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As if using the EPA to browbeat and frighten corporate America and its investors isn’t enough, environmentalist thugs now want other government regulators to get into the act, even though they have no authority to do so:

The groups that released the studies called on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to respond to investor requests for guidance on climate-related disclosures for companies to put in securities filings. The SEC did not immediately respond (why should they?) to questions about the studies.

“As the nation responds to the challenges of global warming, investors have a right to know which businesses are forging innovative solutions for the 21st century and which are lagging behind,” Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp said in a release.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tracks emissions of carbon dioxide from industry, but investors say they want to know more about corporate strategies to reduce pollution from other planet-warming gasses as well as carbon dioxide.

“I want to tell you what’s going to happen from this point forward in my opinion. First of all, the House will pass anything. Nancy Pelosi has the votes to pass anything. Don’t be distressed when you see the House passes some kind of cap-and-trade bill. And you know it could be worse [than the proposed bill] and she could still pass it, so it’ll pass there….

“The EPA has threatened to regulate this through the Clean Air Act. That isn’t going to work in my opinion because we can stall that until we get a new president – that shouldn’t be a problem….

“While the House will pass the bill … in the Senate, they’re not going to be able to pass it. You guys – it’s just not going to happen. Now we have a history of what’s happened in the Senate. We had the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Remember that’s where we passed by a 94-1, I think it was, saying we don’t want to ratify any treaty – the Senate doesn’t – that doesn’t include developing nations with developed nations. Well, that stuck with us.”

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.

Announcements

More than 100 lawmakers at the federal, state and local levels have signed Americans for Prosperity’s No Climate Tax Pledge. This week, the National Taxpayers Union, Institute for Liberty and Competitive Enterprise Institute joined AFP as co-sponsors. Learn more at NoClimateTax.com.

In the News

Just What Is Waxman-Markey for?
Iain Murray, DC Examiner, 8 May 2009

Stunningly Trivial Emission Reductions from the Renewable Fuel Standard Program
Marlo Lewis, MasterResource.org, 8 May 2009

Climate Tax Will Pollute Your Prosperity
Grover Norquist, Washington Times, 6 May 2009

EPA: Small Business Exposed to Climate Litigation
Ian Talley, Wall Street Journal, 6 May 2009

Award Winning Boat Anchors
Paul Chesser, American Spectator, 6 May 2009

Lobbyists Help Dems Draft Climate Bill
Tom LoBianco, Washington Times, 4 May 2009

GM Troubles Repeat British Auto Mistakes of the 1970s
Iain Murray, DC Examiner, 4 May 2009

Greenbacks for Green Energy Come from Taxpayer Pockets
Fred L Smith Jr. & William Yeatman, DC Examiner, 4 May 2009

Australia Postpones Climate Plan
Reuters, 4 May 2009

Green Jobs Debunked
William Yeatman, Townhall Magazine, 1 May 2009

News You Can Use

It Could Happen Here

According to the Daily Mail, laws aimed at tackling global warming could cost every family in Britain a staggering $30,000.

Waxman-Markey Climate Bill Is All Pain, No Gain

Using the same emissions scenarios employed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, environmental scientist Chip Knappenberger calculates that the American Clean Energy and Security Act, if enacted, would reduce global warming by nine hundredths of one degree Fahrenheit.

Gallup: Al Gore “Is Losing”

“Any measure that we look at shows Al Gore’s losing at the moment. The public is just not that concerned,” Gallup editor Frank Newport told U.S. News and World Report this week.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

President Lobbies for Expensive Energy Bill

President Barack Obama met with Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday. He reportedly urged them to make a deal on the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill that would take account of regional economic differences, but did not wade into the details of the negotiations. Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) told reporters that talks between committee members were continuing and expressed confidence that a bill would be voted out of committee before Memorial Day.

