2009

Apologies for the late notice, but I had an article on the potential of solar power in last Friday’s Washington Examiner:

If the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed narrowly in the House of Representatives this week, also passes the Senate, does this mean that we’ll soon replace coal-derived electricity with clean and green solar power? Don’t count on it. Solar has a lot of problems, and those relying on it for the promised “green jobs” will probably be let down.

You might also be interested in the levelized cost-comparisons for building new power plants in 2016 from the Energy Information Administration, helpfully compiled by the Institute for Energy Research.  The cheapest form of energy (assuming a cost of carbon at $15 a ton)? Nuclear.  The most expensive? Solar thermal and solar photovoltaic.

Announcements

The Science & Environmental Policy Project this week sent an open letter from seven prominent scientists to Members of Congress warning them that they are being “deceived” by global warming alarmism. The authors of the letter note that, “the Earth has been cooling for ten years,” and that “the present cooling was NOT predicted by the alarmists’ computer models.” Read the full letter at www.climatedepot.com.

In the News

Fuel Standards Are Killing GM
Alan Reynolds, Wall Street Journal, 2 July 2009

Cap-and-Trade Can’t Deliver Jobs
Detroit News editorial, 2 July 2009

The Enron Revitalization Act of 2009
Robert Bradley, MasterResource.org, 1 July 2009

Facts, Costs, Consequences: Who Cares?
David Harsanyi, Denver Post, 1 July 2009

Global Warming Debate Isn’t Close to Settled
Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 1 July 2009

Americans Will Suffer So Dems Can “Save the Planet”
Jay Ambrose, Orange County Register, 1 July 2009

Democrats Vulnerable after Climate Vote
Jonathan Martin & Alex Isenstadt, Politico, 30 June 2009

Waxman-Markey Flunks Math
Rich Karlgaard, Forbes, 30 June 2009

Climate Bill Hurts the Least among Us
Kenneth W. Chilton, Detroit News, 30 June 2009

Waxman-Markey Is Hilarious, But the Joke’s on Us
Myron Ebell, Townhall, 29 June 2009

ACES Up Her Sleeve
Jeremy Lott & William Yeatman, American Spectator, 29 June 2009

EPA Quashes Dissent on Climate Change
John Hinderaker, PowerLine, 28 June 2009

Creating Green Jobs Means Destroying Other Jobs
Boston Herald editorial, 28 June 2009

The Utterly Misbegotten Climate Bill
John Steele Gordon, Commentary, 27 June 2009

Carbon-gate
Investor’s Business Daily editorial, 26 June 2009

News You Can Use

Waxman-Markey: Big Brother

There are more than 1400 new regulations and mandates in the 1,500 page American Clean Energy and Security Act, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

The Senate

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday, 7th July, on energy-rationing legislation. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack are the lead witnesses. Also testifying will be two witnesses representing the U. S. Climate Action Partnership-one from Dow Chemical and the other from Natural Resources Defense Council. The Republican minority have invited Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to testify. He knows a lot about energy.

Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has announced that she hopes to begin marking up the Senate’s version of an energy-rationing bill on 22nd July and finish before the August recess begins on the 7th or 8th. There is a rumor that Boxer intends to use the 946-page version of the Waxman-Markey bill that passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in May as her starting point, rather than the 1501-page version passed by the House on 26th July. One possible reason is that agricultural special interests are not particularly happy with the deal negotiated by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and want more from the Senate.

The House of Representatives

The House of Representatives voted 219 to 212 on final passage of H. R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act or Waxman-Markey bill, on Friday, 26th July.  The events last week that led to the narrow victory for proponents of energy rationing were extraordinary. On Monday night, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) sent a new 1201-page version of the 946-page bill his committee had passed on 21st May to the Rules Committee.  The Democratic leadership worked all week to round up votes. On Thursday night the Rules Committee met and at 3:09 AM an additional 309 page amendment was released.

The House began considering the 1510-page bill at 9 AM last Friday morning. The rule provided for one-hour of debate on the rule and then three hours of debate on the bill.  Of the two-hundred some amendments that had been filed, the Rules Committee allowed only one to be offered. Calling this a travesty of the legislative process is like calling D-Day a skirmish.

