Waxman-Markey federalizes local building codes

… even the Washington Post is worried about this one:

In fact, the [Waxman-Markey] bill also contains regulations on everything from light bulb standards to the specs on hot tubs, and it will reshape America’s economy in dozens of ways that many don’t realize.

Here is just one: The bill would give the federal government power over local building codes. It requires that by 2012 codes must require that new buildings be 30 percent more efficient than they would have been under current regulations. By 2016, that figure rises to 50 percent, with increases scheduled for years after that. With those targets in mind, the bill expects organizations that develop model codes for states and localities to fill in the details, creating a national code. If they don’t, the bill commands the Energy Department to draft a national code itself.

The Post concludes:

Is the best way to achieve that, though, to federalize what has long been a matter of local concern? And if the point of cap-and-trade is to change market incentives, why does Congress, and not the market, need to dictate these changes? Those are a few questions that emerge when you begin to read through the 900 pages.

One dream. One world. Obamaland für alle.

If you pay a lot for power…

… then you probably don’t rely on coal.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on June 2 that,

If you were paying a lot for power in 2008 and you were not from Hawaii, you were probably living in the Northeast or California. All of the remaining utilities with the 10 highest power prices in 2008 were located in California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts…

The cheapest power prices in the United States in 2008 were again found in the Midwest and Southeast, where utilities with ample coal-fired generation supply were able to offer customers prices frequently less than 6 cents or 7 cents per kWh on average across customer classes.

The anti-coal nature of cap-and-trade will ensure that all of us pay a lot for power and everything else that is produced by means of electricity — i.e., all goods and services.

PowerPrices2008

Obamanomics: Green jobs = Pay cuts

The Left still lambasts the trickle-down theory behind Reaganomics. Meanwhile, the green jobs theory behind Obamanomics is turning out to be more akin to a nose-dive for worker wages.

The hype

In campaign literature abotu creating 5 million “green jobs,” then candidate Obama said,

The Obama plan will increase funding for federal workforce training programs and direct these programs to incorporate green technologies training, such as advanced manufacturing and weatherization training, into their efforts to help Americans find and retain stable, high-paying jobs. [Emphasis added]

in its article about a March 26 White House “townhall meeting”, the Associated Press reported that,

Obama said job creation in America is difficult in a time of economic hardship and that the work of the future should be in more high-paying, high-skill areas like clean energy technology. [Emphasis added]

The reality

But CNNMoney reports:

Massive investment in renewable energy could ultimately create 4 million manufacturing jobs. But for the workers in the bottom rung of this movement, the shift to green jobs could very well mean a pay cut of nearly 60%, a trend spreading across the entire manufacturing sector.

Many of the entry-level jobs making green energy components start at $12 an hour, much less than the now extinct $28 an hour job that had allowed high school-educated workers in the auto sector to achieve middle class status.

“Particularly at the lower end, these are not very good jobs,” said Philip Mattera, research director at Good Jobs First, a labor-friendly research group, also acknowledging that the renewable energy sector paid wages that were “all over the map”… [read more]

Obama buddy Al Gore will possibly make more than a billion dollars from his “green job” — that is, investing in, and lobbying for cap-and-trade — but not everyone will be so fortunate.

Why we need a National Climate Service

The House Committee on Science and Technology yesterday passed a bill to establish a National Climate Service within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

In supporting the establishment of a National Climate Service, Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) said,

“In a climate that is changing, it is imperative that we have reliable information to help us adapt and respond to these changes.”

I must, albeit reluctantly, agree. Just look at what happens when there’s no government agency around to tell people that beach season is over.

Obama: No global climate deal without China

Carbon Control News reports State department climate envoy Todd Stern said in a June 3 speech that,

“Certainly no [global climate] deal will be possible if we don’t find a way forward with China.”

So what does this mean given that China has repeatedly vowed to never reduce its greenhouse gas emissions out of concern for its economic growth, believes that climate change is the fault of the West, and has demanded that the West give developing nations (including China) up to 1 percent of annual GDP supposedly to “assist climate adaptation and mitigation efforts”?

Does it mean that President Obama is looking for a way out of shackling the U.S. economy to the Son of the Kyoto Protocol which will be negotiated in Copenhagen this December?

Or is President Obama preparing us for his surrender of our money to Chinese extortion?

Stay tuned…

Greens commemorate nuke plant shutdown

Tom Hayden, Chicago Seven radical and former Mr. Jane Fonda, will help Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) celebrate the 20th anniversary of

… Sacramento voters going to the polls to shut down Rancho Seco, a nuclear power plant operated by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) about 25 miles southeast of the city. It was the first and only time voters shut down a nuclear power plant – but it has been called the “shot heard round the world” since it echoes to this day.

Yes, that would be the greens celebrating the shutdown of a power plant that emitted no carbon dioxide…

And speaking of “social responsibility”, Reuters reported today that Russian Prime Minister and former KGB officer Vladimir Putin — that’s right, Mr. Human Rights himself — upbraided a Russian businessman for being “greedy” and asked him,

“Where is the social responsibility of business?”

