Politics

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch 

My colleague from the John Locke Foundation, economist Roy Cordato, explains today at National Review Online an energy tax that is part of a bill sponsored by Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman:

The EPA has estimated what the McCain energy tax would mean to consumers. Since the bill’s provisions are phased in, the full cost of the tax would not be felt for a number of years. But in a letter to Senator McCain dated July 2007, the EPA estimated that the tax will be about $.26 cents in current dollars per gallon of gasoline by 2030 and $.68 cents per gallon by 2050. For electricity, the EPA estimates that the McCain energy tax would increase individual’s electric bills by 22 percent in 2030 and 25 percent in 2050.

Roy thinks voters in Michigan ought to be especially interested in this McCain proposal.

The state of Maryland, which is running a climate change study commission like many other states, is ready to implement laws restricting carbon dioxide emissions before its panel even finishes its work. The Maryland Commission on Climate Change released interim recommendations early last month, which include a call for emissions reductions even greater than those made by California last year. The state legislature is ready to go to work now on it, the Associated Press reports:

No kidding. If the interim recommendations are taken seriously by the General Assembly like the carbon cap is, then the state is in for serious economy-busting measures, which include a public benefits fund (a tax on electricity); mandating a higher percentage of renewables in its electricity-generation sources; greater tax subsidies for greenhouse gas emission reduction and energy efficiency; and new transportation initiatives like higher fuel taxes and pay-as-you-drive insurance.

As I’ve written in the past for the John Locke Foundation’s Carolina Journal, this partial menu of options is the adopted brainchild of an advocacy group called the Center for Climate Strategies, who manage these commissions for several different states and give them all their ideas. The difference with Maryland, it seems, is that their lawmakers aren’t bothering to wait until the ink is dry on the commission’s recommendations.

H/T: Mr. Horner

Breaking news from Stockholm is making Al Gore's trip to the Nobel celebrations into a bigger PR morass than it already was. Al Gore used a private plane from Stockholm to Frankfurt when he left the celebrations to head to Bali according to Swedish blogger Henrik Alexanderson. The story has also been picked up by mainstream media, such as Expressen after Alexanderson broke the news.

The Nobel Committee made a publicity stunt out of Al Gore's means of transportation to Oslo, when he showed up here (yes, I am in Oslo now) to receive his undeserved Nobel Prize earlier this month. But Al Gore's long standing record of "do as I say, not as I do" quickly turned the publicity dream into a publicity nightmare.

Friday morning on the 7th of December, Al Gore arrived at Gardermoen Airport. After a brief Q&A session with reporters, he and his entourage walked across the airport and took the escalator down to the Airport Train concourse and hopped on the train to downtown Oslo with the entire gang of dispatched reporters. Well downtown, they walked the three minutes across the downtown park from the rail station to his hotel, cameras in tow.

This was of course running live on Norwegian television, and the head line on all edited television reports and the next morning's newspapers was "LOOK AT HOW ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY HE IS!!"

The honeymoon lasted only until Sunday when the reporters in the largest newspaper in the country asked the first question I had when I saw the reports; where is his luggage? All the other reporters covering the Nobels had gone all gaga and star struck over the former senator gone opportunist.

The Gore luggage had been picked up and sent by van from the airport, and the Nobel committee PR staff was not happy to be asked the question by VG. The spokesperson expressed dismay stating, "Such incidental logistics could hardly be newsworthy".

I have yet to find information on how Gore made it to Stockholm, but the press secretary of Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation stated that lending the private jet of the executive cabinet of Sweden "was the solution that made it possible for Gore to come to Sweden."

It is illegal for anyone but members of the cabinet to use the plane, so the Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation had to accompany Gore on the plane and fly back. At least we know which is the most expendable member of the Swedish Cabinet through this.

This is not the first time Gore is caught saying one thing and doing another. His own inefficient private jet, which he uses extensively in the US, and his energy hungry household in Tennessee, is widely known in the US. The news has reached Scandinavia, but has barely gotten any traction.
If we are to believe Brendan O'Neill's review of Al Gore's speech in Bali, Gore will reveal more of his do as I say, not as I do sentiments now that he is getting more comfortable in his own skin. O'Neill quotes from Gore reveal Gore as an anti-democrat.

It is often suggested that global warming and/or the environment is becoming more important in deciding how Americans vote. The latest poll figures, from the Washington Post and ABC News, suggest that for Democrats in the crucial state of Iowa, that is far from the case.

