http://onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=165930
Domestic drilling split along party lines
By Jim Brown
OneNewsNow
7/8/2008
A veteran U.S. senator from Iowa laments that members of Congress beholden to the environmentalist lobby are still blocking domestic oil drilling opportunities as gas prices continue to skyrocket.
Last week in response to a question regarding soaring oil prices, President Bush called on American consumers to write their members of Congress and urge them to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the Outer Continental Shelf for oil drilling and to increase oil shale exploration.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) says there is not much division among the two parties on the need for more renewable energy sources and conservation -- but the Senate, he says, is deadlocked on oil drilling.
"I'd say 45 out of 49 [Republicans] want to drill almost every place where you can drill in the United States; and Democrats, except for one or two, are taking the view that we should not be drilling," says Grassley.
"That's the environmentalist point of view, and they respond to that environmentalist point of view to a great extent." [THIS SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE WHAT THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION & EU PARLIAMENT DO - EMBRACE THE ENVIRONMENTALIST POSITION, NO MATTER THE COST TO CONSUMERS].
The Iowa Republican says he is constantly being asked why Congress will not approve oil drilling in the ANWR to combat record high fuel prices.
Two months ago, he says, constituents were not asking him that question. "Boy, I'm telling you, it's coming up at my town meetings in the last month. It's coming up in polls," he remarks. "And we're hoping that there's going to be a shift of opinion among Democrats to support more drilling.
But right now it's deadlocked with the end result that some people are willing to import more oil and send $140 [per barrel] overseas instead of keeping it in the United States."
Grassley says drilling in Alaska will yield 13 billion barrels of oil, but there is even more than that in the Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/energy-bill-out-of-gas-2008-07-07.html
Energy bill out of gas
By Jared Allen and Mike Soraghan
07/07/08
House Democrats are in a bind on the focal point of their energy plan.
Worried that a floor vote on any energy-related measure would trigger a Republican-forced vote on domestic drilling, the leadership has scrubbed the floor schedule of the energy legislation that it vowed to tackle after the Fourth of July recess.
Just before leaving for their districts, a number of House Democrats called a press conference to declare victory on a number of energy bills — including overwhelming passage of a bill to rein in excessive oil market speculation.
Democrats declared victory on a bill they failed to pass on the suspension calendar — their “use it or lose it bill” to force energy companies to either start drilling on their federally leased land or give it back — saying they had put 176 Republicans on record as siding with the oil companies over consumers.
And they vowed that the bill, the centerpiece of their energy message, would be back.
“We’ve taken some bold steps this week, and we’re going to build on that [after recess] with the bills we take up,” Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman John Larson (Conn.) said at the press conference.
But, as of Monday afternoon, neither “use it or lose it” nor any other energy measure had been scheduled for floor action this week.
Democrats said they were simply taking a different approach to passing their top energy-related priorities.
Nadeam Elshami, spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said energy activity this week is taking place at the committee level, noting that there are four hearings planned on the issue of speculation in oil trading.
“Different members have different ideas,” Elshami said. “We’ll bring forward the best piece of legislation based on the recommendations and hearings we are having this week.”
Republicans pounced, saying Democrats were backtracking after realizing they would be unable to defeat a Republican vote on increased domestic oil drilling in new areas.
“It’s panic time for Democrats,” said a senior Republican aide. “They are on the wrong side of three-quarters of the American people who support increased production of American-made energy.”
While Democrats were in their districts advocating their plans to end gas price-gouging, rein in speculation, pass “use it or lose it” and even call for President Bush to release millions of barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), Republicans were touting polls showing that a healthy majority of Americans now support increased domestic energy production.
That is proving to be a particular concern for Democrats in that any non-suspension-calendar energy vote would be subject to a Republican alternative, almost certainly calling for offshore and Arctic drilling, that would very likely pass.
“If we could send deepwater drilling over, it would pass the Senate,” said a Republican leadership aide, highlighting just how much an energy vote could backfire on Democrats.
A senior Democratic leadership aide acknowledged this week that there are plenty of members of the majority caucus “who want to drill and want to drill where Republicans want to drill.”
Even if Democratic leaders could beat back a GOP motion on drilling, the vote could be used as political ammunition against their vulnerable members this fall.
The Democratic setbacks come after they scored a political victory this spring when they overwhelmingly passed an SPR bill over initial White House objections. But Republicans now claim they have the upper hand, noting that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is citing drilling repeatedly on the campaign trail.
Further complicating matters for Democrats is the growing number of pro-drilling Democrats who are becoming increasingly worried that voters might throw them in with their anti-drilling leadership.
One pro-drilling Democrat predicted that the backlash against Congress for gas prices could rival the outrage voters felt about the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
Another, Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.), is frustrated at not being listened to.
“My concern with my leadership is that they’re not letting all the people in the room to present the facts,” said Melancon, a proponent of more offshore drilling. “Where are all the pro-oil legislators? I’m not in the room. I don’t know who is. My feeling is we are not being all-inclusive to pass legislation that can get through the Senate and avoid a veto.”
For now, though, there will be no legislation to pass, as the only energy-related action this week will occur at the committee level.
Republicans may try to continue a strategy they demonstrated before recess by forcing drilling votes as energy amendments to bills being considered at the committee level, including appropriations bills.
And Republicans may go one step further by trying to get amendments added to the energy and water appropriations bill, a likely contender to see the floor this week.
“We’re going to demand a pro-production energy vote before Congress goes home for the month of August,” said House Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (Fla.). “We’ve tried to highlight efforts to solve America’s energy problem a thousand ways to Sunday, and [Democrats] keep pulling them from committee, pulling them from the floor and kicking the can down the road.”
Exactly when Democrats will change their present course and bring an energy bill to the floor remains uncertain.
“Right now, our strategy on gas prices is ‘Drive small cars and wait for the wind,’ ” said a Democratic aide.
Showing posts with label religious environmentalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religious environmentalism. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
EU Commission's Barroso Tries to Help Germany Shed its Nuclear Neurosis
http://euobserver.com/9/26452
Barroso attempts to woo Germany on nuclear energy
By RENATA GOLDIROVA
07.07.2008
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has once again made the case for nuclear power, a controversial source of electricity generation in several EU member states, adding to the already heated debate in Germany on whether the country should allow a nuclear comeback.
In an interview with the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag (6 July), Mr Barroso acknowledged that "nuclear energy is a delicate issue in Germany".
Germany's previous government committed itself to a gradual phase-out of all 17 nuclear power plants in the country by 2021 (Photo: wikipedia)
"On the other hand," he said, "more and more countries see in nuclear energy an at least temporary solution to stop climate change and to reduce our dependency on oil and gas."
Germany's previous Green-[Red] Social-Democrat coalition government under the leadership of Gerhard Schroeder committed itself to a gradual phase-out of all 17 nuclear power plants in the country by 2021.
But the commitment is now being questioned by the Christian Democrats (CDU) of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the senior partners in the coalition government with the Social Democrats.
Technology minister Annette Schavan from the CDU said that Germany needs to "exit the exit resolution", referring to the phase-out. "We urgently need the life-span extension - as a contribution to global climate protection and for a lasting energy supply," she told Bild am Sonntag.
But the Social Democrats reject the idea of prolonging the life-span of existing power plants, pointing to remaining question marks over how to safely store the nuclear waste.
"It is irresponsible so long as the question of the disposal of highly radioactive waste is not solved," the party top figure, Peter Struck, was cited as saying by Der Tagesspiegel on Sunday (6 July).
The same message came from transportation minister Wolfgang Tiefensee, speaking to Welt am Sonntag. "We believe in renewable energy and not in nuclear energy," he said, pointing to plans to build some 30 offshore windfarms in the Baltic and North seas. [SEE BELOW]
It is up to each EU state to choose its own energy mix. But the current European Commission, headed by Mr Barroso, has not shied away from supporting the nuclear path. Brussels says that nuclear energy has a role to play in meeting the EU's growing concerns about security of supply and CO2 emission reductions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2008/gb2008077_507147.htm?chan=globalbiz_europe+index+page_top+stories
Germany Plans 30 More Wind Farms
Business Week
July 7, 2008
The government's move toward offshore wind farms comes as the debate over phasing out nuclear energy heats up.
The energy debate is heating up in Germany with advocates of abandoning the planned nuclear phase-out pitted against those who argue that renewable energy is the way to go. Now the German government has said it plans to give a massive boost to wind power in the coming years.
Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee said on Sunday that Berlin plans to build up to 30 offshore wind farms to meet the country's renewable energy targets. Speaking to the Welt am Sonntag newspaper he said the plan was to build some 2,000 windmills in the North Sea and Baltic Sea which would provide 11,000 megawatts of electricity.
"The price of oil has made this all the more pressing and the interest from investors shows that it is economically viable," Tiefensee said.
Berlin wants to reduce dependency on energy suppliers from overseas and Tiefensee says the government is aiming to obtain 25,000 megawatts of energy from wind farms by 2030. The farms, which will cost €1 billion ($1.56 billion) each to construct, are to be located in relatively deep water and will require hundreds of kilometers of cables to bring the power generated to the mainland. The first wind farm is to be erected off Borkum Island in the North Sea next year.
In June, Germany's parliament passed a law aimed at increasing the amount of power generated by renewable energy sources like wind and solar power from the current 14 percent to 30 percent by 2020.
However, there are also growing calls to increase Germany's use of nuclear energy as the price of oil soars.
While the ruling coalition of conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and center-left Social Democrats (SPD) had agreed to honor a previous government's decision to close down the country's nuclear plants by 2020, there are increased calls to take another look at the nuclear phase-out. Many in the CDU, including Merkel, argue that this hinders Germany's efforts to reduce dependency on fossil fuels. The SPD, on the other hand, is firmly against increasing reliance on nuclear power.
Tiefensee, a member of the SPD, said on Sunday that investing in energy sources such as wind was a better option. "We believe in renewable energy and not in nuclear energy."
Barroso attempts to woo Germany on nuclear energyBy RENATA GOLDIROVA
07.07.2008
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has once again made the case for nuclear power, a controversial source of electricity generation in several EU member states, adding to the already heated debate in Germany on whether the country should allow a nuclear comeback.
In an interview with the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag (6 July), Mr Barroso acknowledged that "nuclear energy is a delicate issue in Germany".
Germany's previous government committed itself to a gradual phase-out of all 17 nuclear power plants in the country by 2021 (Photo: wikipedia)
"On the other hand," he said, "more and more countries see in nuclear energy an at least temporary solution to stop climate change and to reduce our dependency on oil and gas."
Germany's previous Green-[Red] Social-Democrat coalition government under the leadership of Gerhard Schroeder committed itself to a gradual phase-out of all 17 nuclear power plants in the country by 2021.
But the commitment is now being questioned by the Christian Democrats (CDU) of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the senior partners in the coalition government with the Social Democrats.Technology minister Annette Schavan from the CDU said that Germany needs to "exit the exit resolution", referring to the phase-out. "We urgently need the life-span extension - as a contribution to global climate protection and for a lasting energy supply," she told Bild am Sonntag.
But the Social Democrats reject the idea of prolonging the life-span of existing power plants, pointing to remaining question marks over how to safely store the nuclear waste."It is irresponsible so long as the question of the disposal of highly radioactive waste is not solved," the party top figure, Peter Struck, was cited as saying by Der Tagesspiegel on Sunday (6 July).
The same message came from transportation minister Wolfgang Tiefensee, speaking to Welt am Sonntag. "We believe in renewable energy and not in nuclear energy," he said, pointing to plans to build some 30 offshore windfarms in the Baltic and North seas. [SEE BELOW]
It is up to each EU state to choose its own energy mix. But the current European Commission, headed by Mr Barroso, has not shied away from supporting the nuclear path. Brussels says that nuclear energy has a role to play in meeting the EU's growing concerns about security of supply and CO2 emission reductions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2008/gb2008077_507147.htm?chan=globalbiz_europe+index+page_top+stories
Germany Plans 30 More Wind Farms
Business Week
July 7, 2008
The government's move toward offshore wind farms comes as the debate over phasing out nuclear energy heats up.
The energy debate is heating up in Germany with advocates of abandoning the planned nuclear phase-out pitted against those who argue that renewable energy is the way to go. Now the German government has said it plans to give a massive boost to wind power in the coming years.
Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee said on Sunday that Berlin plans to build up to 30 offshore wind farms to meet the country's renewable energy targets. Speaking to the Welt am Sonntag newspaper he said the plan was to build some 2,000 windmills in the North Sea and Baltic Sea which would provide 11,000 megawatts of electricity.
"The price of oil has made this all the more pressing and the interest from investors shows that it is economically viable," Tiefensee said.
Berlin wants to reduce dependency on energy suppliers from overseas and Tiefensee says the government is aiming to obtain 25,000 megawatts of energy from wind farms by 2030. The farms, which will cost €1 billion ($1.56 billion) each to construct, are to be located in relatively deep water and will require hundreds of kilometers of cables to bring the power generated to the mainland. The first wind farm is to be erected off Borkum Island in the North Sea next year.
In June, Germany's parliament passed a law aimed at increasing the amount of power generated by renewable energy sources like wind and solar power from the current 14 percent to 30 percent by 2020.
However, there are also growing calls to increase Germany's use of nuclear energy as the price of oil soars.
While the ruling coalition of conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and center-left Social Democrats (SPD) had agreed to honor a previous government's decision to close down the country's nuclear plants by 2020, there are increased calls to take another look at the nuclear phase-out. Many in the CDU, including Merkel, argue that this hinders Germany's efforts to reduce dependency on fossil fuels. The SPD, on the other hand, is firmly against increasing reliance on nuclear power.
Tiefensee, a member of the SPD, said on Sunday that investing in energy sources such as wind was a better option. "We believe in renewable energy and not in nuclear energy."
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Politicians' Calls for Climate Change Chastity A Socialist Sham Leading to Loss of Individual Constitutional Rights
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052903266.html
Carbon Chastity: The FirstCommandment of the Church of the Environment
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 30, 2008; Page A13
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DNkrauthammer_02edi.ART.State.Edition1.461f31e.html
A Global-Warming Agnostic's Take on the Problem
By Charles Krauthammer:
The Dallas Morning News Op-Ed
June 2, 2008
I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.
[Webster's Dictionary defines the idiomatic expression 'to talk through one's hat' as follows: "talk through one's hat : to voice irrational, illogical, or erroneous ideas". Wiktionary defines 'talk through one's hat' as "To speak lacking expertise, authority, or knowledge; to invent or fabricate facts - The politician is talking through his hat." Wordweb online defines the expression 'to talk through one's hat' as a "Verb: Speak insincerely or without regard for facts or truths- bull, fake Type of: affect, dissemble, feign, pretend, sham".]
Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems – from ocean currents to cloud formation – that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing.
The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.
Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."
If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming – infinitely more untested, complex and speculative – is a closed issue.
[See: Sharon Begley, The Truth About Denial, Newsweek (Aug. 15, 2007) at: http://www.newsweek.com/id/32482/output/print ].
But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Mr. Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left, who want to regulate your life in the name of Earth itself.
Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment – carbon chastity – they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.
Just last Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. 
The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.
There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.
So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research – untainted and reliable – to determine (a) whether the carbon footprint of man is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and (b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.
Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry 'carbon ration cards', say MPs
By David Derbyshire
Mail Online
Under the scheme, everyone would be given an annual carbon allowance to use when buying oil, gas, electricity and flights.
Anyone who exceeds their entitlement would have to buy top-up credits from individuals who haven't used up their allowance. The amount paid would be driven by market forces and the deal done through a specialist company.
MPs, led by Tory Tim Yeo, say the scheme could be more effective at cutting greenhouse gas emissions than green taxes.
But critics say the idea is costly, bureaucratic, intrusive and unworkable.
The Government says it supports the scheme in principle, but warns it is 'ahead of its time'.
For the scheme to work, the Government would need to give out 45million carbon cards - each one linked to a personal carbon account. Every year, the account would be credited with a notional amount of CO2 in kilograms.
Every time someone makes a purchase of petrol, energy or airline tickets, they would use up credits. A return flight from London to Rome would, for instance, use up 900kg of CO2 credits, while 10 litres of petrol would use up 23kg.
'What we are asking the Government to do is to seize the reins on this, leading the debate and coordinating research.'
The Government is committed to cutting CO2 emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010.
The Climate Change Bill going through Parliament aims to cut emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. The Government has said it backs the idea in principle, but it is currently too expensive and bureaucratic.
Environment Minister Hilary Benn said: 'It's got potential but, in essence, it's ahead of its time. There are a lot of practical problems to overcome.'
But critics say the idea is deeply flawed. The scheme would penalise those living in the countryside who were dependent on their cars, as well as the elderly or housebound who need to heat their homes in the day.
Large families would suffer, as would those working at nights when little public transport is available.
It would need to take into account the size of families, and their ages. There is huge potential for fraud.
Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers' Alliance said the cards would be hugely unpopular. 'The Government has shown itself incapable of managing any huge, complex IT system.' he said.
HOW THE SCHEME WOULD WORK
Every adult in the UK would be given an annual carbon dioxide allowance in kgs and a special carbon card.
Every time someone paid for road fuel, flights or energy, their carbon account would be docked. A litre of petrol would use up 2.3kg in carbon, while every 1.3 miles of airline flight would use another 1kg.
Trading would be done through specialist companies.
[A RENT-SEEKING SOCIALIST REGULATORY REGIME FAVORING OPPORTUNISTIC INDUSTRY LOBBYISTS]
Carbon Chastity: The FirstCommandment of the Church of the Environment
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 30, 2008; Page A13
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DNkrauthammer_02edi.ART.State.Edition1.461f31e.html
A Global-Warming Agnostic's Take on the Problem
By Charles Krauthammer:
The Dallas Morning News Op-Ed
June 2, 2008
I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.
[Webster's Dictionary defines the idiomatic expression 'to talk through one's hat' as follows: "talk through one's hat : to voice irrational, illogical, or erroneous ideas". Wiktionary defines 'talk through one's hat' as "To speak lacking expertise, authority, or knowledge; to invent or fabricate facts - The politician is talking through his hat." Wordweb online defines the expression 'to talk through one's hat' as a "Verb: Speak insincerely or without regard for facts or truths- bull, fake Type of: affect, dissemble, feign, pretend, sham".]
Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems – from ocean currents to cloud formation – that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing.
The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.
Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."
If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming – infinitely more untested, complex and speculative – is a closed issue.
[See: Sharon Begley, The Truth About Denial, Newsweek (Aug. 15, 2007) at: http://www.newsweek.com/id/32482/output/print ].
But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Mr. Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left, who want to regulate your life in the name of Earth itself.
Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment – carbon chastity – they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.
Just last Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. 
The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.
There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.
So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research – untainted and reliable – to determine (a) whether the carbon footprint of man is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and (b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.
Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean.
But your would-be masters also have a strict nuclear taboo. Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing?
Charles Krauthammer is a Washington Post columnist. He may be reached through letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry 'carbon ration cards', say MPs
By David Derbyshire
Mail Online
May 27, 2008
Every adult should be forced to use a 'carbon ration card' when they pay for petrol, airline tickets or household energy, MPs say.
The influential Environmental Audit Committee says a personal carbon trading scheme is the best and fairest way of cutting Britain's CO2 emissions without penalising the poor.
Under the scheme, everyone would be given an annual carbon allowance to use when buying oil, gas, electricity and flights.
Anyone who exceeds their entitlement would have to buy top-up credits from individuals who haven't used up their allowance. The amount paid would be driven by market forces and the deal done through a specialist company.
MPs, led by Tory Tim Yeo, say the scheme could be more effective at cutting greenhouse gas emissions than green taxes.
But critics say the idea is costly, bureaucratic, intrusive and unworkable.
The Government says it supports the scheme in principle, but warns it is 'ahead of its time'.
The idea of personal carbon trading is increasingly being promoted by environmentalists. In theory it could be used to cover all purchases - from petrol to food.
For the scheme to work, the Government would need to give out 45million carbon cards - each one linked to a personal carbon account. Every year, the account would be credited with a notional amount of CO2 in kilograms.
Every time someone makes a purchase of petrol, energy or airline tickets, they would use up credits. A return flight from London to Rome would, for instance, use up 900kg of CO2 credits, while 10 litres of petrol would use up 23kg.
MP Tim Yeo MP, says the scheme could be more effective at cutting Britain's greenhouse gas emissions
Mr Yeo, chairman of the committee said personal carbon trading rewarded those with a low carbon footprint with cash.
'We found that personal carbon trading has real potential to engage the population in the fight against climate change and to achieve significant emissions reductions in a progressive way,' he said.
'The idea is a radical one. As such it inevitably faces some significant challenges in its development. It is important to meet these challenges.
[ANOTHER 'RADICAL' IDEA FROM THE UTOPIAN PHILOSOPHER KINGS. THIS REMINDS US OF U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BARACK OBAMA'S CALL FOR RADICAL CHANGE!! SEE: ITSSD JOURNAL ON POLITICAL SURREALISM, at: http://itssdjournalpoliticalsurrealism.blogspot.com ].
'What we are asking the Government to do is to seize the reins on this, leading the debate and coordinating research.'
The Government is committed to cutting CO2 emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010.
The Climate Change Bill going through Parliament aims to cut emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. The Government has said it backs the idea in principle, but it is currently too expensive and bureaucratic.
Environment Minister Hilary Benn said: 'It's got potential but, in essence, it's ahead of its time. There are a lot of practical problems to overcome.'
A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report into the scheme found it would cost between £700million and £2billion to set up and up to another £2billion a year to run.
Tory environment spokesman Peter Ainsworth added: 'Although it does have potential we should proceed with care. We don't want to alienate people and we want everyone to be on board.'
[THE FACT THAT THE TORIES WOULD EVEN CONSIDER THIS SCHEME REFLECTS HOW DESPERATELY OUT OF TOUCH THEY MUST BE WITH THEIR CORE PRINCIPLES!!]
But critics say the idea is deeply flawed. The scheme would penalise those living in the countryside who were dependent on their cars, as well as the elderly or housebound who need to heat their homes in the day.
Large families would suffer, as would those working at nights when little public transport is available.
It would need to take into account the size of families, and their ages. There is huge potential for fraud.
Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers' Alliance said the cards would be hugely unpopular. 'The Government has shown itself incapable of managing any huge, complex IT system.' he said.
HOW THE SCHEME WOULD WORK
Every adult in the UK would be given an annual carbon dioxide allowance in kgs and a special carbon card.
The scheme would cover road fuel, flights and energy bills.
Every time someone paid for road fuel, flights or energy, their carbon account would be docked. A litre of petrol would use up 2.3kg in carbon, while every 1.3 miles of airline flight would use another 1kg.
When paying for petrol, the card would need to swiped at the till. It would be a legal offence to buy petrol without using a card.
When paying online, or by direct debit, the carbon account would be debited directly. Anyone who doesn't use up their credits in a year can sell them to someone who wants more credits.
When paying online, or by direct debit, the carbon account would be debited directly. Anyone who doesn't use up their credits in a year can sell them to someone who wants more credits.Trading would be done through specialist companies.
[A RENT-SEEKING SOCIALIST REGULATORY REGIME FAVORING OPPORTUNISTIC INDUSTRY LOBBYISTS]
Friday, May 9, 2008
Governator's California Enviro-Energy Policies Follow in the Footsteps of Europe: Does He Really Wish to Govern the 28th EU Member State??
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_californias_environmentalism.html
California’s Potemkin Environmentalism
By Max Schultz
City Journal
Spring 2008 Vol.18, No. 2
A celebrated green economy produces pollution elsewhere, ongoing power shortages, and business-crippling costs.
In January 2007, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stood before the California legislature in Sacramento and delivered his fourth State of the State address since his improbable 2003 election. It was a rhetorical tour de force that would win him widespread acclaim. “California has the ideas of Athens and the power of Sparta,” said Schwarzenegger. “Not only can we lead California into the future; we can show the nation and the world how to get there.”
Schwarzenegger especially celebrated California for its leadership on energy and the environment. Just three months earlier, he had signed the Global Warming Solutions Act, committing California to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels—roughly 25 percent below today’s—by 2020, and all but eliminating them by 2050. The Governator then lambasted the Bush administration for failing to tackle global warming: “It would not act, so California did.
California has taken the leadership in moving the entire country beyond debate and denial to action.” Such performances have helped establish Schwarzenegger as a national figure, even a statesman, on the environment. In April 2007, he posed for the cover of Newsweek, spinning a globe on his finger under the banner leadership & the environment, and in September, he even addressed the United Nations on climate change.
