MSNBC reports that,
Hundreds of California at-risk students may become part of the green economy if they sign up for the state’s new “green corps,” which the governor launched Monday.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made the announcement just after meeting with President Obama’s Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis in Sacramento.
If this is about jobs, that’s fine. If this is about taking “troubled youth” and turning them into green automatons, that’s quite another matter.
The Associated Press reports that,
Eight Senate Democrats are opposing speedy action on President Barack Obama’s bill to combat global warming, complicating prospects for the legislation and creating problems for their party’s leaders.
The eight Democrats disapprove of using the annual budget debate to pass Obama’s “cap and trade” bill to fight greenhouse gas emissions, a measure that divides lawmakers, environmentalists and businesses. The lawmakers’ opposition makes it more difficult for Democratic leaders to move the bill without a threat of a Republican filibuster.
The budget debate is the only way to circumvent Senate rules that allow a unified GOP to stop a bill through filibusters.
“Enactment of a cap-and-trade regime is likely to influence nearly every feature of the U.S. economy,” wrote the Democratic senators, mostly moderates. They were joined by 25 Republicans. “Legislation so far-reaching should be fully vetted and given appropriate time for debate.”
It takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, but Democrats and allied independents currently control 58 seats…
The Democrats who signed the letter, addressed to the chairman and top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, were: Robert Byrd, W.Va.; Blanche Lincoln, Ark.; Mary Landrieu, La.; Carl Levin, Mich.; Evan Bayh, Ind.; Ben Nelson, Neb.; Bob Casey Jr., Pa.; and Mark Pryor, Ark.
The 25 Republicans were led by Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska.
Take action:
E-mail your support to at last one of the following Democrat Senators who are standing against the Obama Climate Railroad:
Sen. Robert Byrd, W.Va.;
Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Ark.;
Sen. Mary Landrieu, La.;Carl Levin, Mich.;
Sen. Evan Bayh, Ind.;
Sen. Ben Nelson, Neb.;
Sen. Bob Casey Jr., Pa.; and
Sen. Mark Pryor, Ark.
Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar today announced plans to lay off more than 2,400 employees at five plants in Illinois, Indiana and Georgia as the heavy equipment maker continues to cut costs amid the global economic downturn.
Since it’s hardly rocket science that,
Bad economy = Less construction = Bad news for Caterpillar,
inquiring minds want to know why caterpillar is lobbying, via the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, for economy-harming greenhouse gas regulation. Moreover, since such regulation is likely to be anti-coal in nature, why is Caterpillar effectively lobbying against the coal industry, one its biggest customers?
Take action:
Ask Caterpillar Investor Relations why CEO James Owens is lobbying against his own earnings.
As related in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled, “Tax My Products, Please,” AutoNation CEO Michael Jackson said at a conference earlier this month that
“We need more expensive gaosline.”
Why would Mr. Jackson adopt such an anti-consumer, anti-car and anti-his-own business attitude? The WSJ reported that,
While last year’s energy spike briefly encouraged small-car sales, Mr. Jackson complained that those sales have plummeted with gas prices. “I have fuel-efficient vehicles parked at my dealerships as far as the eye can see. I can’t give them away.” He figures a tax that guarantees a gas-price floor of $4 a gallon is a “good start.” [Ford CEO Alan Mulally], for his part, talked about how good Ford’s sales of small cars were in Europe, and that “one of the reasons is that gasoline and diesel is somewhere between seven and nine dollars a gallon.”
Jackson won’t suffer if gas prices go up. He made $4.5 million in 2006 and $3.4 million in 2007. While information on his 2008 compensation will be released later this month, it could very well be in the same neighborhood since his base salary is $1.1 million.
Take action:
E-mail AutoNation CEO Michael Jackson and tell him that his problem could be resolved by selling vehicles that Americans want to buy — like SUVs. You may want to mention that higher gas taxes are regressive and will hit those in lower tax brackets much harder than it will multimillionaires like himself.
The New York Times reports today on the folly of “clean coal” projects.
