Archives for April, 2007
Marlo to appear on climate change panel
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If you’re in DC this evening, CEI’s own Marlo Lewis will be a panelist at a climate change discussion sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Washington, DC. Other participants are Michael McCracken, chief scientist from the Climate Institute, Fred Pearce, New Scientist environmental and development consultant, Reason magazine’s Ron Bailey, and S. Fred Singer, president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project. Here’s the info.
MONDAY, APRIL 30, 2007
6:00 - 8:00PM
National Association of Home Builders - Conference Center
1201 15th St., NW, Washington, DC 20005
Students: $5 WACDC Members: $10 Non-Members: $15
PLEASE CALL OUR OFFICE AT (202) 293-1051 TO REGISTER
Carbon Offsets and Snake Oil
EasyJet, one of Europe’s biggest budget airlines, has taken a look at the carbon offset business and doesn’t like what it found:
Toby Nicol, easyJet’s communications director, said the company had been shocked by how much money carbon offsetting firms wanted for their service. “We have been quite surprised at the percentage that the offsetting companies would like to take out of the scheme for administration costs. Between 25% and 30% of every pound put in by consumers would go into administrating the company and that was simply too expensive,” he said.”There are a lot of people who have dived into the market who are desperate to make a margin from it. There are too many snake oil salesmen in the business.”
The Guardian is running an (unscientific) online poll asking the question, “Do you trust carbon offsets.” When I voted a couple of minutes ago, the results were running 98% against.
A Blow to Privatization and Interstate Commerce
Once again, Justices Roberts and Alito have split over whether federal law preempts a state regulation. In United Haulers Association v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management Authority, Chief Justice Roberts issued a decision in favor of a local government’s taking over waste disposal from out-of-state businesses against a dormant Commerce Clause challenge, while Justice Alito wrote a dissent urging that it be struck down.
The Constitution’s dormant Commerce Clause prohibits regulations that discriminate against, or are unduly burdensome to, interstate commerce. In its absence, a business engaged in interstate commerce could be subjected to a suffocating patchwork of regulations imposed by dozens of distant states and hundreds of obscure municipal governments.
In the United Haulers case, Justice Alito took a broad view of the dormant Commerce Clause, while Chief Justice Roberts took a narrower view. The fact that Alito voted in favor of business in this case and Roberts voted against it is ironic, because the Chamber of Commerce and the business community were very enthusiastic about Judge Roberts when he was nominated to the Supreme Court, and more tepid in their support of Judge Alito. But Alito’s rulings on the Court have been more favorable for business than Roberts.
The court’s ideological outlier justices (Thomas and Scalia on the right, and Ginsburg on the left) don’t like the dormant commerce clause much at all, viewing court enforcement of it as judicial activism.
Justices Scalia and Thomas claim that the dormant Commerce Clause has no basis in the Constitution, and that the founding fathers didn’t intend to allow judges to use it to interfere with states’ rights to regulate.
They are wrong. The Founding Fathers didn’t fetishize states. In fact, they were so distrustful of state regulators that they applied a uniform, judge-made, federal common law, the Law Merchant, to contract disputes between citizens of different states, rather than using the law of the state in which the contract arose. Doing that prevented states from interpreting their own law in ways that might disadvantage out-of-state businesses. (That practice, recognized by a unanimous Supreme Court in Swift v. Tyson, 41 U.S. 1 (1842), was followed for about a century before being overruled during the New Deal in Erie Railroad v. Tompkins (1938)).
Enforcing the dormant commerce clause, which Justice Scalia and Thomas object to, is a far more modest intrusion on state prerogatives than the Founding Fathers’ longstanding practice of applying federal common law to local disputes.
The founding fathers were pro-free-trade, not a bunch of states’-rights worshippers. The United States was intended to be a big internal free trade zone.
Scalia’s and Thomas’s reading of the Framers’ purported original intent about state regulation of interstate commerce is simply wrong. Their interpretation is rooted in 20th century misinterpretations of what federalism meant to the Founding Fathers, rather than the founders’ actual intent.
Incandescent Damsels in Distress
The front page of today’s Washington Post breaks the dramatic story I’ve been waiting to see reported on for some time: U.S. consumers don’t care about compact fluorescent light bulbs. Sorry if that revelation caused you to faint or go into a stroke-like state of shock.
Edison: Ladies Love Cool T
Despite endless cheerleading by environmentalists, the intensity of which tends to verge on the hysterical, most folks in this country have declined to purchase CFLs. Even the most aggressive talking points, repeated threats and browbeating from the activist industrial complex have been impotent to change the minds of the light-purchasing public. This causes severe frustration to the self-appointed arbiters of environmental correctness. Worse yet, this frustration has begun manifesting itself in more than a few examples of legislative petulance; in case you haven’t heard, there’s even talk of making the manufacture and sale of traditional incandescent bulbs a criminal offense.
Now today’s WP story brings us up to speed on the root cause of this war of illuminatory preferences - gender conflict:
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week showed that while women are more likely than men to say they are “very willing” to change behavior to help the environment, they are less likely to have CFL bulbs at home. Wal-Mart company research shows a similar “disconnect” between the pro-environmental attitudes of women shoppers and their in-store purchases of CFL bulbs.
