Features

Why Paul Krugman’s “Regulate to Stimulate” Argument Doesn’t Work

by William Yeatman on September 9, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Many influential opinion-makers, including former Vice President Al Gore, contend that President Barack Obama last week rolled back the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed ozone regulation due to reasons of political expediency.

To me, this mainstream thinking makes sense. The rule likely would have put virtually the whole of the country into non-attainment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone, and compliance costs would have been obscene. This being the campaign silly season, it stands to reason that the President didn’t want to be perceived by voters as kicking a down economy

At the New York Times website, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has challenged this conventional wisdom. According to Krugman, Al Gore and his ilk are way off-base, because the ozone rule, far from being an economic depressant, is actually an economic stimulus.

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Texas Reliability Watchdogs Bash EPA’s “Impossible” and “Unprecedented” Timeline for Cross-State Air Pollution Rule

by William Yeatman on September 8, 2011

in Blog, Features

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In a previous post, I explained how the Environmental Protection Agency seems to have designed the recently finalized Cross-State Air Pollution Rule to be uniquely onerous for Texas. I wrote,

Texas was excluded from the proposed [Cross-State] rule. In the final rule, however, Texas was included, due to the supposed need to slightly reduce emissions as monitored 500 miles away in Madison County, Ill.—a locale that meets the EPA air-quality standards in question. The EPA ordered the Lone Star State to reduce sulfur-dioxide emissions 47 % within 6 months, despite the fact that it takes 3 years to install sulfur “scrubber” retrofits on coal-fired power plants.

Luminant, the largest merchant power producer in Texas, called the EPA’s timeline “unprecedented” and “impossible.” It suggested that the only way to achieve the reductions, and thereby avoid costly penalties, would be to shut down power production.

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Obama Caves to Pressure, Withdraws Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards

by Marita Noon on September 6, 2011

in Blog, Features

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On Friday morning, President Obama announced, “I have requested that Administrator Jackson withdraw the draft Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards at this time.”

Just hours before, the worst jobs numbers in a year were released.

Business and industry groups have been beating the drum regarding the EPA’s excessive regulations and their impact on the struggling American economy. The EPA has already backed down from their foolish attempt to apply oil-spill regulations to spilled milk on dairy farms. Now common sense and economic necessity can chalk up another win.

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The Myth of Oil Addiction

by Marlo Lewis on September 1, 2011

in Blog, Features

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It’s a trick employed by rhetoricians from time immemorial. When their case against an opponent is unpersuasive on the merits, they invoke the image of something their target audience fears or hates. Thus, for example, political pleaders have asserted that money, Dick Cheney, or Zionism “is a cancer on the body politic.”

Perhaps the most influential use of this tactic in modern times is the attack on carbon dioxide (CO2) as “global warming pollution” and on CO2 emitters as “polluters.” Many who know better, including highly credentialed scientists, routinely couple the words “carbon” and “pollution” in their public discourse.

In reality, CO2 — like water vapor, the atmosphere’s main greenhouse gas — is a natural constituent of clean air. Colorless, odorless, and non-toxic to humans at 30 times ambient concentrations, CO2 is an essential building block of the planetary food chain. The increase in the air’s CO2 content since the dawn of the industrial revolution — from 280 to 390 parts per million – boosts the water-use efficiency of trees, crops, and other plants; helps protect green things from the damaging effects of smog and UV-B radiation; and helps make food more plentiful and nutritious. The many health and welfare benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment make CO2 unlike any other substance ever previously regulated as a “pollutant.”

A closely related abuse of the English languge is the oft-repeated claim that America is “addicted to oil.” Although popularized by a Texas oil man, former President G.W. Bush, the phrase is a rhetorical staple of the same folks who inveigh against “carbon pollution.” NASA scientist James Hansen, arguably the world’s most famous carbonophobe besides Al Gore, recently denounced the Keystone XL Pipeline as a “dirty needle” that, if approved, would feed our supposed oil addiction. [click to continue…]

Costco Pulls Plug on Electric Vehicle Chargers

by Marlo Lewis on September 1, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Costco is removing its electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, citing lack of consumer demand, reports Jim Motavalli in the New York Times. Plug-In America, an EV advocacy group, has issued an “action alert” urging its members to email Costco CEO James Sinegal and ask him to maintain and upgrade the charging stations.  From Montavalli’s article:

Costco, the membership warehouse-club chain, was an early leader in offering electric-vehicle charging to its customers, setting an example followed by other retailers, including Best Buy and Walgreen. By 2006, Costco had installed 90 chargers at 64 stores, mostly in California but also some in Arizona, New York and Georgia. Even after General Motors crushed its EV1 battery cars, the Costco chargers stayed in place.

Yet just as plug-in cars like the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt enter the market, Costco is reversing course and pulling its chargers out of the ground, explaining that customers do not use them.

“We were early supporters of electric cars, going back as far as 15 years. But nobody ever uses them,” said Dennis Hoover, the general manager for Costco in northern California, in a telephone interview. “At our Folsom store, the manager said he hadn’t seen anybody using the E.V. charging in a full year. At our store in Vacaville, where we had six chargers, one person plugged in once a week.”

Mr. Hoover said that E.V. charging was “very inefficient and not productive” for the retailer. “The bottom line is that there are a lot of other ways to be green,” he said. “We have five million members in the region, and just a handful of people are using these devices.

