Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent

One State Climate Commission Informs Another

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on January 16, 2008

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

Today the N.C. Division of Air Quality outdoes itself before its state Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change when they bring in as an "expert" witness a fellow named Tad Aburn, who is the director of the Air and Radiation Management Division for the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Aburn, according to the agenda, is scheduled to present a "discussion of strategies to mitigate and adapt to global climate change," and will talk about "emissions reduction goals and standards in the state of Maryland." These brilliant (sarcasm there) folks, in interim recommendations released last month by their own governor-appointed (and Center for Climate Strategies-managed) climate commission, set CO2 emissions reduction targets of 90 percent below 2006 levels in the state by the year 2050. This surpasses the widely heralded (by greenies) targets set by California last year. If enacted into law, Maryland's would have the most stringent regulations in the nation.

Meanwhile, Aburn, who is the man in MD DOE most accountable for this commission process, is a piece of work. Typical of many if not most envirocrats (the kind who often shuffle back and forth between government jobs and advocacy nonprofits), he likes to set goals without considering whether they are feasible, efficient, or how much they cost. Economics are irrelevant to these people. Witness these comments from an Associated Press article last month:

“If you asked me right now, how are you going to do it? What exactly are you going to do? The answer is, I don’t know.”

“It sends a very significant message of how Maryland feels about climate change.”

That's what it is all about: implement some costly feel-good mandates, despite the fact that they won't do anything to affect climate, and that you have no idea if or how they can be achieved.

Besides his economic cluelessness and choked-up emotion about the Chesapeake Bay flooding the Eastern Shore, Aburn is also your standard obstructionist government bureaucrat, as proven in my nearly five-month effort to obtain public records from MD DOE. The Department first told me they would not provide documents because they were “privileged” (I was told that Aburn wanted them withheld). After I made a subsequent exhaustive and expansive request, I was denied again for the same reason. Then after I requested an administrative review of the denial I got a letter from Aburn saying there were 12 pages pursuant to my request and that my administrative review was moot. This was after the agency told a Maryland blogger that there were 3700 pages pursuant to the exact same request I made. So I demanded the records again — on disk — and now I have the same 3700 page answer, in which they told both me and the blogger that it would cost us $1,381 to get the records. Imagine that for a disk. So we’re still at a standstill.

These are the kinds of records I have obtained easily (and much more cheaply — sometimes for nothing) in more than a dozen other states. So it leads me to believe that Aburn has some kind of sweetheart deal with CCS that he is trying to hide. The fact that he is CCS's star presenter today at the NC LCGCC meeting only heightens that suspicion. Also sparking curiosity is the fact that North Carolina had to pay CCS $100,000 for them to manage the state's climate commission process, whereas Maryland has not had to pay a dime. In fact, Maryland does not even have a contract with CCS. What does Aburn have going on here?

I am sure there are many other cases where citizens or reporters have encountered much more obnoxious government obstruction than this. But this experience has inspired me to coin a new phrase for bureaucratic obfuscation and delay: "getting Aburned." This is the "expert" that the NC DAQ wants lawmakers to hear today.

Cross-posted at The Locker Room.

Warming Threat Used to Thwart Coal Power Plants

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on January 15, 2008

in Politics

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

Today the Associated Press examines how environmental activists are engaged in an unprecedented push to prevent utilities from building new coal-fired power plants, because of the threat from global warming:

The offensive against coal is emerging as a pivotal front in the global warming debate as environmental groups file lawsuits and administrative appeals against the companies and put lobbying pressure on federal and state regulators….

"Our goal is to oppose these projects at each and every stage, from zoning and air and water permits, to their mining permits and new coal railroads," said Bruce Nilles, a Sierra Club lawyer who directs the group's national coal campaign. "They know they don't have an answer to global warming, so they're fighting for their life."

Undoubtedly removing such "railroads" and trying to replace them with inefficient and insufficient sources of generation, when demand for power will only increase, will lead to a train wreck:

Industry representatives say the environmentalists' actions threaten to undermine the country's fragile power grid, setting the stage for high-priced electricity and uncontrollable blackouts.

"These projects won't be denied, but they can be delayed by those who oppose any new energy projects," said Vic Svec, vice president of the mining and power company Peabody Energy….

Environmental groups cite 59 canceled, delayed or blocked plants as evidence that they are turning back the "coal rush." That stacks up against 22 new plants under construction in 14 states — the most in two decades.

And they're not stopping there:

Nilles said the Sierra Club spent about $1 million on such efforts in 2007 and hopes to ratchet that figure up to $10 million this year.

 

 

Cost for Public Records on CD: $1,381.40

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on January 14, 2008

in Politics

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch 

My absurd battle with the Maryland Department of the Environment persists, after requesting way back in September all their records related to their dealings with the Center for Climate Strategies. Maryland has been uniquely obstructionist and ornery in their handling of my inquiry, far more so than any of the other 20 or so states I've dealt with so far.

Today, after several back-and-forth exchanges in which the department first alleged their documents were privileged; then did not exist; then did exist but were only 12-pages long, I now have gotten the real answer, sort of: There are 3700 pages responsive to my request, but it is going to cost me $1,381.40 cents to obtain them. This is the answer Red Maryland blogger Mark Newgent got a while back, so now I guess I finally rate the equivalent of an in-stater (I'm in North Carolina).

Knowing there were many records, I requested explicitly at least twice that the documents be provided in electronic form, most likely on a CD. So especially of note is a worksheet MDE attached to their response, which shows how they reached their estimate for putting together these public documents. They said the cost for their time in researching, reviewing and compiling was $44, but the "duplication costs" account for $1,337.40.

