Speaker Nancy Pelosi is arguably the most powerful woman in America. But if she wants to see her real power, she should bring the drilling issue to a vote. Only a Fed chairman could have so much impact on market prices.
2008
New Hampshire is among a dozen states, New York City and the District of Columbia that are suing the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming the Bush administration has failed to rein in emissions from oil refineries.
According to the Los Angeles Times, California’s Legislature is on the verge of adopting SB 375, the nation's first law to control planet-warming gases by curbing sprawl. The legislation would offer incentives to steer public funds away from sprawled development. The state spends about $20 billion a year on transportation, and under the new law, projects that meet climate goals would get priority. The bill is expected to pass the Assembly today and the Senate on Friday.
Will gas prices keep dropping?
A recent drive I took ended with a very strange coincidence. If I were superstitious, I’d regard it as a sign that we’re in for cheaper gas.
Two weekends ago we drove our daughter to college in central Virginia. As we started heading out, I noticed that regular at the neighborhood gas station had dropped to $3.65. That was nice, since the price had been above $3.80 only days before.
We got off I-66 at Gainesville, which two years ago had been the scene of a locally famous price war that for a while led to gas below $2.00!. Filling up at that price back then had been a memorable event for me, since gas had nearly hit $3 only months before.
Further down the road we found prices below $3.50. We filled up—not quite as good a feeling as $1.98, but not bad. And then, at the very end of our trip, one station was selling regular at $3.39. I liked this trend.
Of course, the trend didn’t continue on the way back—duh. But then something strange happened. We pulled into a Gainesville station just before the last stretch home on I-66, and lo and behold—there was a van parked right in front of us with this message stenciled on its rear windshield:
“CRUISING IN LOVING MEMORY OF CHEAP GAS”
Googling this phrase turns up nothing, so it’s not like this is a ready-made window stencil purchased by scores of people. The van we saw may well be the only one in the country carrying this message, and we just happened to pull up behind it after driving all day idly noting gas prices.
I’m a fan of cheap gas. It’s good for my wallet, and it’s good for people universally. If this was an omen of lower prices to come, it was a good omen.
Related links:
Why fans of cheap gas are more honest than warriors against “oil addiction”
Stop kvetching about Exxon (1-minute video)
Visiting New Mexico this week, I haven't found much interest in the global warming debate, but it is having an impact on local issues. The Navajo Nation has finally gained permitting approval for a huge new coal-fired power plant. The plant would be sited next to a coal mine on the Navajo Reservation in northwest New Mexico . (By the way, New Mexico has a lot of coal reserves in the northwest corner, much of it under Navajo land. Coal provides the State with most of its electricity.) The electricty produced would be exported over the grid to population centers in the Southwest.
Naturally, environmental pressure groups have not given up. They are challenging the regulatory approval in court. One of the grounds is that the regulators did not take into account the carbon dioxide emissions that the plant would produce and its contribution to global warming. I don't think they can win in federal court under current laws, but they must hope that if they can delay the project a couple of years, then Congress might pass cap-and-trade legislation that would make coal plants uneconomic.
I don't know whether any utility companies have expressed interest in buying electricity from the Navajos' new plant, but it seems likely that indirectly the plant will help California reach its emissions reduction targets. California imports more and more of its electricity from nearby States, but its new global warming law prohibits importing electricity produced by burning coal. This new plant would allow utilities in Arizona or Nevada to sell their low-emissions electricity to California and then replace it with cheaper coal power from the Navajo plant. Sounds like a win-win to me.
If only drivers could avoid high gasoline prices as easily as Congress has avoided doing anything about them.
Barack Obama has made his economic thinking excruciatingly clear, so it also is clear that his running mate should have been not Joe Biden, but Rumpelstiltskin. He spun straw into gold, a skill an Obama administration will need in order to fulfill its fairy-tale promises.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Through my scavenging of the Web I came across a homemade video (in somebody's kitchen?) of an interview with Tom Peterson (pictured), executive (self-employed) director of the Center for Climate Strategies. In the discussion he confirms much of what has already been reported about CCS and has a few new revelations:
How CCS was started (:29): "…by working with governors primarily and other state leaders who wanted to step up to the plate and find ways to begin reducing the greenhouse gas emissions, to tackle the problem from the bottom-up…"
As we've reported, CCS's strategy is to approach governors (and the process is usually that CCS lobbies them, not that governors go seeking them out, as documents have shown) with the premise that the "Bush Administration/Federal Government/EPA is not doing enough to address global warming so it's up to the states (the "laboratories for democracy," or in this case, the laboratories for economic destruction experimentation) to address this vital work,"…blah, blah, blah…. Because CCS pockets are loaded with Rockefeller Brothers Fund money, states don't have to pay much for these climate study commission scams that Peterson wants governors to set up in their states. So the governor thinks, "hey, no brainer — I pay nothing and I look like I'm doing something about global warming! Let's do it!" Further testimony to this truth is shown by the fact that even respected and supposedly conservative GOP Governors (and potential McCain running mates) Sanford (S.C.), Crist (Fla.), Pawlenty (Minn.), and Palin (Alaska) have bought into the idea.
