William Yeatman

Announcements

CEI’s Iain Murray and H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, this week released a new report, “10 Cool Global Warming Policies,” on measures that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase wealth creation. To read NCPA’s report, click here.

In “Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present a comprehensive and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals. Click here to get the report.

The Science & Public Policy Institute has released a series of state climate change policy papers. Each study examines an individual State and addresses four topics: observed climate change over time; impacts of climate mitigation measures; costs of federal mitigation legislation; and a list of state scientists who reject the man-made global warming hypothesis. To read more, click here.

In the News

Climate Conspiracy
Christopher Monckton’s Speech to the Heartland Institute’s 3^rd International Climate Conference in Washington, D.C., 2 June 2009

Climate Bill Sparks Lobbying Frenzy
Steven Mufson, Washington Post, 5 June 2009

Little Chance the U.S. Will Sign a Climate Treaty
L.A. Times editorial, 4 June 2009

Green with Guilt
George Will, Washington Post, 4 June 2009

Steep Cost of Renewables
Paul Chesser, GlobalWarming.org, 4 June 2009

Politics, Economics and Green Jobs
J.T. Young, American Spectator, 3 June 2009

Clean Air Act Regulation of CO2: Rough Road Ahead
Marlo Lewis, MasterResource.org, 3 June 2009

Gore-Backed Hara Sees Big $$ in Climate Policy
David Lawsky, Reuters, 1 June 2009

Pelosi’s Chinese Climate Change
Wall Street Journal editorial, 1 June 2009

Cap-and-Trade: All Cost and No Benefit
Martin Feldstein, Washington Post, 1 June 2009

Indiana Wants No Part of Energy Tax
Elisabeth Meinecke, Human Events, 1 June 2009

Now the World Faces Its Biggest Ever Bill
Christopher Booker, Telegraph, 23 May 2009

News You Can Use

Gore Hijinx

Reuters reported this week that Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins invested $6 million in Hara, a “one stop shop for greenhouse gas management,” with the endorsement of former U.S. Vice President Gore, who is a partner at the firm. Gore has lobbied for the Waxman-Markey Clean Energy and Security Act, a major climate change mitigation bill that would create a market for Hara’s services.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Bingaman Moves Forward with Senate Anti-Energy Package

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week held another mark-up of Chairman Jeff Bingaman’s (D-NM) comprehensive anti-energy bill. Bingaman plans to finish next week. The title on energy efficiency standards was amended to provide more financial assistance for retro-fitting historic buildings with energy-saving features. The title would require States to adopt building codes that would reach 30 percent energy savings through 2010 compared to 2006 standards, and then 50 percent by some future date to be determined later.

A number of amendments were offered to the renewable electricity standards title, but most were defeated on an 11 to 12 vote. The title would require that 15 percent of electricity must be generated by defined renewable sources by 2021. The committee wrangled over how nuclear power should be treated. An amendment to take new nuclear power out of the baseline from which the 15 percent is calculated was approved. Thus nuclear does not count as renewable, but new nuclear power plants will not increase the requirement to produce other renewables.

Waxman-Markey Heads to Floor?

The House Democratic leadership had a different story to tell every day this week on the schedule to bring H. R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill, to the floor.  Their intentions may change again several times, but right now it looks as if they plan to debate and vote on the bill before leaving for the Fourth of July recess. I think Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) have come to the same conclusion I did: their chances of passing it are better sooner rather than later.  To rush such a huge and momentous piece of legislation to the floor in a month is going to take a huge effort. It could easily slip to July or even past the August recess. But for now, we should expect a weeklong floor debate the week of 21st June.

The Alternative to Waxman-Markey

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) on 7th May introduced what can be seen as the comprehensive alternative to Waxman-Markey.  Rather than rationing energy in the name of saving us from global warming, the American Energy Innovation Act would increase access to all kinds of energy, especially on federal lands and offshore areas. Bishop, the chairman of the Western Caucus, was joined by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, in introducing the bill. H. R. 2300 currently has 59 co-sponsors. Price and Bishop have both written articles promoting this joint effort of the Western Caucus and the Republican Study Committee and contrasting it with the Waxman-Markey bill. The American Energy Innovation Act is too big a bill with too much in it to be perfect, but it’s a good start toward rational (rather than rationing) energy policy. It’s going to be a long journey to get even halfway there.