As the federal government and industry spend billions of dollars on projects to capture CO2, the daunting task remains what to do with it after capture. Here’s what the greens say, according to the Times
:Greenpeace argues that the energy required to capture the carbon, pressurize it and pump it underground is too large and the risks of underground storage too high. The effort, the group says, would divert money from more promising alternatives. Others argue that making coal safe to burn would simply encourage damaging mining, like mountaintop removal.
For more on the clean coal controversy, check out this piece by Steve Milloy.
The bottom line: Coal, as used in the U.S., is already clean. There’s no need to capture and bury it — even if such a Herculean task could be accomplished.
Trash has become worthless in China, crimping the recycling business, the New York Times reported on March 12.
The problem isn’t confined to China:
Environmentalists and recycling experts worry about the impact of the recycling slump. With Western curbside recycling programs becoming less profitable, local governments are being forced to re-examine their programs as they struggle to balance budgets. In some cases, that means that office printouts and soda cans, once exported, went to landfills.
“It used to be that recyclers would pay governments for these goods,” said Mr. Savage of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. “But now governments have to pay recyclers. What was once a revenue stream is now a cost to cities.”
So maybe the greens were a little hasty in condemning economic growth?
Touting its products to investors, biofuels manufacturer FutureFuel Corp. states in its annual Form 10-K report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that,
Biodiesel is a sustainable, renewable transportation fuel with a growing market in the United States and internationally. See http://www.emerging-markets.com/biodiesel/default.asp . As an
alternative to petrodiesel and other petroleum-based fuels, biodiesel has several advantages, including:
- extending domestic diesel fuel supplies;
- reducing dependence on foreign crude oil supplies;
- expanding markets for domestic and international agricultural products;
- reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and other gases that are regulated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency [Emphasis added] (see, e.g., http://www.cyberlipid.org/glycer/biodiesel.htm ); and
- being usable by existing diesel engines while extending their useful lives (see, e.g., http://www.cyberlipid.org/glycer/biodiesel.htm ).
But with respect to biodiesel reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it’s quite possible that the claim is more fantasy than fact. You may remember this New York Times headline from February 2008:
Biofuels make greenhouse gases worse, scientists say
At the very least, there is controversy about the greenhouse gas footprint of biofuels, including FutureFuel’s biodiesel.
The federal securities laws are based on two pillars — a requirement of full and fair disclosure of material facts and a prohibition on fraudulent activity. FutureFuel’s unqualified touting of biodiesel seems to lack a basis in reality and would seem to be the very sort of thing that the federal securities law prohibit.
Or does the act of pleading green entitle one to a “Get Out of the Truth Free” card?
Bloomberg reported today that,
China may be letting “green” goals fall by the wayside as it trims spending on energy and emission – reduction projects in a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) economic stimulus plan, two environmental groups said.
The decision to cut environmental funding by 40 percent in the economic-aid package is “worrying,” officials of Friends of Nature and Greenpeace China said in interviews, calling on the government to clarify its objectives.
The Greens say that China should be more like the U.S. where,
… President Barack Obama has pledged to spend $150 billion over 10 years to combat climate change and create “green” jobs.
It’s too early to know how things will turn out, but investor Marc Faber told Bloomberg that China is the world’s best-performing stock market this year.
In remarks on global warming legislation to the Business Roundtable last week, President Obama said that,
… And I’m not somebody who — I’ve never bought into these Malthusian — woe — Chicken Little, the earth is falling — I tend to be pretty optimistic. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t pretty optimistic. But I think this is — the science is overwhelming. This is a real problem. It will have severe economic consequences, as well as political and national security and environmental consequences.
Yet as pointed out in this fact sheet from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, President Obama’s lead science advisor, John Holdren, is nothing short of the reincarnation of Thomas Malthus, a pioneer in chicken little-ing about overpopulation. CEI notes that,
… Holdren has advocated governmentfunded sterilization programs and the “de-development” of industrialized economies to ward off “ecocide.” And he has complained that “people are the bane of a rational energy policy,” by which he meant that his energy-rationing schemes to prevent “climate disruption” are politically unpopular.
Early in his career, Holdren warned of “ecocide,” an “ecocastrophe” caused by expanding populations and growing economies that exceed the “finite ability of this planet to support people.” Holdren became a vocal proponent of population control.
