Two EPA lawyers criticized the cap-and-trade energy bill passed by the House as a scam, noting in The Washington Post that it will be manipulated to profit politically connected corporations and reward certain kinds of pollution, while not cutting greenhouse gas emissions.  A similar scheme enacted in Europe in the name of fighting global warming enriched polluters, while not reducing emissions, which actually rose faster in most of Europe than in the U.S.

The Washington Examiner explains how the bill will lead to deforestation, and thus increase greenhouse gas…

Read the full story

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.

Read the full story

In today’s New York Times, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman preens about intellectual dishonesty while presenting the most intellectually dishonest case about the cost of climate change policies I have seen this side of Joe Romm.  It moved me to do something I have not done for some time, and Fisk the entire article.  Krugman’s words are in italics.

So, have you enjoyed the debate over health care reform? Have you been impressed by the civility of the discussion and the intellectual honesty…

Read the full story

In his update to his post, Declan McCullagh notes an objection by the Center for American Progress:

The fourth objection is the most compelling. The Center for American Progress writes: “The potential benefits of clean energy legislation far outweigh the modest costs.” That’s a reasonable cost vs. benefit calculation, and it includes the claim that even with the extra taxes, cap and trade is so vital to America, it’s still worth it.

That’s the right approach to take: it would be a…

Read the full story

Read the full story

The news that the Federal Government has forced UBS to give up the details of 4000 of its customers’ transactions has other financial institutions finding new ways to protect their clients.  This has been greeted with dismay by one community.  The following letter to the New York Times was intercepted and we provide it here in the interests of transparency.

Dear Sir,

As an international bank robber, may I say how much I deplore the underhanded way in which financial institutions are…

Read the full story

Congress plans to spend $200 million on luxury jets for liberal House leaders, even though it earlier denounced the automakers for having corporate jets, and even though the luxury jets the House plans to buy emit vast amounts of pollution and greenhouse gases. Now they’ll be able to go on foreign junkets and hob-nob with wealthy lobbyists in style.

As Victor Davis Hanson notes, this excess and hypocrisy is typical of a House Speaker “Pelosi who rails about carbon footprints, but wants the…

Read the full story

In Washington, beware any proposal that attempts to “level the playing field.” What is usually meant is hobbling competition with restrictive rules and regulations that often raise costs for consumers. On the international playing field, such “leveling” can have broader disastrous consequences.

That’s likely to be the case with the House Ways and Means’ misguided proposals to impose carbon taxes on imports from countries that haven’t taken stringent measures to control greenhouse gas emissions.

It turns out that the huge and complex energy bill…

Read the full story

Hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist join Michelle Minton in welcoming you to LibertyWeek 36: The Green Episode. We begin our environmental adventure with an update on the high cost of renewable energy and the good news from the coal laboratory. We then pass on advice for drinking green in Beer News and celebrate the recent observance of Human Achievement Hour. This brings us to the featured interview with our distinguished colleague and author Steve Milloy – where we explore…

Read the full story

“Not one dime,” said President Obama in his address to Congress, referring to how much extra tax people earning under $250,000 a year will have to pay in his budget. Unfortunately, even if you don’t have to pay extra tax, you will have to pay extra fees for your energy, which are passed on to the government via energy companies. That’s the effect of the President’s cap-and-trade scheme for carbon emissions, an important part of his new budget. Energy companies…

Read the full story

My colleagues will be providing some commentary on what an Obama presidency means, realistically, for global warming policy. Here, I’m going to comment on environmental policy more generally.

First, I suspect that we will see the EPA Administrator raised to cabinet rank. With this will come a more radical and assertive EPA. This should not be surprising. Even within this Administration, the EPA has been flexing its muscles. The issuance of the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on regulating greenhouse gases…

Read the full story

Coming from the UK, CEI Senior Fellow Iain Murray knows a little something about the history of political empires. Today, however, we find ourselves faced with a new era of eco-imperialism, particularly in the field of global warming policy. Iain explains:

“Eco-Imperialism” = efforts by the developed world to impose its environmental priorities on the developing world. Developed countries seek to pressure the Third World into reduce greenhouse gas emissions “for the sake of the planet,” regardless of its impact on the…

Read the full story