William Yeatman

Check out this great letter to The Hill, on how the stakes for the Waxman-Markey energy tax couldn’t be any higher, from a gentleman who fights on the front lines against this awful legislation.

(From The Hill)
Perhaps the most destructive legislation in our country’s history will soon be voted on in the House – the Waxman-Markey tax bill in the guise of addressing climate change. It will have dire consequences for every American. It will raise the cost of energy with little or no environmental benefit. Independent experts estimate that it will cost Americans more than $2 trillion in just over eight years.

The Midwest, South and Rocky Mountain regions will be most drastically affected because the climate change legislation will destroy the nation’s coal industry and the availability of low-cost electricity. Wealth will be transferred away from almost every state to the West Coast and New England.

The most abundant and by far least-expensive energy source in our country for generating electricity is coal. America’s coal reserves rival the energy potential of Saudi Arabian oil. Unfortunately, the proposed climate change legislation in the House forces America to throw away this tremendous resource, and our low-cost electricity with it.

The Waxman-Markey bill sets an unattainable cap on carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, with the first reductions due by 2012. Under the program, businesses that emit carbon dioxide would be required to purchase or obtain from the government special carbon dioxide credits. This carbon dioxide cap will force utilities to switch from lower-cost coal to natural gas or other, more expensive energy sources. Reliable estimates show this bill will increase the cost of energy for each American family by at least $3,000 each year, notwithstanding the $2 trillion cost to the economy in just eight years.

The supporters of this misguided legislation point to two provisions that they claim will help coal. The first is that they give electric utilities free credits. However, those credits are worth millions of dollars, and the utilities will be free to sell the credits and use the proceeds to build more expensive natural gas or nuclear power plants, and not use our lowest-cost fuel – coal. Second, the authors of the legislation invest money in carbon capture and storage technology, claiming that this will save jobs. But, this technology will not be commercially available for at least 15 to 20 years, long after the reductions are required in 2012 – and long after our coal plants are shut down and our manufacturing jobs are exported to China, India and other countries.

It is not too late to tell Congress to kill this flawed bill. Everyone should call their congressional representatives and ask them to vote no on the Waxman-Markey climate bill and to support affordable energy, American jobs and our quality of life.

By Robert E. Murray, chairman, president and CEO, Murray Energy Corp.
Pepper Pike, Ohio

It’s On!

In an unexpected move, House leadership last night took the procedural steps to hold a vote on the Waxman-Markey Clean Energy and Security Act by the end of the week.

The bill is designed to make energy more expensive, so it has engendered opposition from politicians that want to keep their jobs. Last month, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) passed the legislation out of the Energy and Commerce Committee he chairs only after buying off moderate democrats, one by one, with the federal proceeds from the energy tax (up to $2 trillion from 2012-2020, according to an official in President Barack Obama’s administration). In this fashion, for the last three weeks, Waxman has been trying to buy enough support in the Democratic caucus to pass the bill in the House.

These negotiations have been slow and difficult, which is why everyone, myself included, had assumed that this expensive energy bill would fail to come to the House floor for a vote before July 4^th-the leadership’s self-imposed deadline.

Last night, however, House leadership submitted the bill to the Rules Committee for guidelines to structure the debate on the floor, which paves the way for a vote by Friday on the 1,000+ page Waxman Markey expensive energy bill.

According to E&E News (subscription required), House leadership intends to severely limit debate on the bill, presumably to avoid having vulnerable members of the Democratic make politically sensitive votes on amendments offered by Republicans. That’s a pity for anyone who buys into Obama’s “change” theme, because leadership had promised unfettered debate when it rode into power in 2006.

In a perfect world, Waxman fails to buy enough support for this energy tax and it dies a spectacular, front-page death. As of this morning, it’s unclear whether he’s collected enough voted for critical mass. With hope, there are enough responsible Congressmen to sink this trillion dollar energy tax before it has a chance to ruin the American economy.