Wal-Mart launched a campaign last fall to sell 100 million CFL bulbs a year and is prominently displaying them in all its stores. That campaign, Wal-Mart says, has more than doubled the share of CFLs it has sold.
“Attitudes don’t always reflect behavior, and that is what was most surprising to us,” said Tara Raddohl, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. “Customers may have in mind, yes, they want to support environmentally friendly products, but when they come to the shelf to buy, the data shows they are not always buying them.”
Apparently not even the power of the world’s leading retail bohemeth can manhandle members of the fairer sex into embracing a brave new CFL world. They like the soft, flattering glow of a traditional bulb, and frankly, I think it’s shockingly unchivalrous to try and force them into a harsh, overlit future. Questions of cost and efficiency must be set aside. It is time for all good men to close ranks and guard the right to flattering illumination. No true gentleman would do less.
Global Warming Round-up
It’s a while since I’ve done one of these, but here are some global warming-related stories you may have missed.
- Canada sets own emissions limits, well short of Kyoto targets
- Canadian plan will still cost $C7-8 billion per year
- Hurricane scientist William Gray continues to voice doubts over global warming
- Growing doubts about whether there will be a Kyoto II
- Vatican conference told global warming is natural
- IPCC to recommend use of nuclear power; environmentalists say nay
- Australia to authorize use of nuclear power
- Andy Revkin asks whether the carbon-neutral craze is just a gimmick
- German emissions continue to rise
- Scientists debate whether plants produce methane
- Larry Summers derides cap-and-trade and argues developing countries need to be the focus of emissions policies
- Washington, D.C. sees spike in emissions
Finally, he’s not terribly popular on NRO for some silly remarks about America a while back, but Jeremy Clarkson’s review of some eco-vehicles for the Times in London is a must-read:
The driver, a chap we shall call Swampy Bin Laden, was very proud of his car; so proud that he launched immediately into a not very scientific lecture about the benefits and origins of the fuel he was using. “It’s from a bio-plant,” he beamed.
To hammer the point home, he’d placed some stickers in the back window that said: “This vehicle runs on foreign oil.” Only the word “foreign” had been crossed out and replaced with the word “vegetable”.
I asked him if he would mind using British oil, expecting that this might have him stumped. “Yessir, I would,” he replied. “But,” I said, “you don’t mind leaving all the world’s normal oil in the ground and running your car on what could be an African’s lunch?” Bzzz went his head. Then he twitched a bit. For a while he looked a bit like a sci-fi robot that had been given conflicting orders.
Oh, and for those of you with the time to plough through hundreds of pages of scientific language, the full IPCC report from Working Group I is now out. Enjoy.
Free Kareem Roundup
Today’s Free Kareem rally went off well: we had people from Bureaucrash/CEI as well as Cato and the American Islamic Congress in attendance. We held up our signs, handed out flyers and engaged the public. Special thanks to Knud Berthelsen of Cato and CEI’s own Holly Jackson for all of their hark work organizing today’s event. And yes, since you ask, there are photos.
Full photo series here.
Lewis Black on Eco-celebs
Enviro kids need counseling?
Richard, your post on angry kids used by enviros reminded me that I showed the Greenpeace ad to a friend who deals with disturbed children—her assessment: This kid needs psychological counseling right away! (He also looks a bit sick, too, maybe he needs a pediatrician—where are his parents?)
Getting rid of the sugar program — buyouts looking sweeter
Yesterday, the Cato Institute hosted a forum on the proposals for a new farm bill detailed in its new monograph, “Freeing the Farm: A Farm Bill for All Americans,” by Sallie James and Dan Griswold. The paper focuses on buyouts of dairy and sugar farmers—not necessarily the “first best solution” but one that may work politically:
Because the first-best solution of completely ending farm programs as of September 30, 2007—with no compensation or transition payments—is politically infeasible, we advocate that the government buy out the damaging and expensive support for farmers by paying them a fixed amount of money, which they would be free to spend as they wish. Although it would require large up-front outlays, a politically expedient buyout of agricultural subsidies and trade barriers, with concrete steps to ensure the changes are permanent, would be a worthwhile investment.
Speakers at the seminar included Cato’s Sallie James, Dr. David Orden, at the International Food Policy Research Institute, and Clayton Yeutter, former Secretary of Agriculture and former U.S. Trade Representative.
CEI, in its own monograph a year ago, “Is the U.S. Sugar Problem Solvable?”offered buyouts as an option for reform—one that has been successfully used with tobacco and peanuts. CEI noted:
While these programs impact taxpayers directly, the costs represent either lumpsum or phased-out payments, which means that the payouts are temporary and transparent.
Supporting Online Gaming Is No Gamble
House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank has proposed repealing last Fall’s ban on Internet gambling, though according to the punsters at the Associated Press, the bill could be facing “long odds”:
Supporters of the U.S. ban maintain that Internet betting can be addictive and potentially drain people’s savings, a risk they say is especially acute for young people who are frequently online.
