William Yeatman

European Union ministers will try to get the United States to agree to “mid-term” emissions targets of 20% reductions by 2020 at the G8 conference for industrialized nations in Japan early this July. That’s not an arbitrary target; it’s the same one that the EU already adopted unilaterally two years ago.

European countries have yet to act on their collective promise to reduce emissions because they want other industrialized countries to make a similar pledge before proceeding with economically harmful climate policies. The procrastination is starting to hurt Europe’s heavy industry sector, which has postponed new investment until it can assess whether the EU’s climate regulations would make it more profitable to do business in countries without climate change regulations. But it cannot postpone investment much longer, because heavy industry requires long planning horizons. As a result, the EU is getting increasingly desperate to commit the United States to similar emissions targets.

Well, Democrats have been in the majority for a year and a half.  Nearly every House and Senate committee has held a hearing on it.  The committees of jurisdiction have held scores of hearings.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) even set up a select committee just to hold hearings on why immediate drastic action must be taken to save the world from global warming.

After all that jabber, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, finally brought her bill to the floor this week.  It hardly made a squeak.  It wasn't even a mouse.  It was a slug.  Although to be fair to Boxer, it must be noted that it was a very big slug–filled with 491 tons of hot air to be precise.

The Senate voted on Monday evening to bring the Lieberman-Warner energy rationing bill, formerly S. 2191 but now S. 3036, to the floor.  By Tuesday afternoon, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was complaining that the (mostly Republican) opponents were dragging their feet.  The nerve–they dared to talk about what the bill would do to raise people's gas and electricity prices and how many manufacturing jobs would be lost.  Reid warned that he wouldn't put up with their delaying tactics much longer.

For comparison, as Senator Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) pointed out, the Senate debated the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 for five weeks and considered 180 amendments.  The economic impact of Lieberman and Warner's monstrosity would be several hundred times greater.

The reason Reid started so quickly to prepare the ground to pull the bill is that Boxer and company were making a complete mess of the debate.  On the other side, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) was leading a brilliant operation involving a number of well-prepared Senators to expose the bill's countless problems and shortcomings.

On Wednesday just before 1 PM, Reid introduced on behalf of Boxer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.  Whereas the Lieberman-Warner bill as passed out of committee in December was 150-some pages and the substitute that Boxer released on May 16 was about the same length, the surprise substitute was 491 pages.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) immediately objected to the motion that the amendment be considered as read, so the Clerk then spent from 1 to 9:30 PM reading all 491 ages aloud.  It gave Senators a chance to catch up on their fundraising.

The reason McConnell objected was to call attention to Reid's failure to keep his agreement to hold votes on at least three nominations for appeals court judges before the end of May.  But taking all day to read it made another point relevant to the bill.  Springing a new version on the Senate floor that is more than three times longer than the bill passed out of committee is outrageous.  Reading it aloud gave citizens listening on C-SPAN some vague idea of the trillions of dollars of payoffs to special interests contained in the bill.  But it will take weeks of study to find and analyze all the changes.

Reid then filed a motion to invoke cloture on debate and move to a vote on passage of the Boxer substitute. Not only would no amendments be debated, but Senators would be voting on cloture with almost no idea of what they were voting on.

The cloture vote, which requires sixty yes votes, was held on Friday morning at 9. It failed 48 to 36.  Leader Reid is expected to pull the bill from the floor later today.  That will be it this year for stopping global warming in its tracks and diverting trillions of dollars from consumers to special interests.

I am astonished at the perseverance the forces of darkness have mustered in this debate and the number of obstacles they overcame.  (Reid has devoted more effort to getting post offices renamed for big donors.)  It just shows what you can do when you're determined to save the planet.  But they'll be back next year with a new president who supports cap-n-trade and probably more Democrats in Congress.  This time was just for fun; next time will be deadly serious.

I don't think I've ever seen as pathetic an attempt at legislative management as the majority's bumbling attempts to promote the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill this week (and I lived through the Major government in Britain).  From Sen. Boxer's stumbling delivery, through the farce of the full reading of the 491-page "minor textual" amendments to today's failure by the majority even to reach 50 votes for cloture when it was a free vote, this has been high comedy all around (or low tragedy if you are an alarmist).  Whatever possessed them to believe that a time when Americans are suffering from high food and energy prices would be appropriate to discuss a bill whose only point is that is raises those prices further to discourage energy use? The only way to manage the manageable risk of global warming is to produce a package of measures that does not raise energy prices, rather than the massive, many trillion dollar wealth-redistribution and tax package these geniuses came up with.  For the record, here are the seven Republicans who voted for cloture today: Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Elizabeth Dole (N.C.), Mel Martinez (Fla.), Gordon Smith (Ore.), Olympia Snowe (Maine), John Sununu (N.H.)and John Warner (Va.).  Democrats voting against were: Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Tim Johnson (S.D.) and Mary Landrieu (La.).John McCain sent a letter saying he would have supported cloture, but was condemned by the Center for American Progress for demanding a price of "billions of dollars for nuclear pork, and zero assistance for American families."  I get the feeling they don't like him any more.My main question now is whether they will ever allow Senator Boxer to manage any major initiative ever again.

General Motors announced yesterday that it is closing 4 pickup truck and SUV factories as it tries to accommodate rising demand for smaller cars caused by $4/gallon gas. In fact, GM’s cost cutting measures demonstrate that “green jobs” are a crock.

GM is responding to high energy prices by altering its production schedule to make “greener” (ie, smaller, more fuel efficient) cars. GM might expand its small car plants, and thereby create green jobs (making more fuel efficient cars), but that is of little use to the 10,000 workers that lost their jobs at the big car plants. So for every “green” job created at a small car plant there is at least one “brown” job lost at a big car plant.

The same dynamic is at work with a cap and trade scheme, which is designed to make energy more expensive so that businesses are encouraged to make changes that reduce CO2 emissions. In turn, a green economic sector would grow to provide businesses with climate friendly technologies and services. But as the GM example shows, one man’s green job is another man’s pink slip.

The tradeoff between green jobs and brown jobs is known among economists as the “broken window fallacy.” At first glance, smashing a window might seem as though it adds to economic growth, because it results in the employment of a window repairman. But the proprietor of the window must pay for the damage, which comes out of his or her profits, so there is in fact no net gain to the economy.

Having learned from the Farm Bill that people will pass anything if you buy enough of them off, Sen. Boxer has proposed a substitute amendment to the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill currently before the Senate, which will redistribute trillions (yes, trillions) of dollars to the environmental-industrial complex.  Senator McConnell just objected to the Boxer substitute amendment being taken as read.  The Clerk is now reading aloud the 491 page substitute, which was described as making small textual corrections to the 157 page bill.