Category: Climate & Energy

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dealt a blow yesterday to Rep. Fred Upton’s hope-the-litigation-works strategy for fending off EPA’s imminent climate regulation. The court denied the state of Texas’ bid to block the EPA’s rules from taking effect next week.

So barring some holiday season miracle, the EPA will soon further oppress an already-strained economy and euthanize more of our freedoms for absolutely no purpose (other than the advancement of Comrade Obama’s agenda).

It’s looking like Upton and the rest of the often jello-y GOP leadership may actually have to develop a spine. Shall we hold our collective (but not collectivized!) breath?

A key Republican is already laying the groundwork for the 112th Congress’ surrender on the EPA’s climate rules. More surprising is the complicity of a tea party group.

Rep. Fred Upton, the chairman-designate of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, co-authored an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal with the promising title, “How Congress Can Stop the EPA’s Power Grab.”

Now that we face the prospect of flagrantly illegal, arbitrary, expensive and pointless regulation of greenhouse gases by the EPA, I was eager to read how the new Congress was going to, say, slash the EPA’s budget to prevent it from implementing the climate rules or perhaps shutdown the federal government if the Obama administration proceeded with its plan to dictate energy policy in order to control the economy.

Instead, Upton offered a mere two sentences of action that are better described pusillanimity rather than pugnacity:

The best solution is for Congress to overturn the EPA’s proposed greenhouse gas regulations outright. If Democrats refuse to join Republicans in doing so, then they should at least join a sensible bipartisan compromise to mandate that the EPA delay its regulations until the courts complete their examination of the agency’s endangerment finding and proposed rules.

Earth to Upton, it will be impossible to overturn or delay the EPA rules because:

• There will likey be more than 40 Democrat senators to filibuster any effort to overturn or delay the rules. Likely filibuster-ers include Begich (AK), Feinstein (CA), Boxer (CA), Bennet (CO), Lieberman (CT), Blumenthal (CT), Carper (DE), Coons (DE), Nelson (FL), Akaka (HI), Inouye (HI), Durbin (IL), Harkin (IA), Cardin (MD), Mikulski (MD), Kerry (MA), Levin (MI), Stabenow (MI), Franken (MN), Klobuchar (MN), Tester (MT), Reid (NV), Shaheen (NH), Lautenberg (NJ), Menedenz (NJ), Bingman (NM), Udall (NM) ,Schumer (NY), Gillibrand (NY), Hagan (NC), Brown (OH), Merkley (OR), Wyden (OR), Casey (PA), Reed (RI), Whitehouse (RI), Johnson (SD), Leahy (VT), Warner (VA), Webb (VA), Cantwell (WA), Murray (WA), and Kohl (WI). Most of these senators already voted last June against the Murkowski amendment to rollback the EPA rules under the Congressional Review Act.
• Even if a bill to overturn/delay the rules managed to get out of Congress, President Obama would veto it — and it’s unlikely that Republicans could muster the two-thirds majorities needed to overturn the veto.

The wimpiness, here is breathtaking. Aside from the total ineffectiveness of the plan, Upton fails to support his preferred solution (overturning the rules) with a more aggressive, less-palatable-to-Democrats alternative (defunding the EPA or shutting down the government). Instead, Upton’s alternative course is weaker (delaying the rules) and is offered from the position of a supplicant (“at least” do the “sensible, bipartisan compromise” — pretty please?).

I hope EPA administrator Lisa Jackson doesn’t hurt herself rolling on the floor.

Upton expresses high hopes, if not expectations, that ongoing litigation will curb the EPA. But an appellate court recently held that the EPA can wreak its havoc on our economy while the litigation is ongoing. And who knows how long it will take to get a final ruling from the Supreme Court? Keep in mind that the current Court is philosophically unchanged from the one ruling in 2007 that EPA could regulate greenhouse gases.

Moreover, while the portion of the EPA’s climate rules that is flagrantly illegal is likely to be overturned (i.e., the so-called “tailoring rule” under which EPA unilaterally amended the Clean Air Act to  limit regulation of greenhouse gases from 100-ton emitters to 75,000-ton emitters), it is unlikely that the Court will overturn the EPA’s so-called “endangerment funding” (which declares that greenhouse gases are a threat to the public welfare). Under the 1984 Supreme Court case Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, it is extremely difficult to show that an agency has acted arbitrarily and capriciousily in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.

