Category: Miscellaneous

During her visit to India to persuade that country to join in a new global warming treaty, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stopped at the undistinguished brick-and-sandstone headquarters of the hotel division of Indian tobacco giant ITC Ltd. The building’s L-shaped design maximizes natural lighting which reduces energy use and makes the building “green.”

As the Washington Post reported,

Clinton likened the squat, plain-looking building — which was constructed with U.S. assistance — to a new version of the Taj Mahal, grandly declaring it was “a monument to the future.”

But if Hillary thinks that this…

… is the new this…

… then it’s no wonder that the India rejected her pleas to reduce its emissions and forego improvement in its standard of living.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) rails against the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill and all the opportunities created therein for carbon market speculation in a July 16 Senate floor speech.

Sure, Dorgan is misinformed on the need for a cap on carbon emissions, but first things first: the Senate version of Waxman-Markey neededs to be defeated and then we can move on to re-educating those who have been deceived by Al Gore and the greens.

Dorgan should be congratulated — at least so far — for his courageous stand in favor of taxpayers and consumers and against the likes of the morally bankrupt Al Gore, Goldman Sachs and others who would sell our country down the river in order to profit from cap-and-charade.

Watch Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) get chastised for trying to pit the NAACP and another black-led business group against the National Black Chamber of Commerce in a racially-charged Senate hearing on climate.

Sen. Boxer’s seems to insist that the view of the NBCoC is offset by the NAACP’s view simply because both are black groups.

Shark attack victims testified on Capitol Hill yesterday in favor of a nationwide ban on shark-finning — the practice of cutting-off a shark’s dorsal fin and throwing back the rest, reports Energy & Environment Daily.

Recruited to testify by the Pew Environment Group, Al Brennika was attacked in 1976 while surfing by a 7-foot lemon shark. He testified that,

“I was limbed. They get finned. It gives me … empathy for their situation.”

Brennika was one of several shark-attack victims at the hearing apparently suffering from Jaws-version of Stockholm syndrome.

That’s today’s insight into the mind of an environmentalist and the nutty way environmental policy is made in Washington, DC.

On July 10, this blog criticized the American Chemistry Council for trying to ameliorate rather than to kill Waxman-Markey.

Unhappy with that characterization of its efforts, an ACC spokesperson e-mailed us requesting a correction:

We have specifically expressed concerns and noted that the bill needs work. ACC is not supporting nor opposing the House climate bill (that has moved to the Senate). We are neutral on the bill as a whole and have specific, pointed concerns that we have expressed about the bill.

But unless ACC means that the “work” that the bill “needs” is its utter destruction, then no correction is warranted.

There is no upside to making energy more expensive and handing over control of our economy to Marxist-socialist greens. Even if ACC succeeded in its effort to enact a Waxman-Markey lite, such a bill would still establish a mechanism for the future ratcheting-down of its provisions.

ACC’s claim of “neutrality” on Waxman-Markey is embarrassing. It doesn’t know what side its on? It doesn’t care?

To its ever-lasting infamy, Sweden claimed neutrality during World War II. Is that the sort of legacy the chemical industry wants?

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

Early next year, the Southern California town of Carlsbad will break ground on a plant that each day will turn 50 million gallons of seawater into fresh drinking water…

Government agencies have opposed desalination because of the process’s energy consumption. The desalination plant would use nearly twice as much energy as a wastewater-treatment plant available in Orange County. Environmental groups also object because fish and other organisms are likely to be sucked into the facility.

“Eventually, people will have to realize, it’s either fish or children,” Mr. Lewis said…

Officials in Carlsbad began discussing desalination in 1998 and planned to open the plant this year. But opposition was fierce.

The Surfrider Foundation and San Diego Coastkeeper — two local environmental groups — argue the plant would be disastrous for marine life, “killing everything that floats” near the plant’s intake, said Surfrider’s Joe Geever.

The permitting process continued for six years, and included 14 public hearings that ran a total of 170 hours and included five revisions to the plan…

I’m not sure what housing crisis this is this Seasteading Institute contest is supposed to help resolve, but below is the winner:

Click here for the other “winners.”

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) pitied Waxman-Markey supporters today as yielding to “the twisted desires of radical environmentalists.”

At least someone gets it…

Amid a pretty could floor speech against Waxman-Markey, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) inexplicably said that “removing CO2 from the atmosphere is a noble endeavor.”

God save us from our friends…

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) today said that opponents of Waxman-Markey lack imagination. We went to the moon, why can’t we get off foreign oil, he asked.

Rep. Joe Barton just said during House debate that 400 NEW pages (actually 309 pages) to Waxman-Markey were printed at 2am this morning! Waxman-Markey is now 1,500-pages in length.

Barton added that the House has spent more time debating ceremonial resolutions than the 3 hours it will spend debating Waxman-Markey.