- In 1969, he wrote about the necessity “to convince society and its leaders that there is no alternative but the cessation of our irresponsible, all-demanding, and all-consuming population growth.”
- Two years later, Holdren claimed that “population control, the redirection of technology, the transition from open to closed resource cycles, the equitable distribution of opportunity, and the ingredients of prosperity must all be accomplished if there is to be a future worth living.”
Steve Milloy discusses how the greens want to ration people in his new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.
Take action:
Keep a shovel handy when listening to President Obama.
Last week in an address to the Business Roundtable (a trade association for CEOs), President Obama seemed to back away (See transcript, below) from his recent budget proposal to auction 100% of the permits in a cap-and-trade system.
Carbon Control News reported this morning that Senate budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) stated that a 100% auction system is not politically doable, a sentiment also held by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM).
Text of President Obama’s Remarks on Cap-and-Trade to the Business Roundtable (March 12, 2009)
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me start by saying this. I said during the campaign we were looking at a hundred percent auction. We are not going to be able to move this in an effective way without partnership with the business community. But we just — we can’t get it done. And for businesses like yours that are committed to the concept and the idea, we’re going to work to make sure that it works for you.
Now, the experience of a cap and trade system thus far is that if you’re giving away carbon permits for free, then basically you’re not really pricing the thing and it doesn’t work, or people can game the system in so many ways that it’s not creating the incentive structures that we’re looking for. The flip side is, you’re right, if it’s so onerous that people can’t meet it, then it defeats the purpose — and politically we can’t get it done anyway.
So we’re going to have to find a structure that arrives at that right balance. We want to create a price structure. Keep in mind that the reason that I’m interested in a cap and trade approach is precisely because I think the market makes decisions about these technologies better than we do. You know, for those who are concerned about some heavy-handed command and control regulations coming down the pike, cap and trade is designed to say, you know what, here’s a target, here’s a price, you guys go figure it out and if you can make money on it, all the better.
So that’s the — that’s our goal. That’s what we want. And how that pricing mechanism works most effectively to actually influence incentives, but also be sufficiently realistic that industries are thriving as opposed to groaning under the weight of it, I think is going to be the trick. I’m confident that we can do it. We’ve done it before.
I mean, keep in mind that when — I’m trying to remember, this was back in the ’70s or early ’80s — I’m getting old enough now where I can’t remember — but, you know, the issue of acid rain was around. Everybody thought all your trees were going to be dying; you couldn’t make any paper. And we put in an auction system and a trading mechanism and, lo and behold, American ingenuity and American entrepreneurship and inventiveness created options that ended up being much cheaper than anybody had imagined — much cheaper than anybody had imagined.
Now, in the meantime, I just — I was talking to some members of Congress just yesterday, you know, who were concerned about this, because I’m sure they’re hearing from industries and, you know, what does this mean economically, et cetera. I just want to point out, you know, anybody who has been to Las Vegas recently and looked at Lake Mead; or who is familiar with what’s happening in agriculture in California right now; or go down to Atlanta, which may not have any water soon, because of what’s happening in terms of changing weather patterns; or talk to Kevin Rudd in Australia — that’s going to cost us money too. It’s just not — it’s not priced.
And I’m not somebody who — I’ve never bought into these Malthusian — woe — Chicken Little, the earth is falling — I tend to be pretty optimistic. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t pretty optimistic. But I think this is — the science is overwhelming. This is a real problem. It will have severe economic consequences, as well as political and national security and environmental consequences.
And I’m confident that if we do it smart, if we’re talking to you guys, if we’re talking to industries, if our projections don’t end up being wildly unrealistic, then I think we can handle this problem.
Carbon Control News reported today that,
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), a senior member of the House Ways & Means Committee and chairman of the subcommittee on income security, is drafting climate change legislation that aims to ensure low-income households are not adversely affected by the higher costs for energy and consumer goods that will accompany federal restrictions on greenhouse gases.
By providing low-income households with direct rebates and tax credits, McDermott views this legislation as addressing “social justice” concerns. A similar proposal was recently made by the Center for Budget Policy Priorities.