Debate ended around 7 PM with final passage. Eight Republicans voted Yes. Forty-four Democrats voted No. (To see all the votes, click here). Three Members missed the vote: Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), John Sullivan (R-Okla.), and Jeff Flake (R-Az.). Rep. Flake had announced earlier that he would miss the vote if it were on Friday because he would be attending a Junior Miss competition in which his daughter was participating. The Republican leadership must have already decided that they were going to lose the vote because they apparently accepted Flake’s (to me lame) reason and apparently didn’t put heavy pressure on the eight who voted Yes.

Among the many amusing or riveting incidents during the course of the debate, I only have room to mention a couple. Rep. Tom Price (D-Ga.) asking for a moment of silence for those who would lose their jobs if Waxman-Markey were enacted can be seen here.  A Democrat objected, so there was no moment of silence.

Two Texas Representatives did a great routine. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) made a parliamentary enquiry about where he could find a copy of the 309 pages that were added to the bill at 3:09 AM.  The chairman hemmed and hawed and finally said that she didn’t know. Then Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, made a parliamentary enquiry about whether there was a rule of the House that a copy of the bill on the floor had to be available. The chairman said that she was not aware of such a rule. Then after some more attempts to make enquiries about where a copy of the 309 pages could be consulted, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) disdainfully explained to his inferiors that a copy was in plain sight at the Clerk’s desk and was available on the web site. Then Rep. Barton pointed out that the copy available at the desk was the 1201 pages and a separate pile of the 309 pages, the pieces of which the clerk was trying to insert into their correct places in the 1201 pages.  He enquired whether this was an official copy. The chair said that yes “in effect” it was.

As I reported last week, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) used the prerogative reserved to the Speaker and Majority and Minority Leaders to speak as long as he wished.  His concluding powerful speech lasted more than an hour. Parts of it can be seen here. About twenty minutes in, Chairman Waxman enquired whether Mr. Boehner was going to be allowed to speak without limit. The chair ruled that it was the custom of the House to listen to the leader. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) then spoke only for a few minutes.  She told the House to remember that the Waxman-Markey bill was about four words: jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.

By the way, it was reported earlier this week that Chairman Henry Waxman was hospitalized in Los Angeles after saying that he felt unwell. I hope he’s just tired out from his mighty efforts to get his bill through the House and wish him a speedy recovery.  I learned from the news stories that he’s just about to publish a book, The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works.  I bet it’s worth reading.

Across the States

EPA Bites Off More Than It Can Chew

The Environmental Protection Agency this week issued a waiver allowing California to regulate vehicular tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases. As noted by CEI’s Marlo Lewis, the waiver has far-reaching consequences. It gives environmental lawyers the legal grounds under the Clean Air Act to compel the EPA to regulate hundreds of thousands of small businesses. To read more about this regulatory nightmare, click here.

Around The World

If We Start a Trade War, Will China Still Lend Us $ to Pay for Green Jobs?

The AFP reports today that Chinese officials are “firmly opposed” to provisions in the American Clean Energy and Security act that would force the President to impose “border adjustments” (a.k.a. tariffs) on the carbon content of imports from developing countries that aren’t fighting climate change by rationing energy. Earlier this year, Chinese officials warned that retaliation is likely if the U.S. resorted to carbon tariffs, which could lead to an economically ruinous trade war.

India (Again) Rejects Emissions Reductions

Jairam Ramesh, Indian Environment Minister, this week told Reuters, that India “will not accept any emission-reduction target, period. This is a non-negotiable stand.”

Today in her column, The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel explains the Obama EPA’s censoring of an internal study that questioned the scientific foundation for the administration’s climate change policies. The report, written by Alan Carlin, a senior analyst at the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, was released last week by CEI last week.

Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. “We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA,” the report read.

The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from “any direct communication” with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: “The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” (Emphasis added.)

Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: “With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate.” Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.

The emails were unearthed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Republican officials are calling for an investigation; House Energy Committee ranking member Joe Barton sent a letter with pointed questions to Mrs. Jackson, which she’s yet to answer. The EPA has issued defensive statements, claiming Mr. Carlin wasn’t ignored. But there is no getting around that the Obama administration has flouted its own promises of transparency.

For more on the study the Obama administration did not want you to read, see here and here.