Heartland’s Climate Conference

The big event in Washington this week (besides the unveiling of the Reagan statue in the Capitol’s Rotunda) was the Heartland Institute’s International Climate Conference.  All the talks will soon be posted here. A good place to start will be with Professor Richard Lindzen’s excellent opening address. Lindzen’s analysis of the politics of global warming in the scientific community is most perceptive, and his demonstration that the climate is not nearly as sensitive to CO2 levels as the climate models assume looks definitive.

GE: General Extortion

Julie Walsh

GE, currently the 22^nd largest company in the world-down from 10^th last quarter-has been lobbying for Cap and Tax. Julia Seymour at Business and Media Institute in her piece “Networks Ignore Trillion-Dollar Price Tag of Climate Cap Bill“ writes:

GE is the largest wind turbine generator maker and according to an “O’Reilly Factor” investigation the company “stands to make billions” from cap-and-trade.

And Vladimir at Redstate has a continuation on Tim Carney’s expose on the lobbying of General Electric:

GE also controls the message through its ownership of the media. That includes NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Universal Studios, 10 major-market NBC affiliate stations, 16 Telemundo stations, plus many of the popular cable TV networks: A&E, History Channel, Sundance Channel, Weather Channel (my emphasis), Bravo, USA Networks, on and on. Have you noticed how hard the Green Agenda is being pushed in all the media?

A savvy capitalist hedges his bets. GE is one of the biggest players in the high-return business of energy lending – financing the capital needs of oil and gas firms.

No wonder the real story on the costs of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill isn’t getting out.

Around the World

Bonn: New Conference, Same Deadlock

Delegates from 180 countries met in Bonn this week for negotiations in advance of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change this December in Copenhagen, where the UN hopes to adopt a successor global warming treaty to the failed Kyoto Protocol.

According to the International Energy Agency, it would cost $45 trillion through 2050 to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. U.S. President Barack Obama wants rapidly developing nations such as China and India, which will account for the preponderance of future increases in global emissions, to share this tremendous economic burden. His top climate envoy, Todd Stern, told the Associated Press, “I would not say that the United States is going to race forward with major players like China on the sidelines.”

Under the Kyoto Protocol, however, rapidly developing nations are exempt from binding emissions cuts that would slow poverty reduction by making energy much more expensive. Delegates from these nations want to maintain this “right to develop,” so they reject Stern’s logic. China’s climate ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters, “Instead of introducing new concepts, controversial concepts, unfair concepts, the world would be better served if we could focus on what is already agreed upon…”

The deadlock in Bonn is nothing new. For two years, the climate negotiators have been meeting at five star resorts around the world, and they have made no progress on the core dispute: the U.S. won’t act on climate change without China, which won’t act under any circumstance. Thankfully, this impasse appears to be intractable.

Bonn Bombshell

Besides deadlock, the only other news out of Bonn was the European Union’s apparent reversal on its unilateral pledge to reduce EU greenhouse gas emissions 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. On Monday, German environmental minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters that, “If the others don’t join in, we cannot uphold this target.”

China and the United States account for almost half of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is why Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) this week told the Sydney Morning Herald that ongoing negotiations between the two nations will “define” the upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen (where the 15^th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet in December to negotiate a successor global warming treaty to the failed Kyoto Protocol). According to U.S. Representative Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) the climate talks will be “one of the most complex diplomatic negotiations in the history of the world,” as reported by the New York Times.

If the Congressmen are correct, and climate negotiations with China are delicate diplomacy, then why did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California)-long an irritant to the Chinese government for her vocal criticism of the Communist regime’s human rights record-lead a delegation to China to try to find common ground on global warming? Pelosi told 200 students that climate change is “a place where human rights-looking out for the needs of the poor in terms of climate change and healthy environment-are a human right.” I’m not sure what this statement means, but I bet Chinese diplomats cringed.

Thankfully, U.S. Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) was there to remind reporters that negotiations with China are pointless, because the Chinese leadership already has decided growing prosperity and poverty reduction will not be hindered by expensive-energy climate treaties.

Announcements

The Heartland Institute’s Third International Conference on Climate Change will be held in Washington, DC on June 2, 2009 at the Washington Court Hotel, 525 New Jersey Avenue, NW. It will call attention to widespread dissent to the asserted “consensus” on various aspects of climate change and global warming. Register here.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a new video campaign–Al Gore, 1984. The web page links to a joint CEI-National Taxpayer Union project that allows you to email your Member of Congress about the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill.

