Glowbull Warming Updates & Cap and Tax
June 25th, 2009(New York blogging!)
With B.O. and Congressional Donks pushing for the passage of the energy mega-tax bill, these items are either directly or indirectly related.
First Some of their political strategery…
Awwwwwwwww!
Former Vice President Al Gore canceled plans to fly to Washington for a news conference with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday, and instead was working the phones from Tennessee to help push a landmark climate bill to passage.
Hopefully this next bit is wrong…but we’ll see what happens.
Friday’s vote on the measure is expected to be close, but multiple sources on both sides of the aisle say they’re confident that the bill will pass — with some Republican votes — following a deal between House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson.
Why is this a BAD idea: a number of issues are in play here:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put cap-and-trade legislation on a forced march through the House, and the bill may get a full vote as early as Friday. It looks as if the Democrats will have to destroy the discipline of economics to get it done.
Despite House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman’s many payoffs to Members, rural and Blue Dog Democrats remain wary of voting for a bill that will impose crushing costs on their home-district businesses and consumers. The leadership’s solution to this problem is to simply claim the bill defies the laws of economics.
This will NOT be doing anything to help the economy, quite the contrary. (Are you paying any attention Congresscritter Herseth-Sandlin?)
The biggest doozy in the CBO analysis was its extraordinary decision to look only at the day-to-day costs of operating a trading program, rather than the wider consequences energy restriction would have on the economy. The CBO acknowledges this in a footnote: “The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap.” [emphasis added]
The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.
So what else is new in the Glowbull Warming debate?
EPA Suppresses Internal Global Warming Study
Scientific findings at odds with the Obama Administration’s views on carbon dioxide and climate change are being suppressed as a result of political pressure, officials at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) charge.
“This suppression of valid science for political reasons is beyond belief,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “EPA’s conduct is even more outlandish because it flies in the face of the president’s widely-touted claim that ‘the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.’”
The agency has never made the study public or included it in official reference materials, according to CEI. As part of a recently concluded EPA public comment period on a proposed rule, CEI submitted a set four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, as evidence that the suppressed study included a critique of the agency’s global warming position.
CEI has asked EPA to make the study public and to allow public comments on it. CEI has also asked that EPA to prevent any reprisals against the study’s author who has been employed with the agency for 35 years.
And then there’s this this bit of common sense:
Electric Cars Will Not Decrease Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Says Federal Study
The stimulus law enacted in February promoted the purchase of plug-in electric cars by the federal government and the broader market, but a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released this month says that the use of plug-in electric vehicles will not by itself decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
To do that, the report argues, the United States would have to switch from coal-burning plants to lower-emission sources to generate electricity such as nuclear power.
“If you are using coal fired power plants and half the country’s electricity comes from coal powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?”
Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report and a specialist in energy issues told CNSNews.com.
Well, DUH!