[THE UNITED NATION ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM'S INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC) IS THE 'CHURCH' OF THE UNQUESTIONABLE PARADIGM.]
Schwarzenegger’s reputation as an environmental trailblazer is in keeping with California’s recent history and self-perception. California’s political leaders, business titans, academics, and environmental activists proudly point to the fact that the state has infused its public policy over the last four decades with an environmental consciousness unmatched in the United States, while also maintaining a dynamic economy, arguably the eighth-largest on the planet, with a gross state product of more than $1.6 trillion. The widely shared assumption is that forward-looking Athenian wisdom has nourished awesome Spartan power.
In truth, however, the Golden State’s energy leadership is a mirage. California’s environmental policies have made it heavily dependent on other states for power; generated some of the highest, business-crippling energy costs in the country; and left it vulnerable to periodic electricity shortages. Its economic growth has occurred not because of, but despite, those policies, which would be disastrous if extended to the rest of the country.
Much of California’s heightened environmental awareness dates back to January 1969, when an industrial accident on a Union Oil (now Unocal) drilling rig about five miles off the Santa Barbara coast blew out of control. Over 11 days, the rig spewed more than 3 million gallons of oil over 800 square miles of ocean and along a 35-mile stretch of coastline. The massive spill killed innumerable birds, fish, dolphins, and seals and coated beaches with a six-inch-thick film. Union Oil president Fred Utley’s ham-handed response enraged an already angry public: “I don’t like to call it a disaster,” he said, noting that there had been no loss of human life. “I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds.”
The concern over “the loss of a few birds” was even more powerful than Utley thought. It’s no exaggeration to say that much of the modern environmental movement emerged from the Santa Barbara oil spill. Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson said that he conceived of the first Earth Day because of the accident. A powerful movement to ban offshore drilling sprang up. Environmental advocacy groups formed. A marked hostility to oil companies took hold in the public’s mind.
Voters established the California Coastal Commission in a 1972 referendum. And at the federal level, in 1970, President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency largely as a response to the spill.
From then on, the environment would be central for California lawmakers and regulators. Unlike other states, California began to focus on efficiency and conservation, and it pioneered new efficiency standards for appliances and for the construction of new buildings. It mandated aggressive conservation programs for businesses and consumers and required a certain percentage of the state’s electricity to come from renewable sources like wind and solar. It subsidized such clean technologies, seeking to give them a foothold in the state’s energy mix. It implemented far-reaching regulations on emissions from car tailpipes and from stationary sources like factories, seeking to protect health and improve air quality. In league with influential environmental groups, California officials began attacking nuclear power and moving (with some success) to shut down the state’s nuclear facilities.
For environmentalists, this was visionary policy. “This is a state which should be commended,” says Rory Cox of Ratepayers for Affordable Clean Energy, a San Francisco–based environmental coalition. “This is a state which has a number of really good laws regarding renewable energy and a lot of incentives for things like renewable energy and energy efficiency.” The Natural Resources Defense Council, arguably the nation’s leading green activist group, expressed the same view in a 2006 cover story in its magazine OnEarth: “California Illuminates the World.”
For a time, these efforts to meet power needs by reducing energy demand and consumption seemed to work. Since the mid-seventies, California’s economy has grown while per-capita energy consumption stayed flat—an astounding fact, considering that such consumption has increased by roughly 50 percent elsewhere in the country over the same period.
To understand better how California’s environmental policies have played out, however, consider what two of them—opposition to nuclear energy and promotion of solar power—have done to Clay Station, California, 25 miles outside Sacramento, where two gigantic cooling towers rise up over rolling fields and farmland. This facility was once the Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station, capable of generating over 900 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough to power upward of 900,000 homes. Rancho Seco opened in 1975, when antinuclear fervor in California was just beginning to gain momentum, and at one point, it generated more electricity than any other nuclear plant in the world.
Over the years, though, management missteps led to several shutdowns, including one that lasted 27 months. Antinuclear advocates seized on the fact that the reactor’s design was similar to Three Mile Island’s in Pennsylvania, which had suffered a partial meltdown in 1979, and demanded that it be closed. In a 1989 referendum on whether to decommission Rancho Seco, 53 percent of Sacramento voters agreed. Just 14 years after powering up, and nearly two decades before its operating license was to expire, the nuclear reactor shut down.
The facility didn’t entirely close, though. In 1984, trying to position itself as a national leader in solar power, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) began building photovoltaic solar panels on the site, taking advantage of the already constructed infrastructure to transmit power.
At the same time, in a bid to position itself as a national leader in solar power, SMUD instituted programs subsidizing the construction of photovoltaic panels for Sacramento homes and businesses. The utility halted the installation of new panels in 2002, after it became clear that the program would cost perhaps three times more than projected and had lost millions of dollars, falling well short of its modest goal to install 2 MW of solar energy that year.
Today, Rancho Seco possesses one of the largest photovoltaic arrays in the world. Yet it provides less than 4 MW of electricity, or less than half of 1 percent of what the closed nuclear plant optimally offered. Total solar capacity for the Sacramento region is less than 50 MW, or about 6 percent of the nuclear plant’s output. In fact, after millions of dollars in subsidies and other support for solar power, the entire state of California has less than 250 MW of solar capacity.
The Rancho Seco story helps explain California’s infamous turn-of-the-millennium energy crisis. In 2000 and 2001, numerous rolling blackouts and power outages caused billions of dollars in damages in the state. The degree to which rapacious power-company executives and traders were responsible for the shortages remains open to debate. But what isn’t in question is that California had insufficient power to meet demand and that officials had let the state’s infrastructure for moving electrons become frayed and overloaded. Having adequate power supplies would have shielded consumers from any private-sector perfidy.
Republican state senator Tom McClintock underscored the real problem, which went well beyond Rancho Seco, in a speech to a Silicon Valley group in 2001. “From 1979 to 1999, generating capacity of over 45,000 megawatts was proposed to the [California Energy] Commission,” he said. “Only 4,500 megawatts was approved. Nuclear power plants were forbidden, and Rancho Seco and San Onofre Unit One,” another nuclear reactor, “were shut down prematurely. . . . For 27 years, this state has actively discouraged the construction of new power plants, and the day finally arrived when we ran out of power.” Indeed, California’s capability to generate electricity actually decreased slightly from 1990 through 1999.
Not even California’s flat per-capita energy consumption could save it from blackouts, since its population had been soaring. During the 20-year period that Senator McClintock noted, the number of California residents jumped from about 23 million people to 33 million. Today, the figure is closer to 38 million, and it could top 45 million by 2020. The cumulative demand proved too much for the aging system.
A dirty secret about California’s energy economy is that it imports lots of energy from neighboring states to make up for the shortfall caused by having too few power plants. Up to 20 percent of the state’s power comes from coal-burning plants in Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Montana, and another significant portion comes from large-scale hydropower in Oregon, Washington State, and the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas. “California practices a sort of energy colonialism,” says James Lucier of Capital Alpha Partners, a Washington, D.C.–area investment group. “They rely on western states to supply them with power generation they are unwilling to build for themselves”—and leave those states to deal with the resulting pollution.
Another secret: California’s proud claim to have kept per-capita energy consumption flat while growing its economy is less impressive than it seems. The state has some of the highest energy prices in the country—nearly twice the national average, a 2002 Milken Institute study found—largely because of regulations and government mandates to use expensive renewable sources of power. As a result, heavy manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries have been fleeing the Golden State in droves for lower-cost locales. Twenty years ago or so, you could count eight automobile factories in California; today, there’s just one, and it’s the same story with other industries, from chemicals to aerospace. Yet Californians still enjoy the fruits of those manufacturing industries—driving cars built in the Midwest and the South, importing chemicals and resins and paints and plastics produced elsewhere, and flying on jumbo jets manufactured in places like Everett, Washington. California can pretend to have controlled energy consumption, but it has just displaced it.
It isn’t just the high price of power that’s compelling California businesses to shift operations to other regions. The state’s unreliable power grid has its economic costs, too. A 2003 U.S. Department of Energy report noted that “a recent rolling blackout in the greater San Francisco Bay area caused an estimated $75 million in losses in the Silicon Valley.” A 20-minute outage at a Hewlett-Packard circuit-fabrication plant, the report observed, “would result in a day’s production loss at a cost of $30 million.” As Jack Gerard, then-president of the National Mining Association, put it in a 2001 speech: “Events are proving that the most expensive kilowatt is the one that’s not there when needed.”
The shortages are starting to rattle some Silicon Valley heavyweights. Intel chief executive Craig Barrett, for instance, vowed in 2001 not to build a chip-making facility in California until power supplies became more reliable. This October, Intel opened a $3 billion factory near Phoenix for mass production of its new 45-nanometer microprocessors. Google, meanwhile, has chosen to build the massive server farms that will fuel its expansion anywhere but in California. The most celebrated is an enormous installation along the Columbia River in The Dalles, Oregon, a facility that will house tens of thousands of computers, requiring mind-boggling amounts of power. A 1.8-gigawatt hydroelectric power plant will offer Google power for a small fraction of what it would cost in the Golden State. The irony is that the Silicon Valley companies that have become the face of California’s twenty-first-century economy are increasingly building the facilities that will give them their future value in other states.
Despite California’s desperate need for more power, opposition to energy projects remains nearly as prevalent today as at any time during the previous three decades. State law explicitly prohibits the construction of new nuclear plants, and legislative efforts last summer to repeal it went nowhere, even though more and more states are looking to nuclear power as a clean energy alternative. A de facto moratorium on conventional coal-fired power plants (which generate half of America’s electricity) has been in place for decades in California; none exists anywhere in the state. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense are working to get dams torn down, even though large-scale hydropower supplies nearly one-fifth of Californians’ electricity.
Plans to construct liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminals along the California coast have met with particularly fierce resistance. Natural gas accounts for nearly half of California’s electricity generation. Regulators (and even some environmentalists) favor it because it’s capable of generating large amounts of power but burns much cleaner than coal. American production of natural gas has reached a plateau, however, while demand around the country continues to rise, driving prices upward over the last five years.
To avert a long-term natural-gas supply crisis, Schwarzenegger administration officials have encouraged companies to explore the idea of building offshore terminals to accept LNG from other countries. The gas would be liquefied abroad, shipped via tanker to the terminals, reconverted to gas, and then sent to shore through long underwater pipelines. The distance from shore is critical, since the liquefied gas is extremely flammable: federal officials believe that the fire from an explosion at an LNG terminal could reach as far as seven miles.
The state has received several credible proposals to construct LNG terminals far offshore, the most promising of which called for a terminal 14 miles off the Malibu coast. But the project sparked intense resistance from environmentalists and a coterie of entertainment-industry activists (and Malibu residents), including Pierce Brosnan, Ted Danson, Martin Sheen, Téa Leoni, Cindy Crawford, Halle Berry, and octogenarian Dick Van Dyke. “This is just another disaster waiting to happen,” said actress Darryl Hannah at a 2006 protest. “An LNG plant off the coast is not just an eyesore, but it’s like a bomb waiting to go off.”
A political consultant with close ties to the Schwarzenegger administration wasn’t impressed. “These softheaded celebrity protests against LNG are the same thing we saw in the 1970s with the protests against nuclear power,” he said. “I mean, Martin Sheen? I think he was actually there in the seventies.” But the celebrity activists have had the last laugh. Bowing to the activists, regulators with the California Lands Commission and the California Coastal Commission vetoed the project last spring.
Even renewable energy projects can have trouble getting off the ground, often because of Not-In-My-Backyard objections. “NIMBYism is a huge problem in our state, a whole creature unto itself,” says Joe Lyons, a lobbyist for the California Manufacturers Technology Association. “It cuts across all sectors. Even in the most remote locations, where you wouldn’t think it would be difficult to site a new project, or even on federal lands, it is still extremely difficult and there is always opposition.”
For instance, attempts to build a geothermal facility on federal lands deep within the Modoc National Forest face relentless opposition from Indian tribes, which consider the site sacred. Local hostility also threatens to hold up construction of several major transmission lines designed to bring more than 5,000 MW of power from renewable energy sources to Southern California consumers.