In the News

Study Estimates 2.3 Billion Lost Jobs with Waxman-Markey
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 22 May 2009

Waxman-Markey Bill Jury-rigged for Special Interests
Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, 22 May 2009

The Climate-Industrial Complex
Bjorn Lomborg, Wall Street Journal, 20 May 2009

Democrats May Make Trouble for Climate Bill
Lisa Lerer and Patrick O’Connor, Politico, 22 May 2009

Waxman-Markey Full of Unpleasant Surprises
The Washington Examiner, 22 May 2009

Warnings from the Left Coast
Rep. Tom McClintock, 21 May 2009

California’s Sorry State Points to America’s Future
Iain Murray and William Yeatman, Fox Forum, 20 May 2009

Cap and Trade is a License to Cheat and Steal
William O’Keefe, San Francisco Examiner, 18 May 2009

Cap and Trade or Coaches and Horses
Financial Times, 18 May 2009

Waxman-Markey Will Wreck U.S. Economy
Washington Examiner, 18 May 2009

Is Wind the Next Ethanol?
Ben Lieberman, Washington Times, 17 May 2009

Mark Mills: Prophet in His Own Time?
Marlo Lewis, MasterResource.org, 15 May 2009

News You Can Use

What Happens When You Give Away the Ration Coupons?

As former Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag (now Obama’s Office of Management and Budget Director) said, “If you didn’t auction the permits it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States. All of the evidence suggests that what would occur is that corporate profits would increase by approximately the value of the permits.”

Rep. Jay Inslee, Washington Democrat, said lawmakers should not repeat the mistakes of the European Union, which gave away its first round of permits to affected industries free of charge: “When they started the cap-and-trade [plan], they gave away all the permits,” Mr. Inslee said. “It created less controversy and it was a spectacular disaster.” From an article on the hearings by Tom LoBianco published in the Washington Times on 22nd April.

H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, as passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on 21st April gives away 85% of the ration coupons to special interests.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

House Committee Passes Waxman-Markey, 33-25

The House Energy and Commerce Committee early Thursday evening voted to send the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill, H. R. 2454, to the House floor by a vote of 33 to 25. One Republican, Mary Bono Mack of California, voted yes. Four Democrats voted no: Mike Ross of Arkansas, Charles Melancon of Louisiana, John Barrow of Georgia, and Jim Matheson of Utah. Republican Nathan Deal of Georgia was not there to vote, but was opposed to the bill.

Final passage came after four long days of considering amendments. The Democratic majority defeated every Republican attempt to put upper limits on the economic damage the bill could do. They defeated amendments that would have suspended the Act if electricity prices double, gasoline reach five dollars a gallon, or unemployment exceeds fifteen percent. An amendment to suspend the Act if China and India don’t reduce their own emissions was rejected on a straight party-line vote.

They also defeated Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s (R-Tenn.) amendment (based on her bill-H. R. 391) that would have removed greenhouse gases from the list of pollutants regulated by the Clean Air Act. Rep. Edward Markey said in opposing the amendment, “We might as well say that the Earth doesn’t revolve around the sun or the dinosaurs never roamed the Earth as to say that carbon isn’t a pollutant.” (I wrote that down as I listened on C-Span, so it may not be an exact quote.) Yes, there’s no doubt in the U. S. Congress that a naturally-occurring trace gas necessary for life on Earth is a pollutant. As far as I can tell, defeat of the Blackburn amendment means that the cap-and-trade scheme in the bill will run in tandem with regulation of greenhouse gases under some sections of the Clean Air Act.

The debate became more and more unreal as it went on. Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) argued that the purpose of giving away 85% of the ration coupons to big businesses was to protect consumers from higher energy prices. But cap-and-trade can only reduce emissions if prices go up. Higher prices force consumers to use less and bring otherwise uncompetitive alternatives, such as wind power, onto the market. Of course, everyone realizes that the real purpose of giving away the coupons is to buy support from big businesses. Jim Rogers of Duke Energy is now looking forward to a big retirement package.

It’s actually unlikely that the bill if enacted will reduce emissions, at least for twenty or thirty years. That’s because nearly all the cuts required can be met by buying offsets, as an analysis by the Breakthrough Institute shows. Many offsets are a scam. Most of the ones that aren’t entirely bogus don’t deliver their emissions offsets until decades after they are purchased. For example, you can buy to have a forest planted with young trees, but they won’t sequester much carbon until they grow much bigger.  A Republican amendment to ban foreign offsets, which are especially hard to monitor and verify, was defeated.

