The stunning victory by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in Canada’s election means the death of cap-and-trade or a carbon tax in Canada. The Conservative Party’s platform firmly opposed both cap-and-trade and carbon taxes. The Liberal Party, which was annihilated in the election, equally strongly supported imposing a cap-and-trade scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Conservatives won a clear majority of 167 seats in the 308-member federal Parliament. They had formed a minority government since 2007. For the first time in Canadian history, the Liberal Party dropped to third place with 34 seats. The hard left New Democratic Party (NDP) wiped out the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec and will become the official opposition with 102 seats. The NDP and the Bloc Quebecois also support cap-and-trade. The Green Party won its first seat in Parliament.
This is another clear sign that public support for cap-and-trade and other energy-rationing policies is waning. Cap-and-trade has been dead in the United States since the Waxman-Markey bill narrowly passed the House of Representatives on June 26, 2009. And in Australia, the Labour Party government is in deep trouble as a result of proposing a carbon tax. The global warming fad appears to be fading fast.
If you’ve been following the global warming debate for any length of time, you know how boringly predictable the “consensus” narrative has become. Global warming is good for bad things — poison ivy, ticks, toxic algae blooms, malaria-carrying mosquitoes — but bad for good things — polar bears, ski resorts, Vermont’s maple sugar industry, and the weather patterns on which agriculture (hence human survival) allegedly depend.
And supposedly, one of the cures for global warming is to “repower” America with zero-carbon energy, especially electricity generated from wind turbines.
But that creates a bit of a conundrum for warmists. If global warming is going to play havoc with the weather, how do we know that the best locations for siting wind farms today will remain optimal (or even marginally productive) in the allegedly topsy turvy greenhouse planet of tomorrow?
Never fear! A new study funded by the National Science Foundation finds that global warming will not significantly change America’s wind patterns over the next 50 years. [click to continue…]
Professor Matthew Nisbet of American University published a report last week that concludes, among much else, that environmental pressure groups spent a lot more money trying to pass cap-and-trade legislation than opponents spent trying to defeat it. The report, “Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate,” is part of the Climate Shift Project of American University’s School of Communications.
As someone who has been engaged in the global warming debate for over a decade, the conclusion that the cap-and-traders had more money than their opponents is not at all surprising. In fact, it is obvious and recognized by everyone who has been paying attention.
But rabid attack dog Joe Romm of the hilariously-misnamed Center for American Progress, who got hold of a copy of the report before it was published, naturally attacked it viciously. That’s because Nisbet’s analysis destroys the environmental movement’s carefully-cultivated mythology that they are a bunch of little citizen groups up against mammoth industry special interests led by Big Oil and King Coal.
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“Storms Kill Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers,” announces a blog post on ThinkProgress.Org. If the blogger does not actually claim that the southland is being punished for its sins of emission, he apparently sees poetic justice in the devastation, or at least irony:
The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings of scientists.
The real irony, though, is that blaming tornadoes on global warming is unscientific. [click to continue…]
High Court Offers Sense in Global Warming Battle
Bob Tippee, Oil & Gas Journal, 2 May 2011
The One “Big” You Can’t Escape
Eric Peters, American Spectator, 2 May 2011
Paul Krugman’s Convenient Lie about Global Warming
Joseph Klein, FavStocks.com, 30 April 2011
The Truth about Green Jobs: A Recruiter’s Perspective
Doug Thorner, Denver Post, 29 April 2011
Fear of Climate Change Falling Precipitously
Joe Wolverton, American Thinker, 29 April 2011
Natural Gas: A Better “Climate” Fuel?
Chip Knappenberger, MasterResource.org, 29 April 2011
Let’s Sunset the Ethanol Subsidy
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, RealClearMarkets.com, 28 April 2011
How Oil Profits Are Good for Americans
Nicolas Loris, The Foundry, 28 April 2011
Professor Cornpone, Inc.
Wall Street Journal editorial, 27 April 2011
The Climate Gospel According to Gore
Larry Bell, Forbes, 26 April 2011
Here is an excellent overview (by Robert Rapier) of taxes and the oil industry. The basic takeaways are that a simpler tax code is much preferable to what we have now, that ending these deductions without reforming the tax code will be damaging, and the oil industry’s profit margins are actually lower than many other industries. The whole thing is worth reading, but below are a few excerpts.
The biggest ‘oil company subsidy’ — amounting to $1.7 billion per year for the oil industry — is a manufacturer’s tax deduction that is explained in Section 199 of the IRS code. This is a tax credit designed to keep manufacturing in the U.S., but it isn’t limited to oil companies. It is a tax credit enjoyed by ethanol companies (have you ever heard anyone call it an ethanol subsidy?), computer companies (we are subsidizing Microsoft and Google!) and foreign companies who operate factories in the U.S.
