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

Trojan House: New poster-child of solar failure

From the Detroit News:

It was supposed to be a shining example of the green movement — a completely independent solar-powered house with no gas or electrical hookups.

Seven months ago, officials gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the $900,000 house owned by the city of Troy that was to be used as an educational tool and meeting spot.

But it never opened to the public. And it remains closed.

Frozen pipes during the winter caused $16,000 in damage to floors, and city officials aren’t sure when the house at the Troy Community Center will open…

“The system was designed to kick a heater on to keep water from freezing,” [the superintendent of parks for the city] said. “The heater drew all reserve power out of the battery causing the system to back down and the pipes froze.”

Yeah, but shouldn’t the first clue of failure have been the very idea of building an 800 square-foot house in Troy, MI that cost $900,000 — that is, $1,125 per square foot? The median price of homes in Troy is about $159,000 and that’s for an 1,800 sq. ft home — about $88 per square foot.

Even if the solar system hadn’t malfunctioned, who in their right mind would consider the house a success?

I suppose it’s fitting that this tragi-comedy occurred in a place called Troy — the greens are trying to deceive us in adopting their nutty policies and goofy technologies with a Trojan House.

Beware of greens bearing grifts.

Al Gore 1984

The latest from CEI:

Can Big Brother be green? Absolutely. If carbon dioxide were the planetary poison that global warming alarmists claim, then every aspect of our lives would be fair game for government control: the homes we build, the cars we drive, the light bulbs we use. Even the number of children we have—because lets face it; any reduction in CO2 that we achieve will be more than offset by the households our kids will create when they grow up.

There are already proposals in Congress and federal agencies to vastly increase taxes and regulations in order to address the so-called global warming crisis. But as a growing number of scientists are openly declaring, there is no crisis.

To take action, and to learn more, see http://cei.org/1984

South Park fans—this clip has a special treat for you.

Irony aficionados—In its original 1984 ad, Apple Computer warned of a totalitarian threat in computing. Today Al Gore sits on Apples Board of Directors. The company that warned of 1984 25 years ago now has, as one of its directors, the man most likely to lead us into a new 1984.

History students—Apple Computer ran its ad, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV…, only once, during the 1984 Super Bowl, to introduce its new Macintosh computer. In 2006, during the primary battles, a pro-Obama YouTube take-off of the Apple ad was created by an independent solo video artist,.casting Hillary Clinton in the role of Big Brother. The ad was titled Vote Different—apparently parodying Apples Think Different slogan. It can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-l…