Global Warming

Planning to Disaster: San Diego and California’s Sustainable Communities Strategies

by Marc Scribner on June 3, 2011 · 1 comment

in Environment, Global Warming, Personal Liberty, Property Rights, Regulation

The San Diego metro area has been institutionalizing its boring reputation by undertaking in recent years what is arguably the most aggressive regional planning effort in the country. Enviros and “anti-sprawl” (read: anti-poor, anti-choice) types have fallen back in love with America’s Finest City over San Diego’s ease of meeting SB 375′s Sustainable Communities Strategies targets. Thanks to the members of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), San Diegans can look forward to this whiter brighter future:

While the notion of efficiently coordinating transportation, housing, and commercial development across thousands of square miles and millions of people sounds daunting, officials in the San Diego area say that drafting the SCS was not nearly as difficult as it may be for other regions.

“A lot of the stuff in our plan is not new to us,” said SANDAG Executive Director Gary Gallegos. “It’s not a huge game-changer because we were already doing a lot of these things because they were good for us.”

The SCS relies on complex forecasts for regional growth—which is anticipated to include a growth in population from 3.2 million to 4.4 million and 400,000 more housing units by 2050—but much of the actual planning work that will contribute to the SCS has already been done.

Indeed, much of the region’s growth is already prescribed and accounted for, some of it before SB 375 was even imagined.

“San Diego, in spite of the fact that SB 375 and AB 32 came along, was already doing a lot of what was required by those pieces of legislation we had incorporated into our planning,” said County Supervisor Ron Roberts, who also is also an ARB board member. “We were already on a course to get to the transportation corridors and move the density from the furthest out areas.”

The California Air Resources Board set per capita emissions reductions targets for the state’s MPOs just last October. San Diego’s targets are 7% by 2020 and 13% by 2035.

So San Diego’s out front in the most out-front state in the country with respect to enviro-regulating itself into a situation far worse than climate change could ever do. Thanks to their heavy-handed land-use regulations, city officials’ hell-bound well intentions now add $220,000 to the price of a new single-family detached home. This so-called “smart growth” is anything but: it drives up housing prices and goods prices, reduces employment opportunities and entrepreneurial activity, limits personal mobility, and is generally supported by a very large, taxpayer-funded planning bureaucracy that’s primary purpose is to perpetuate itself and increase its political power.

Overall, “anti-sprawl” forces are reducing quality of life and the costs are disproportionately borne by low-income minorities, which is what makes this leftist program so ironically terrible.

Yet More Proof that the Supreme Court is Not Pro-Business

by Hans Bader on May 27, 2011

in Economy, Employment, Environment, Global Warming, Legal

The Supreme Court has ruled against the Chamber of Commerce’s challenge to an Arizona law punishing businesses that hire illegal aliens by taking away their business licenses, and requiring use of E-Verify. The vote in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting was 5-to-3, with the five “conservative” justices voting against the Chamber of Commerce. So much for the erroneous claim that the Supreme Court is dominated by pro-business conservatives.

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick falsely claimed in 2009 that in the Supreme Court, “big business always prevails, environmentalists are always buried, female and elderly workers go unprotected, death row inmates get the needle, and criminal defendants are shown the door.” Supreme Court reporters for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other liberal newspapers also peddle this same false caricature.

Contrary to Lithwick’s claims, environmentalists have won many cases, including one of the most economically-significant decisions ever — the 5-to4 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), which arguably opened the door to EPA regulation of virtually every human activity, on the grounds that virtually all activity (from industrial production to farming) emits carbon dioxide. That decision also created a special rule of standing to allow state attorneys general to bring lawsuits that would otherwise be thrown out as non-justiciable.