No profile in courage, Upton is wishing for a litigation miracle so that he doesn’t have to get down in the mud and wrestle with the Obama administration.

Also of note is Upton’s co-author, Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) — a nationwide conservative grassroots group that has tried to blend in with the tea party movement. But AFP may be risking its tea party credentials by signing on to Upton’s exercise in bipartisan futility  —  where liberal/socialist Democrats get what they want and the rest of us get the shaft. That may be standard Washington, DC fare, but it is not what tea partiers voted for in November.

I’m not surprised by Upton’s wimpiness — that’s why conservatives wanted Joe Barton (R-TX) to be chairman of Energy and Commerce, not the light-bulb-banning Upton — but I am surprised by AFP’s. Shame on them.

Here’s the bottom line. Since the new Congress will not rubber stamp Obama’s socialist legislative agenda, the President will seek to socialize us via regulation — regardless of legality. The EPA’s climate regulation plan is unconstitutional on its face (only Congress, not federal agencies, can change laws). Another example of the coming socialization-by-regulation is the Federal Communications Commission’s recent party-line vote to implement net neutrality rules despite the a federal appellate court ruling that it lacks the statutory authority to do so.

“Every battle is won before it is fought,” said Sun Tzu. Upton, according to his op-ed, has already surrendered to Obama. Oh well, at least election night was fun.

Fresh off selling us out on the START treaty, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar is poised to introduced a “clean energy” bill in the 112th Congress, according to Carbon Control News. According to CCN,

A number of policy provisions have already been floated for inclusion in such legislation, including a “clean energy standard” that would include renewables as well as coal with carbon capture and sequestration, along with nuclear [loan guarantees], energy efficiency standards and support for natural gas vehicles and infrastructure.

Renewable electricity and energy efficiency standards hurt consumers by raising electricity prices. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), and natural gas vehicles/infrastructure hurt taxpayers since they will be paying the upfront costs. Significant CCS isn’t even possible. Nuclear loan guarantees don’t guarantee that new nukes will be built so much as they guarantee that failure will be borne in large part by taxpayers.

None of this will improve the environment in any discernible way. None of this will make us more energy secure/independent than we already are. These policies are just flat-out rentseeking by utilities like Indiana’s Duke Energy, Exelon, and NextEra, and a certain Texas oilman.

The 78-year old Lugar is up for reelection in 2012. He ought to be primaried and hopefully put to pasture in 2013 — where he can ruminate over whether it really made sense to surrender America’s right to missile defense in return for worthless promises from the diabolical Vladimir Putin.

By Steven Milloy
December 15, 2010, Human Events

Last Friday’s federal appellate court decision allowing the Obama administration’s greenhouse gas regulations to take effect Jan. 2 is an unnecessary travesty for taxpayers, consumers, businesses and states. Continue reading Sadistic Judges Back EPA Climate Rules

We now know how cap-and-trade will be rebranded for the start of the 112th Congress — and we also know the Republican weak spot in the Senate.

As reported today by Energy & Environment News,

[A] proposal for a clean energy standard, which has been batted around for years and introduced most recently by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), has created a buzz on and off Capitol Hill in recent weeks.

What is a “clean energy standard” (CES)?

Graham’s CES is essentially a national renewable electricity standard (RES), where nuclear power and so-called “clean coal” qualify to meet the RES. Reportedly, Sens. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Tom Carper (D-Del), and Energy Secretary Chu are open to it.

Why should a CES be opposed?

1. A CES is a carbon cap. Like an RES, mandating that a certain amount of electricity is “renewable” means capping the amount of electricity that can be produced by burning fossil fuels. We just spent the last 12 years killing cap-and-trade — the last two years of which the beast had us by the throat — why would we now support just “cap”?
2. CCS is a pipedream. So-called “clean coal” depends on the commerical viability of carbon capture and sequestration (CSS). As we have pointed out before, CCS is a technical and political pipedream. It will never happen on a significant scale — and everyone knows this except the fools on Capitol Hill who are being serenaded by unscrupulous electric utilities and too-stupid-for-words coal companies. The utilities are for CCS because they want the billions in taxpayer largesse that would be floated their way. The coal companies that are for CCS hope that it will buy them peace with politicians and the public. Though CCS may be promised in a CES bill, the enviros will work to make sure that CCS projects are never actually come into operation. Properly seen, CCS is little more than a bait-and-switch tactic to get coal-burning utilities and coal companies to agree to “cap.”
3. Nuclear power is a pipedream. Environmentalists are committed to ending nuclear power — that’s why no new plants have been constructed in more than 30 years. While utilities, politicians and the public will be teased by the prospect of more nuclear power in a CES bill, crafty enviros will make sure that no law guarantees the construction of more nuclear plants. As now, the enviros will make sure that they can use the regulatory process and the courts to halt new nuke plant construction.