Eager to sustain his regulatory whirlwind, President Obama is now calling for efficiency standards for household and business lighting.  As if the climate-themed energy rationing bill that just blew through the House wasn’t enough, the White House now wants to force lamp and light bulb manufacturers to make their products use less energy.  This plan appears modeled after the ambitious fuel efficiency standards applied to the now decimated auto industry and Obama’s order to the Department of Energy to mandate increased efficiency for household appliances.  It’s almost funny — the government, of all entities, telling private enterprises to be more efficient.

Are these the winds of change we’ve been anticipating?  Something is floating on the breeze, but it smells disappointingly familiar.  That’s because all this has been done before, and by the administration of George W. Bush, no less.  In late 2007, then-President Bush signed an energy bill into law that established long-term efficiency standards for automobiles and household appliances and ordered a phasing-out (ban) of the incandescent light bulb by 2014.  For all his hot air about changing the country’s direction and breaking from the strides of the previous administration, Obama hasn’t even shown originality in his determination to send the economy into a tailspin.

As with his predictions regarding jobs and unemployment, Obama’s stated expectations for this new light bulb bill are, quite frankly, hogwash.  He says consumers will save up to $4 billion annually in energy costs, erroneously assuming away the greatly increased energy and light bulb prices that would result, which would drive down purchases.  Also, any replacements that do take place would be piecemeal — replacement and installation costs alone would be enough to encourage most consumers to hang on to their incandescent bulbs and older appliances for as long as they can.  Why pay and risk more for light when you can avoid it?

The biggest problem with this legislation, as with most government intrusions into the economy, is its total disregard for business incentives and consumer self-interest.  Businesses fully recognize that efficiency, especially energy efficiency, is consistently in high demand throughout the market, so any serious drive toward boosting profits must necessarily focus on innovations that they can use to entice cash-strapped consumers.  An added benefit brought by the resulting savings is that consumers have more money to spend.  So the incentives are there.  Improving technology is a win-win situation all around, but only if it is voluntary.

Simply commanding progress does not make it happen.  If some imagined and desired technology does not exist, ordering people to work harder will not make it arrive faster.  It’s not as if any industry wants to lag behind technologically.  The incentives are there.  Sure, a business can seize upon an underdeveloped idea like, for example, a car motor fueled by something that produces water vapor as its only exhaust, and pour its resources into making the motor work, but the fact that the idea is still inadequately understood would mean inevitable waste and likely failure for the business.  Maybe it turns out that the motor has to be too big to make it worth installing in a car.  Maybe it depletes this clean fuel more quickly than current motors expend current fuel.  Maybe it’s more dangerous.  Maybe only a certain car model can effectively use this motor, and consumers don’t like its size or shape.  Maybe a better idea comes along, or the motor and fuel cost too much even for die-hard environmentalists to use regularly.  The bottom line is that taking such a leap is a huge risk that no savvy investor would touch with a ten foot pole.  Even if something profitable finally does come out of such an investment, so much money would be wasted in the process of developing, refining, and marketing this unfamiliar product that the business may go bankrupt by the time the car hits the market.

So it is with lamps.  Energy efficiency is great, but without market efficiency, any products that do come out of this forced innovation (there’s no shortage of oxymorons in government) will be dead on arrival.

Then again, the economic illiteracy of the aformentioned bills’ supporters is only part of the problem.  Without even trying to understand how such regulations would affect their constituents or considering the idea that private expenses are private matters, the government is already charging ahead with more controls, more limits on liberty.  The private sector has solid incentives to innovate.  The government does not.  That is why it should come as no surprise when this legislation, which is mystifyingly supposed to help prevent climate catastrophe, ultimately inflicts more damage on the United States than a category 5 hurricane.  At this point, any change in the winds would be welcome.

President Barack Obama rode into the White House promising open and honest government. So why did his administration bully a career official at the Environmental Protection Agency into silence?

Last week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released a 98 page report written by Alan Carlin, a 38 year veteran of the EPA, on the shaky science employed by global warming alarmists. Mr. Carlin had submitted the report to his superiors for the EPA to consider as it deliberated whether or not carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare. As noted by my colleague Marlo Lewis, an “endangerment” finding isn’t mere bureaucratese. Instead, it’s a legal tripwire that would spark an economically ruinous regulatory chain reaction under the Clean Air Act (to read more on that, click here).

But the EPA would not consider Carlin’s report. In a series of incriminating emails, Carlin’s boss bluntly informed him that his report would remain secret for political reasons.