One of these projects, a $1 billion transmission line known as the Sunrise Powerlink, would ship wind power 120 miles west from the Imperial Valley to San Diego. Here’s the head of one community activist group commenting on the initiative: “While the Sunrise Powerlink may represent the possibility of a new dawning of power . . . to me it represents a threat; a darkness, a SUNSET, of sorts, on our quiet, natural, joyful and backcountry rural way of life. For the many quiet folks who thought they had found paradise . . . or the many who may see the intrusive poles each and every day for the rest of their days here, the magnificent beautiful and natural sunrises and sunsets will never be quite the same.”
With such widespread opposition to energy projects, where will California get the power its economy needs to flourish? Since the 2000–01 electricity debacle, the state has overseen the construction of some natural-gas power plants, whose added generation has helped relieve the pressure slightly. But Californians have continued to face the threat of blackouts or brownouts almost every summer since 2001.
California’s inability to provide the energy that its economy needs hasn’t stopped its leaders from setting wildly unrealistic goals for safeguarding the environment. In 1990, for instance, the state’s Air Resources Board sought to encourage the development of an electric car, decreeing that by 1998, 2 percent of all new cars sold by the major automakers had to meet zero-emissions standards; by 2001, 5 percent; and by 2003, 10 percent. But by 1996, it was clear that there was simply no technological way for the automakers to comply with the mandate. The regulators first eliminated the 1998 and 2001 benchmarks, later announced that gasoline-battery hybrids could count toward the 2003 requirement, and then, faced with the reality that the automakers could not come close to meeting even the newly relaxed standards, relaxed the mandate once again and moved the deadline to this year. Doubtless that goal will prove impossible to meet as well.
California’s efforts to implement a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) and to become the nation’s leader in wind-energy production have hit similar stumbling blocks. In 2002, California enacted an RPS that called for 20 percent of the state’s electricity to come from clean energy sources (excluding nuclear energy and hydropower) by 2017. When Schwarzenegger became governor, he moved the target to 2010. But recent reports, including one from the state’s Public Utilities Commission, signal that California will very likely not meet the 2010 target. In September 2006, reports emerged that Pacific Gas & Electric, the Northern California utility serving San Francisco, had actually reduced the share of renewables in its portfolio between 2003 and 2005. And Texas, of all places, has outpaced California as America’s leader in wind-power generation. High costs, excessive regulation, and litigation from environmental groups on how to limit bird deaths have all hampered California’s effort; Texas has just built lots of wind turbines.
Now California is embarking on its most ambitious project yet: an attempt to combat global warming by reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions. The devil will be in the details of how the Global Warming Solutions Act (or AB32, for its legislative number) is enacted—details that state regulators don’t have to unveil until January 2009. Already there’s widespread skepticism that the state can succeed. Margo Thorning, chief economist at the American Council for Capital Formation, testified before Congress last July: “The economic burden of California’s new climate policy legislation is likely to be high, and the targets in AB32 are unlikely to be met.” Even the California Energy Commission hints that the targets might be unreachable.
It’s certainly going to cost a lot to find out. Analysis from the Electric Power Research Institute pegs AB32’s cost to the California economy at anywhere from $100 billion to $511 billion. “What will it take to achieve the benchmark? Consider that California could take every one of its 14 million passenger cars off the road, and still be less than halfway toward its goal,” observed Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub. “Shutting down 100 state-of-the-art, natural-gas-fired power plants still wouldn’t get us there. Closing the entire cement industry, although it is a major source of greenhouse gases, wouldn’t finish the job.”
Given all its failings, what sort of leadership example does California offer the rest of the country? It’s hard to claim credibly that California illuminates the world when it has trouble illuminating itself. Further, California’s particular path makes sense only if the rest of the country refuses to follow it. The state’s lawmakers and regulators have enacted policies that for several decades have allowed Californians to feel good, even smug, about their environmental credentials. Yet California’s economic prosperity has relied on the fact that other states have built power plants and established sensible regulatory regimes that don’t force businesses to flee. The power plants scattered throughout the western United States, as well as the factories in the American Midwest and South, have consistently saved California from the folly of its own anti-energy agenda.
[EUROPE SUFFERS FROM THE SAME DELUSIONS. FOR THIS REASON, CALIFORNIA HAS BEEN INCREASINGLY REFERRED TO AS THE 28TH EU MEMBER STATE].
California isn’t content to keep its energy policy within state limits, however. Recently, it passed a law barring state utilities from entering into long-term contracts to buy electricity from out-of-state producers if coal is used in generating it. “They are clearly trying to trim down the growth of coal, not just in California, but elsewhere,” said a top official at the U.S. Department of Energy.
“California is using their regulations to direct the economic development of the West. And it is arrogant and it is appalling.”
[THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT EUROPE DOES WITH ITS ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS - IT EXPORTS THEM AROUND THE WORLD IN ORDER TO 'LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD' FOR THOSE OF ITS INDUSTRIES BURDENED BY THE HIGH COSTS OF THE REGULATIONS.]
California is certainly within its rights to set policies for itself and to live with the consequences. But everyone can’t do what California does. Someone needs to build power plants and oil refineries. Someone needs to manufacture the cars, trucks, airplanes, and other pieces of heavy equipment that enrich Americans’ lives, till our fields, and grow our economy. Someone needs to produce the plastics and chemicals that undergird our prosperity. Those things require energy, and lots of it—growing amounts of it. All the wisdom of Athens and all the power of Sparta won’t change that fact.
Max Schulz is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and director of its Center for Energy Policy and the Environment.
California’s Potemkin Environmentalism
By Max Schultz
City Journal
Spring 2008 Vol.18, No. 2
A celebrated green economy produces pollution elsewhere, ongoing power shortages, and business-crippling costs.
In January 2007, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stood before the California legislature in Sacramento and delivered his fourth State of the State address since his improbable 2003 election. It was a rhetorical tour de force that would win him widespread acclaim. “California has the ideas of Athens and the power of Sparta,” said Schwarzenegger. “Not only can we lead California into the future; we can show the nation and the world how to get there.”Schwarzenegger especially celebrated California for its leadership on energy and the environment. Just three months earlier, he had signed the Global Warming Solutions Act, committing California to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels—roughly 25 percent below today’s—by 2020, and all but eliminating them by 2050. The Governator then lambasted the Bush administration for failing to tackle global warming: “It would not act, so California did.
California has taken the leadership in moving the entire country beyond debate and denial to action.” Such performances have helped establish Schwarzenegger as a national figure, even a statesman, on the environment. In April 2007, he posed for the cover of Newsweek, spinning a globe on his finger under the banner leadership & the environment, and in September, he even addressed the United Nations on climate change.
[THE UNITED NATION ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM'S INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC) IS THE 'CHURCH' OF THE UNQUESTIONABLE PARADIGM.]
Schwarzenegger’s reputation as an environmental trailblazer is in keeping with California’s recent history and self-perception. California’s political leaders, business titans, academics, and environmental activists proudly point to the fact that the state has infused its public policy over the last four decades with an environmental consciousness unmatched in the United States, while also maintaining a dynamic economy, arguably the eighth-largest on the planet, with a gross state product of more than $1.6 trillion. The widely shared assumption is that forward-looking Athenian wisdom has nourished awesome Spartan power.
In truth, however, the Golden State’s energy leadership is a mirage. California’s environmental policies have made it heavily dependent on other states for power; generated some of the highest, business-crippling energy costs in the country; and left it vulnerable to periodic electricity shortages. Its economic growth has occurred not because of, but despite, those policies, which would be disastrous if extended to the rest of the country.
Much of California’s heightened environmental awareness dates back to January 1969, when an industrial accident on a Union Oil (now Unocal) drilling rig about five miles off the Santa Barbara coast blew out of control. Over 11 days, the rig spewed more than 3 million gallons of oil over 800 square miles of ocean and along a 35-mile stretch of coastline. The massive spill killed innumerable birds, fish, dolphins, and seals and coated beaches with a six-inch-thick film. Union Oil president Fred Utley’s ham-handed response enraged an already angry public: “I don’t like to call it a disaster,” he said, noting that there had been no loss of human life. “I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds.”
The concern over “the loss of a few birds” was even more powerful than Utley thought. It’s no exaggeration to say that much of the modern environmental movement emerged from the Santa Barbara oil spill. Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson said that he conceived of the first Earth Day because of the accident. A powerful movement to ban offshore drilling sprang up. Environmental advocacy groups formed. A marked hostility to oil companies took hold in the public’s mind.
Voters established the California Coastal Commission in a 1972 referendum. And at the federal level, in 1970, President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency largely as a response to the spill.
From then on, the environment would be central for California lawmakers and regulators. Unlike other states, California began to focus on efficiency and conservation, and it pioneered new efficiency standards for appliances and for the construction of new buildings. It mandated aggressive conservation programs for businesses and consumers and required a certain percentage of the state’s electricity to come from renewable sources like wind and solar. It subsidized such clean technologies, seeking to give them a foothold in the state’s energy mix. It implemented far-reaching regulations on emissions from car tailpipes and from stationary sources like factories, seeking to protect health and improve air quality. In league with influential environmental groups, California officials began attacking nuclear power and moving (with some success) to shut down the state’s nuclear facilities.
For environmentalists, this was visionary policy. “This is a state which should be commended,” says Rory Cox of Ratepayers for Affordable Clean Energy, a San Francisco–based environmental coalition. “This is a state which has a number of really good laws regarding renewable energy and a lot of incentives for things like renewable energy and energy efficiency.” The Natural Resources Defense Council, arguably the nation’s leading green activist group, expressed the same view in a 2006 cover story in its magazine OnEarth: “California Illuminates the World.”
For a time, these efforts to meet power needs by reducing energy demand and consumption seemed to work. Since the mid-seventies, California’s economy has grown while per-capita energy consumption stayed flat—an astounding fact, considering that such consumption has increased by roughly 50 percent elsewhere in the country over the same period.
To understand better how California’s environmental policies have played out, however, consider what two of them—opposition to nuclear energy and promotion of solar power—have done to Clay Station, California, 25 miles outside Sacramento, where two gigantic cooling towers rise up over rolling fields and farmland. This facility was once the Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station, capable of generating over 900 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough to power upward of 900,000 homes. Rancho Seco opened in 1975, when antinuclear fervor in California was just beginning to gain momentum, and at one point, it generated more electricity than any other nuclear plant in the world.
Over the years, though, management missteps led to several shutdowns, including one that lasted 27 months. Antinuclear advocates seized on the fact that the reactor’s design was similar to Three Mile Island’s in Pennsylvania, which had suffered a partial meltdown in 1979, and demanded that it be closed. In a 1989 referendum on whether to decommission Rancho Seco, 53 percent of Sacramento voters agreed. Just 14 years after powering up, and nearly two decades before its operating license was to expire, the nuclear reactor shut down.
The facility didn’t entirely close, though. In 1984, trying to position itself as a national leader in solar power, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) began building photovoltaic solar panels on the site, taking advantage of the already constructed infrastructure to transmit power.
At the same time, in a bid to position itself as a national leader in solar power, SMUD instituted programs subsidizing the construction of photovoltaic panels for Sacramento homes and businesses. The utility halted the installation of new panels in 2002, after it became clear that the program would cost perhaps three times more than projected and had lost millions of dollars, falling well short of its modest goal to install 2 MW of solar energy that year.
Today, Rancho Seco possesses one of the largest photovoltaic arrays in the world. Yet it provides less than 4 MW of electricity, or less than half of 1 percent of what the closed nuclear plant optimally offered. Total solar capacity for the Sacramento region is less than 50 MW, or about 6 percent of the nuclear plant’s output. In fact, after millions of dollars in subsidies and other support for solar power, the entire state of California has less than 250 MW of solar capacity.
The Rancho Seco story helps explain California’s infamous turn-of-the-millennium energy crisis. In 2000 and 2001, numerous rolling blackouts and power outages caused billions of dollars in damages in the state. The degree to which rapacious power-company executives and traders were responsible for the shortages remains open to debate. But what isn’t in question is that California had insufficient power to meet demand and that officials had let the state’s infrastructure for moving electrons become frayed and overloaded. Having adequate power supplies would have shielded consumers from any private-sector perfidy.
