Your host Richard Morrison welcomes guest co-host Jeremy Lott and Editorial Director Ivan Osorio for Episode 63 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with CEI’s FOIA fight with the U.S. Treasury, 7-Eleven’s attempt to give consumers a big gulp of government and the solution to a jobless recovery. We then move on to union pension politics, Ireland’s regrettable embrace of EU hegemony and some scantily-clad Olympic News.

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Showing that he believes Al Gore’s typical misunderstanding that the Chinese word for crisis is made up of the characters for threat and opportunity (it isn’t), Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Program, has said that the global financial crisis provides an opportunity for a global green new deal:

The UNEP report said investments of one percent of global gross domestic product, or about $750 billion, could bankroll a “Global Green New Deal” inspired by the “New Deal” of…

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Fiona Harvey of the FT is one of the better journalists covering the environmental beat, but I’m afraid that is a bit like saying that someone is one of the better members of Congress. In this blog entry on green jobs she commendably raises some objections to the idea that “green jobs” can be a panacea, but then shows her own biases with an unsupportable assertion:

That said, the move to a low-carbon economy requires such major changes in the way…

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The President might make various remarks relating to energy tonight. These are likely to center around grandiloquent claims as to the effectiveness of “green jobs” and alternative energy in saving the economy, not to mention the planet. Here are a few notes on the reality of these claims.

Green Jobs: The President will probably claim to be creating millions of “green jobs” to save the economy, fight global warming and end dependence on foreign oil together. In fact, “green jobs” have…

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On behalf of my distinguished colleague Iain Murray, who is busy speaking at a very important press conference this morning, let me present his prepared remarks on the impending stimulus bill:

Remarks of Iain Murray, Director of Projects and Analysis, Competitive Enterprise Institute

Good morning. Others have already told you what an unutterable waste of money this so-called stimulus package is. I just want to make two points. First, that the American people have been misled about the nature of the bill, and…

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I’ve spent a while crunching the numbers relating to energy and environment spending in the stimulus bill. The bill will spend about $80 billion on energy and environment, which can be broadly broken down into the following categorizations:

Electricity infrastructure/efficiency - $35.6 billion
Renewable projects - $11.95bn (mostly $8bn in loan guarantees and $2.4bn for clean coal)
Climate science/general energy academic research - $9.3bn!!! (including $1.9 for nuclear research)
EPA programs (Superfund cleanup etc) - $12.2bn
Other environmental (National Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau…

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