Expensive Energy Bill Worries Moderate Democrats

As it happens, I am writing this while in Rep. Waxman’s incredibly wealthy district. I have talked to a number of well-informed Californians over the past few days and have found that they are aware that the state government’s energy and global warming policies are contributing to the economic downturn, which is severe and shows few signs of bottoming out. If even some of Waxman’s constituents are growing anxious about the costs of green energy, it should not be surprising if voters in districts that produce oil or coal or depend upon coal-fired electricity to produce energy-intensive goods are starting to become really worried by the Waxman-Markey bill. In a long and thorough analysis published in Thursday’s Environment and Energy Daily (subscription required), Alex Kaplun and Darren Samuelsohn consider the political prospects of the moderate and Blue Dog Democrats who represent many of these districts. They write:

“At first glance, the 15 or so moderate Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats who hold the fate of the climate change bill in their hands have little to fear as far as political repercussions in their home state. Virtually all of them won their last election by large margins and for most it has been several years since they saw a serious political challenge. But a closer examination of each moderate’s political situation also shows that a closely contested election may not be as far off as it may seem. And in many instances a vote on climate change legislation — depending on which side ultimately wins the public relations battle on the issue — could play a key role in their political futures.”

The votes of twelve of the nineteen undecided Members that they identify will be necessary to pass the bill out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. My guess is that public opinion in these districts is turning against cap-and-trade as people start to pay attention to the fact that it would have significant costs for them. That could make it difficult for these Members to vote for Waxman-Markey no matter how much it is watered down.

EPA Makes a Powerful Enemy

EPA on Tuesday released its proposed rulemaking to implement the Renewable Fuels Standard. The document is a monster–500 pages with 800 more in supporting documents. There will be a sixty-day comment period. I hope those who intend to comment can read faster than I can. EPA’s analysis of corn-based ethanol is that it will increase greenhouse gas emissions by 5 to 34 percent (depending on whether natural gas or coal is used to power the ethanol distillery) over a thirty-year payback period above gasoline derived entirely from petroleum. EPA’s estimate includes the indirect effects of land-use changes.

One powerful moderate Democrat reacted by blowing his top. Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) announced at a hearing that the EPA finding that corn ethanol increases greenhouse gas emissions would kill the biofuel industry. He then stunned the hearing audience and probably some members of his committee: “I want this message sent back down the street (that is, down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House). I will not support any climate change bill. I don’t trust anybody anymore.”

Crisis Averted

Julie Walsh

How many times have you heard it breathlessly declared that a warming Arctic will melt the permafrost and release methane, a greenhouse gas twenty-five times more potent than carbon dioxide? Well, unnoticed by the regular press, a six-year study has determined that the vast store of planet-warming methane appears to be more stable than thought, easing fears of a rapid rise in temperatures. Crisis averted.

Across the States

New Kansas Gov Says Yes to Coal

Before she was confirmed in late April as Secretary of Human Health and Services, Kathleen Sebelius served as the governor of Kansas, and one of her last acts in that capacity was to veto a bill passed by the State Legislature that would have allowed for the construction of two coal-fired power plants in the southwestern part of the State. Sebelius already had vetoed 4 similar bills. In a stunning reversal, her successor, Gov. Mark Parkinson, this week decided to allow the construction of one 895 megawatt plant.

Even Berkeley Liberals Don’t Want to Pay for Green Energy

Tracy Seipal of the San Jose Mercury News this week reported that, “After two years of public outreach and debate on an ambitious and controversial plan to curb global warming, Berkeley’s city council this week was forced to water down the proposal…after angry homeowners complained the plan could cost them tens of thousands of dollars.”

Durango Ditches Green Power

Durango (Colorado) City will save more than $45,000 by using coal power instead of wind energy to generate electricity for government buildings. Manager Ron LeBlanc told the USA Today, “It’s very hard for us to lay off an employee to justify green power.”

