Today, on MasterResource.Org, the free-market energy blog, I examine the Kerry-Boxer bill’s not-so-hidden fangs.
Like its House companion bill, Waxman-Markey, Title VII, Part A of Kerry-Boxer contains language that will:
encourage CO2 tort litigation against businesses smaller than those subject to the cap-and-trade program, and
pressure policymakers to “move the goal posts” (amend the legislation to tighten the caps).
Bottom Line: The costs of climate legislation may greatly exceed the most pessimistic estimates of recent modeling studies. Those looking for “regulatory certainty”…
Senators Kit Bond (R-MO) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) have just released a report, Climate Change Legislation: A $3.6 Trillion Gas Tax, which estimates how much additional pain at the pump the Waxman-Markey would inflict on U.S. consumers.
The Waxman-Markey bill (like its Senate companion, Kerry-Boxer) aims to cap U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from 2012 to 2050. Bond and Hutchison estimate the bill’s impacts on motor fuel prices during 2015 to 2050. Of course, their study depends on assumptions regarding population growth, GDP growth,…
In today’s ClimateWire (subscription required), reporter Jessica Leber describes a biofuel industry still totally dependent on government handouts and still pleading for more special favors.
First a bit of background.
In December 2007, Congress passed and President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA). Among other things, EISA boosted the existing (2005 Energy Policy Act) Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) from 7.5 billion gallons a year by 2012 to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022. Of those 36 billion gallons, 21 billion gallons must come from…
Divide et Impera — divide and conquer — is perhaps the oldest strategic maxim of war, politics, and diplomacy. Businesses succumb to it time and time again. Why?
It is in the general interest of business to preserve an open and competitive marketplace, and to limit tax and regulatory burdens. However, it is often in the special interest of particular firms to expand the size and scope of government in order to collect political “rents” – windfall profits created by market-rigging subsidies, preferences, or mandates.
Today’s ClimateWire (subscription required) carries an analysis by reporter Lauren Morello that begins:
Say goodbye to “greenhouse gases.” Say hello to “carbon pollution” and ”heat-trapping gases.”
Morello observes a shift in the vocabulary U.S. government officials are using to talk about global warming — a change much in evidence in President Obama’s climate speech yesterday at the U.N.
Obama officials increasingly avoid the non-pejorative (although somewhat metaphorical) term “greenhouse gas” to describe carbon dioxide and instead refer to “carbon pollution” and “heat-trapping gases.”
In today’s E&E TV interview with Monica Trauzzi (http://www.eenews.net/tv/), UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer did not balk at Trauzzi’s statement that, “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has indicated that the Senate may not see floor action on climate until next year.” Nor did he bat an eye when she said that the Obama administration seems to have ”shifted to using the Clean Air Act to regulate emissions.” Like many observers, de Boer appears to have low expectations for the Waxman-Markey bill, at least for this…
Last week, on the free-market energy blog MasterResource.Org, I posted a two-partcolumn on climate change and national security. In a nutshell, I argued that global warming is likely not an important geopolitical or military “threat multiplier,” and that the national security risks of climate change policies likely outweigh those of climate change itself.
One of the great things about “publishing” on the Internet is that readers can quickly and easily share other insights and information the author had not considered.
Climate scientist and fellow blogger Chip Knappenberger called my…
by Elizabeth Jacobson September 17, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
You know them from the cap-and-trade climate bill that failed to generate funding for Obama’s proposed health reforms. Now, they’re joining forces again. Rep. Henry Waxman (D.-CA) announced Thursday that he will co-sponsor a net-neutrality bill introduced by Rep. Ed Markey (D.-MA). Misleadingly named the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, Waxman-Markey v 2.0 would hold Internet Service Providers legally responsible for ensuring that every user has access to whatever they want, whenever they want, regardless of the actual resources available.
The global warming scare campaign goes through phases. Warmists are collectivists, and they buzz like a hive. The overall narrative of doom does not change, but every couple of months or so the hive settles on a different scare to buzz about most loudly.
That’s the best way to get media and public attention, after all. Single out one alleged global warming terror, publicize the heck out of it until ”everybody knows” the “crisis” is “even worse than scientists previously believed,” and then move on to the next scare-of-the-month. The intended effect, as H.L. Mencken put it, “is…
Today’s excerpt from CEI’s film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, rebuts the argument that regulatory climate policies can’t be bad for the economy because so many big businesses support them.
This is an odd argument coming from people who are usually suspicious of big business, or even hostile to corporations. When did they decide that corporate support is some kind of good-housekeeping seal of approval?
To watch today’s film excerpt, click here. To watch the entire movie, click…
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 manytechnicalissues 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,…
In a piece in today’s State Journal-Register, noted economist and commentator Walter Williams asks: “Why the rush to OK ‘cap and trade’ in the Senate?” He addresses the major push now under way to pass the Waxman-Markey climate legislation through the Senate since it passed the House a couple of weeks ago. In this quote he lays exactly what is at stake with this issue:
“Cap and trade” is first a massive indirect tax on the American people and hence another source of revenue…
by Tatiana Kryzhanovskaya July 07, 2009 @ 12:11 pm
In today’s Washington Examiner, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ran an ad where its President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue warns that the Waxman-Markey climate change bill “would put U.S. businesses at a disadvantage, would violate our international trade obligations and could incite a devastating trade war that would cripple American exporters.”
The cap-and-trade system–together with the carbon tariffs and border adjustments suggested in the bill–will be harmful for U.S. businesses, and as Donohue points out, “would not be a good…
Krugman started out with a brief explanation of the bill. He acknowledged that it would bear some costs, and that some industries and parts of the country that rely on coal “are going to be hurt… somewhat.” He repeated the Democrat talking point that the Congressional Budget…
Today, the World Trade Organization, together with the UN Environment Programme posted a report on trade and climate change that outlines how carbon border taxes may be consistent with WTO rules.It is a very careful discussion of relevant articles, their intent and interpretation, and related WTO cases (though no case has specifically dealt with climate change).
In some cases, the WTO-UNEP discussion reads like “on the one hand, and on the other.” The report is bound to provide environmental groups with…
The alliance between organized labor and leftist environmentalists remains as strong as ever. As Carter Wood at Shopfloor.org notes, the Waxman-Markey climate change bill is a great example of this alliance.
(F) COMPLIANCE WITH WAGE RATE REQUIREMENTS.-Each recipient of a loan shall undertake and agree to incorporate or cause to be incorporated into all contracts for construction, alteration or repair, which are paid for in whole or…
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…
Most media coverage of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), focuses on the bill’s cap-and-trade program and the free rationing coupons (emission allowances) that the bill’s co-sponsors, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA), had to hand out to utilities and other interests to secure their support for the legislation.
But the cap-and-trade program occupies only one of four of the bill’s main sections (”titles”). Other titles contain a host of mandates and “incentives” (carrots and sticks) to…
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