Announcements

The deadline for the public comment period on the EPA’s proposed finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare is June 23rd. You may submit comments here.

In the News

The Big Chill
Pete Du Pont, Wall Street Journal, 19 June 2009

Scared Silly by Global Warming Alarmism
Bjorn Lomborg, The Korea Times, 19 June 2009

Commandeered by Climate Alarmists
Paul Chesser, American Spectator, 19 June 2009

California Unions Muscle in on Green Jobs
Todd Woody, New York Times, 18 June 2009

Map: How Much Will Waxman-Markey Cost Your State?
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 18 June 2009

Reasons To Distrust Your Government
Alan Caruba, Warning Signs, 18 June 2009

Utilities Could Cash in on Climate Bill
Andy Stone & Jonathan Fahey, Forbes, 17 June 2009

Global Warming Bill Is a Job Killer
Investor’s Business Daily editorial, 17 June 2009

Waxman-Markey: A Dog That Won’t Hunt
Robert Murphy, MasterResource.org, 17 June 2009

Obama Ressurrects Illinois Green Energy Boondoggle
Tim Carney, Washington Examiner, 17 June 2009

Ethanol vs. Enviros
William Yeatman & Jeremy Lott, American Spectator, 17 June 2009

Global Cooling
Colorado Springs Gazette editorial, 16 June 2009

Breaking Down the Cost of Waxman-Markey Energy Rationing Bill
Nick Loris, The Foundry, 15 June 2009

News You Can Use

Rasmussen Poll: Voters Want More Energy

According to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, voters believe that finding new sources of energy is more important than reducing the amount of energy Americans now consume by a 60% to 32% margin.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Update on Waxman-Markey Energy Rationing Bill

The Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill may come to the House floor next week. Or it may not.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Representative Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, are still negotiating with a farm-state faction led by Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, to gain enough votes to pass the bill. Press reports suggest that they are further from making a deal today than a couple days ago.  That may be true, but at this point comments from Waxman, Pelosi, and Peterson may not accurately reflect the state of their negotiations. It’s a poker game now. As I write, Roll Call and E and E News PM both report that floor action is unlikely next week because the deal isn’t done yet.  But maybe it will be over the weekend or on Monday.

The National Rural Electric Co-operative Association is also raising a fuss since they discovered that they weren’t close enough to the trough when the free ration coupons were handed out. It has been reported that NRECA may drop their potential opposition to the bill if the co-operatives are given 1% of the coupons. It’s not much, but it may be enough for the president of NRECA, Glenn English, to quiet down his members. English is a former Democratic Congressman from Oklahoma. Former Members promote themselves on the basis of the access they have to their former colleagues. However, it is my experience that access is often a liability. It seems to me that English is so eager to agree to a deal with Waxman and Pelosi because if he doesn’t their doors will be closed the next time he stops by.

Focus Groups: Public Is Not Buying “Green Jobs” Nonsense

As Waxman-Markey inches closer to passage by the House, a memo has surfaced in the press that reports that the public isn’t buying global warming or cap-and-trade legislation.  According to the results of “a set of 12 focus groups with swing voters in six states,” Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Third Way (a “progressive” public policy group) advise that the public are eager for dramatic change in energy policy, but that they “are not yet engaged on the issue and are susceptible to the argument that the progressive policy proposal [that is, cap-and-trade] amounts to a big energy tax.”  Well, yes, people are susceptible to that argument because cap-and-trade does amount to a big energy tax on them.

So how to sell this big energy tax?  The memo advises less emphasis on global warming and green jobs and more on clean energy.  They suggest the slogan, Get America running on clean energy.  That’s what worked with the focus groups.  My slogan is, It’s a tax!  We’ll see which one is more effective.

The Government’s Winners and Losers

Julie Walsh

Government subsidies, tariffs, and special treatment for certain industries make an uneven playing field for competing energy options for consumers. This creates winners and losers based on the government’s favors. The government’s track record picking winners and losers hasn’t been good.

