* Kotkin:
‘Gentry’ and ‘populist’ factions square off on energy and the
environment
* “The debate on
tackling climate change often becomes transfixed by magic bullet technologies”
* Monckton: “Global
Warming Is Not Happening”
* WSJ Blog: One of the
biggest challenges in fighting global warming is getting countries to act. One of the biggest risks
may be that countries do act—with unilateral geoengineering schemes to stave off climate
change.
* Watts Up With That?: John
Kerry et al vs. George Will items here and here
* Is It Getting Warmer?:
“The other bad thing about carbon trading is that it doesn’t really tackle all of the
problems of greenhouse gas”
* This should be
scientifically and economically sound … Martin Sheen, Paul Hawken, James Hansen and others
invite citizens to stand with them against coal
* JunkMan: Is George Soros a
global-warming turncoat?
* Celebrities’ carbon
footprint from flying in private jets? No problem. Your carbon footprint earns a new fee at the
airport.
The George C. Marshall Institute this morning
released a new study telling us what we already (should) know: regulating carbon, in the name of
fighting climate change, will be costly for consumers. How costly? Wrap your noodle around these
points:
The authors find that the
constraints posed by the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade approach is equivalent to a constant (in
percentage terms) consumption decrease of about 1% each year, continuing to 2050. Put another way,
the cap-and-trade approach is the equivalent of a permanent tax increase for the average American
household, which was estimated to be $1,100 in 2008, would rise to $1,437 by 2015, to $1,979 in
2030, and $2,979 in 2050.
Reviewing a host of recent
studies, Buckley and Mityakov show that estimates of job losses attributable to cap-and-trade range
in the hundreds of thousands.
The price for energy paid by
the American consumer also will rise. The studies reviewed showed electricity prices jumping 5-15%
by 2015, natural gas prices up 12-50% by 2015, and gasoline prices up 9-145% by 2015. As an
illustration, gasoline would suffer a 16 cent price increase per gallon at the low end of the
estimates to a $2.58 penalty at the high end (using the January 2009 reported retail price of $1.78
per gallon).
Emphases added. Recap here. Study here.
Don’t forget the NAM/ACCF study and the Heritage Foundation’s work. What does it all add
up to? Plenty of warnings for politicians who will either oversee an economic recovery through
processes that help grow the economy or be responsible for a cratering economy in the name of
specious policy endeavors.
It’s galling that President Obama’s
first budget includes projected billions in new tax revenue … from a cap-and-trade carbon
scheme that hasn’t been passed by Congress. In fact, the president is banking on tens of
billions from the plan, which most economists will tell you is less efficient at addressing carbon
concerns than would be a straight tax.
But since politicians hate saying they’re
going to raise taxes on poor people (who use energy but may not pay income taxes), they call it cap
and trade. Here’s the Wall Street Journal this morning:
“Mr. Obama’s
Energy Secretary Steven Chu was refreshingly candid on this point with the New York Times earlier
this month. Given that higher prices are supposed to motivate the changes necessary to reduce carbon
energy use, Mr. Chu said he was worried that climate taxes may drive jobs to countries where costs
are cheaper. “The concern about cap and trade in today’s economic climate,” he
said, “is that a lot of money might flow to developing countries in a way that might not be
completely politically sellable.” You are correct, sir.
“Meanwhile, the
political class loves a cap-and-trade tax because it gives them new economic and political power.
Congress would create a new property right to expend CO2, setting a price per ton on carbon output,
and then Congress would also get to determine the distribution of allowances. The Administration
wants all of them to be auctioned off, which is what creates the giant revenue windfall. The
politicians would then decide how to spend all of that new “climate revenue.”
“Mr. Obama’s
budget proposes to spend this windfall on two items: $15 billion a year in more subsidies for
alternative fuels, and $65 billion or so a year to finance tax subsidies for workers, many of whom
don’t pay income taxes. In other words, once this cap-and-trade tax is on the books, the
revenue stream will create political constituencies that depend on it.”
Let’s make a resolution together:
let’s call this Cap-and-Tax. It will save time and explain the issue better.
But will it warn alarmists’ ...
probably not.
Check it out:
One gathers from the links
that the Capitol Climate Action blogger attributes the droughts to global warming. But that’s
a pretty dumb unpersuasive argument to make on a snowy day in Washington at the end of an unusually
cold winter.
Meanwhile, the increasingly
erratic James Hansen of NASA issues a “call to action” against coal in a video posted at
the blog, headlined, “Dr. James Hansen on coal, civil disobedience.”
For those brave souls in DC, don’t forget
the pro-coal demonstration intended to remind the public (and, hopefully, their surrogate, the
media) about the positives of inexpensive access to domestic energy. Sheesh — it
shouldn’t be so much work to point out the obvious.
Steve Milloy, the JunkMan: “President
Obama wants to pay you to support global warming regulation. What he isn’t saying, however, is
that his enticement won’t come close to covering what the regulations will cost
you.”