually legislate the "global warming" policies that will supposedly save the planet from itself. For six years, the Democratic minority indulged in often nasty rhetoric, with the gist being: We know the problem. We know the solution. Your hearings are a delaying tactic. We. Must. Act. Now!
After winning the majority, Dems muttered for a while about how that mean George Bush would just veto their legi-salvation anyway: Why bother? We'll just work for a bigger majority – and the White House. Though, as I have noted on Planet Gore before, Bush had threatened no veto – and on those occasions since January 2007 when he did threaten a veto, in other policy contexts, the Dems typically took it as a challenge to pass something. So there seemed to be something missing from their political calculation, or at least their public rhetoric.
Today's E&E Daily (subscription required) has a hilarious apologia, "Sponsors lower expectations for Lieberman-Warner bill," offering a walk-through of the phenomenon afflicting our crusaders. Here as in pretty much every country in the world (posturing notwithstanding), global warming is such a grave threat that other people need to "do something." Given the inescapable price tag, lawmakers looked and discovered that anything they propose would actually be doing nothing – besides harming state economies. And if forced to choose, it seems they would prefer it be other states' economies that are harmed.
"The Lieberman-Warner-Boxer camp is facing increasing demands from all corners of the Senate to change the bill that would establish a cap-and-trade system with midcentury emission limits of 70 percent below 2005 levels.
Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown told the Cleveland Plain Dealer this week he was holding out in his support for the Lieberman-Warner bill because it did not do enough to protect his home state's manufacturing jobs while still stimulating investments in alternative energy. "I have serious concerns about any climate-change bill that doesn't take into account energy-intensive industries like we have in Ohio – glass and chemicals and steel and aluminum and foundries," Brown said.
"He's concerned," Brown spokeswoman Joanna Kuebler explained yesterday. "He's leaning toward a no."
Sen. Maria Cantwell [NB: Democrat] of Washington said in an interview that she is also pushing for changes in the Lieberman-Warner bill to benefit her home state's abundant supplies of hydropower. "We want to make sure people who are already good at reducing CO2 emissions will continue to do that and not be penalized," she said. Cantwell explained that she has not joined the bill as a cosponsor because she wants to keep working on it.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said he wants a more beneficial emission allocation system for his state's rural energy producers." Obviously, I represent a state that's a significant power producer," Conrad said. "Most people don't think of North Dakota that way. But we produce electricity for nine states. We have the largest coal gasification plant in the country. We have very large reserves of lignite coal." [Meanwhile], Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) maintained that he is a long way from backing the Lieberman-Warner bill. Instead, he is taking a close look at an alternative climate bill circulated from Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) that opens with tax incentives for new energy technologies but falls back on cap and trade if the other ideas have not worked by 2030."
That mean George Bush and those nasty filibustering Republicans are blocking a climate bailout. Or, maybe not so much. As my CEI colleague Myron Ebell characterizes this: thieves fall out when it comes time to split up the loot.
Speaking of energy (see here), we can't help but give more attention to a recent press release from some of the Senate's leading liberals. Charles Schumer, Byron Dorgan, Bernie Sanders, Bob Casey and Mary Landrieu are demanding that President Bush tell OPEC nations to increase their oil supplies or risk losing arms deals with the United States. The Senators say U.S. consumers need the price relief that only increased oil production can bring.
When heralded Canadian environmentalist Lawrence Solomon first set out two years ago – on a bet, no less – to find credible dissenters to the well-entrenched climate change dogma, he thought he might perhaps unearth enough material for a few National Post columns. Instead, like Alice passing through the looking glass, Mr. Solomon entered a world wherein it soon became clear the much-ballyhooed idea of a "scientific consensus" was as nonsensical as "Jabberwocky."
US presidential candidates John McCain and Hilary Clinton vow to combat man-made climate change by curbing America's CO2 emissions. They also vow to give American drivers a tax holiday this summer by suspending the federal gas tax. Voters are upset at the price they must pay at the pump.
Great Britain is a decade ahead of Canada in the global warming debate and what's happening there today is instructive for us.