Winners: Wind and Solar

Wind and solar energy have been receiving government subsidies since the ’70s, currently now at the rate of $23 per megawatt hour. Coal-fired power only costs around $25 per megawatt hour and receives a 44 cent per megawatt hour subsidy.

Loser:  Thorium energy

Proponents of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors believe they can provide energy cheaper than from coal. And there are enough thorium reserves to power the world for centuries. A thorium reactor produces less than 1% of the radioactive waste of today’s nuclear power plants and can even consume the existing nuclear waste. In the 1990s the Megatons to Megawatts program spent millions of dollars to develop this design under a federal grant to a private company that did most of its research in Russia in order to keep former Soviet scientists busy so that they wouldn’t be forced to sell their expertise to terrorists.

The Science

Dr. Doom Unveils Doomsday Report

On June 17, the U. S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) released a report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.”  The report was prepared by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which is headed by Dr. John P. Holdren, a doomsday theorist who once suggested that climate change will kill a billion people by 2020. As such, it’s unsurprising that the report is as alarming as it is flawed.

The first key finding of the report is, “Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.”  Yet global temperatures have not increased statistically since 1995, despite a steady increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (the supposed cause of so-called global warming), so it’s hard to see how global warming is “unequivocal.”

Many projections made by the report depend upon climate models that have no skill in regional forecasting. Many scientists agree that the models currently have no predictive ability on the regional scale, and therefore should not be relied upon for policy decisions.

Across the States

California Renewable Requirement=Expensive Energy

E&E News (subscription required) reported this week on a new study from the California Public Utilities Commission showing that utility bills for California homes will increase by 24% under a requirement that renewable energy sources generate a third of the Golden State’s electricity by 2020. The Waxman-Markey energy rationing bill would require the nation’s electric utilities to use at least 20% renewable power by 2020.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a finding that carbon dioxide (the same stuff we exhale) “endangers” public health and welfare by causing so-called global warming (even though global temperatures haven’t increased in a decade, despite steady increases in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, which, again, supposedly causes global warming).

It may seem like arcane bureaucratese, but an “endangerment” finding is actually a big deal that would hurt virtually every facet of the American economy. Under the Clean Air Act, an endangerment finding serves as a tripwire for a regulatory chain-reaction that would subject small businesses, farms, and any building larger than a mansion to costly red tape and endless paperwork.

In his comments on EPA’s proposed endangerment, available here, CEI’s Marlo Lewis exposes the flawed science behind the EPA’s finding, and he also explains the regulatory ramifications.

The deadline for the public comment period on the EPA’s proposed finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare is June 23^rd. You may submit comments here.

Yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a public web page dedicated exclusively to the Waxman-Markey bill.  The page is accessible here.

The purpose of this very basic page is to give visitors the 10 or 15 most relevant documents to Waxman-Markey, so as not to overwhelm them. It’s a great place to learn more about an energy-rationing bill that threatens to torpedo economic growth in America.

Cheney Coal Plan Gets $1 Billion Boost…From Obama
Tim Carney, Washington Examiner, 17 June 2009

Leading coal and electricity companies on Friday won a billion-dollar chunk of stimulus money from the Obama administration, highlighting once again how President Barack Obama’s anti-lobbyist and anti-big business rhetoric is divorced from his actions.

Farmer Brown Fights Back
William Yeatman & Jeremy Lott, American Spectator, 17 June 2009

To all appearances, green special interests are on a roll.

Global Cooling
Colorado Gazette Editorial, 16 June 2009

More and more, progressives who want American citizens to fork over their money in an effort to control the climate are trying to market the phrase “climate change” instead of “global warming,” in an urgent about face they hope nobody will notice. That’s because they’re faced with an inconvenient truth: all the hystrionics about icebergs melting and drowning coastal cities in coming years may not be true. To continue the fear, and therefore generate support for spending billions to solve the crisis, fear-mongers need terminology that will work no matter what the climate does.