One never hears of proposals to entirely do away with Section 199. Apparently, since this tax credit was designed as an incentive to keep manufacturing in the U.S., many would feel that eliminating it for all companies would provide less incentive for them to keep their factories in the U.S. Some of the same people apparently don’t believe this reasoning will apply with the oil industry.
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In the wake of some of the deadliest storms in American history this week in the South, global warming alarmists have shamelessly tried to link the devastation wrought by tornadoes to climate change. According to Grady Dixon, assistant professor of meteorology and climatology at Mississippi State University, such a conclusion would be a “terrible mistake.” He told a leading science website that, “If you look at the past 60 years of data, the number of tornadoes is increasing significantly, but it’s agreed upon by the tornado community that it’s not a real increase. It’s having to do with better (weather tracking) technology, more population, the fact that the population is better educated and more aware. So we’re seeing them more often.” The likelihood of a bad tornado season was predicted on the basis that there is currently a strong La Nina in the Pacific Ocean. It should be remembered that El Ninos bring warmer weather while La Ninas bring cooler weather.
The White House has finally realized that there is a close correlation between rising gas prices and dropping presidential popularity ratings, and so President Barack Obama has begun flailing around to try to deflect the blame. Normally, I would sympathize with the President’s predicament. Oil prices go up and down as a result of global supply and demand. But in this case, I think the President deserves all the blame he’s going to get from the American people.
President Obama and his Administration have done everything they can to reduce domestic oil and natural gas production. The Department of the Interior has cancelled leases on federal land in the West, delayed and denied permits necessary to start drilling on leases (which, remember, are awarded by competitive bid and have already been paid for), restored an executive moratorium on leasing most federal offshore areas, denied a permit to a lease off the Alaska coast for which Shell paid $2.2 billion and has already invested $4 billion, and placed a moratorium on new drilling in deep and shallow waters in the western Gulf of Mexico (the only major offshore oil field in the U. S.). Since lifting the western Gulf moratorium earlier this year, Interior has been slow-walking the approval of drilling permits. The President also steadfastly opposes opening the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration.
Although President Obama said in a recent speech that the U. S. was going to have to produce more oil, the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration has projected that domestic oil production is going to decline significantly in the next few years as a result of Administration policies. The dropoff would be much steeper were it not for the rapid expansion of production in the Bakken field in North Dakota and Montana. The Obama Administration has not been able to slow production there because all the land is privately owned.
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Via Steven Mufson at The Washington Post.
Black liquor is a by-product of paper production and much of it is burned in house at the paper mills to produce energy. Note that these companies need no incentive to do this as they already have been doing it on their own for quite a long time as its an efficient way for them to produce their own energy. This was an issue in the past, which Congress had theoretically fixed, but as the article notes:
Eager to limit the cost to the Treasury — more than $4 billion by the end of fiscal year 2009 — Congress said that black liquor would not qualify for the alternative fuel tax credits after Dec. 31, 2009. And to help cover the cost of the January 2010 health-care law, Congress also barred black liquor from qualifying for the cellulosic biofuel tax credit.
But the story didn’t end there.
Last year, the IRS said that the provision in the 2010 health-care legislation didn’t prevent black liquor produced in 2009 from qualifying as a cellulosic biofuel, so the paper industry got its calculators out again. The cellulosic biofuel tax credit, part of the 2008 farm bill, is worth $1.01 a gallon.
I can understand how this might happen initially. Laws are written vaguely and companies take advantage of a law not intended to benefit them. This is frustrating in and of itself, but given the complexity of our tax code its bound to happen sometimes. However, the fact that our laws are so complicated that Congress tried, and failed, to fix this loophole is beyond belief.
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I travelled to Denver twice in the last 7 days to testify before the Senate State Affairs Committee on HB 1291, Colorado’s State Implementation Plan to meet the Regional Haze provision of the federal Clean Air Act.
I told the Committee that HB 1291 is illegal. And I rebutted the distortions peddled by its proponents, who also testified. Illegality and disingenuousness are huge accusations, and I made them twice, in testimonies a week apart, so the bill’s proponents had time to conjure a response. But no one disputed my assertions. Because they were true.
Nonetheless, the Plan passed out of Committee, due to the fact that it enjoys the support of two of Colorado’s richest special interests, for which billions of dollars were at stake. Today, HB 1291 was enacted by the full Senate, by a 25-10 vote. Two weeks ago, by a 58-7 vote, it was passed by the House of Representatives. If there’s one thing a bipartisan, bicameral majority can agree on these days, it’s the importance of currying favor with the deepest pockets.
This is a long blog about the who, what, why, and when of Colorado’s Regional Haze State Implementation Plan, the most outrageous rip-off you’ve never heard of.
The Back Story
Colorado’s Regional Haze State Implementation Plan originated not in the Centennial State, but in Oklahoma. It owes its form to Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, a natural gas company headquartered in Oklahoma City.
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