CCS's goals (:42): …"so we've been supporting them in the formulation of comprehensive climate action plans and all the policies that are involved in reducing emissions from all the different economic sectors in the economy (from the chairman of the Department of Redundancy Department:"Did I mention that we want to take over the economy?"), and ultimately lead to national policy and we hope even international agreements…."
See? I told you so.
Do you think we'll have a national framework for climate change? (2:50): "…the Supreme Court made it fairly clear in saying emphatically that the answer is 'yes, in fact we already have that framework.' It's called the Clean Air Act. Greenhouse gases are in fact pollutants that need to be covered by the Clean Air Act, so it will be the responsibility of the next president and the next administration, if this president decides not to take up the task, to actually add greenhouse gas controls to the Clean Air Act…Certainly the Clean Air Act is a template that is here. By law, it is a template that must be used…."
Of course this is enviro-crapola. Peterson has proven himself to be a non-credible source who is all too happy to quash discussion of climate science, hide CCS's funding sources and agenda, exaggerate his credentials, and ignore economic impacts of CCS's proposals.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
Earlier this week Climate Strategies Watch showed, mostly with documents it posted from tax returns, how the Center for Climate Strategies has its origins in global warming alarmism advocacy (despite their claims to the contrary). Today we will look at the contractors they have running the many state climate commissions where CCS has set up shop.
Instead of hiring their own people, CCS uses staff from the Pennsylvania Environmental Council to handle administrative work and contracts out for their technical and facilitation service work for states. You can view their top five highest paid contractors in both FY2006 (PDF) and FY2007 (PDF) (these tax returns are for Enterprising Environmental Solutions, Inc., where CCS is housed).
So, who are these people? Well, it's best to start with the person identified as CCS's executive director, Thomas D. (Tom) Peterson, who received nearly $180,000 in each of the last two years from EESI/CCS. Peterson is at the forefront of this state-level effort despite not being a formal employee for CCS, as he owns all the domain names for current and potentially future climate commission Web sites. More on him in a future post.
E.H. Pechan & Associates
Consultants E.H. Pechan received $195,819 in FY2006 and $287,682 in FY2007. Pechan provides "climate change services" including emissions inventories for governments and businesses."For our clients," the company's Web site explains, "Pechan develops emission inventories (e.g., developing baselines), verifies inventory and reduction projects, develops data management systems, and assists with GHG mitigation plans." Pechan's client list reads like a "Who's-Who" of environmental alarmist groups: Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Climate Trust, the Energy Foundation, and the Pacific Forest Trust.
You could say climate change is big business for E.H. Pechan, and several of the CCS-controlled state climate commissions can be included on that list of clients. Names of Pechan-employed consultants as state climate commission consultants include Steve Roe, Randy Strait, and Holly Lindquist.
Symbiotic Strategies
Symbiotic Strategies is Kenneth Colburn, an alarmist (see video) who received $104,230 from EESI/CCS in FY2006. He continues to work as a leader on behalf of CCS with state climate commissions, but apparently in FY2007 his level of compensation did not rise to the level of their top-five paid outside contractors.
Karl Hausker & Others
Karl Hausker, once a deputy director for CCS who was paid $91,900 in FY2006, is also an adjunct fellow with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, where some of his work focused on problems with global climate change. According to his bio, he led the EPA's programs on climate change and on trade and the environment between 1993 and 1995.
Dr. David Von Hippel, who assisted the North Carolina climate commission's Residential, Commercial and Industrial sub-study group, is also a senior associate with the Nautilus Institute, a public policy organization in San Francisco. The organization takes a clear posture on the dangerous repercussions from greenhouse gases: "Our planet now faces a looming climate catastrophe caused by human action," according to a 2003 Nautilus briefing paper titled, "Our Burning Path: Action or Denial on Global Warming?"
Von Hippel himself adopted a similar stance in a report for Nautilus. "Scientific consensus is that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, prominently including carbon dioxide and methane emitted by fossil fuels combustion, will cause global climate to change in the next several decades, if such changes have not already occurred," he wrote. "The impacts of climate change will vary widely across the globe, but those countries with the largest, least affluent populations per unit land area will likely be among the most vulnerable."
Von Hippel is associated with other similarly focused organizations, including the Stockholm Environment Institute, where he is also identified as a senior associate. At least two other CCS subcontractors who have worked on state climate commissions are affiliated with the Stockholm Institute as well: advisors Bill Dougherty, Michael Lazarus, and Sivan Kartha.
Stockholm Environment Institute received $331,032 from CCS as an outside consultant in FY2007 (PDF).
William Schroeer is a CCS consultant employed by ICF International in Fairfax, Va. The company works with government and commercial enterprises in six fields: energy, environment, transportation, social programs, defense, and homeland security. Schoeer leads ICF's "smart growth" consulting work.
Terry Tamminen (pictured with a friend) was paid $225,000 by CCS in FY2007 as an outside consultant. He has served in California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneggar's administration as an environmental adviser. He is the author of "Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction," explained in his bio as "a timely examination of our dependence on oil and a strategy to evolve to more sustainable energy sources."
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