Announcements

The deadline for the public comment period on the EPA’s proposed finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare is June 23^rd. You may submit comments here.

In the News

Carbon Geography
Michael I. Cragg & Matthew E. Kahn, 10 June 2009

The UN’s Climate of Futility
Patrick Michaels, Planet Gore, 10 June 2009

Behind the Cap-and-Trade Curtain
Max Schulz, National Review, 9 June 2009

Review of New Books by Lawson and Stern
Myron Ebell, Standpoint, June 2009

Plan To Fight Global Warming-Pie in the Sky
Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2009

CO2 Is Hot Air
Chris Horner, Washington Times, 9 June 2009

Taxing Cows
Alan Caruba, Warning Signs, 9 June 2009

Texas Blasts Federal Efforts to Fight Global Warming
Russell Gold, 9 June 2009

Cap-and-Trade: The New Subprime Scam?
Rachel Morris, Mother Jones, 8 June 2009

Buried Code
Washington Post Editorial, 7 June 2009

News You Can Use

It Could Happen Here

According to the Herald Sun, Australian police will be forced to become “carbon cops” under the Government’s blueprint to cut greenhouse emissions.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Update on House Energy Rationing Bill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) are making mighty efforts to get the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill to the House floor before the Fourth of July recess, which is scheduled to begin on 26^th June. The main obstacle to passage appears to be a group of moderate Democrats centered in the Agriculture Committee and led by Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), the Committee’s Chairman. Peterson claimed to have forty-five votes as he started horse trading with Pelosi and Waxman. I expect that the Democratic leadership will come up with enough votes to pass H. R. 2454 narrowly and with only a handful of Republican votes. They are rushing because they realize that the bill could implode at any time.  Should you care to tell your Representative whether to vote Yes or No on H. R. 2454, the Capitol switchboard number is (202) 225-3121.  Live operators will connect you to your Member even if you don’t know his name if you give your zip code.

Republicans Introduce a Pro-energy Bill

House Republicans on Wednesday unveiled the latest version of their pro-energy bill, the American Energy Act. The bill would increase domestic energy production, particularly oil and gas on federal lands and offshore areas, and includes no rationing provisions.  This could be the Republican substitute amendment when Waxman-Markey comes to the floor. It would draw a very clear distinction between Republicans, who think we need to increase access to energy, and Democrats, who think we need to force people to pay much more and use much less energy.

Boxer Wants Energy Rationing Bill by August

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, announced on Thursday that she plans to mark up the Senate version of Waxman-Markey in her committee before the August recess. Right now, there are probably enough votes to move the bill out of committee, but support in the full Senate looks far short of the 60 necessary to invoke cloture and proceed to a final vote. It’s not even clear to me that generic cap-and-trade legislation has majority support in the Senate.

California Scheming

California, the world leader in energy rationing (after North Korea, Cuba, etc.), now looks likely to go bankrupt by the end of July.  Californians Pelosi, Waxman, and Boxer are actively promoting at the federal level the policies that are contributing to the decline of the once-Golden State.

CBO’s Scoring of Waxman-Markey’s Cap-and-Tax Bill

Julie Walsh

The Congressional Budget Office released a report on June 5th detailing the costs and revenues of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, before the House. Noticeably absent, however, is analysis of the effects of Renewable Electricity Credits (RECs) and the domestic and international offset credits. These should force up costs for consumers and therefore reduce economic growth and federal revenues.

Highlights:
The bill gives away over three-quarters of the rationing coupons, auctioning off just 18 percent until 2020. CBO estimates in the first ten years the bill would bring in revenues of $845.6 billion, but increase federal spending by $821.2 billion-a $24.4 billion net gain over ten years.