Late Thursday night, CEI went ahead and posted a draft version of the document, which you can read here.

In a not-so-subtle dig at the supposed backwardness of his predecessor four months ago, President Obama said that science is “about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology.” Now we learn that his administration has silenced a critical voice in the EPA. Is this the change we were promised?

Members of Congress are suitably outraged. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), cited the report on the floor of the House of Representatives last Friday. Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) told FoxNews that he intends to investigate the matter further.

The story has made big waves in the media. For accounts, click on this links: New York Times, San Francisco Examiner, Michelle Malkin, Dow Jones (Subscription Req’d), American Spectator, and National Review.

The tenth in an occasional series that shines a bit of light on the regulatory state.

Today’s Regulation of the Day comes to us from the U.S. House of Representatives (435 employees, $4 trillion budget).

The Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill that passed the House last week contains 397 new regulations, according to CEI Energy Policy Analyst William Yeatman and former CEI Warren Brookes Fellow Jeremy Lott. The legislation now heads off to the Senate.

It is worth noting that just minutes after the final vote came in, Washington was hit by a fierce hail storm; not that Congress’ doings have any cause-and-effect relationship with the weather (ahem).

You can read the bill — Congress didn’t — by clicking here.

Noted atmospheric scientist and Nobel Prize winner in Physics, Paul Krugman, has a rant in the New York Times today saying that House members — the “deniers” who voted against the pork-filled energy bill — were guilty of “treason against the planet.”

As Krugman wrote:

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

He must have been watching a different debate. I was most taken with the fact that the Democrats didn’t seem at all perturbed about voting on a bill with 300 pages of amendments missing. But the Republicans were, and repeatedly asked how they were supposed to vote on a bill that no one had read in its entirety.

But no, Krugman didn’t think that the Dems were acting irresponsibly in blatantly bribing recalcitrant Members to vote “aye” to get the necessary votes for a bill that would drastically restrict energy use, increase energy prices, subsidize every remote technology favored by Dems’ constituents, and, incidentally, would have a negligible effect on the earth’s temperature.

He was too busy ranting about “the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial.” In his apocalyptic view:

. . . the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.

Note: Krugman is not an atmospheric scientist and did not receive a Nobel Prize for Physics.

In the News

The Climate Change Climate Change
Kimberly Strassel, Wall Street Journal, 26 June 2009

The Renewable Energy Scam
Darren Bakst, National Review Online, 26 June 2009

Perversities of Whackman-Malarkey
Kenneth Green, Masterresource.org, 26 June 2009

Trojan Hearse
Myron Ebell, New York Post, 25 June 2009

Tilting at Green Windmills
George Will, Washington Post, 25 June 2009

Will Congress Switch off the Lights?
Iain Murray, Washington Times, 25 June 2009

A Looming Cap-and-Trade War
Patrick Michaels & Sallie James, Planet Gore, 24 June 2009

Pelosi Will Profit from Energy Tax
Mark Tapscott, Washington Examiner, 24 June 2009

Waxman-Markey: Death Knell for U.S. Jobs, Low-Cost Energy
Robert Murray, The Hill, 22 June 2009

Campaign Slogans Won’t Solve Virginia’s Energy Woes
William Yeatman & Jeremy Lott, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 21 June 2009

News You Can Use

What a Difference 3 Months Makes!

Julie Walsh

Congressional Budget Office, March 12, 2009: “The price increases caused by a cap-and-trade program would impose additional costs on households. For example, without incorporating any benefits to households from lessening climate change, CBO estimates that the price increases resulting from a 15 percent cut in CO2 emissions could cost the average household roughly $1,600 (in 2006 dollars), ranging from nearly $700 in additional costs for the average household in the lowest one-fifth (quintile) of all households arrayed by income, to about $2,200 for the average household in the highest quintile.”

Congressional Budget Office, June 20, 2009: “CBO estimates that the net annual economy wide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion-or about $175 per household.”

Inside the Beltway

The Moment of Truth

Myron Ebell

The House Democratic leadership rushed the Waxman-Markey bill to final passage by a narrow vote on Friday afternoon. It’s been a busy week. Late Monday night, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) sent a substitute version of H. R. 2454 to the Rules Committee. The 946-page bill passed by his committee on 21st May had become a 1201-page bill. Then early Friday morning the House Rules Committee sent the 1201 pages to the floor with an additional 309 pages released around 3:09 AM. The Rules Committee provided for three hours of debate and allowed only one of the 200-odd amendments that had been filed to be offered.