Frank acknowledged that the Democratic leadership of the House likely would not support it. The Bush administration also could be expected to oppose the legislation.
The vote for the ban in the House, for example, was 317-93 last year. Lobbying for it were the horse racing industry and professional sports leagues, which argued that Web wagering could hurt the integrity of their sports.
No comparable measure has emerged in the Senate.
The integrity of the horse racing industry? Riiiiight. You know what, I’ll let Jon Stewart and Ted Stevens explain it. We start with the Series of Tubes, and we hit the online gambling bit about two and a half minutes in:
Free Kareem Rally in DC
Groups of people will be gathering in cities around the world today to protest the unjust imprisonment of Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer. In case you’re not familiar with his case, here’s a little background from the Free Kareem Coalition:
Kareem is a writer who always found the courage within him to keep speaking his mind freely in the name of not only freedom of speech, but the freedom to think in an otherwise sheltered society. Because of that, he has been sentenced to four years in prison.
The Free Kareem Coalition is an interfaith alliance of young bloggers and college students committed to the principles of freedom of thought and freedom of speech.
This campaign is our way of fighting to further the cause of brave people who continue to practice their right to freedom of expression even when such rights are not recognized. The creators and main supporters of the Free Kareem Coalition are Muslim, and we are doing this despite what Kareem said about our religion. Free speech doesn’t mean “speech that you approve of.” It includes criticism.
If you’re going to be in the Washington, D.C. area today, please join us in front of the Egyptian Embassy Cultural Office near Dupont Circle at 1303 New Hampshire Avenue NW.
Photos from the Bureaucrash and friends February protest are available here.
ED Ads: Tick’d off By Annoying Child Actors
First came Greenpeace’s Angry Kid:
Now come ED’s clock kids:
Why do big environmental groups think adults like being lectured by bossy tweens? The tone of the latter is at least a pit more pleading than demanding, but they’re both obnoxious. Why don’t we ratify the Kyoto Protocol? Because I said so, young man, that’s why. Now go to your room.
Back to the Paleo Future
The delightful and fascinating blog Paleo-Future has some entertaining video clips up from a short film produced by AT&T in 1993, showing what the company thought the future of telecommunications would look like. The dramatization, titled “Connections: AT&T’s Vision of the Future,” features the story of a young woman about to get married, highlighting along the way all of the fantastic new technologies that people of the future (us, basically) would be using. Like most past visions of the future it was a bit off, in some rather amusing ways.
First, everyone uses two-way video phones. Exclusively. Futurists have been predicting this for decades, never quite realizing that very few people want either to have to look at or be viewed by everyone with whom they’re required to have a telephone conversation. As we know now, that’s what webcams are for. Also, everything in one’s home and office is (of course) computerized and operated by voice command, a la Star Trek. Characters in this film are constantly uttering staccato commands to unseen digital assistants like “begin message transmission,” “enlarge image 17.5%” and “order us two Cobb salads.”
Another recurring theme of late-20th century futurism, globalization, dominates the story. Every interaction more complicated than crossing the street seems to require the involvement of teleconferenced participants from at least three continents. The (American) central character begins the film by video phoning what appears to be some sort of Nepalese rug workshop to discuss her impending marriage to a Belgian physician. The writers then keep piling on the geographic diversity to the point of near absurdity. Golly gee - in the future, Korean prosthetic limb manufacturers who like to take fishing vacations in Mongolia will be keeping a watch on their virtual inbox to see video footage of one of their Americans clients playing in the world youth ice hockey tournament in Helsinki! It truly is a small world after all.
Rainbow coalition cliches aside, though, “Connections” is an interesting exercise in near-term futurism. And now: The Wedding Dress of the Future. And check out the shoulder pads on these two women:
More on the Neutrality Battle
If this whole net neutrality thing sounds a bit complex, let The Simpleton’s Guide explain it all. Because after all, simple is better:
What’s the Gift for a One-Year Lobbying Anniversary?
The inaptly named Save the Internet coalition is celebrating its first anniversary today, and Wayne is on the case:
“We all can probably agree that we want tomorrow’s Internet at the speed of light, not at the speed of government,” said CEI Director of Technology Policy Wayne Crews. “But a better starting point is to appreciate that we have no broadband today: cable and DSL are a trickle compared to the Niagara needed tomorrow. Freezing today’s Internet into a regulated public utility via net neutrality’s inevitable price-and-entry regulation would be the worst possible move, slowing investment and innovation, meaning fewer new companies, networking deals, products and technologies.”
“Activists fear that not regulating network owners will leave the Internet at the mercy of a few large companies when, in fact, the activists’ backers are themselves large companies. Moreover, often the problem is not that there’s no competition, but that it’s illegal or cumbersome thanks to franchise, zoning, and environmental barriers, or compartmentalization of our great network industries (electricity, water, rail, sewer, communications) into regulatory silos. Network liberalization should be the emphasis of both sides: Instead, the paradoxical result is that regulators and activists think we need “neutrality” on what, in reality, is sub-par infrastructure.
Full statement here.
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