So here’s our problem. While the GOP-controlled House will have knee-jerk reaction to anything called “cap-and-trade,” members may not have the same reaction to an unfamiliar beast called a “clean energy standard.” The enviros, of course, will work to liken opposing a “clean energy standard” to opposing food and shelter for orphans. Then there’s the clean energy industry which will be working harder and throwing around more money than ever. The 112th Congress is do-or-die time for the wind and solar rentseekers.

Energy use in America is already clean. If the enviros need something to do, they ought to go pester their fellow communists in China, where energy use is anything but clean. We should be all in favor of the ChiComs “winning the race for clean energy.” Then they can put it to good use at home.

By Steve Milloy
November 14, 2010, Times-Leader (Wilkes-Barre, PA)

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection chief John Hanger is planning to give Alaska’s infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” a run for its money. Continue reading DEP’s plan for Shale pipeline just a conduit for green activists’ agenda

By Steve Milloy
November 10, 2010, Washington Times

If California’s Republican Rep. Darrell Issa plans on investigating the Obama administration, he needs to read and digest M. Stanton Evans’ gripping book “Blacklisted by History: The True Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies” (Crown Forum, 2007). Continue reading Memo to Issa: Channel Joe McCarthy

By Steve Milloy
November 10, 2010, Washington Times

If California’s Republican Rep. Darrell Issa plans on investigating the Obama administration, he needs to read and digest M. Stanton Evans’ gripping book “Blacklisted by History: The True Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies” (Crown Forum, 2007).

The left is already trying to liken Rep. Issa to McCarthy – a Mother Jones headline from this week was “The GOP’s Coming Climate Witch Hunt” and the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog bemoaned the coming McCarthyism.

No doubt the left has good cause for worry, given a White House that hired a director of Socialist International to be energy and environment czar (Carol Browner), an acknowledged communist as the “green jobs” czar (Van Jones), and an admirer of Chairman Mao as communications director (Anita Dunn).

So Mr. Issa may as well learn, embrace and benefit from the truth about McCarthy, since he will be investigating people of the same stripe that McCarthy brought to account.

The common McCarthy caricature is one of a raving lunatic, throwing mud at hapless innocents, recklessly ruining lives and careers, and launching a national paranoia about an imagined “red scare.”

But as Mr. Evans points out with the help of FBI, State Department, congressional and other unimpeachable records, the federal government was, in fact, chock-full of Soviet agents who not only committed copious espionage, but, more importantly, steered U.S. policy to the detriment of America, Eastern Europe and China.

If you’re interested in the shocking back story to the losses of Eastern Europe and China to communists, the North’s invasion of South Korea and more, Mr. Evans’ book is for you. Ann Coulter has rightly described “Blacklisted by History” as “the greatest book since the Bible.”

While McCarthy did make some mistakes – most notably confusing Gen. George Marshall’s implementation of bad policies as complicity rather than cluelessness – most of his errors were pretty innocuous and didn’t detract in the slightest from his larger thesis.

So how is all this relevant to Mr. Issa’s upcoming investigations as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee?

The most valuable lesson from “Blacklisted by History” is that the epithet of so-called “McCarthyism” is not what McCarthy did to others; it was what was done to him.

Congressional Democrats and the Truman and Eisenhower administrations did not even really try defending themselves against McCarthy’s charges by proving them wrong. Rather, they attacked McCarthy personally with the intent of destroying him.

From the outset, congressional Democrats responded to McCarthy’s charges by entirely ignoring them and, instead, falsely accusing him of lying about what he said in his February 1950 maiden speech on communists in the government. Bootstrapping themselves with that distraction, congressional Democrats then spent far more time investigating McCarthy than they did considering his well-documented accusations.