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Greenland Flourishes Due to Global Warming and Climate Change

by Hans Bader on May 16, 2011 · 1 comment

in Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, International, Natural Resources, Regulation

Alarmists have been decrying the effects of global warming on Greenland for years, even though Greenland was greenest during the Medieval Warm Period, and Greenland’s Vikings, who flourished during that warm period, died out when cold temperatures returned, reducing them to starvation. (It was warmer in the year 1003 than 2003.) Now, the residents of Greenland, the world’s largest island, are once again profiting from global warming, reports the Washington Post:

“Rather than questioning global warming, many of this island’s 60,000 inhabitants seem to be racing to cash in.  The tiny capital of Nuuk is bracing for record numbers of visitors this year; the retreating sea ice means a longer tourist season and more cruise ships . . . Hunters are boasting of more and bigger caribou, and the annual cod migration is starting earlier and lasting longer. In the far south, farmers are trying their hand at an exotic form of agriculture: growing vegetables. ‘Before, the growing season was too short for vegetables,’ . . .‘Now it is getting longer each year.’”

Since 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency has sought to regulate greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (which we breathe out and plants consume) because they supposedly threaten public health in the United States by causing global warming. President Obama has backed a corporate welfare-filled global-warming bill that would increase electricity bills. Obama admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008 that under his “cap and trade” plan to address global warming, ”electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

But even if greenhouse gas emissions are the principal cause of global warming (as opposed to natural causes), it’s not clear why such warming would harm public health in a non-tropical country like America. After all, people in America’s warmer cities have lower mortality rates, and higher life expectancies, than people in its colder cities.

Warmer climates may be particularly helpful for racial minorities in Canada. Most non-white Canadians suffer from Vitamin D deficiency, putting them at risk of cancer, osteoporosis, and diabetes, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail. Lack of exposure to the sun is a big part of the problem. More than 50,000 people die every year in the United States every year as a result of inadequate sun exposure. While milk is Vitamin D enriched, many non-whites are lactose intolerant. Sunlight is the most potent source of Vitamin D. But in northern regions like Canada, sunlight alone does not provide enough Vitamin D for many people who work indoors. There,  the sunlight is too feeble in winter and fall for people’s bodies to turn sunlight into Vitamin D. To get enough Vitamin D from the sun, people have to go outside a lot during spring and summer to offset the weak sunlight in fall and winter. But increasingly sedentary lifestyles and office jobs have reduced outdoor activity. And cold temperatures in spring discourage warmth-loving people from going outside, even when the light is strong enough to produce Vitamin D. Thus, cold climates can be bad for their health.

UN Embarrassed as “Climate Refugees” Fail to Show

by Ivan Osorio on April 20, 2011

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming

It’s hardly novel to compare global warming alarmism to a doomsday cult, but it’s hard to avoid the comparison whenever yet another doomsday scenario is called off, or at least postponed. The recurring embarrassment renders doomsday cults, well….doomed, practically by definition. Now the latest such embarrassment seems bad enough to spark an exodus from the compound — or it should.

To make a long story short, 50 million “climate refugees” failed to materialize in 2010, as projected way back in 2005. Then the United Nations Environment Program deleted a map from its website illustrating where those climate migrations would occur. Then Gavin Atkins of Asian Correspondent asked, “What happened to the climate refugees?” and uncovered the map’s absence.

How could an error so large happen? Der Spiegel offers one likely explanation: sloppiness.

Scientists have been claiming for years that some 25 million people have already been displaced by adverse environmental conditions. Drought, storms and floods have always plagued parts of the world’s population. The environmentalist Norman Myers, a professor at Oxford University, has been particularly bold in his forecasts. At a conference in Prague in 2005, he predicted there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010.

“As far back as 1995 (latest date for a comprehensive assessment), these environmental refugees totalled at least 25 million people, compared with 27 million traditional refugees (people fleeing political oppression, religious persecution and ethnic troubles),” Myers said. “The environmental refugees total could well double between 1995 and 2010.”

“When global warming takes hold,” he added, “there could be as many as 200 million people overtaken by disruptions of monsoon systems and other rainfall regimes, by droughts of unprecedented severity and duration, and by sea-level rise and coastal flooding.” Myers’ report may have been the basis for the UN statements in 2005.