Perhaps a future Russian chapter of PSR could be called Physicians for Putinism?

GM’s Concept Car: The 2010 ‘Obama-wagen’

From an unknown source:

GM (Government Motors) proudly introduces the 2010 Obama-wagen:

2010Obama

Runs on hot air and broken promises. Its three wheels speed through sharp left turns. Comes complete with teleprompters programmed to help occupants smooth-talk their way out any violations. It’s change you can believe in!

Al Gore invests millions to make billions in cap-and-trade software

Al Gore’s venture capital firm has invested $6 million in a software company that stands to make billions of dollars from cap-and-trade regulation — further fueling controversy that Gore lied about his profiteering from cap-and-trade to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee during testimony in April.

Hara Software sells software to help track greenhouse gas emissions. The market for such software is now about $2.5 billion dollars in size, and is expected to grow by a factor of ten to $25 billion if cap-and-trade legislation is enacted, according to Hara CEO Amit Chatterjee.

Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital firm in which Al Gore is a partner, invested in Hara just last year. Chatterjee told Reuters that,

“This company would not have existed if Al Gore had not bought off on the idea.”

Gore is also under fire for lying to Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) at the same congressional hearing about his relationship with Goldman Sachs.

Operating as a stealth tax, cap-and-trade will make the vast majority of Americans poorer and less free — but Al Gore, Kleiner Perkins, Amit Chatterjee and Hara will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Calvert Cliffs-hanger: Nukes’ now or never?

The ongoing battle over the proposed reactor at the existing Calvert Cliffs, MD nuclear power plant is shaping up to be do-or-die for the U.S. nuclear power industry, according to a report in Carbon Control News.

The Constellation Energy-Electricite de France joint project moved a step closer to reality on April 28 when the Maryland Public Service commission recommended that initial construction on the reactor be allowed to commence. Then on May 19, the proposed reactor became one of four projects to be considered by the Department of Energy for part of the $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees available for new nuclear projects. At least $10 billion in loan guarantees are needed for the plant to proceed, according to Constellation.

But the greens are claiming that the project’s 49.99% ownership by Electricitie de France would allow a foreign government to control a U.S. nuclear reactor  and are raising concerns about Constellation’s finances, including its ability to secure financing for the eventual decommissioning of the plant.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce told Carbon Control News that the Calvert Cliffs project,

“… will have a ridiculously huge bearing over what happens with the rest of the industry.”

The greens are downplaying the notion of any imminent “nuclear renaissance” since only four applications have been filed with the DOE for loan guarantees. The anti-nuclear group Public Citizen told Carbon Control News,

“Four applicants is not a renaissance.”

Propagreenda: Cap and trade not central planning

Desperate greens really will say anything to advance their agenda (i.e., totalitarianism-via-global-warming-regulation).

Rhapsodizing about der wunder of cap-and-trade in a May 31 letter to the Washington Post, Nathaniel Keohane of the Environmental Defense Fund Sturmabteilung wrote that,

History has not been kind to central planners. The way to solve global warming is to harness the power of the market rather than let the government pick the winners. It’s time to unleash America’s entrepreneurs and inventors to solve this critical challenge.

Keohane sets up his deception by seeming to acknowledge that  central planning was debunked by the 20th century — insincerity at its very best since every solution the greens offer to every environmental problem (whether real or imaginary) is central planning.

Keohane then tries to position cap-and-trade as some sort of market-based/free-market mechanism — it’s not.

First, the current iteration of cap-and-trade as embodied in the Waxman-Markey bill is nothing less than the government picking winners (every special interest group that would get free carbon allowances, tax credits and subsidies, not to mention the greens who would acquire unrivaled political power) and losers (the rest, and vast majority of us).

Next, there’s little market-like about cap-and-trade since the government will arbitrarily determine the supply of, and arbitrarily create the demand for the central commodity to be traded (permits to emit CO2).

Cap-and-trade is more akin to musical chairs than a free market. Every year there will be fewer and fewer emissions allowances available. When the music stops — at government whim — businesses that can’t obtain or can’t afford allowances will lose.

Underscoring Keohane’s disingenuosness and the economic threat posed by cap-and-trade is, surprisingly, Bill McKibben, an all-pro green propagandist who, as co-founder of 350.org, agitates to return the planet to its supposed halcyon days — pre-1990, when the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide was less than 350 parts per million.

Writing about the choppy water ahead for the Waxman-Markey climate bill in The New York Review of Books, McKibben wrote that,

“… it could be a messy fight…”

because

“[the] country [is] still suspicious of big government, and currently fearful of depression.”

Yes, Bill, and why shouldn’t clear-thinking people be suspicious of the central planning that is big government and that has been so disastrous to so many?

As one lefty talking to other lefties in the NYRB, I guess McKibben felt comfortable being honest about cap-and-trade. Keohane, in contrast, tells the public in a major daily newspaper that totalitarianism is really just markets-plus-ingenuity.

It’s all rather reminiscent of that old “Arbeit macht frei” ruse.