Rent-seeking–the whoring after market-rigging rules and subsidies–is a true addiction, an appetite that grows with feeding. For the ethanol lobby, it’s not enough that government props up their product with Soviet-style production quota, protective tariffs, a 45-cent-per-gallon blenders tax credit, R&D handouts, and other support. Like the Johnny Rocco character portrayed by Edward G. Robinson in the Bogart and Becall classic Key Largo, the ethanol lobby always wants “more.”

And there are always well-meaning politicians happy to oblige. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) have introduced bipartisan legislation (HR 1476, S. 835) requiring each automaker to ensure that at least 50% of the vehicles it manufactures or sells are flex-fuel by 2012 and at least 80% by 2015. A flex-fuel vehicle is one that can run on either regular gasoline or E-85 (a blend containing 85% ethanol), or anything in between.

Supporters acknowledge that flex-fuel technology will add about $100 to the purchase price of a new car. But, they claim, this expense will be more than offset by the reduction in fuel costs. That’s an interesting theory. However, according to www.fueleconomy.gov, a Web site jointly administered by DOE and EPA, it costs hundreds of dollars more annually to fill up a flex-fuel vehicle with E-85 than with regular gasoline. No wonder so few people buy flex fuel vehicles!

When will mandatists learn? If the combination of flex-fuel vehicles and E-85 is such a great bargain, consumers will demand them, and profit-seeking companies will produce and deliver them for sale, all without regulatory coercion. Alternatively, if the flex-fuel/E-85 package is not a good buy, no amount of government meddling can make it so.

For further discussion, see my post today on www.Masterresource.org.

One irony of mandating renewable energy is that it isn’t necessarily any cleaner than coal.  One example of this is North Carolina’s mandate for renewable energy derived from chicken litter waste.   Chicken litter waste is composed of wood shavings and of course chicken droppings.  There are plans to build a chicken litter waste plant in North Carolina and one has already been built in Minnesota.

As it turns out, burning chicken litter waste tends to produce a high level of particulates, high levels of carbon monoxide, high levels of nitrogen oxides, and a high level of arsenic.  The reason the plants produce high levels of particulates and carbon monoxide is because the wood shavings don’t burn as hot as coal and so there is often incomplete combustion.  The high levels of nitrogen oxides come from the fact the chicken waste is high in ammonia and urea.  In fact, chicken waste is often used as a source of nitrogen fertilizer on farms.   The reason for the high levels of arsenic is that most commercial chicken feed contains Roxarsone, which is an arsenic based compound that is added to the chicken feed to prevent the birds from developing parasites.

The emissions at the Minnesota plant are apparently so problematic the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency  has pending legal action.  So much for clean green renewable energy.

Announcements

• The Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change is March 8-10 in New York City. You can sign up for “Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?” here.

• Cato Book Forum on “Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know”
  Thursday, March 12, 2009
  12:00 PM (Luncheon to Follow)
  Featuring coauthor Patrick J. Michaels, Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute with comments by David Legates, Delaware State Climatologist and Director of the Delaware Environmental Observing System.

In the News

Politicians are Playing Word Games with Energy Plans
Dan Kish, DC Examiner, 27 February 2009

Video: Myron Ebell on Obama’s Green Energy Plan
Fox Business, “Money for Breakfast” show, 25 February 2009

NASA’s Chief Climate Scientist Stirs Controvery with Call to Civil Disobedience
Joshua Rhett Miller, Fox News, 27 February 2009

Obama Counting on Cap and Trade
Tom LoBianco, Washington Times, 25 February 2009

The Climate Change Lobby Explosion
Marianne Lavelle, The Center for Public Integrity, 24 February 2009

The Doomsday Bias
William Yeatman and Jeremy Lott, The American Spectator, 25 February 2009

In Climate Debate, Exaggeration is a Pitfall
Andrew Revkin, The New York Times, 24 February 2009

Obama Needs a ‘Not To Do’ List
Holman Jenkins, Wall Street Journal, 25 February 2009

Carbon Trading to Raise Consumer Energy Prices
Stephen Power, Wall Street Journal, 27 February 2009