Prospects for Waxman-Markey

Four moderate Democrats voted against H. R. 2454. That spells difficulties when it reaches the House floor, but not insuperable ones. My guess is that the bill can probably pass the House if the Democratic leadership can get it to the floor quickly. But I wouldn’t bet on it passing if the vote occurs after the August recess. That’s because it’s ramshackle (as is any thousand-page bill) and will start falling apart as people begin to explore what’s in it. Right now, the momentum is provided by the big businesses that stand to gain windfall profits from getting free ration coupons.

But there are losers as well, and the losers are going to realize that and then will begin to complain about it. The entire real estate and building industries lose big under Title II.  Even among industries that gets lots of free ration coupons, there are winners and losers. For example, utilities get 35% of the coupons, but in some States utilities get more coupons than their current emissions and in some States they get fewer coupons. How many coupons will Rep. Jay Inslee of Washington be willing to transfer from utilities in his State to some other State in order to gain a vote?

So I think that the momentum is going to change directions fairly quickly. Major far-left environmental pressure groups are opposing the bill largely because it gives away the ration coupons to “polluters.” See here and here.(“Far-left” is not only my adjective. When Greenpeace USA, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen sent out a press release criticizing Waxman-Markey, that’s how Greenwire described them.) They will mobilize their supporters as floor action approaches.

Public opinion has already turned strongly against the bill. An in-depth poll conducted by Lauer Johnson Research for the National Rural Electric Co-operative Association in early April found that 58% of those surveyed would oppose any bill to combat global warming that would raise their electricity bills by any amount. We have posted the poll results on the Cooler Heads Coalition web site, globalwarming.org. Waxman and Markey are not going to be able to conceal the likely price increases for long. Initial estimates by the Heritage Foundation, Charles River Associates, and the Congressional Budget Office show much higher costs to consumers than the EPA found in their obviously flawed estimate of 13 cents per person per day. Environmental pressure groups that support Waxman-Markey are using the EPA study, even though one of the reasons it finds such low compliance costs is that it assumes that a lot of new nuclear plants are going to be built.

Obama Raises Car Prices

President Barack took a politically popular step this week in announcing higher fuel economy standards for new cars and trucks. The anti-energy bill enacted in 2007 by the Democratic-controlled Congress and enthusiastically supported by President George W. Bush raised Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards to 35 miles per gallon for new cars by 2020 (and included the huge increase in the ethanol mandate as well). President Obama raised that to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016 (higher for cars, lower for light trucks).

It’s popular because vast efforts have been made to make people assume that they can still buy the same vehicle with the same size and performance at the same price, but after government waves a magic wand it will now get more miles per gallon. That is of course not the case. Big cars and trucks are still going to be produced, but the automakers aren’t going to meet these higher CAFÉ standards if they sell very many of them. Thus prices are going to go up for all cars, but much more for bigger, safer models.

While I’ve been concentrating on the Waxman-Markey bill for the past few weeks, things have also been happening in the Senate. Next week, I’ll catch up on the hi-jinks in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Around the World

Kyoto II

A draft of the negotiating text for the fifteenth Conference of the Parties to be held in Copenhagen in December has surfaced. It incorporates entirely new approaches to regulate greenhouse gases. It appears that binding time tables and actions are out, while mandatory “official development assistance” is in.

Yet China will be submitting their own position to the United Nations in one week. While the specific details of the document are unknown, Bejing demanded Tuesday that rich countries cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 from 1990 levels and help pay for reduction schemes in poorer countries, including China, with 0.5 to 1 percent of their annual economic worth. And such developing countries should curb emissions only on a voluntary basis, and only if the cuts “accord with their national situations and sustainable development strategies”.

The Chinese government didn’t say whether they would be willing to loan us the hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars they want us to pay them to reduce their emissions.

In the States

Utah

Utah may be getting a new governor who is more sceptical about climate change policies than the current one. Lieutenant Governor Gary Herbert will replace Governor Jon Huntsman if the Senate confirms President Obama’s nomination of Huntsman to be our Ambassador to China.

It Costs Only 13 Cents Per Day!

Julie Walsh
If you’ve heard environmentalists claim that the Waxman-Markey bill will only cost each person 13 cent a day, they are relying on information from a recent EPA study. However, the EPA’s analysis includes this rather large assumption: “Nuclear power generation is allowed to increase by ~150% from 782 billion kWh in 2005 to 1,982 billion kWh in 2050” (page 27). There have been no new orders for nuclear plants since the 70s, yet we are supposed to believe that environmental pressure groups will allow dozens of new reactors to be built.