Republican state senator Tom McClintock underscored the real problem, which went well beyond Rancho Seco, in a speech to a Silicon Valley group in 2001. “From 1979 to 1999, generating capacity of over 45,000 megawatts was proposed to the [California Energy] Commission,” he said. “Only 4,500 megawatts was approved. Nuclear power plants were forbidden, and Rancho Seco and San Onofre Unit One,” another nuclear reactor, “were shut down prematurely. . . . For 27 years, this state has actively discouraged the construction of new power plants, and the day finally arrived when we ran out of power.” Indeed, California’s capability to generate electricity actually decreased slightly from 1990 through 1999.
Not even California’s flat per-capita energy consumption could save it from blackouts, since its population had been soaring. During the 20-year period that Senator McClintock noted, the number of California residents jumped from about 23 million people to 33 million. Today, the figure is closer to 38 million, and it could top 45 million by 2020. The cumulative demand proved too much for the aging system.
A dirty secret about California’s energy economy is that it imports lots of energy from neighboring states to make up for the shortfall caused by having too few power plants. Up to 20 percent of the state’s power comes from coal-burning plants in Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Montana, and another significant portion comes from large-scale hydropower in Oregon, Washington State, and the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas. “California practices a sort of energy colonialism,” says James Lucier of Capital Alpha Partners, a Washington, D.C.–area investment group. “They rely on western states to supply them with power generation they are unwilling to build for themselves”—and leave those states to deal with the resulting pollution.
Another secret: California’s proud claim to have kept per-capita energy consumption flat while growing its economy is less impressive than it seems. The state has some of the highest energy prices in the country—nearly twice the national average, a 2002 Milken Institute study found—largely because of regulations and government mandates to use expensive renewable sources of power. As a result, heavy manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries have been fleeing the Golden State in droves for lower-cost locales. Twenty years ago or so, you could count eight automobile factories in California; today, there’s just one, and it’s the same story with other industries, from chemicals to aerospace. Yet Californians still enjoy the fruits of those manufacturing industries—driving cars built in the Midwest and the South, importing chemicals and resins and paints and plastics produced elsewhere, and flying on jumbo jets manufactured in places like Everett, Washington. California can pretend to have controlled energy consumption, but it has just displaced it.
It isn’t just the high price of power that’s compelling California businesses to shift operations to other regions. The state’s unreliable power grid has its economic costs, too. A 2003 U.S. Department of Energy report noted that “a recent rolling blackout in the greater San Francisco Bay area caused an estimated $75 million in losses in the Silicon Valley.” A 20-minute outage at a Hewlett-Packard circuit-fabrication plant, the report observed, “would result in a day’s production loss at a cost of $30 million.” As Jack Gerard, then-president of the National Mining Association, put it in a 2001 speech: “Events are proving that the most expensive kilowatt is the one that’s not there when needed.”
The shortages are starting to rattle some Silicon Valley heavyweights. Intel chief executive Craig Barrett, for instance, vowed in 2001 not to build a chip-making facility in California until power supplies became more reliable. This October, Intel opened a $3 billion factory near Phoenix for mass production of its new 45-nanometer microprocessors. Google, meanwhile, has chosen to build the massive server farms that will fuel its expansion anywhere but in California. The most celebrated is an enormous installation along the Columbia River in The Dalles, Oregon, a facility that will house tens of thousands of computers, requiring mind-boggling amounts of power. A 1.8-gigawatt hydroelectric power plant will offer Google power for a small fraction of what it would cost in the Golden State. The irony is that the Silicon Valley companies that have become the face of California’s twenty-first-century economy are increasingly building the facilities that will give them their future value in other states.
Despite California’s desperate need for more power, opposition to energy projects remains nearly as prevalent today as at any time during the previous three decades. State law explicitly prohibits the construction of new nuclear plants, and legislative efforts last summer to repeal it went nowhere, even though more and more states are looking to nuclear power as a clean energy alternative. A de facto moratorium on conventional coal-fired power plants (which generate half of America’s electricity) has been in place for decades in California; none exists anywhere in the state. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense are working to get dams torn down, even though large-scale hydropower supplies nearly one-fifth of Californians’ electricity.Plans to construct liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminals along the California coast have met with particularly fierce resistance. Natural gas accounts for nearly half of California’s electricity generation. Regulators (and even some environmentalists) favor it because it’s capable of generating large amounts of power but burns much cleaner than coal. American production of natural gas has reached a plateau, however, while demand around the country continues to rise, driving prices upward over the last five years.
To avert a long-term natural-gas supply crisis, Schwarzenegger administration officials have encouraged companies to explore the idea of building offshore terminals to accept LNG from other countries. The gas would be liquefied abroad, shipped via tanker to the terminals, reconverted to gas, and then sent to shore through long underwater pipelines. The distance from shore is critical, since the liquefied gas is extremely flammable: federal officials believe that the fire from an explosion at an LNG terminal could reach as far as seven miles.
The state has received several credible proposals to construct LNG terminals far offshore, the most promising of which called for a terminal 14 miles off the Malibu coast. But the project sparked intense resistance from environmentalists and a coterie of entertainment-industry activists (and Malibu residents), including Pierce Brosnan, Ted Danson, Martin Sheen, Téa Leoni, Cindy Crawford, Halle Berry, and octogenarian Dick Van Dyke. “This is just another disaster waiting to happen,” said actress Darryl Hannah at a 2006 protest. “An LNG plant off the coast is not just an eyesore, but it’s like a bomb waiting to go off.”
A political consultant with close ties to the Schwarzenegger administration wasn’t impressed. “These softheaded celebrity protests against LNG are the same thing we saw in the 1970s with the protests against nuclear power,” he said. “I mean, Martin Sheen? I think he was actually there in the seventies.” But the celebrity activists have had the last laugh. Bowing to the activists, regulators with the California Lands Commission and the California Coastal Commission vetoed the project last spring.
Even renewable energy projects can have trouble getting off the ground, often because of Not-In-My-Backyard objections. “NIMBYism is a huge problem in our state, a whole creature unto itself,” says Joe Lyons, a lobbyist for the California Manufacturers Technology Association. “It cuts across all sectors. Even in the most remote locations, where you wouldn’t think it would be difficult to site a new project, or even on federal lands, it is still extremely difficult and there is always opposition.”
For instance, attempts to build a geothermal facility on federal lands deep within the Modoc National Forest face relentless opposition from Indian tribes, which consider the site sacred. Local hostility also threatens to hold up construction of several major transmission lines designed to bring more than 5,000 MW of power from renewable energy sources to Southern California consumers.
One of these projects, a $1 billion transmission line known as the Sunrise Powerlink, would ship wind power 120 miles west from the Imperial Valley to San Diego. Here’s the head of one community activist group commenting on the initiative: “While the Sunrise Powerlink may represent the possibility of a new dawning of power . . . to me it represents a threat; a darkness, a SUNSET, of sorts, on our quiet, natural, joyful and backcountry rural way of life. For the many quiet folks who thought they had found paradise . . . or the many who may see the intrusive poles each and every day for the rest of their days here, the magnificent beautiful and natural sunrises and sunsets will never be quite the same.”
With such widespread opposition to energy projects, where will California get the power its economy needs to flourish? Since the 2000–01 electricity debacle, the state has overseen the construction of some natural-gas power plants, whose added generation has helped relieve the pressure slightly. But Californians have continued to face the threat of blackouts or brownouts almost every summer since 2001.
California’s inability to provide the energy that its economy needs hasn’t stopped its leaders from setting wildly unrealistic goals for safeguarding the environment. In 1990, for instance, the state’s Air Resources Board sought to encourage the development of an electric car, decreeing that by 1998, 2 percent of all new cars sold by the major automakers had to meet zero-emissions standards; by 2001, 5 percent; and by 2003, 10 percent. But by 1996, it was clear that there was simply no technological way for the automakers to comply with the mandate. The regulators first eliminated the 1998 and 2001 benchmarks, later announced that gasoline-battery hybrids could count toward the 2003 requirement, and then, faced with the reality that the automakers could not come close to meeting even the newly relaxed standards, relaxed the mandate once again and moved the deadline to this year. Doubtless that goal will prove impossible to meet as well.
California’s efforts to implement a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) and to become the nation’s leader in wind-energy production have hit similar stumbling blocks. In 2002, California enacted an RPS that called for 20 percent of the state’s electricity to come from clean energy sources (excluding nuclear energy and hydropower) by 2017. When Schwarzenegger became governor, he moved the target to 2010. But recent reports, including one from the state’s Public Utilities Commission, signal that California will very likely not meet the 2010 target. In September 2006, reports emerged that Pacific Gas & Electric, the Northern California utility serving San Francisco, had actually reduced the share of renewables in its portfolio between 2003 and 2005. And Texas, of all places, has outpaced California as America’s leader in wind-power generation. High costs, excessive regulation, and litigation from environmental groups on how to limit bird deaths have all hampered California’s effort; Texas has just built lots of wind turbines.
Now California is embarking on its most ambitious project yet: an attempt to combat global warming by reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions. The devil will be in the details of how the Global Warming Solutions Act (or AB32, for its legislative number) is enacted—details that state regulators don’t have to unveil until January 2009. Already there’s widespread skepticism that the state can succeed. Margo Thorning, chief economist at the American Council for Capital Formation, testified before Congress last July: “The economic burden of California’s new climate policy legislation is likely to be high, and the targets in AB32 are unlikely to be met.” Even the California Energy Commission hints that the targets might be unreachable.
It’s certainly going to cost a lot to find out. Analysis from the Electric Power Research Institute pegs AB32’s cost to the California economy at anywhere from $100 billion to $511 billion. “What will it take to achieve the benchmark? Consider that California could take every one of its 14 million passenger cars off the road, and still be less than halfway toward its goal,” observed Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub. “Shutting down 100 state-of-the-art, natural-gas-fired power plants still wouldn’t get us there. Closing the entire cement industry, although it is a major source of greenhouse gases, wouldn’t finish the job.”
Given all its failings, what sort of leadership example does California offer the rest of the country? It’s hard to claim credibly that California illuminates the world when it has trouble illuminating itself. Further, California’s particular path makes sense only if the rest of the country refuses to follow it. The state’s lawmakers and regulators have enacted policies that for several decades have allowed Californians to feel good, even smug, about their environmental credentials. Yet California’s economic prosperity has relied on the fact that other states have built power plants and established sensible regulatory regimes that don’t force businesses to flee. The power plants scattered throughout the western United States, as well as the factories in the American Midwest and South, have consistently saved California from the folly of its own anti-energy agenda.
[EUROPE SUFFERS FROM THE SAME DELUSIONS. FOR THIS REASON, CALIFORNIA HAS BEEN INCREASINGLY REFERRED TO AS THE 28TH EU MEMBER STATE].
California isn’t content to keep its energy policy within state limits, however. Recently, it passed a law barring state utilities from entering into long-term contracts to buy electricity from out-of-state producers if coal is used in generating it. “They are clearly trying to trim down the growth of coal, not just in California, but elsewhere,” said a top official at the U.S. Department of Energy.
“California is using their regulations to direct the economic development of the West. And it is arrogant and it is appalling.”
[THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT EUROPE DOES WITH ITS ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS - IT EXPORTS THEM AROUND THE WORLD IN ORDER TO 'LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD' FOR THOSE OF ITS INDUSTRIES BURDENED BY THE HIGH COSTS OF THE REGULATIONS.]
California is certainly within its rights to set policies for itself and to live with the consequences. But everyone can’t do what California does. Someone needs to build power plants and oil refineries. Someone needs to manufacture the cars, trucks, airplanes, and other pieces of heavy equipment that enrich Americans’ lives, till our fields, and grow our economy. Someone needs to produce the plastics and chemicals that undergird our prosperity. Those things require energy, and lots of it—growing amounts of it. All the wisdom of Athens and all the power of Sparta won’t change that fact.
Max Schulz is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and director of its Center for Energy Policy and the Environment.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
EPA Must Find CO2 Endangers Public Health Before It Can Regulate Emissions - California & Greenies Misrepresent Law
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1870.cfm
The EPA's Prudent Response to Massachusetts v. EPA
by Ben Lieberman
Heritage Foundation WebMemo #1870
March 28, 2008
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Administrator Stephen Johnson deserve praise following the announcement that the agency will respond to the Supreme Court's Massachusetts v. EPA decision by issuing an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on the question of regulating carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act. Taking irreversible steps toward regulating emissions would lead to the imposition of unnecessary costs on the economy, which would be all the more damaging in the current economic climate. An ANPR, which will allow for public comment without committing the agency to a specific outcome, is the best course of action.
