In recent testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, energy secretary Steven Chu makes a convoluted case for S. 1733, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, a.k.a. the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill.

Chu argues roughly as follows. Global investment in wind turbines and solar panels could reach $3.6 trillion by 2030. China is investing heavily. If we don’t ramp up our investment in “clean tech” products, we’ll be left behind, become increasingly dependent on foreign producers, and China will eat our…

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Next week, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold three hearings on S. 1733, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” also known as Kerry-Boxer after its co-sponsors Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA). Kerry-Boxer is the Senate companion bill to H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), also known as Waxman-Markey after its co-sponsors Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA).

Part A of Title VII of Kerry-Boxer sets forth the emission reduction targets…

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Norman Borlaug, the scientist who saved a billion lives by fathering the Green Revolution, died Saturday at the age of 95. His work in developing new crops to feed the world’s hungry in places like India earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a Congressional Gold Medal, even though his work was seldom mentioned by the press. Ronald Bailey notes that Borlaug “saved more human lives than any other” person in history.

Borlaug was attacked by some on the…

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Today’s excerpt from CEI’s film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, is on the global warming movement’s anti-coal campaign and the dangers it poses to U.S. consumers and the economy. To watch today’s clip, click here. To watch the entire film, click here.

The text of today’s excerpt follows. I provide additional commentary and links to supporting information in the footnotes.

Narrator: First and foremost, they want to ban construction of new coal-fired power plants.…

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Today’s excerpt from CEI’s film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, is on cap-and-trade.  

What is cap and trade?

Cap-and-trade is Al Gore’s (and the environmental community’s) leading “solution” to the alleged “climate crisis”–the centerpiece, for example, of the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty.

There are many technical  issues in the design and implementation of a cap-and-trade program, but the basic idea is as follows. 

The government establishes a legal limit–a “cap”–on the total quantity of greenhouse gases that regulated (”covered”) entities may emit. Each covered entity must acquire one federally-created or -certified allowance (permit,…

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Already burdened by $8 trillion in new federal spending commitments and the likelihood of higher taxes to pay for bailouts, pork, and welfare, the economy now faces an additional threat: an explosion of litigation.

Even liberal Washington Post columnist Michael Kinsley can’t stand the Supreme Court’s liberal 6-to-3 ruling in Wyeth v. Levine, which let a patient sue an innocent drug maker for an injury caused by a physician’s assistant who disregarded repeated warnings by the drug maker. (The ruling indirectly “will cost lives“). As…

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The appropriations portion of the House stimulus bill is not the only legislation with bad ideas.  The House Energy and Commerce Committee has also marked up their portion of the stimulus package.  During the Committee markup, Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) inserted a provision that would “decouple” utility rates from the amount of electricity or natural gas that the utilities sell.  According to the “decoupling” provision, states that accept federal energy efficiency grants from the economic stimulus package will have to…

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My colleague Cord asked me about proposing a tech agenda for Congress given the ascendancy today of Henry Waxman to Energy and Commerce Chairmanship; my immediate answer was “Adjourn.”

Anyway, the big news is that Rep Henry Waxman challenged John Dingell for Energy and Commerce Committee chairmanship, and won. E&C has jurisdiction over, well, everything.

Waxman has been a member of Congress since 1975, reminding us of the saliency of term limits. What matters, one might argue, is not that…

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As Cord mentioned earlier, Henry Waxman has been named incoming Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet is a part. In his role, Waxman is likely to play an influential role in future tech policy fights involving issues such as universal broadband access and network neutrality. While Waxman has laudably defended civil liberties on many occasions, his record on telecommunications lawmaking is quite troubling.

Waxman has embraced forced openness for privately-owned…

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At the hearing being held today by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in which former Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld is now testifying, an earlier panel attempted to look at the causes of Lehman’s collapse and the broader credit cirisis. And this gave an opportunity to committee members to ride their various hobby horses.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s horse and “whipping boy” was deregulation. She blamed the entire crisis on deregulation, and specifically the repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall law that…

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