Forecasts in Doubt

But Myers’ forecasts are controversial in scientific circles. Stephen Castles of the International Migration Institute at Oxford University contradicted the horror scenarios in an interview with SPIEGEL in 2007. Myers and other scientists were simply looking at climate change forecasts and counting the number of people living in areas at risk of flooding, said Castles, author of the “The Age of Migration.” That made them arrive at huge refugee numbers.

Castles said people usually don’t respond to environmental disasters, war or poverty by emigrating abroad. That appears to be confirmed by the behavior of victims of last month’s devastating earthquake and tusnami in Japan. Many survivors are returning to rebuild their ruined towns and villages.

Of course, the climate doomsday cult will go on. What is really crazy is the how commonplace such End Times claims are now — what Spiked Online’s Brendan O’Neill aptly calls, “the unexceptionable nature of apocalyptic thinking.” (Hat tip: Margaret Griffis)

Icemakers: Mankind’s Doom

by Ryan Young on April 20, 2011

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Regulation

An article at Time explains “How the Ice in Your Drink is Imperiling the Planet,” and what regulators are doing about it:

NIST is thus urging refrigerator manufacturers to look closely at the design of their icemakers, insisting that there are “substantial opportunities for efficiency improvements merely by optimizing the operations of the heaters.”

That appeal to reason, NIST officials hope, will be enough. But just in case it isn’t, the Department of Energy has announced that it intends to add 84 kilowatt hours to the efficiency rating of every refrigerator equipped with an icemaker. Consumers will feel that fact in the wallet—and if manufacturers don’t scramble to improve their numbers, they soon will too.

Senator Jim Webb Flunks Legislation 101: Says Congress Can’t Change the Law

by Hans Bader on April 15, 2011

in Economy, Employment, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Regulation

Congress can always change the law if it chooses. For example, it passed the 1991 Civil Rights Act, which overturned many Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But you would never know that from reading Virginia Senator Jim Webb’s letter today in the Wall Steely Journal. In it, Webb defends his vote against a Republican amendment to block EPA regulation of carbon dioxide, an amendment supported by many Virginians because the EPA’s regulation of carbon dioxide would wipe out thousands of Virginia jobs in industries that emit carbon dioxide. (Carbon dioxide is the gas needed by plants to conduct photosynthesis. It is not poisonous or dirty, and humans emit carbon dioxide every time they breathe.)

Webb claims he voted against the amendment because the amendment would have been “a violation of the Supreme Court holding in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency,” a case that interpreted a provision of the Clean Air Act to potentially expand the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

The amendment would have greatly reduced future energy costs, thus saving countless jobs. In 2008, President Obama admitted that under his greenhouse gas regulations, people’s utility bills would “skyrocket,” and coal-fired power plants would go “bankrupt.”  The EPA’s own internal documents show that the administration’s global warming regulations will result in a massive “loss of steel, paper, aluminum, chemical, and cement manufacturing jobs.”

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Human Achievement of the Day: Turning Plastic Waste Back into Oil

by Michelle Minton on March 7, 2011 · 1 comment

in Energy, Environment, Features, Global Warming, Natural Resources

Post image for Human Achievement of the Day: Turning Plastic Waste Back into Oil

This “human achievement of the day” is a true example of why we at CEI and many others around the world choose to celebrate the ingenuity expressed when individuals can exploit resources. Apart from increasing personal wealth and improving the quality of life for humans around the globe, it is technology, not “conservation,” that results in more “environmentally friendly” technologies. The machine that turns plastic waste into oil is just one example of this.

The miracle of plastics: The invention of plastic is arguable one of the most important contributions to the improving quality of human life. Plastics are used in medicine, aeronautics, travel, construction, and electronics. In fact, if it wasn’t for plastic materials, one wonders if we’d have the satellites used to track the changes in Earth’s environment.