Such a short debate on major legislation is almost unprecedented. They have had to rush because they realized that the bill is such a turkey that the only way to get it through is to force members to vote and then find out later what’s in it. What they are going to find out is that it’s full of little payoffs to scores and scores of Members.

Even though there was only three hours of debate (as Rep. Joe Barton [R-Tex.] remarked, the House had spent nearly that much time on some commemorative bills), there were several priceless moments.  More on those next week. I expect that campaign operatives at the House Republican Campaign Committee are licking their lips at all the video clips they are going to have to run in teevee ads of Democrats saying that Waxman-Markey will create jobs, boost the economy, and only cost each of us a postage stamp a day.

But just as the debate was winding down at around 5:40 PM and moving to votes on the amendment and then final passage, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) gave one of the closing speeches. The Speaker, Majority Leader, and Minority Leader traditionally are not limited by the clock and can speak as long as they want. After about twenty minutes, Chairman Waxman made a parliamentary enquiry as to whether there were any limits on how long the minority leader could speak. The Chair ruled that it was the custom of the House to listen to the Leader.

So the Digest is going to press as Minority Leader Boehner continues to speak. The Republican leadership has put out a statement that he plans to read the all 309 pages of the bill that appeared early Friday morning. It appears, though, that he’s not reading it, but summarizing each section. Rather than finishing in time for dinner or even in time to catch a flight out of town for the Fourth of July recess, it might be a long night. I expect that the House will pass Waxman-Markey on a close vote, something like 224 to 207. If it goes very late, the vote totals on both sides will go down as Members give up and go home. As people begin to dig into and see what’s in it, my guess is that it will become a sick joke, suitable fodder for late night comedians.

The Science

EPA Suppresses Internal Memo on Climate Science

Sam Kazman

In his closing remarks on Waxman Markey, Rep. Barton discussed the recent revelations of EPA squelching an internal report that criticized the agency’s stance on GW. Those revelations were made by CEI three days earlier, when it disclosed a series of EPA emails in which a senior career analyst at the agency was bluntly informed by his boss that his report would remain secret for political reasons. CEI filed the emails in EPA’s Endangerment Docket, and demanded that EPA produce the full report, extend the time for public comment, and pledge to take no reprisals against the analyst.  EPA’s press people went into spin mode, but as of Friday had not produced the final report.  Late Thursday night, CEI went ahead and posted a draft version of the document, which you can read here.

To read media accounts of the memo, click on the following links: New York Times, San Francisco Examiner, Michelle Malkin, Dow Jones (Subscription Req’d), American Spectator, and National Review

Today, National Public Radio held a pep rally for the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, which narrowly passed the House last night, with Paul Krugman as head cheerleader. No critic of the bill was interviewed.

Krugman started out with a brief explanation of the bill. He acknowledged that it would bear some costs, and that some industries and parts of the country that rely on coal “are going to be hurt… somewhat.” He repeated the Democrat talking point that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the cost of the bill for the average household would be around$175 “a postage stamp a day.” (Never mind that people are buying fewer stamps because of email; let’s make them spend that money, anyway — for nothing.)

Then NPR host Guy Raz asked Krugman to comment on bill cosponsor Rep. Henry Waxman’s claim that his bill would create jobs. Krugman said:

There will be more wind farms built. There will be people retrofitting power plants to reduce their emissions. There will be people weatherproofing housing and commercial buildings.”

What economists would say is that employment would be just about the same as it would have been otherwise, but it will be a different mix of jobs. [Emphasis added]

That is not job creation, that is a transfer of wealth from a politically disfavored group of industries to a politically favored one. Notice the nebulous reference to “economists.” To which ones is Krugman referring to? Isn’t he one?

Now, back to that $175 per year figure that the bill’s supporters like to bandy about. They love that postage-stamp-a-day comparison so much that I thought it would be a good idea to come up with some of my own. For an average household, that $175 would also amount to:

• An additional month of utilities;
• One less plane ticket to visit family or go on vacation; or
• One payment on a cheap used car

Other similar comparisons are welcome, so please post in the comments below.