[See brief explanation of the USSct's holding in Mass. v. EPA at: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Call For Large Unspecified National 'Sacrifices' and High Cost Enviro-Energy Use Regulatory 'Changes', at: http://itssdenergysecurity.blogspot.com/2008/03/hillary-clinton-and-barack-obama-call.html ].
Background
In April 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-to-4 decision against the EPA over its refusal to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from motor vehicles. Notwithstanding assertions to the contrary, Massachusetts v. EPA did not require the agency to change its position; it only required the agency to demonstrate that whatever it chooses to do complies with the requirements of the Clean Air Act. The Court stated that "[w]e need not and do not reach the question whether on remand EPA must make an endangerment finding" and that
"[w]e hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute."
Nonetheless, some people in the environmental activist community, Congress, and the EPA wanted to read the decision as a mandate to begin cracking down on carbon dioxide. But doing so is not required under the law.[1]
[A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THIS ARE THE STATEMENTS THAT HAVE BEEN MADE BY THE ACTIVI
ST GROUP ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE. "In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the gases that cause global warming are pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The court also found that the U.S. government has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping gases... Although the ruling does not require the federal government to act, it puts new pressure on Congress to set a national policy that caps carbon pollution — the best way to solve this problem. 'This is ultimately up to Congress,' said Environmental Defense President Fred Krupp. "The Court did all it can," he said, "but if we’re really going to fix climate change, Congress must pass a cap on carbon pollution, and soon."
See http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentID=5623 ].
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE WAS JUST ONE OF A NUMBER OF ACTIVIST PLAINTIFFS IN THE MASS. V. EPA C
ASE. OTHER ACTIVIST GROUPS INCLUDED:
Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation, Environmental Advocates, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, International Center for Technology Assessment and its affiliate, the Center for Food Safety, National Environmental Trust, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
The Clean Air Act is a model of redundancy. Virtually every type of pollutant is regulated by not one but several overlapping provisions. Terms of art like "air pollutant" and "public health" appear throughout the statute, as do a number of non-discretionary duties for the EPA. Thus, any finding that carbon dioxide from motor vehicles is a pollutant that endangers public health or welfare would not only lead to regulations for cars and trucks, but also unleash many additional measures with impacts throughout the economy.
EPA's announcement is entirely consistent with the Supreme Court's decision, which neither set a deadline for the agency to act nor required it to undertake a particular course of action. The EPA is to be applauded for taking the most sensible course of action.
Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
The EPA's Prudent Response to Massachusetts v. EPA
by Ben Lieberman
Heritage Foundation WebMemo #1870
March 28, 2008
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Administrator Stephen Johnson deserve praise following the announcement that the agency will respond to the Supreme Court's Massachusetts v. EPA decision by issuing an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on the question of regulating carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act. Taking irreversible steps toward regulating emissions would lead to the imposition of unnecessary costs on the economy, which would be all the more damaging in the current economic climate. An ANPR, which will allow for public comment without committing the agency to a specific outcome, is the best course of action.
[See brief explanation of the USSct's holding in Mass. v. EPA at: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Call For Large Unspecified National 'Sacrifices' and High Cost Enviro-Energy Use Regulatory 'Changes', at: http://itssdenergysecurity.blogspot.com/2008/03/hillary-clinton-and-barack-obama-call.html ].
Background
In April 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-to-4 decision against the EPA over its refusal to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from motor vehicles. Notwithstanding assertions to the contrary, Massachusetts v. EPA did not require the agency to change its position; it only required the agency to demonstrate that whatever it chooses to do complies with the requirements of the Clean Air Act. The Court stated that "[w]e need not and do not reach the question whether on remand EPA must make an endangerment finding" and that
"[w]e hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute."
Nonetheless, some people in the environmental activist community, Congress, and the EPA wanted to read the decision as a mandate to begin cracking down on carbon dioxide. But doing so is not required under the law.[1]
[A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THIS ARE THE STATEMENTS THAT HAVE BEEN MADE BY THE ACTIVI
ST GROUP ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE. "In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the gases that cause global warming are pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The court also found that the U.S. government has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping gases... Although the ruling does not require the federal government to act, it puts new pressure on Congress to set a national policy that caps carbon pollution — the best way to solve this problem. 'This is ultimately up to Congress,' said Environmental Defense President Fred Krupp. "The Court did all it can," he said, "but if we’re really going to fix climate change, Congress must pass a cap on carbon pollution, and soon." See http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentID=5623 ].
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE WAS JUST ONE OF A NUMBER OF ACTIVIST PLAINTIFFS IN THE MASS. V. EPA C
ASE. OTHER ACTIVIST GROUPS INCLUDED: 
Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation, Environmental Advocates, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, International Center for Technology Assessment and its affiliate, the Center for Food Safety, National Environmental Trust, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE IS HOW CALIFORNIA'S ATTORNEY GENERAL HAS CREATIVELY INTERPRETED THE U.S. SUPREME COURT'S RULING AND PRESSURED THE EPA TO IMMEDIATELY MAKE A FINAL ENDANGERMENT DETERMINATION WITHOUT ADEQUATE REVIEW AND CONSIDERATION. THE CALIFORNIA RELIES ON INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, WHICH HAPPENS TO BE CHAIRED BY HENRY WAXMAN, A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS NOT UNKNOWN FOR HIS FIERCELY PARTISAN POLITICS: "California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. went to federal court today to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to release a court-mandated determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health or welfare. Such a determination of endangerment is the first step towards establishing federal controls on greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming... On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that the EPA must regulate greenhouse gas emissions after making a formal determination that such pollution threatens public health or welfare. The EPA itself described the Court’s mandate as follows: '...the EPA must determine...whether greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to air pollution that endangers public health or welfare'...A recent investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform revealed that the EPA had already made its endangerment determination--including an extensive scientific review--and sent it to the White House Office of Management and Budget for final approval. Brown called EPA’s inaction “a textbook case of unreasonable delay” because the agency already completed its endangerment determination last year and is simply refusing to release it publicly. “It is makes absolutely no sense for the EPA to say it needs a year-long public comment period before it can obey the Supreme Court,” Brown said. “The EPA has finished its determination and Johnson should keep his promise by releasing the final version immediately.” See "Brown Takes EPA To Court For Ignoring Supreme Court Mandate", News Alert, Office Of The Attorney General, The State of California (April 2, 2008) at: http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1540 .]
A Cautious Federal Approach to Regulating Carbon Dioxide
Thus Far Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring component of the air and is created by breathing and other natural processes. It is also the ubiquitous and unavoidable byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, which currently provides 85 percent of America's energy. Thus, any effort to substantially curtail such emissions would have extremely costly and disruptive impacts on the economy and on living standards.
However, that may change over the long term: The Bush Administration is supporting research into carbon-friendly energy technologies as well as means to capture and store carbon emissions underground rather than releasing them into the air. But these efforts will likely take at least 20 years to reach fruition. There are no cost-effective solutions in the interim.
For this reason, the federal government has been extremely cautious about embarking on mandatory carbon reductions over shorter time frames. In 1997, the Senate unanimously resolved to reject any climate change treaty that unduly burdened the U.S. economy or failed to engage all major emitting nations such as China and India. Although the Kyoto Protocol was signed by the U.S. later that year, neither President Bill Clinton nor President George W. Bush ever submitted the treaty to the Senate for the required ratification.
Legislatively, Congress has rejected every attempt to control carbon dioxide emissions, from proposed provisions in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments to ones in the 2005 energy bill. Even the current Congress, with its stated zeal for regulating carbon, has done little since taking power in January 2007. One climate change bill, S. 2191, has been voted out of committee, but its proponents still have a number of hurdles to overcome before it stands a realistic chance before the full Senate. The House has done nothing beyond introducing several bills and holding hearings.
Beyond costs, there are questions about whether these measures would accomplish anything environmentally. Even assuming the worst-case scenarios of man-made warming, these bills would likely reduce it by an amount so small as to be difficult to detect.
Overall, Congress has, quite rightly, recognized the potential pitfalls of ill-advised climate measures and is acting with appropriate caution.
The Clean Air Act: A Regulatory Pandora's Box
It is with this justified caution that the Administration should approach its response to Massachusetts v. EPA. This is especially so given the many shortcomings of the Clean Air Act as an instrument for rationally regulating carbon dioxide emissions—something the statute was not set up to do.
The Clean Air Act is a model of redundancy. Virtually every type of pollutant is regulated by not one but several overlapping provisions. Terms of art like "air pollutant" and "public health" appear throughout the statute, as do a number of non-discretionary duties for the EPA. Thus, any finding that carbon dioxide from motor vehicles is a pollutant that endangers public health or welfare would not only lead to regulations for cars and trucks, but also unleash many additional measures with impacts throughout the economy.
Under the Clean Air Act, once carbon dioxide emissions are regulated from motor vehicles, they must also be controlled from stationary sources under the New Source Review (NSR) program, which applies to all pollutants subject to regulation anywhere in the statute. And given that the threshold for regulation—250 tons per year and in some cases as little as 100 tons per year—is easily met in the case of carbon dioxide emissions, the agency could impose new and onerous NSR requirements heretofore limited to major industrial facilities.
Most emissions regulated under the Clean Air Act are trace compounds measured in parts per billion, so these threshold levels make sense to distinguish de minimis contributors from serious ones. But carbon dioxide occurs at far higher levels (background levels alone account for 275 parts per million), and even relatively small usage of fossil fuels could meet these thresholds. Thus, even the kitchen in a restaurant, the heating system in an apartment building, or the activities associated with running a farm could cause these and other entities—potentially a million or more—to face substantial and unprecedented requirements whenever they are built or modified.
The bottom line: The kind of industrial-strength EPA red tape that routinely imposes hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in compliance costs in a process that can drag on for a year or more could now be imposed for the first time on many commercial buildings, farms, and all but the smallest of businesses. Not only would the costs and delays hamper the private sector, but the paperwork would do the same to federal and state environmental regulators, drawing resources away from more useful endeavors.
Even if the EPA attempts to limit the impact to motor vehicles, it will be hit with a number of lawsuits from environmental organizations trying to force an expansion of its carbon dioxide restrictions. In addition to NSR, the language used to regulate carbon dioxide from motor vehicles could also qualify it as a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS), and a lawsuit seeking to do so would be inevitable. If carbon dioxide becomes a NAAQS, it would trigger requirements that could be met only by severely curtailing economic activity. Other Clean Air Act regulations could also be unleashed—and all of this without congressional approval.
In effect, initiating carbon dioxide restrictions for motor vehicles would lead to a regulatory scheme far more extensive than those Congress has wisely rejected. The economic impacts, unintended consequences, and public anger could be unprecedented. It would leave a highly unfortunate legacy for this Administration; indeed, the cost of this de facto tax increase on businesses and consumers would undo the benefits of the Bush tax cuts and then some.
In effect, initiating carbon dioxide restrictions for motor vehicles would lead to a regulatory scheme far more extensive than those Congress has wisely rejected. The economic impacts, unintended consequences, and public anger could be unprecedented. It would leave a highly unfortunate legacy for this Administration; indeed, the cost of this de facto tax increase on businesses and consumers would undo the benefits of the Bush tax cuts and then some.
Conclusion
A wave of costly new regulations is the last thing the economy needs. An ANPR is the best option at this time. It will allow for comment on the economic implications of various options open to the EPA for regulating motor vehicles and on other critical issues, such as the impact of the recently passed Energy Independence and Security Act.
EPA's announcement is entirely consistent with the Supreme Court's decision, which neither set a deadline for the agency to act nor required it to undertake a particular course of action. The EPA is to be applauded for taking the most sensible course of action.
Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
[1] Edwin Meese III et al., Heritage Memorandum, "Possible EPA Regulation of Carbon Dioxide Emissions," December 13, 2007, pp. 3–4.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Mindless Green UK Mandates Make Migraines A Medical Concern
Energy-Saving Light Bulbs Blamed for Migraines
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/03/eabulb103.xml
Telegraph.co.uk
By Laura Clout
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 03/01/2008
The energy-saving light bulbs that will be made compulsory in homes in a few years can trigger migraines, campaigners have claimed. The Migraine Action Association (MAA) said some of its members alleged the fluorescent bulbs had led to attacks of the powerful headaches. Some energy-saving bulbs may trigger headaches.