Why is consumer demand for EVs — hence for charging stations — so low? [click to continue…]

Awful Month for “Green” Stimulus

by William Yeatman on August 30, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Remember how the stimulus was pitched? In order to defibrillate job creation, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was supposed to inject almost $1 trillion of taxpayer money into the economy, in a manner that was “timely, targeted, and temporary.”

About a tenth of ARRA funds were given to creating so-called “green jobs,” and a spate of recent news stories suggest that these “clean energy” stimulus dollars have been a massive failure. Instead of “timely, targeted, and temporary,” these environmentalist earmarks are better described as “late, loose, and lasting.” Consider:

Hurricanes in New York — Blame Global Warming?

by Marlo Lewis on August 29, 2011

in Features

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Google “Hurricane Irene” and “global warming,” and you’ll find 23,000 sites where these two topics are both discussed.

The Huffington Post served up the standard alarmist narrative. Reporter Lynne Peeples quotes NRDC senior scientist Kim Knowlton, who told her: “No one is going to point to Irene and say this is climate change. But we can say that we are seeing the fingerprint of climate change this year.” Huh? Peeples interprets for us:

Knowlton was of course referring to the growing list of extreme weather events that have ravaged the U.S. in 2011 — from tornadoes and flooding, to droughts and heat waves. And now millions of Americans, many of whom have never seen a real tropical storm in their lifetime, are facing a major hurricane.

Note the clever juxtaposition of Knowlton’s two statements. Although the NRDC scientist does not openly — and unscientifically — attribute a particular weather event to global climate change, she encourages readers to do just that.

Hurricanes in New York are certainly not as common as hurricanes in Florida or Louisiana, but if Irene is evidence of global warming, then global warming has menaced the Empire State for centuries, because hurricanes have hit New York since before the industrial revolution. [click to continue…]

Irene Brings the Importance of Energy to Light

by Marita Noon on August 29, 2011

in Blog, Features

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“Coal is making us sick. Oil is making us sick.” So said Senator Harry Reid. As the entire East Coast faced a fierce Irene, the lunacy of Reid’s statement was brought to light.

America’s energy is what kept people alive despite nature’s fury.

Over the weekend, the news was filled with clips of governors, mayors, and police chiefs begging people to evacuate and escape the storm, and shots of highways were filled with cars heading out. Reports warned that gas stations were out of gas and major power outages impacting millions of people could remain for as long as two weeks.

Buried between the lines of “storm surges” and “wind gusts,” is an untold story of the importance of energy in saving lives.

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Eight Reasons to Love the Keystone XL Pipeline

by Marlo Lewis on August 26, 2011

in Features

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The State Department is expected as soon as today to release its final environmental impact statement (FEIS) on the proposed 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline to bring up to 850,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Canadian heavy crude from Alberta’s oil sands down to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

According to anonymous sources at State, the FEIS will confirm the agency’s earlier finding that construction and operation of the pipeline will have “limited adverse environmental impacts,” reports Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post. This will remove a key obstacle to State issuing an assessment that the pipeline is in the U.S. national interest. Then, presumably, this $7 billion, shovel-ready project could start creating thousands of high-wage jobs.

In July, the House passed H.R. 1938, the North American-Made Energy Security Act, by 279-147. The bi-partisan bill would require President Obama to issue a final order granting or denying a permit to construct Keystone XL by no later than November 1, 2011. The Center-Right is putting pressure on Team Obama, in the run-up to an election year, to expand U.S. access to oil from our friendly, democratic, politically stable neighbor to the north.

At the same time, Eilperin notes, Keystone XL “has strained President Obama’s relationship with his environmental base and become a proxy for the broader climate debate. Protesters from across the country have gathered daily in front of the White House since Saturday, resulting in 275 arrests so far.”

First to be arrested was Canadian actress Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane in several Superman films. Her top reason for opposing the pipeline: “It’s bound to leak, there’s no way it’s not going to…. They always assure us these things are safe, and they never are.” By that logic, no pipeline should ever be built, and all should be dismantled. And then we could all live in Medieval squalor. Planet Saved!

I’ve been a Keystone booster for some time, but the fracus at the White House has taught me new reasons to love the pipeline.

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Changing the Discussion on Energy and the Environment

by Marita Noon on August 24, 2011

in Blog, Features

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In reaching to remain relevant, the environmental movement has had to change tactics.

Back in the seventies, when America looked like China does today, environmental issues needed attention. But then we cleaned up the air and water. The skies and rivers went from brown to blue. As Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore explains, in order to stay relevant, environmentalists had to find new issues.

For most of the last decade global warming has been their cause, and carbon—or burning fossil fuels—was vilified as the cause. This gave way to a whole new industry: green. Green energy would replace fossil fuels. Wind and solar would replace coal as the source fuel for electricity and ethanol, or other fuels generated from biomass, would replace liquid fuels. Green energy would provide new “green” jobs. The world would be a beautiful place.

This all sounded nice. It felt good.

But that was before data began to be show how much more all of this was going to cost and the urgent need to save the planet passed. The polar bears were not drowning. The measurements were found to be falsified. Consensus science didn’t work. The seas did not rise and the world seemed to adapt to whatever the various changes have been. There was a “newfound hostility to climate policy.” Suddenly, we did not want to spend so much on “feel good.”

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