They did everything possible to thwart McCarthy, including refusing to make State Department records available in a meaningful way to congressional investigators, hiding records at the White House under a claim of executive privilege, fabricating exculpatory statements from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, playing fast and loose with congressional records and, ultimately, destroying McCarthy personally with a bogus Senate censure.

Like few in history – and none admirable – the left tagged McCarthy with his own “-ism” that is ignorantly and flagrantly used by the left-leaning lamestream media and a misled public.

As Mr. Evans points out, though, McCarthy gave better than he got. Sacrificing himself, he exposed and rousted many communists from the government and alerted America to a problem that had caused grievous harm to national security.

Even before Mr. Issa takes his seat as committee chairman, he is being attacked. It will get worse. The left will try to savage him. Truth won’t matter. Once he assumes his chairmanship, he can rest assured that he will be lied to and about.

Mr. Issa will need much personal fortitude and persistence. He’ll need a staff of steel to conduct the much-needed investigations that he envisions. He’ll need the stuff of which Joe McCarthy was made.

Steve Milloy is publisher of JunkScience.com and is author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plant to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery, 2009).

House Democrats may have missed their golden opportunity to rid themselves of the pathologically narcissistic leader that has nearly destroyed them – just like the Soviets missed their best chance in late-June 1941.

After having purged his army generals via show trials in 1937 and after having utterly ignored numerous intelligence reports that the Nazis were going to invade the Soviet Union, Joe Stalin was terrified when the Nazis actually did invade on June 22, 1941.

But he wasn’t scared because the Germans were slaughtering his armies or gaining vast swaths of territory (largely because he refused to give orders to counterattack), he was scared because he reasonably believed that he was going to be deposed (and worse) for his disastrous miscalculation in trusting Hitler.

In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, Stalin vanished from Moscow, absconding to his dacha where he hid, trembling. When prime minister Vyacheslav Molotov finally got a hold of him after about a week or so, Stalin imagined that the Politburo was coming for him.

But shockingly, the Politburo wasn’t angry with Stalin. Instead, the sycophantic group was desperate for his leadership. The much-relieved Stalin got a grip on himself and resumed active leadership of the nation and its armies.

Thus, the Soviets thus lost the opportunity to rid themselves of a most destructive and vulnerable leader.

Fast forward to November 2, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blithely told the media on election day that she was confident of Democrats maintaining control over the House of Representatives — arrogantly ignoring every shred of information to the contrary.

Then in the immediate aftermath of the 60-seat wipeout — a destruction that was courtesy of her forcing House Democrats into becoming kamikazes for an extreme legislative agenda — Pelosi laid low for the next couple days, probably uncertain of what to do or say.

Later in the week, House Democrat survivor Heath Shuler (NC) indicated that he might challenge Pelosi. But other Democrats remained mostly silent. No chorus of Democrats called for Pelosi’s ouster.

Apparently sensing that House Democrats were too shell-shocked and too afraid to rightly direct their frustration at her, Pelosi relocated her cojones and announced on November 5 that she would seek to retain her House leadership role. Thus Democrats probably lost their opportunity to rid themselves of perhaps the worst political leader their party has ever had.

The self-resurrections of Stalin and Pelosi have two key elements in common – an absence of conscience (no guilt over the havoc they wrought) and the bully’s situational awareness for coward exploitation (”Wow, these pusillanimous wimps really don’t have the brains and/or courage to get rid of me, so I can still be queen bee.”)

Some may view these self-resurrections as heroic manifestations of courage and steadfastness. But in the context of the circumstances and other relevant facts, a more apt characterization of this behavior involves pathological narcissism.

Of course, it’s not too late for Democrats to save their party from a leader with harmful psychological issues. But they will have to realize that Nancy Pelosi is just another vain and power-crazed bully, not the winged goddess of victory-in-2012.

But like skeptics were most pleased that the greens selected the polarizing and truth-and-lifestyle-impaired Al Gore to be the face of global warming alarmism, House Republicans are no doubt licking their chops at the prospect of the nationally unpopular and publicly rebuked Nancy Pelosi being the face of House Democrats again.

While we shouldn’t expect our left-wing elitist of a President to understand last Tuesday’s electoral rejection of his “progressive” prescriptions for America, we should expect Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to get it.