In a state where ethanol and energy are important issues, too few people to register mentioned global warming as the most important issue in determining their choice of candidate. Taking the top two issues together, 4 percent said the Environment, 3 percent said Energy/Ethanol and 2 percent global warming. There may be some overlap between these groups, so it is impossible to add these up even to 9 percent.

And that's the Democrats. Now admittedly, this is from a midwest state but the figures for environmentally "aware" New Hampshire aren't much different. In the latest CNN poll there, just 4 percent of Democrats make it their #1 issue, with 3 percent their #2 (an additional 5 percent named it their #3 issue, something that wasn't asked in the Iowa poll).

In South Carolina, a Winthrop University poll in October found just 0.8 percent of Democrats mentioning the Environment as their most important issue – lower (though meaninglessly so) than the 1 percent of Republicans!

Its about time someone called the celeboticians from Hollywood on their hypocrisy. This editorial from the Harvard Crimson points out the difference between what our movie stars gone activists do, and what they tell other people to do. Hummers and jets might be convenient, so why should the use be limited to celebrities that tell everyone else how bad it is to use them.

Gore's Wars?   [Iain Murray]

It appears that the Nobel committee gave Al and the UN the peace prize on the grounds that

 it wanted to bring the "increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states" posed by climate change into sharper focus

The theory being that if there's more malaria, sea level rise, drought, hunger etc then people will react badly and fight.  The trouble is that Gore's preferred policies will lead to a poorer, energy starved world.  Far better, one might think, to tackle malaria, sea level rise, drought, hunger and so on directly rather than by tinkering with the chemical composition of the atmosphere.  As Indur Goklany has shown, we can do this for a fraction of the cost. 

Lots more on this idea on the Solutions page.  In particular you might note William Nordhaus' findings that while 3 degrees C of unchecked warming will cost the world $22 trillion in damages, Gore's policies will cost the world $44 trillion in total.

So if global warming will lead to "violent conflicts and wars," what would Gore's policies do?

10/12 10:47 AM

In a major defeat for global warming alarmists, a California judge yesterday dismissed a law suit by the State of California that sought to blame the world's six largest automakers for damages it purported had been caused by global warming.

The judge (opinion here) held that the Court could not decide to what extent the automakers themselves were responsible for the problems the State alleged they caused:

"The court is left without guidance in determining what is an unreasonable contribution to the sum of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere, or in determining who should bear the costs associated with global climate change that admittedly result from multiple sources around the globe"

The judge declared that it was for lawmakers, not the Court, to decide to what extent automakers were liable for any costs associated with global warming. He also found that ruling for the State would jeopardize the Administration's foreign policy negotiations.

Who recently made the following statement?

"In fact, the life of all mankind is in danger because of global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations; yet despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistics speak of the death and displacement of millions of human beings because of global warming, especially in Africa."

No, this quote is not from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. It’s from Osama bin Laden’s latest rant from the cave, where reportedly his carbon footprint is very small. Certainly, Osama is producing a lot less carbon dioxide than Al Gore. Sean Hannity on Fox News recently showed video footage of Gore’s frequent flights on private jets. Earlier this year, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research reported that Gore’s house in Tennessee has a carbon footprint twenty times that of the average American’s house — and Gore owns a house in suburban Virginia as well. It’s sad to have to say it, but Al doesn’t live by his own advice. He preaches global warming salvation, but apparently he isn’t going to make it to the promised land himself.

On the other hand, Osama appears to have taken Gore’s advice to heart. He’s cut way down on his air travel, and he’s telecommuting from home. And even better than owning a Toyota Prius hybrid, it appears that he currently doesn’t own a car at all. Those are three of the big recommendations in An Inconvenient Truth. Osama appears to have adopted the ideal radical environmentalist lifestyle down to the very last detail—it really is back to the cave.

This is not to say that Osama is not just as hypocritical as Gore. While Gore plays the phony egalitarian card as expertly as the founder of his political party, Thomas Jefferson, Osama’s considerable wealth would not exist without Saudi Arabia’s enormous oil production. In the end, they are both elitists (by which I don’t mean to suggest that they are similar in all respects—Osama is an evil mass murderer) who claim to lead populist movements that will require, in Gore’s words, “a wrenching transformation of society.”