By 2011, Britain will be the first European country to phase out traditional bulbs as part of a strategy to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The MAA is calling on the Government to avoid a complete ban on old-style bulbs, by providing an opt-out for people with health problems. Last year it was claimed that the "green" bulbs can cause people with epilepsy to experience symptoms similar to the early stages of a fit.
There have also been complaints from people with lupus, a chronic immune disease that causes pain and extreme tiredness. Low energy light bulbs use only a quarter of the energy consumed by traditional versions and are estimated to save 2,000 times their weight in greenhouse gases. They are often five times more expensive but the greater efficiency means they can pay for themselves within months. Several versions use a technology similar to fluorescent strip lights and some migraine sufferers say they produce a flickering effect that triggers their condition.
Karen Manning, from the MAA, said: "When the Government announced that traditional light bulbs would be phased out, we were inundated with over 200 calls and emails from members who said the flickering had caused migraines."This is a debilitating condition which can often leave people bed-ridden for days."The bulbs do not necessarily affect every sufferer, but we are talking about up to six million people in the UK who suffer migraines - so this is a serious concern.
"We would ask the Government to avoid banning them completely and leave some opportunity for conventional bulbs to be purchased."The Lighting Association, which represents manufacturers, denied that modern designs produced a flicker.A spokesman said: "A small number of cases have been reported by people who suffer from reactions to certain types of linear fluorescent lamps. These were almost certainly triggered by old technology."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/03/eabulb103.xml
Telegraph.co.uk
By Laura Clout
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 03/01/2008
The energy-saving light bulbs that will be made compulsory in homes in a few years can trigger migraines, campaigners have claimed. The Migraine Action Association (MAA) said some of its members alleged the fluorescent bulbs had led to attacks of the powerful headaches. Some energy-saving bulbs may trigger headaches.
By 2011, Britain will be the first European country to phase out traditional bulbs as part of a strategy to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The MAA is calling on the Government to avoid a complete ban on old-style bulbs, by providing an opt-out for people with health problems. Last year it was claimed that the "green" bulbs can cause people with epilepsy to experience symptoms similar to the early stages of a fit.
There have also been complaints from people with lupus, a chronic immune disease that causes pain and extreme tiredness. Low energy light bulbs use only a quarter of the energy consumed by traditional versions and are estimated to save 2,000 times their weight in greenhouse gases. They are often five times more expensive but the greater efficiency means they can pay for themselves within months. Several versions use a technology similar to fluorescent strip lights and some migraine sufferers say they produce a flickering effect that triggers their condition.
Karen Manning, from the MAA, said: "When the Government announced that traditional light bulbs would be phased out, we were inundated with over 200 calls and emails from members who said the flickering had caused migraines."This is a debilitating condition which can often leave people bed-ridden for days."The bulbs do not necessarily affect every sufferer, but we are talking about up to six million people in the UK who suffer migraines - so this is a serious concern.
"We would ask the Government to avoid banning them completely and leave some opportunity for conventional bulbs to be purchased."The Lighting Association, which represents manufacturers, denied that modern designs produced a flicker.A spokesman said: "A small number of cases have been reported by people who suffer from reactions to certain types of linear fluorescent lamps. These were almost certainly triggered by old technology."
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Russian Scientist Says Earth Could Soon Face New Ice Age: Countries Must Secure Diverse Energy Sources to Meet Greater Energy Needs
http://en.rian.ru/science/20080122/97519953-print.html
Russian scientist says Earth could soon face new Ice Age
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
(RIA Novosti) Russian News & Information Agency
January 22, 2008
Temperatures on Earth have stabilized in the past decade, and the planet should brace itself for a new Ice Age rather than global warming, a Russian scientist said in an interview with RIA Novosti Tuesday.
"Russian and foreign research data confirm that global temperatures in 2007 were practically similar to those in 2006, and, in general, identical to 1998-2006 temperatures, which, basically, means that the Earth passed the peak of global warming in 1998-2005," said Khabibullo Abdusamatov, head of a space research lab at the Pulkovo observatory in St. Petersburg.
According to the scientist, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has risen more than 4% in the past decade, but global warming has practically stopped. It confirms the theory of "solar" impact on changes in the Earth's climate, because the amount of solar energy reaching the planet has drastically decreased during the same period, the scientist said.
Had global temperatures directly responded to concentrations of "greenhouse" gases in the atmosphere, they would have risen by at least 0.1 Celsius in the past ten years, however, it never happened, he said.
"A year ago, many meteorologists predicted that higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would make the year 2007 the hottest in the last decade, but, fortunately, these predictions did not become reality," Abdusamatov said.
He also said that in 2008, global temperatures would drop slightly, rather than rise, due to unprecedentedly low solar radiation in the past 30 years, and would continue decreasing even if industrial emissions of carbon dioxide reach record levels.
By 2041, solar activity will reach its minimum according to a 200-year cycle, and a deep cooling period will hit the Earth approximately in 2055-2060. It will last for about 45-65 years, the scientist added.
"By the mid-21st century the planet will face another Little Ice Age, similar to the Maunder Minimum, because the amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth has been constantly decreasing since the 1990s and will reach its minimum approximately in 2041," he said.
The Maunder Minimum occurred between 1645 and 1715, when only about 50 spots appeared on the Sun, as opposed to the typical 40,000-50,000 spots.
It coincided with the middle and coldest part of the so called Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America were subjected to bitterly cold winters.
"However, the thermal inertia of the world's oceans and seas will delay a 'deep cooling' of the planet, and the new Ice Age will begin sometime during 2055-2060, probably lasting for several decades," Abdusamatov said.
Therefore, the Earth must brace itself for a growing ice cap, rather than rising waters in global oceans caused by ice melting.
Mankind will face serious economic, social, and demographic consequences of the coming Ice Age because it will directly affect more than 80% of the earth's population, the scientist concluded.
Russian scientist says Earth could soon face new Ice Age
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
(RIA Novosti) Russian News & Information Agency
January 22, 2008
Temperatures on Earth have stabilized in the past decade, and the planet should brace itself for a new Ice Age rather than global warming, a Russian scientist said in an interview with RIA Novosti Tuesday.
"Russian and foreign research data confirm that global temperatures in 2007 were practically similar to those in 2006, and, in general, identical to 1998-2006 temperatures, which, basically, means that the Earth passed the peak of global warming in 1998-2005," said Khabibullo Abdusamatov, head of a space research lab at the Pulkovo observatory in St. Petersburg.
According to the scientist, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has risen more than 4% in the past decade, but global warming has practically stopped. It confirms the theory of "solar" impact on changes in the Earth's climate, because the amount of solar energy reaching the planet has drastically decreased during the same period, the scientist said.
Had global temperatures directly responded to concentrations of "greenhouse" gases in the atmosphere, they would have risen by at least 0.1 Celsius in the past ten years, however, it never happened, he said.
"A year ago, many meteorologists predicted that higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would make the year 2007 the hottest in the last decade, but, fortunately, these predictions did not become reality," Abdusamatov said.
He also said that in 2008, global temperatures would drop slightly, rather than rise, due to unprecedentedly low solar radiation in the past 30 years, and would continue decreasing even if industrial emissions of carbon dioxide reach record levels.
By 2041, solar activity will reach its minimum according to a 200-year cycle, and a deep cooling period will hit the Earth approximately in 2055-2060. It will last for about 45-65 years, the scientist added.
"By the mid-21st century the planet will face another Little Ice Age, similar to the Maunder Minimum, because the amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth has been constantly decreasing since the 1990s and will reach its minimum approximately in 2041," he said.
The Maunder Minimum occurred between 1645 and 1715, when only about 50 spots appeared on the Sun, as opposed to the typical 40,000-50,000 spots.
It coincided with the middle and coldest part of the so called Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America were subjected to bitterly cold winters.
"However, the thermal inertia of the world's oceans and seas will delay a 'deep cooling' of the planet, and the new Ice Age will begin sometime during 2055-2060, probably lasting for several decades," Abdusamatov said.
Therefore, the Earth must brace itself for a growing ice cap, rather than rising waters in global oceans caused by ice melting.
Mankind will face serious economic, social, and demographic consequences of the coming Ice Age because it will directly affect more than 80% of the earth's population, the scientist concluded.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
UK Used Presidency of UN Security Council to Incorporate Sustainable Development Within Broader Council Mandate
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/CC%20S2007%20186.pdf
UK Used Presidency of UN Security Council to Incorporate Sustainable Development Within Broader Council Mandate
During September 2005, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution S/RES/1625 (14 September 2005), declaring "the effectiveness of the Security Council's role in conflict prevention [and] reaffirming the need to adopt a broad strategy to conflict prevention, which addresses the root causes of armed conflict in a comprehensive manner, including by promoting sustainable development.
"Reaffirming the need to adopt a broad strategy of conflict prevention, which addresses the root causes of armed conflict and political and social crises in a comprehensive manner, including by promoting sustainable development, poverty eradication, national reconciliation, good governance, democracy, gender equality, the rule of law and respect for and protection of human rights..."
"...2. Affirms its determination to strengthen United Nations conflict
prevention capacities by:
...(g) helping to enhance durable institutions conducive to peace, stability and sustainable development..."
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/CC%20SRES%201625.pdf
Building upon Security Council Resolution 1625, during April 2007, UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett used Britain’s then presidency of the Security Council as a platform to promote sustainable development as a separate rationale to preserve international peace and security. This indirectly served the purpose of pushing reform of the Security Council’s traditional scope of jurisdiction and authority.[1] In particular, she insisted that the UN Security Council expand its jurisdictional mandate, traditionally limited to ‘prevention of conflicts’ and ‘maintenance of international peace and security’, so that it also covers ‘collective global environmental threats’ to sustainable development, such as climate change.[2]
In pursuing this multilateral campaign, Ms. Beckett not unexpectedly relied on the recently issued Stern and UN Intergovernmental Climate Change Committee Reports [3] to raise the specter of an impending global environmental and human disaster should the member states of the United Nations fail to reach a political ‘burden-sharing’ (a/k/a economic wealth redistribution and technology transfer) accord that proactively and adequately addresses the hazards posed by runaway climate change. Many left-leaning politicians, scientific academies and environmentalists in Europe and the United States have likewise used these controversial reports to squelch the scientific debate over the causes and effects of climate change.[4]
This proposal was contained in a more formal UK concept paper that resulted in the Security Council’s first debate on environmental issues. The Security Council Report documenting this meeting states the following:
“1. All members of the international community face a shared dilemma. To ensure well-being for a growing population with unfulfilled needs and rising expectations, we must grow our economies. Should we fail, we increase the risk of conflict and insecurity. To grow our economies we must continue to use more energy. Much of that energy will be in the form of fossil fuels. But if we use more fossil fuels without mitigating the resulting emissions, we will accelerate climate change, which itself presents risks to the very security we are trying to build.
2. The aim of the debate is to raise awareness of a set of significant future security risks facing the international community as a result of failing to resolve this shared dilemma, to promote a shared understanding of these risks, and to explore ways to address them.
3. The focus of the debate will be on the security implications of a changing climate, including through its impact on potential drivers of conflict (such as access to energy, water, food and other scarce resources, population movements and border disputes). No other international forum has yet addressed these issues from this perspective. A Security Council discussion will therefore make a useful initial contribution, while recognizing that it is for other United Nations bodies (in particular the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to pursue other aspects of climate change that are not within the mandate of the Security Council (including action to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a safe level, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities).
... 6. While the physical effects of climate change and what can be done about them are important issues, it is their potential impact on security that is the proposed focus of this Security Council debate.”
The UN Security Council Report then proceeded to outline the following key ‘security risks’ posed by climate change which would not only contribute mightily to political efforts aimed at raising public fears about the hypothetical impacts arising from climate change, but would also justify greater UN involvement in national sovereign affairs:
“Border Disputes
A significant proportion of current threats to international peace and security are disputes over borders or land. Melting ice and rising sea levels caused by climate change are likely to result in major changes to the world’s physical landmass during this century. Will political and maritime borders change as well?... [T]he possible submergence of entire small island States, dramatically receding coastlines, and the development of new shipping routes...could all lead to disputes over maritime zones and other territorial rights.