From Planet Gore, National Review Online
The NRDC has a full-page ad in the New York Times today hailing "The Economic Stimulus Plan that can Save the World." This miracle piece of legislation is none other than the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill. NRDC's premise is put quite simply in the ad — Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! In other words, shifting over from old-energy technology to new-energy technology will create jobs aplenty.
This is hooey, of course. Don't take my word for it, here's resource economist Billy Pizer:
"As an economist, I am skeptical that [dealing with climate change] is going to make money. You'll have new industries, but they'll be doing what old industries did but a higher net cost…. You'll be depleting other industries."
As James Pethokoukis points out in the surrounding commentary, the Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! hype is just a re-run of Bastiat's obviously-not-famous-enough Broken Windows Fallacy — by breaking a window, I am contributing to the economy by providing work for a glazier! (Of course, all you've done is cost the economy one window). By this reasoning, the devastation in Myanmar is a boon for its economy. Note furthermore this interpretation of the parable:
Austrian economists, and Bastiat himself, apply the parable of the broken window in a more subtle way. If we consider the parable again, we notice that the little boy is seen as a public benefactor. Suppose it was discovered that the little boy was actually hired by the glazier, and paid a franc for every window he broke. Suddenly the same act would be regarded as theft: the glazier was breaking windows in order to force people to hire his services. Yet the facts observed by the onlookers remain true: the glazier benefits from the business at the expense of the baker, the cobbler, and so on. Bastiat demonstrates that people actually do endorse activities which are morally equivalent to the glazier hiring a boy to break windows for him.
This is close to what NRDC is lobbying for. They are urging Congress to break windows to advance their own policy goals.
At least they don't go quite as far along this line of argument as Barack Obama:
Barack Obama also believes the transition to a clean energy economy holds special promise for low-income communities and families, which are poised to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden of global climate change. To combat this problem, Obama will create an energy-focused youth jobs program to invest in disconnected and disadvantaged youth. This program will provide youth participants with energy efficiency and environmental service opportunities to improve the energy efficiency of homes and buildings in their communities, while also providing them with practical skills and experience in important career fields of expected high-growth employment.
Yes, he's going to train disaffected youngsters who could have gone into the steel mills or auto plants to change twisty lightbulbs for people.
From The Locker Room:
If the same category four cyclone (or "hurricane" in the Atlantic) hit an industrialized country, the storm would have been harmful but not even remotely close to the devastation that exists today in Myanmar.
This tragedy doesn't provide ammunition for global warming (category four cyclones aren't unique), but for the need for countries and their citizens to develop better infrastructure, build better buildings, have better emergency services, etc.
The only way these changes will happen is if poor countries are able to generate the wealth necessary to make the changes. The only way for the U.S. to better protect itself against hurricanes is to ensure that we continue to be a wealthy country.
Al and friends instead want to tell third world countries that the single most critical factor to develop wealth, low-cost energy, should be prohibited. They want to adopt policies that would keep the poor countries poor and put wealthy countries on a path to poverty.
The Beacon Hill Institute examined the impact that policies being considered by the Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change would have on North Carolina. Please recognize that these policies wouldn't even come close to what the zealots want in terms of reductions in carbon dioxide. Policies include a cap and trade program, taxes on driving, taxes on electricity use, etc.
From the press release: “By 2011, the state would shed more than 33,000 jobs,” according to the report from the Beacon Hill Institute, the research arm of the economics department at Boston’s Suffolk University. “Annual investment would drop by about $502.4 million, real disposable income by more than $2.2 billion, and real state Gross Domestic Product by about $4.5 billion.”
When the Beacon Hill Instutute presented this data to the Commission, there wasn't a dispute about the numbers. Those trying to argue weren't concerned with the actual loss of jobs and the devastation on the economy, but instead were pointing out that this is a price that needs to be paid.
North Carolina, the U.S. and for that matter the entire globe have to make choices. We can choose to adopt policies that would have no effect (PDF) on temperature and have devastating effects on our economy and our ability to prepare for major storms or we can choose to be sensible and do all we can to ensure that public policy doesn't undermine countries from having the wealth necessary to protect themselves from natural disasters.
I'm inclined to favor the latter option, but that's just me.
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