The amount of coupons auctioned actually drops from 29.6% in 2012 and 2013 to 17.5% through 2019, while the free allocations (i.e., windfall profits) increase to 82.5%.

The new carbon market would exceed $60 billion by 2012.

CBO expects that some regions of the country-particularly the southeast-would probably not generate sufficient RECs to satisfy the federal standard, and therefore, would choose to make compliance payments.

More highlights are here.

Around the World

Backpedaling in Bonn

Last week’s Cooler Heads Digest reported that negotiations in Bonn for a successor climate treaty to the failed Kyoto Protocol actually regressed, because a European Union official unexpectedly backed off the EU’s promise to reduce emissions 20% by 2020.

This week we are pleased to report that negotiations deteriorated even further during the second half of the Bonn talks. On Monday, Japan unilaterally unveiled its greenhouse gas emissions target: 8% below 1990 levels by 2020. According to BBC News, green groups called the Japanese commitment “appalling.” They had been lobbying Japan and other industrialized nations to cut emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate official, was stunned by the meagerness of Japan’s targets. For the first time in two years, “I don’t know what to say,” he admitted to the New York Times. Later, he told AFP that he believed it was impossible to meet the deadline for a global treaty by the 15^th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change this December in Copenhagen.

Dr. Doom Goes to China

Also at Bonn, Todd Stern, the State Department’s top climate envoy, and White House Science Advisor Dr. John P. Holdren met with Chinese negotiators for bilateral climate talks. Details of the meeting are scant (an anonymous source told the China Daily that there was “limited progress“), but it is likely that the talks were strained-Dr. Holdren is an environmental extremist who once advocated industrial “de-development,” whereas rapid industrialization is China’s #1 priority.

Global Warming Book Review
Myron Ebell, Standpoint Magazine, 10 June 2009

Both these books look comprehensively at global warming and cover much the same ground in much the same order. There the similarities end. First published last year, Lord Lawson’s Appeal is the best short book on the entire range of issues in the global warming debate that is available from a British publisher. This paperback edition with a substantial new afterword is therefore most welcome. Lawson is lucid, thoughtful and fair-minded. The book’s highly useful footnotes and bibliography attest to Lawson’s familiarity with the wide range of scholarship on the many scientific disciplines that contribute to understanding the climate and with the major economic analyses of the energy-rationing policies proposed to deal with warming.

CO2 Is Hot Air
Chris Horner, Washington Times, 10 June 2009

Your Tuesday story “GDP hit found with cap, trade” (Nation, Politics) states: “A cap-and-trade system would decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the air to a level that researchers say is safe.” The piece cites no such researchers making any such claim because no researcher on record says any such thing.

The EPA’s Protection Racket
Angela Logomasini & Jeff Stier, National Review, 9 June 2009

The Environmental Protection Agency is making “significant strides” on issues such as “protecting children’s health” and “confronting climate change,” says a memo from EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson. Not surprisingly, the agency has requested a 37 percent budget increase for fiscal year 2010.

Behind the Cap-and-Trade Curtain
Max Shulz, National Review Online, 9 June 2009

Proponents of a cap-and-trade program to combat global warming face an uphill fight. For all their attempts to spin it as a solely environmental issue about saving the planet from extinction, the reality is that it’s a political question that ultimately comes down to economic tradeoffs.

Plan To Fight Global Warming? Pie in the Sky
Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2009

The latest example of anthropogenic-lunar empowerment is global warming. Al Gore and Barack Obama routinely cite the Apollo program as proof that we can make good on the president’s messianic campaign pledge to stem the rising ocean tides and hasten the healing of the planet.

The Carbon Offsets Con
William Butier, Financial Times, 4 June 2009

In my discussion of the Cap & Trade scheme for carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2E) emissions (greenhouse gases) proposed by U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Edward Markey, D-Mass. (the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act of 2009), I argue that the two key issues are (1) the size of the overall quota and (2) the enforcement of the rule that without a permit, you cannot emit.