But Sen. McConnell seems to have missed the message, at least when it comes to cap-and-trade — odd for a coal state politician. The day after the election, Sen. McConnell said:

“The president says he’s for nuclear power. Most of my members are for nuclear power. The president says he’s for clean coal technology. Most of my members are for clean coal technology. There are areas that we can make progress on for the country.”

Aside from the canard of President Obama sincerely supporting nuclear power and the fact that Republicans ought to avoid the loaded and already co-opted-by-the-left
word “progress,” so-called “clean coal” is a form of Obama-think — a discredited cap-and-trade concept that was more trap than sincere policy.

Some in the coal industry and some coal-burning electric utilities had been talked into supporting cap-and-trade, provided that taxpayers and ratepayers forked over billions (if not trillions) of dollars for so-called “carbon capture and sequestration” (CCS) — that is burying utility carbon dioxide emissions deep underground and hoping they stay there safely.

But to the extent that any so-called environmentalists paid any lip service to clean coal and CCS, it was only to lure coal and utility suckers into cap-and-trade. Does anyone really believe, after all, that the greens would allow utilities to inject underground billions of tons of highly pressurized carbon dioxide all over the nation? They fought tooth-and-nail, after all, to prevent the storage of a comparatively small number of sealed casks of spent nuclear fuel one mile underground in the Nevada desert.

But discussion of clean coal and CCS are academic since, as of January 3, 2011, cap-and-trade will be as dead as dead gets. This is because there is no cap-and-trade without CCS and you can bet that the 112th Congress — at least on the House side — will not appropriate the billions (trillions) of dollars necessary of for large-scale CCS. So clean coal is dead too — except in the minds of establishment zombies who slept through the election.

If all anyone is worried about with coal is carbon dioxide, then coal is already clean — and that’s what all Republican Senate candidates believed, except perhaps for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator-elect Mark Kirk (R-IL).

Radical environmentalists are trying to put out the post-election message that support for cap-and-trade wasn’t a big negative for House Democrats.

But as a former senior Senate staffer pointed out to me…

…one need look no further than the ten House Democrats who voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill but who voted against the healthcare bill — i.e., Reps. John Adler (NJ), Rick Boucher (VA), Frank Kratovil (MD), Ike Skelton (MO), Zack Space (OH), Harry Teague (NM), Ben Chandler (KY), Dan Lipinski (IL), Stephen Lynch (MA), Collin Peterson (MN).

Of the ten, three were in noncompetitive seats (Peterson, Lynch, and Lipinski). Lynch and Lipinski, in fact, voted against healthcare because it didn’t go far enough. That leaves seven House members who voted against healthcare but supported Waxman-Markey, six of whom were defeated last night and the seventh, Chandler led by only 600 votes (out of 239,000 cast), but the race hasn’t been called yet (as of Nov. 4).

So Waxman-Markey seems to have figured prominently in all seven of these races, especially in Boucher’s, considering his role in helping to craft the bill. In the Teague race, returning Congressman Pearce cited the cap-and-trade vote as one of the primary reasons he decided to challenge Teague.

Sen. McConnell should wake up to the new reality in Washington, DC — a reality that does not include the discredited and lamebrain ideas of President Obama and the Pelosi-Reid 111th Congress. Many of yesterday’s Republican victors would probably just as soon have the tea party-esque and already-hip-to-the-new-reality Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) as their leader.

If Sen. McConnell keeps prattling about ”clean coal,” he may just one day find himself in the same scrap heap as all the Democrats who were smoked yesterday for their Waxman-Markey votes.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery 2009).

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) just released its state energy efficiency scorecard.

Spurred by ACEEE’s ranking of California as the most energy efficient state and the fact that California is only exceeded by Michigan and Nevada in unemployment, we ran a simple regression of ACEEE energy efficiency rankings versus state unemployment rankings according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for August 2010.

Unemployment ranking was positively correlated (slope=.15) with energy efficiency ranking — i.e., states with higher unemployment rankings tended to have higher energy efficiency rankings.

ACEEE claims that energy efficiency creates jobs — and maybe it does. But do the jobs created through energy efficiency efforts wind up destroying other jobs — and more of them?

Energy efficiency is a policy of contraction, not one of growth — and job gains only occur during periods of growth. While energy efficiency may make sense on a case-by-case basis, blindly implemented on a societal scale, it is a suicidal policy.

There is plenty of energy out there. We need to put as much of it to good use as soon as possible to get our economy and standard of living back on the positive track.