Migration
[S]ubstantial parts of the world risk being left uninhabitable by rising sea levels, reduced freshwater availability or declining agricultural capacity. This will exacerbate existing migratory pressures from rural areas to cities, from unproductive land to more fertile land, and across international borders... Migration does not in itself lead directly to conflict. But it can alter the ethnic composition and/or population distribution within and between States, which can increase the potential for instability and conflict
Energy Supplies
There is already extensive discussion on the relationship between energy resources and the risk of conflict, in terms of competition over scarce energy resources, security of supply, and the role energy resources play once conflict has broken out. Climate change is expected to complicate this relationship still further, presenting us with a shared dilemma about how to balance our climate and energy objectives while preserving security...
Other Resource Changes
Climate change is likely to make essential resources (notably freshwater, cultivable land, crop yields and fish stocks) more scarce in many parts of the world, particularly in already vulnerable societies. Resource scarcity threatens people’s livelihoods, especially when changes occur relatively quickly. Much depends on the adequacy of adaptation strategies. But increased scarcity increases the risk of competition over resources within and between communities and States. This can create instability, increasing vulnerability to conflict...
Societal Stress
The 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change noted that climate change was a major challenge to poverty reduction, affecting the poorest countries earliest and most. The tensions that climate change through its impact on development — and hence inequality — could produce within and between States might not in themselves necessarily lead to conflict. But in some weaker States — e.g., where severe inequalities occur among different groups in society, for example on ethnic grounds — political violence within and between States may become more likely.
Humanitarian Crises
Climate change is likely to increase the risk of extreme weather events that may become sudden humanitarian emergencies. There are already indications that such events, especially on a large scale, can exacerbate societal and cross-border stresses, with potential consequent political and security impacts. There is a proven correlation between drought and the likelihood of high intensity conflicts in some regions, and some Governments have struggled to cope with the social consequences of major natural disasters. 8. Conflicts often start when societies cannot cope with multiple stresses...”
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/CC%20S2007%20186.pdf
It is interesting to note how the Security Council referred to the term ‘correlation’ rather than ‘causation’.
While standing their political ground, it was apparent that Madams Merkel and Beckett had side-stepped the important scientific debate that continues to rage throughout the world. This debate concerns the extent to which certain human activities can actually be shown to cause measurable global warming or to merely correlate with a barely observable rise in global temperatures that may or may not prove cyclical in nature. Ordinary scientists, engineers and business people, the world over, know quite well that there is a marked difference between causation and correlation, and that they can make rationally-based decisions in their daily lives guided only by the ‘knowables’ in life rather than the ‘unknowables’.
Did Ms. Beckett’s reference to the term ‘correlation’ rather than ‘causation’ suggest a nuanced effort to base intergovernmental regulatory policy on popularly fanned fears about largely hypothetical, unpredictable and/or unknowable future natural and man-made hazards that have not yet been shown to pose direct ascertainable risks to human health or the environment???
[1] See "Update Report No. 2 Energy, Security and Climate", UN Security Council (12 April 2007) at: http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/site/c.glKWLeMTIsG/b.2666033/k.BE96/Update_Report_No_2brEnergy_Security_and_Climatebr12_April_2007.htm [2] See “Opening Statement of Margaret Beckett at UN Security Council Climate Change Debate” British Embassy Buenos Aires (April 17, 2007) at:
http://www.britishembassy.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1138870133146 .
[3] See “Speech of Margaret Beckett and UN Security Council Climate Change Debate On Energy, Climate and Security” Foreign and Commonwealth Office News (April 17, 2007) at:
http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029391629&a=KArticle&aid=1176454354972 . [4] See, e.g., “Royal Society Letter to ExxonMobil Requesting ExxonMobil to Stop Funding of Lobby Groups that Seek to Misrepresent the Scientific Evidence Relating to Climate Change” (Sept. 4, 2006) at:
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/displaypagedoc.asp?id=23780 ; “Rockefeller and Snowe Demand that Exxon Mobil End Funding of Campaign that Denies Global Climate Change”, Press Release, Office of United States Senator for Maine, Olympia Snowe (Oct. 30, 3006) at:
http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=9ACBA744-802A-23AD-47BE-2683985C724E ; Michael Erman, “Greenpeace: Exxon Still Funding Climate Skeptics”, Reuters (May 17, 2007) at: http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-05-18T102946Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-298816-1.xml&archived=False .
UK Used Presidency of UN Security Council to Incorporate Sustainable Development Within Broader Council Mandate
During September 2005, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution S/RES/1625 (14 September 2005), declaring "the effectiveness of the Security Council's role in conflict prevention [and] reaffirming the need to adopt a broad strategy to conflict prevention, which addresses the root causes of armed conflict in a comprehensive manner, including by promoting sustainable development.
"Reaffirming the need to adopt a broad strategy of conflict prevention, which addresses the root causes of armed conflict and political and social crises in a comprehensive manner, including by promoting sustainable development, poverty eradication, national reconciliation, good governance, democracy, gender equality, the rule of law and respect for and protection of human rights..."
"...2. Affirms its determination to strengthen United Nations conflict
prevention capacities by:
...(g) helping to enhance durable institutions conducive to peace, stability and sustainable development..."
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/CC%20SRES%201625.pdf
Building upon Security Council Resolution 1625, during April 2007, UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett used Britain’s then presidency of the Security Council as a platform to promote sustainable development as a separate rationale to preserve international peace and security. This indirectly served the purpose of pushing reform of the Security Council’s traditional scope of jurisdiction and authority.[1] In particular, she insisted that the UN Security Council expand its jurisdictional mandate, traditionally limited to ‘prevention of conflicts’ and ‘maintenance of international peace and security’, so that it also covers ‘collective global environmental threats’ to sustainable development, such as climate change.[2]
In pursuing this multilateral campaign, Ms. Beckett not unexpectedly relied on the recently issued Stern and UN Intergovernmental Climate Change Committee Reports [3] to raise the specter of an impending global environmental and human disaster should the member states of the United Nations fail to reach a political ‘burden-sharing’ (a/k/a economic wealth redistribution and technology transfer) accord that proactively and adequately addresses the hazards posed by runaway climate change. Many left-leaning politicians, scientific academies and environmentalists in Europe and the United States have likewise used these controversial reports to squelch the scientific debate over the causes and effects of climate change.[4]
This proposal was contained in a more formal UK concept paper that resulted in the Security Council’s first debate on environmental issues. The Security Council Report documenting this meeting states the following:
“1. All members of the international community face a shared dilemma. To ensure well-being for a growing population with unfulfilled needs and rising expectations, we must grow our economies. Should we fail, we increase the risk of conflict and insecurity. To grow our economies we must continue to use more energy. Much of that energy will be in the form of fossil fuels. But if we use more fossil fuels without mitigating the resulting emissions, we will accelerate climate change, which itself presents risks to the very security we are trying to build.
2. The aim of the debate is to raise awareness of a set of significant future security risks facing the international community as a result of failing to resolve this shared dilemma, to promote a shared understanding of these risks, and to explore ways to address them.
3. The focus of the debate will be on the security implications of a changing climate, including through its impact on potential drivers of conflict (such as access to energy, water, food and other scarce resources, population movements and border disputes). No other international forum has yet addressed these issues from this perspective. A Security Council discussion will therefore make a useful initial contribution, while recognizing that it is for other United Nations bodies (in particular the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to pursue other aspects of climate change that are not within the mandate of the Security Council (including action to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a safe level, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities).
... 6. While the physical effects of climate change and what can be done about them are important issues, it is their potential impact on security that is the proposed focus of this Security Council debate.”
The UN Security Council Report then proceeded to outline the following key ‘security risks’ posed by climate change which would not only contribute mightily to political efforts aimed at raising public fears about the hypothetical impacts arising from climate change, but would also justify greater UN involvement in national sovereign affairs:
“Border Disputes
A significant proportion of current threats to international peace and security are disputes over borders or land. Melting ice and rising sea levels caused by climate change are likely to result in major changes to the world’s physical landmass during this century. Will political and maritime borders change as well?... [T]he possible submergence of entire small island States, dramatically receding coastlines, and the development of new shipping routes...could all lead to disputes over maritime zones and other territorial rights.
Migration
[S]ubstantial parts of the world risk being left uninhabitable by rising sea levels, reduced freshwater availability or declining agricultural capacity. This will exacerbate existing migratory pressures from rural areas to cities, from unproductive land to more fertile land, and across international borders... Migration does not in itself lead directly to conflict. But it can alter the ethnic composition and/or population distribution within and between States, which can increase the potential for instability and conflict
Energy Supplies
There is already extensive discussion on the relationship between energy resources and the risk of conflict, in terms of competition over scarce energy resources, security of supply, and the role energy resources play once conflict has broken out. Climate change is expected to complicate this relationship still further, presenting us with a shared dilemma about how to balance our climate and energy objectives while preserving security...
Other Resource Changes
Climate change is likely to make essential resources (notably freshwater, cultivable land, crop yields and fish stocks) more scarce in many parts of the world, particularly in already vulnerable societies. Resource scarcity threatens people’s livelihoods, especially when changes occur relatively quickly. Much depends on the adequacy of adaptation strategies. But increased scarcity increases the risk of competition over resources within and between communities and States. This can create instability, increasing vulnerability to conflict...
Societal Stress
The 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change noted that climate change was a major challenge to poverty reduction, affecting the poorest countries earliest and most. The tensions that climate change through its impact on development — and hence inequality — could produce within and between States might not in themselves necessarily lead to conflict. But in some weaker States — e.g., where severe inequalities occur among different groups in society, for example on ethnic grounds — political violence within and between States may become more likely.
Humanitarian Crises
Climate change is likely to increase the risk of extreme weather events that may become sudden humanitarian emergencies. There are already indications that such events, especially on a large scale, can exacerbate societal and cross-border stresses, with potential consequent political and security impacts. There is a proven correlation between drought and the likelihood of high intensity conflicts in some regions, and some Governments have struggled to cope with the social consequences of major natural disasters. 8. Conflicts often start when societies cannot cope with multiple stresses...”
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/CC%20S2007%20186.pdf
It is interesting to note how the Security Council referred to the term ‘correlation’ rather than ‘causation’.
While standing their political ground, it was apparent that Madams Merkel and Beckett had side-stepped the important scientific debate that continues to rage throughout the world. This debate concerns the extent to which certain human activities can actually be shown to cause measurable global warming or to merely correlate with a barely observable rise in global temperatures that may or may not prove cyclical in nature. Ordinary scientists, engineers and business people, the world over, know quite well that there is a marked difference between causation and correlation, and that they can make rationally-based decisions in their daily lives guided only by the ‘knowables’ in life rather than the ‘unknowables’.
Did Ms. Beckett’s reference to the term ‘correlation’ rather than ‘causation’ suggest a nuanced effort to base intergovernmental regulatory policy on popularly fanned fears about largely hypothetical, unpredictable and/or unknowable future natural and man-made hazards that have not yet been shown to pose direct ascertainable risks to human health or the environment???
[1] See "Update Report No. 2 Energy, Security and Climate", UN Security Council (12 April 2007) at: http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/site/c.glKWLeMTIsG/b.2666033/k.BE96/Update_Report_No_2brEnergy_Security_and_Climatebr12_April_2007.htm [2] See “Opening Statement of Margaret Beckett at UN Security Council Climate Change Debate” British Embassy Buenos Aires (April 17, 2007) at:
http://www.britishembassy.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1138870133146 .
[3] See “Speech of Margaret Beckett and UN Security Council Climate Change Debate On Energy, Climate and Security” Foreign and Commonwealth Office News (April 17, 2007) at:
http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029391629&a=KArticle&aid=1176454354972 . [4] See, e.g., “Royal Society Letter to ExxonMobil Requesting ExxonMobil to Stop Funding of Lobby Groups that Seek to Misrepresent the Scientific Evidence Relating to Climate Change” (Sept. 4, 2006) at:
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/displaypagedoc.asp?id=23780 ; “Rockefeller and Snowe Demand that Exxon Mobil End Funding of Campaign that Denies Global Climate Change”, Press Release, Office of United States Senator for Maine, Olympia Snowe (Oct. 30, 3006) at:
http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=9ACBA744-802A-23AD-47BE-2683985C724E ; Michael Erman, “Greenpeace: Exxon Still Funding Climate Skeptics”, Reuters (May 17, 2007) at: http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-05-18T102946Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-298816-1.xml&archived=False .
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