That must be a solid gold, diamond-studded disk. I'm sure they only want the best for Maryland taxpayers!

McCain’s Energy Tax

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on January 10, 2008

in Politics

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch 

My colleague from the John Locke Foundation, economist Roy Cordato, explains today at National Review Online an energy tax that is part of a bill sponsored by Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman:

The EPA has estimated what the McCain energy tax would mean to consumers. Since the bill’s provisions are phased in, the full cost of the tax would not be felt for a number of years. But in a letter to Senator McCain dated July 2007, the EPA estimated that the tax will be about $.26 cents in current dollars per gallon of gasoline by 2030 and $.68 cents per gallon by 2050. For electricity, the EPA estimates that the McCain energy tax would increase individual’s electric bills by 22 percent in 2030 and 25 percent in 2050.

Roy thinks voters in Michigan ought to be especially interested in this McCain proposal.

States’ Climate Manager Gets Economic Scrutiny

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on January 10, 2008

in Blog

Yesterday the Center for Climate Strategies finally got their standard stock of alleged greenhouse gas-reducing ideas evaluated by real economists, and it isn’t pretty.

In an apparent attempt to blunt criticisms from folks like the free-market, limited-government John Locke Foundation (until recently my employer) in Raleigh, CCS enlisted the Energy Center at Appalachian State University to do what they call an economic analysis of a batch of CCS’s recommendations in North Carolina. In 2005 ASU had come up with a study model – called the North Carolina Energy Scenario Economic Impact Model (NC-ESEIM) — to analyze effects on jobs, incomes, Gross State Product and energy use. This was not, as CCS executive director Tom Peterson recently said in a legislative committee meeting, a cost-benefit analysis, but simply a study to try to determine the impacts on employment and GSP.

CCS and ASU, thanks to their economic model, made ludicrous claims that forcing the use of huge energy inefficiencies would also add 23,500 jobs annually to the economy and raise Gross State Product by $1.47 billion. Knowing this was not possible, the Locke Foundation called upon the Beacon Hill Institute’s PhD economists to do a peer review of the ASU economic model, and not surprisingly, BHI found their methodology lacking:

The NC-ESEIM also makes unduly optimistic assumptions about the future course of cost reductions in the production of energy from renewable sources, and is too sanguine about the potential for state spending to trigger private investment, and influence individual behavior, in energy conservation.

We are just beginning the great debate about the extent to which, and how, state governments should pursue policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Appropriate formal models to measure the economic impact of such policies will have an important role to play in this process, but it is essential that such models be credible and testable. The NC-ESEIM model falls short of this standard.

This is what happens when, as ASU has done, you have a political science graduate student as the chief author of your economic study. The full BHI peer review is online at the Locke Foundation Web site.

A destination with no road map

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on January 4, 2008

Climate Strategies Watch

Continuing with the theme from yesterday on Maryland's Commission on Climate Change, today in the Washington Examiner I dissect many of the interim recommendations sent by the commission to the Maryland General Assembly. This includes the carbon cap I mentioned, which is even more aggressive than California's:

However, if you ask anyone involved with the commission how they intend to reach those targets, you get the standard shoulder shrug.

“If you asked me right now, how are you going to do it? What exactly are you going to do? The answer is, I don’t know,” Tad Aburn, director of the state’s Air and Radiation Management Division within the Maryland Department of the Environment, told The Associated Press last month.

Speaking of Aburn, he is the one in charge of withholding from me on a public records request I made to the Maryland Department of the Environment, as outlined earlier this week in an Examiner editorial. MDE is telling me one thing (they have 12 pages that fulfills my request) and they are telling Red Maryland blogger Mark Newgent another (that they have 3700 pages and it will cost him $1381 to get what he's asking for).

My request seeks all records related to MDE's relationship with the Center for Climate Strategies, a global warming advocacy group cloaked in "objective technical advisor" garb for state commissions. CCS's process in every state where they work claims to be "fully transparent," so I am still wondering what they want to hide in Maryland.

Maryland in a hurry

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on January 3, 2008

in Politics

The state of Maryland, which is running a climate change study commission like many other states, is ready to implement laws restricting carbon dioxide emissions before its panel even finishes its work. The Maryland Commission on Climate Change released interim recommendations early last month, which include a call for emissions reductions even greater than those made by California last year. The state legislature is ready to go to work now on it, the Associated Press reports:

Several lawmakers say a proposal to cap carbon emissions — possibly the nation's toughest plan to reduce greenhouse gases — stands to become the most ambitious bill of the General Assembly session. The environment could be a main topic of debate because the state's looming budget problems were largely addressed in last fall's special session.

The carbon bill, endorsed by a task force set up by Gov. Martin O'Malley, would call for carbon reductions of 25 percent by 2020 and 90 percent by 2050. If approved, the goals would be the nation's strongest carbon-reduction plans.

The caps could headline a long list of environmental proposals.

No kidding. If the interim recommendations are taken seriously by the General Assembly like the carbon cap is, then the state is in for serious economy-busting measures, which include a public benefits fund (a tax on electricity); mandating a higher percentage of renewables in its electricity-generation sources; greater tax subsidies for greenhouse gas emission reduction and energy efficiency; and new transportation initiatives like higher fuel taxes and pay-as-you-drive insurance.

As I’ve written in the past for the John Locke Foundation’s Carolina Journal, this partial menu of options is the adopted brainchild of an advocacy group called the Center for Climate Strategies, who manage these commissions for several different states and give them all their ideas. The difference with Maryland, it seems, is that their lawmakers aren’t bothering to wait until the ink is dry on the commission’s recommendations.

H/T: Mr. Horner

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