The walls, pillars, and floors of the Metro subway station at Capitol South, which is next to the House office buildings, are plastered with advertisements from a coalition calling itself 35Plus15. The ads support legislation mandating that CAFÉ standards on cars and light trucks be raised to 35 miles per gallon and that electric utilities be required to produce 15 per cent of their power from renewable sources. 35Plus15 appears to be a project of the Save Our Environment coalition of environmental pressure groups.
What's remarkable is some of the claims that these ads make. Most egregious is one poster that says, "Let's put Americans to work saving money". How mandating more expensive vehicles and electricity is going to save anyone money is beyond me. If these policies would save people money, then they wouldn't require government mandates.
Targeting this kind of propaganda to congressional staffers is clearly having an effect, despite its counter-factual claims. At a conference on energy at the Washington Post I attended Thursday, one panel consisted of two Republican Senators–Lisa Murkowski (Ak.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.)–and two Democratic Representatives–Edward Markey (Mass.) and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (S. D.). Markey has been pursuing a leftist anti-energy agenda for thirty-one years as a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and of the Natural Resources Committee, so perhaps his confusion can be explained as a political strategy to advance his goals. But the others are just confused. They recognize that there have been problems when government has gotten involved in picking winners and losers, but still want to do it.
Rep. Markey objected to nuclear subsidies because they violate the need for a level-playing field. But he supports mandates and subsidies for renewable fuels and energy conservation. And on top of those distortions of the level playing field, he favors cap-and-trade controls on greenhousee gas emissions.
Sen. Murkowski thinks CAFE standards must be raised so that the automakers will be forced to produce the kinds of vehicles she prefers rather than the kind her sixteen-year-old son prefers. Of course, the automakers do produce such models, but more people prefer safer, bigger, and faster cars than the Senator says she prefers (I don't know what model she drives).
Rep. Sandlin wants lots of ethanol for motor fuels, but she demands that the mandate be designed carefully, so that corn isn't displaced by other feedstocks. Higher CAFE standards are good, but need to have special loopholes to take account of the needs of rural agro-Americans for bigger pickup trucks.
Sen. Corker likes the ethanol mandate and would support a renewable requirement for utilities if nuclear and hydropower were included. He is also interested in cap-and-trade for greenhouse gas emissions, even though he admits it's a tax, if it will create new green jobs and technology. Of course, cap-and trade would raise energy prices and thereby destroy a lot more jobs than it creates. But any familiarity with basic economics is not a pre-requisite for making the nation's energy policies.
On November 5, Senator Hilary Clinton (D-NY) unveiled her presidential campaign’s plan to fight global warming.
Of the economics of climate mitigation policy, Senator Clinton said: “The climate crisis is one of the greatest economic opportunities in the history of this country.”
On that same subject, the Congressional Budget Office reports: "Most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline."
A few remarkable pieces ran today in the “climate change” context.
First, China Daily, which is a decent barometer of the state’s thinking, ran a piece with the amusing headline “UN climate change chief impressed by China,” which also was indicative of the piece’s message: this is as good as it gets.
It opens by noting that “China is taking all the necessary steps to tackle the adverse impacts of climate change, chairman of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri has said.” Presumably this means openly rejecting Kyoto-style caps on emissions, and building a coal-fired power plant every three days as China reportedly is doing, in which case the U.S. certainly has some catching up to do on at least one count to match Chinese performance which also is increasingly lauded by the Europeans (see below).
It turns out, however, that Pachauri had less obvious steps in mind. “Pachauri said he was impressed by what Chinese scientists and meteorologists had done to fight climate change.” (emphasis added; and in case you are not yourself impressed by this assessment, China Daily follows this with a reminder that Pachauri leads a group that shared the Nobel with Al Gore).
So, China’s impressive contribution – to fighting climate change, mind you – is proffered by its scientists and meteorologists. Some breakthrough technology, you might ask? Well, sort of. It seems that China now has a weather channel, “and it reaches everyone”. OK, that might exaggerate things by a few hundred million in a country lacking rural electrification necessary for large swaths of its peasantry to plug in their sets.
