Month: May 2009

California already looking at CAFE 2016+

In the immediate wake of President Obama’s announcement of more stringent mileage standards by 2016, California air czar Mary Nichols told Reuters yesterday that,

“California will be immediately getting to work on what the standards should be for beyond 2016,” and that she expects, “a much more stringent standard.”

Now that California voters have forced Gov. Schwarzenegger to start cutting state employees to stave off the state’s fiscal crisis, a good place to start would be pink-slipping Nichols and the rest of the California Air Resources Board.

Dems vote down Waxman-Markey amendments that would protect consumers and the economy

Courtesy of CEI’s Myron Ebell:

“Here are some of the key votes on amendments [to the Waxman-Markey climate bill] so far. Most were straight party-line votes, but a few Democrats strayed on several votes.

  • Mike Rogers (R-MI) introduced an amendment suspending the Act if China and India don’t adopt similarly stringent emissions reductions. Defeated on a party-line vote with all members of the committee voting, 23-36.
  • Roy Blunt (R-MO) introduced an amendment suspending the Act if electricity prices go up in any region more than 10% after inflation. Defeated, 23-32.
  • Fred Upton (R-MI) introduced an amendment suspending the Act if unemployment reaches 15%. Defeated, 21-34.
  • Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced an amendment requiring full disclosure to consumers of cost increases due to the Act. Defeated, 19-35.
  • Lee Terry (R-NE) introduced an amendment suspending the Act if gasoline prices hit $5. Defeated, 25-31.
  • Tim Murphy (R-PA) introduced an amendment suspending Act if 10,000 steel jobs lost. Defeated, 20-35.
  • Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced an amendment prohibiting using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases (H. R. 391).Defeated, 23-33. John Barrow of Georgia was the only Democrat who voted yes.
  • Phil Gingrey (R-GA) introduced an amendment requiring 100% auctioning of ration coupons, with proceeds going to the States. Defeated, 4-52. This vote shows how tied the Republicans as well as the Democrats are to big business special interests.”

As for a the Democrats are concerned, damn the economic and social downsides, full speed ahead on the costliest, junk science-fueled special interest boondoggle of all time.

Lower growth reduced carbon emissions…

… in 2008, according to a report released yesterday by the Energy Information Administration.

That’s no surprise as economic activity and energy use are highly correlated.

The greens want us to use less energy, so you can probably predict the impact that will have on economic growth. Don’t bother coming back with the “efficiency” argument — been there, debunked that.

Obama’s Economic Recovery ‘Advisory’ Board: Little dissent, lots of self-dealing on climate

President Obama’s so-called Economic Recovery Advisory Board held its first quarterly meeting today — it was a spectacle of the sort of self-dealing and corruption that we may rightly expect to become routine if cap-and-trade legislation passes.

After the meeting, CNBC’s Becky Quick interviewed ERAB board member John Doerr, head of the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins — that’s right, the very same Kleiner Perkins that has invested more than $1 billion in 40 cap-and-trade-dependent business ventures and that has Al Gore as a partner.

Doerr said that ERAB talked about the need for:

  • Green technologies;
  • Cap-and-trade; and
  • Rewarding electric utilities for selling less electricity.

Doerr also told Quick that an EPA analysis showed that cap-and-trade would cost Americans less than $100 per year. (LOL!)

But we have no reason to believe that Doerr wouldn’t say and do absolutely anything to help ram through cap-and-trade legislation that would enable his firm to steal billions of dollars from consumers and taxpayers through bogus Al Gore-endorsed “green technologies.”

If you’re thinking that Doerr is only one voice on the ERAB and that less-biased heads will prevail, think again. Here are the other ERAB members and their interests/positions on cap-and-trade:

  • Austan Goolsbee as staff director and chief economist (Obama administration);
  • William H. Donaldson, SEC Chair, 2003-05 (Obama supporter who has spoken in support of climate legislation);
  • Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., president and CEO, TIAA-CREF (TIAA-CREF promotes climate change legislation through shareholder activism and possibly stands to benefit from “green” investments);
  • Robert Wolf, chairman and CEO, UBS (sells climate change-related financial products);
  • David F. Swensen, CIO, Yale University (Yale supports climate change legislation);
  • Mark T. Gallogly, founder and managing partner, Centerbridge Partners L.P. (early Obama supporter);
  • Penny Pritzker, chairwoman, Pritzker Realty Group (Obama campaign finance chairman);
  • Jeffrey R. Immelt, CEO, GE (parent company of NBC News) (lobbying for climate legislation through USCAP);
  • John Doerr, partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (lobbying for climate legislation through Al Gore);
  • Jim Owens, chairman and CEO, Caterpillar Inc. (lobbying for climate change legislation through USCAP);
  • Monica C. Lozano, publisher & chief executive officer, La Opinion (her newspaper endorsed Obama);
  • Charles E. Phillips, Jr., president, Oracle (wants to use Oracle technology to ration electricity to consumers through a “smart grid”);
  • Anna Burger, chairwoman, Change to Win (union group that supports green jobs);
  • Richard L. Trumka, secretary-treasurer, AFL-CIO (the union has joined with greens to lobby for climate legislation);
  • Laura D’Andrea Tyson, dean, Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley (Obama supporter who has advocated climate change legislation);
  • Martin Feldstein, professor of Economics, Harvard (opposes cap-and-trade)

So of the 16 members of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, only one (Feldstein) opposes cap-and-trade. At least six (Immelt, Owens, Doerr, Ferguson, Wolf, Phillips) expect direct financial benefits from cap-and-trade. The remaining members are either Obama supporters/employees or union representatives. Taxpayers, consumers and non-rent-seeking businesses have been left out in the cold.