Inside the Beltway

CEI’s Myron Ebell

Obama Scores Zero on Econ 101

In his first address to Congress on Tuesday night, President Obama said that the “stimulus” legislation and other short-term economic policies were necessary to prevent a decade-long recession.  He then went on to advocate energy and global warming policies that will foster a perpetual recession.  First, he promised that federal funding and mandates will make the United States the world leader in renewable energy technologies.  As an article that might have been published in the Onion but actually appeared in the Los Angeles Times last week noted, the only thing holding renewable energy technologies back is a number of necessary technological breakthroughs that will make them work.  Apparently, our President is too young to have learned that the federal government has been throwing taxpayer money at renewables since the 1970s.

The President then called on the Congress to send him cap-and-trade legislation that would make renewable energy profitable by raising the price of conventional energy produced from burning coal, oil, and natural gas.  Yes, renewable energy will become profitable, many jobs will be created, and we’ll have to settle for a significantly lower standard of living as a result.  On Wednesday, the Administration sent their budget proposals to Congress for FY 2010.  Included were revenue projections from auctioning rationing coupons under a cap-and-trade scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The Office of Management and Budget assumes that $78.7 billion will be raised in 2012 and a total of $645.7 billion by 2019.  My colleague Iain Murray has some comments here.  My comment is that it’s a sad fact that the new Administration has some highly-regarded establishment Democratic economists in it, but is for some reason pursuing economically illiterate and consequently disastrous policies.

Stars Come Out for House and Senate Hearings

Last week I reported that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee would hold a hearing featuring the Chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri.  I didn’t know at the time that the House was planning a hearing this week as well with a prominent witness. As it turned out, the House and the Senate held competing A-list hearings on global warming on Wednesday at 10AM.  Testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee was Dr. James E. Hansen, whom the committee described as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.  He is of course also Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  I tried to watch both hearings on the internet and thereby undoubtedly missed a lot of good stuff as I switched back and forth.  Interestingly, Pachauri, an economist and engineer, talked mostly about global warming science, while Hansen, an astronomer, talked mostly about economics.  Pachauri was utterly dreary.  Hansen was an interesting mix.  He inveighed against cap-and-trade as an ineffective scam designed to pay off big business.  He instead endorsed a stiff carbon tax with 100% of revenues rebated to consumers.

When asked by Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) about what would happen to North Dakota and its near-total reliance on lignite (brown coal) for producing electricity, Hansen said that employment in the lignite industry would go down, but that North Dakota had lots of potential for wind power and potentially for growing well-designed bio-fuels.  He observed that these new industries might create more jobs than would be lost in the coal industry.  That is true.  One of the ways to create jobs is to make production and use of capital less efficient.  For example, there would be tens of millions, probably even hundreds of millions, of new jobs in North Dakota and throughout rural America if mechanized agriculture were banned.

The Republican witnesses-Professor William Happer at the Senate hearing and Professor John Christy at the House hearing-were articulate, intelligent, and scientifically accurate.  Christy made a strong case against energy poverty.  Naturally, most Senators and Representatives were unimpressed and unhappy with them.

Around the States

Kansas

The Kansas House of Representatives passed a bill today that allows Sunflower Electric Power Company to build two coal-fired power plants. Governor Kathleen Sibelius will veto the bill after it passes the Senate, but House Speaker Mike O’Neal believes he will be able to get the five more votes necessary for an override. Forrest Knox, the Republican who led the House debate, explained, “This is about doing business in Kansas…. The bottom line is our energy needs will not be met without conventional energy production.”

Across the World

Australia

Bushfires in the Victoria region of Australia have now killed over 200 people and have released over 550 million tons of carbon dioxide. In 2003, Australia reported that bushfires had released 190 million tons of CO2-equivalent, roughly a third of the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions for the year. And yet, it was green policies that kept many Australians from being able to clear the brush amd trees around their homes that posed a fire risk.