Still, were that not enough to fight climate change, China has set up 2,400 observation posts (the U.S. may or may not be a laggard, with precisely half that amount, 1221 surface temperature measuring stations, if also having considerably less area to cover). Impressed with their climate-change fighting capabilities yet? There’s more.
Finally, it seems that Chinese scientists were very cooperative with the IPCC, “with its scientists showing a very positive attitude toward working with international researchers to fight climate change”.
You really gotta love state-run media. I may be mistaken, but there has indeed been a detectable cooling just in the past few days.
This heroic Chinese effort becomes relevant due to a claim, made by a European climate delegate published in a Forbes story, “US, not China, main obstacle in climate change talks – EU delegation”, who assures us that the Chinese quietly inform her how “China is also likely to make other commitments when the [post-2012 Kyoto] talks begin next month”. Tough to tell which messenger to believe here, really.
This piece reflects the EU’s rather transparent campaign, in the run-up to December’s Kyoto talks in Bali, to explain away its unilateral if fracturing insistence that post-2012 Kyoto look like the 2008-2012 version, with an ever-tightening if selective absolute emissions cap, which is still rejected by the U.S. and 155 other countries. In truth, the U.S. has joined with Kyoto parties Japan and now Canada to bring in Kyoto-rejecting Australia and Kyoto free-riders India, China, and South Korea and develop (what the administration refuses to call) an alternative path, of technology development and transfer allowing participants to choose their own metric.
Europe demands that others stay clear of that approach, thereby somehow positioning the U.S. as the obstacle to progress. This spin will be on full display beginning on December 3-14, at which point we hopefully will see how it withstands pushback and debate.
The NYT has a piece today containing this beauty of a second paragraph:
"In southern China, high oil prices forced Wang Pui, a trucker, to wait in line 90 minutes the other day to fill up, just to be told he could pump only 25 gallons, as China faced spot shortages of gasoline and diesel fuel."
Amazing what those high prices can do. Like causing lines and shortages. From the people who brought you “Despite Drop in Crime, an Increase in Inmates”
MSNBC reports that two think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security, released a study claiming that climate change could be one of the greatest security threats ever faced by the U.S. The report even compared the ramifications of a warmer world to a nuclear holocaust.
That’s strong stuff. It is also on the fringe of plausibility.
But what are the geopolitical ramifications of climate policies? Here’s a different scenario:
It’s 2012, and the West proceeds apace with emissions reductions. Unwilling to accept a comparative disadvantage to China, which refused binding emissions targets, the West imposes a carbon tariff on all Chinese goods (as French President Nicolas Sarkozy has recently suggested). As a result of the West’s protectionism, the Chinese economy—now the driver of global economic growth—sputters and stalls, and the world is plunged into a global recession.
It gets worse. Millions of Chinese can’t comprehend why the boom times came to a halt, so they take to the streets in protest. The Communists in charge feel their grip on power loosen, so they resort to nationalism to reassert control. A surprise attack is launched on Taiwan. The American President keeps her pledge to protect Free China, and has the 7th fleet engage the Chinese navy….missiles ensue….the world shuts up shop.
Sounds scary, right? Unlike the bogus report released yesterday, my scenario is at least grounded in history. Do you remember what happened the last time protectionism initiated a nasty global recession? It was the 1930’s, and it helped usher in World War Two.
Matt Sinclair of the Taxpayers Alliance in the UK builds on Marlo's research on the reality of large-scale emissions reduction. Matt's conclusion:
"Without some kind of miracle technology you can only reduce emissions sufficiently by radically slashing incomes. There is just no way that the Chinese, or any other other big emitters, will possibly accept this. Cutting their long-term expected income in half, or more, is just not an option at all.
"What does this mean for Britain? We already knew that our emissions weren't particularly important to global emissions growth. The UK just doesn't emit that much. Instead of actually changing anything by our actions we were supposed to be "leading". Showing others how it is done. That's pretty irrelevant now. Even if you were to, as some would like to, have the EU put massive trade sanctions on any country that doesn't sign up to our green agenda they're still not going to pay half of their long-term income for the right to trade with us. They certainly won't be shamed into it by Britain's selfless willingness to decimate its manufacturing sector."
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