Click here for the Quick-Doerr interview. Don’t miss Green Hell endorser Larry Kudlow’s anti-green fusillade at the end.

Republicans may finally get it: Big business is the enemy

This memo from the Minority Staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee indicates that Republicans are finally starting to understand that big business is the enemy of taxpayers, consumers and, well, freedom itself, when global warming is concerned.

By themselves, Al Gore and the greens lack the credibility and the lobbyists to put the carbon choke-hold on our economy. But big business — like the members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership — are providing what the Gore-greens lack.

Moreover, USCAP members are doing their best to silence business lobby groups that should be leading the fight against global warming legislation like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable.

Corpocracy — a marriage of big business to government that is detrimental to consumers, taxpayers and freedom — is here.

CAFE Obama: Proposed mileage standards would kill more Americans than Iraq War

The Obama administration’s proposed mileage standards that will be announced today may kill more Americans at a faster rate than the Iraq War — his signature issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Obama’s standards will require automakers to meet a 35 miles-per-gallon standard by 2016 — four years earlier than the same standard imposed by the Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007.

As discussed in my new book Green Hell, the only way for carmakers to meet these standard is to make smaller, lighter and deadlier cars.

The National Academy of Sciences has linked mileage standards with about 2,000 deaths per year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that every 100-pound reduction in the weight of small cars increases annual traffic fatalities by as much as 715.

In contrast in the more than six years since the Iraq war began, there have been 4,296 deaths among American military personnel.

There’s also another lesson hidden in the proposed standards — one that applies to businesses trying to game global warming legislation.

Carmakers lobbied hard against overly stringent mileage standards in the 2007 energy bill, finally negotiating with Congress a compromise standard they thought they at least had a chance to meet. President Obama has now pulled the rug out from under the carmakers and their 2007 deal.

This ought to serve as a lesson for businesses trying to negotiate a climate deal they think (hope) they can survive. Rest assured that as soon as business groups agree to a climate deal, the greens and the Obama administration will go to work the next day figuring out ways to bulldoze the deal in order to make greenhouse gas limitations more stringent and more expensive.

Businesses often operate under the mis-impression that they can cut lasting, win-win compromises with environmental groups on public policy. But such dealing is an impossibility since the greens are ideologically driven and won’t be happy until capitalism is stamped out. The greens are not interested in compromise. Like blood in the water to sharks, compromise by businesses signals its weakness and vulnerability, and, therefore, opportunity for the greens.

And the winner is…

… actually there was a tie in JunkScience.com’s Cap-and-Trade Re-branding Contest between:

  • Deceive-and-thieve; and
  • Tax-and-ration.

Both of these entries will receive autographed copies of Steve Milloy’s new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.

Congrats to the winners — and woe to us all if deceive-and-thieve and tax-and-ration become the law of the land.

Attention Wal-Mart Management: Clean-up on aisle ‘green’

Wal-Mart’s support for action on climate change has taken an ironic, but not unpredictable twist.

Last week, a California superior court judge overturned local approval of a Wal-Mart store because developers and officials failed to adequately consider the store’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report in Carbon Control News.

Click here for the ruling.

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott admitted at last year’s Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics conference that his company had not done a cost-benefit analysis of its green advocacy efforts.

It’s starting to show.

Hey, Al Gore: How will Waxman-Markey save the planet?

May 18, 2009

Dear Al Gore,

How will the Waxman-Markey bill — legislation that you have endorsed — save the planet from the disaster that you claim is imminent?

You have said that,

Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced. [Emphasis added]

But under the fantasy emission-reduction scenario of the Waxman-Markey bill, the U.S. would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from more than 7 billion tons today to about 5.6 billion tons in 2020 — the level at which U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were in 1988 when NASA’a James Hansen famously sounded the alarm about global warming in congressional testimony.

So in a sense, after ten years of Waxman-Markey we’d only be back at square one.

Meanwhile, worldwide CO2 emissions are projected to increase from about 30 billion tons in 2009 to about 37 billion tons in 2020. Even if the Waxman-Markey fantasy came true and U.S. emissions were reduced by 1.4 billion tons, worldwide CO2 emissions would still increase to about 35.6 billion tons annually.

Pray tell, Mr. Gore, how will Waxman-Markey avert the “major catastrophe” that you say we only have ten years to avoid?

And while you’re spinning the answer to that one, Mr. Gore, would it be possible to get a list of your investments that would benefit from the Waxman-Markey bill?

Sincerely,

Your friends at JunkScience.com

You decide: Re-brand ‘cap-and trade’

Thanks to all for entering JunkScience.com’s re-branding contest for cap-and-trade.

Because of the difficulty in choosing the best entry among the hundreds of entries received — the winner gets an autographed copy of Steve Milloy’s new book Green Hell — we narrowed down the field to the five in the poll below. Please vote once for your favorite. Results will be announced Tuesday, May 19.

Honorable mentions go to the following entries that more than adequately describe the nature of cap-and-trade:

  • Energy tithing
  • Waxman Malarkey
  • The Great Leap Forward
  • Energy Option 19/22 (i.e., 19th century energy options at 22nd century prices)
  • Carbon Concentration Control Program, or “CCCP” for afficianados of the old USSR
  • Tree and Economic Starvation Act