European consumers shunning imported food supposedly to limit climate change should not make African farmers a scapegoat, a Brussels conference has been told.
In Britain, several supermarkets have begun labelling products flown into the country with stickers marked “air-freighted,” to reflect concern about the contribution of aviation to global warming.
But Benito Müller, a director at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, dismissed the concept of food miles as “an extremely oversimplified indicator” of ecological impact.
DAVID CAMERON is to abandon plans for “green” taxes amid fears of a backlash from voters unhappy about having to pay for climate change.
A leaked policy paper commissioned by the Tory leader warns that action on the environment is too often seen in terms of “consumer sacrifice”.
“If the US economy moves into recession this year, world economic growth could slow to just 1.6 percent in 2008,” according to a recent United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs policy brief, an almost 50% percent decrease.
Conversely, today in our global economy, the trickle-down theory correctly predicts that the poorest person’s lot in the developing countries would be improved by our increasing GDP. But the Lieberman-Warner (S.2191) tax on hydrocarbon energy would reduce that possibility. According to CEI’s Iain Murray,
Economist Anne Smith testified to Congress that her state-of-the-art economic modeling estimates that Warner-Lieberman would cause net reduction in 2015 GDP of 1.0% to 1.6% relative to the GDP that would otherwise occur. That loss rises to the range of 2% to 2.5% after 2015. Smith found that the annual loss in GDP would increase to the range of $800 billion to $1 trillion, which is serious money. By 2020, Smith estimates losses of 1.5 to 3.4 million jobs – and that is net jobs, after adjusting for the new "green" jobs that might be created by the bill.
The world depends upon America’s pursuit of happiness. And as those Third World boats float in the world’s rising tide, only then will people in those countries begin to be able to afford to be environmentally conscious.
A front page story in the Washington Times by Patrice Hill reports that Americans are currently most worried by high energy prices. They should be. So far, the 110th Congress has passed and President Bush has signed an anti-energy bill, H. R. 6, that will raise gasoline, auto, food, and appliance prices. And the House and Senate are actively considering other bills that will increase gas and electricity prices a whole lot more (see, for example, S. 2191).
But now two members of the House have introduced a bill that would increase domestic oil and natural gas production and thereby lower prices over the long term. The American-Made Energy Act, H. R. 5890, was introduced by Representatives Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Mike Ross (D-Ark.) on February 14. According to Rep. Nunes’s press release, the bill will open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) areas to oil and gas exploration. The tens and hundreds of billions of dollars from leasing and royalty payments would be used to fund a wide range of tax credits, loan guarantees, and grants to encourage renewable vehicle fuels, plug-in hybrid vehicles, coal to liquids, and electricity production from renewable sources and nuclear power plants.
The 109th Congress failed narrowly to pass bills that would have opened the OCS and ANWR. The 110th Congress is much more hostile to increasing domestic energy production, so the Nunes-Ross bill isn’t going to become law anytime soon. But it is a most hopeful sign, nonetheless. It takes persistence to enact controversial legislation. By introducing H. R. 5890, Representatives Nunes and Ross have signaled that they are in this fight for the long haul.
CEI’s new online video spot, Where’s the Warming?, challenges global warming alarmists to justify their calls for restrictions on energy use. Carbon dioxide from man's energy use has continued to increase in the atmosphere in recent years, but recent studies show that average global temperatures have not.
The two-minute video, which can be viewed on YouTube, pays tribute to the famous “Where’s the Beef?” ads of two decades ago. It contrasts clips from Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, with actual temperature data.
The basic alarmist contention is that we must restrict affordable energy use because CO2 is the most important determinant of global temperatures. But this year’s unexpectedly cold winter and, more importantly, the temperature trends of the last few years tell a different story. There has been practically no global warming in the last five years or more. Even prominent climate modelers have admitted natural factors are coming into play.
CEI Senior Fellow Iain Murray commented, "Temperatures ought to be at a peak, but instead they've held steady for at least the last five years and by some accounts, they've actually dropped. The case for urgent action to restrict energy use is getting weaker, not stronger. Given that affordable energy is the best hope of escape from poverty for billions around the globe, politicians need to ask themselves "where's the beef" before pushing their anti-energy policies."
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