The problem with plastic: While plastics make much of modern human life possible, there are some who see the downsides of plastics. Making these synthetic materials accounts for 7 percent of the world’s annual petroleum usage, which increases demand and the price of oil. At the same time, disposing of plastic is environmentally tricky: it takes a while for plastics to biodegrade naturally — some say it takes between 500 and 1,000 years – and there is a fear that these materials will  fill our oceans and landfills. Several cities have banned or taxed the use of plastic bags, which some believe are polluting rivers, streams, and oceans.

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CEI Podcast — December 8, 2010: What’s Driving Ethanol Subsidies

by Ryan Young on December 8, 2010

in Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Ethanol, Global Warming

Have a listen here.

CEI Research Associate Brian McGraw talks about the federal government’s multi-billion dollar subsidies for ethanol, which is now dismissed even by environmental groups as an inferior alternative to gasoline. He also explains what lies in ethanol’s near future. Brian was also recently interviewed on RTV’s Thom Hartmann Show, which you can watch here.

Image credit: Rascaille Rabbit’s flickr photostream.

EPA at 40 — Doing an End-Run Around the Legislative Process

by Fran Smith on December 1, 2010 · 1 comment

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Regulation

The Environmental Protection Agency is 40 years old.  It came into being under a Republican president, Richard M. Nixon, and opened its offices on December 2, 1970.  In January of that year, Nixon had signed the National Environmental Protection Act, and on the last day of December 1970, he signed the Clean Air Act of 1970.

Fast forward to the year 2010, with an EPA now with almost limitless powers in the environmental arena — regulating greenhouse gas emissions, policing carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and expanding the purview of the Clean Air Act, without congressional approval.  As CEI’s Marlo Lewis wrote,

. . . EPA has positioned itself to determine the stringency of fuel economy standards for the auto industry, set climate policy for the nation, and even amend provisions of the Clean Air act–powers Congress never delegated to the agency. The Endangerment Rule is both trigger and precedent for sweeping policy changes Congress never approved. America could end up with a pile of greenhouse gas regulations more costly than any climate bill or treaty the Senate has declined to pass or ratify, yet without the people’s representatives ever voting on it.

Here’s more from a coalition letter trying to roll back these expanded powers:

Is climate policy to be made by the people’s representatives or by politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges?

Only one answer to that question passes constitutional muster. EPA has no authority to do an end-run around the democratic process. Climate policy is too important to be made by an administrative agency without new and specific statutory guidance from Congress.

Republicans are now in control of the House, and with six additional seats in the Senate, they, working with moderate Democrats, should be able to pass legislation suspending or overturning EPA greenhouse gas regulations. We, the People, can “take back our government” only if our representatives stop administrative agencies from legislating.

Two GOP Senators Say Get Rid of Ethanol Subsidies; Gore Says His Support for Ethanol Subsidies a Mistake

by Fran Smith on November 23, 2010

in Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Ethanol, Global Warming

In the Washington Post’s “Plum Line” column today Greg Sargent focuses on two GOP senators’ campaign to get rid of the ethanol subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year. It’s likely that the issue will be a divisive one on the Republican side, because some strong supporters of ethanol subsidies want to extend the 45-cent-a-gallon tax credit for blenders of ethanol and the tariff on ethanol imports.

Influential Republican Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn are arguing that a clear message in the recent elections was that Americans want to reduce government spending, and the ethanol programs should be on the cutting block.

A surprise new opponent of ethanol subsidies from the other Party is former Vice President Al Gore, who was quoted as saying: “It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol.” Gore noted that ethanol as a fuel has a small energy conversion ratio. He also explained his earlier support for ethanol subsidies as a product of his political ambition to become president:

“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

Many environmental and food aid groups – some of which had originally supported corn-based ethanol production - turned against this technology because of the diversion of corn crops from food to fuel production as well as the environmental damage of its production. CEI early on – in 2006 — called attention to the land and environmental costs of expanded ethanol production because of the subsidies and other incentives, especially the renewable fuels mandate. In 2007, CEI pointed to the unintended consequences of the ethanol program. Check out CEI’s global warming website for news about CEI’s continued efforts to get rid of the ethanol mandate, subsidies, and tariffs.

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