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Added on 03 February 2009

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Human Achievement Hour
by Michelle Minton
23 March 2009 @ 12:09 pm


This week CEI announced the creation of Human Achievement Hour (HAH) to be celebrated at 8:30pm on March 28th 2009 (the same time and date of Earth Hour).

Our press release described ways people might celebrate the achievements of humanity such as eating diner, seeing a film, driving around, keeping the heat on in your home—all things that Earth Hour celebrators, presumably, should be refraining from. In the cheekiest manner, we claimed that anyone not foregoing the use of electricity in that hour is, by default, celebrating the achievements of human beings. Needless to say, the enviros in the blogosphere didn’t take to kindly to our announcement.

Matthew Wheeland, an environmental journalist called the holiday “mind-blowingly strange” and pondered if Earth hour…


Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce unveiled a NIMBY-Watch Web site called Project No Project .

With case studies from more than 30 states, Project No Project chronicles how NIMBY (”not in my backyard”) activists “block energy projects by organizing local opposition, changing zoning laws, opposing permits, filing lawsuits, and bleeding projects dry of their financing.” Many of the projects blocked are not coal plants but alternative energy projects or infrastructure often touted as “green.”

The site invites readers to provide examples from their own locales of NIMBY efforts to block or stall energy-related projects.

Proponents of “green jobs” should be concerned as much as free-market and property-rights advocates, because ”stimulus” projects are vulnerable to the same NIMBY tactics that, for example, have immobilized the Cape Wind Project in Nantucket, Mass.

Although Project No…

Tomorrow, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the national security threats from melting Arctic ice. Greenwire (subscription required), the Online environmental news service, explains the rationale for the hearing:

In a report last year, the European Commission warned that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization must be prepared for an intensified “scramble for resources” as melting glaciers and sea ice open up previously inaccessible areas to exploitation. The report explicitly expressed concerns over “long term relations with Russia,” (ClimateWire, April 2, 2008).

Now, opening up ”previously inaccessible” areas to oil and gas development could also be a font of economic and national security benefits. One thing we know for sure about Arctic mineral resources–they aren’t owned by Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Venezuela, and never will be controlled by OPEC.

Yes, there…

Announcement

Click here to see Global Warming Apocalypse? No!, a Congressional staff and media briefing by Lord Christopher Monckton, Chief Policy Advisor, Science and Public Policy Institute.

The Heartland Institute has posted videos of the keynote speeches from the second International Conference on Climate Change.

In the News

Obama Budget Will Bring…

Over at the Center for American Progress, Brad Johnson, my sometimes interlocutor, takes issue with a recent Gallup poll for giving a “false choice between environmental protection and economic growth.” The subject of Johnson’s analysis is a report on the Gallup website that says,

“For the first time in Gallup’s 25-year history of asking Americans about the trade-off between environmental protection and economic growth, a majority of Americans say economic growth should be given the priority”

Mr. Johnson asserts that the Gallup’s poll is flawed because the question is inaccurate. According to Mr. Johnson, there is no trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection. We can have our cake and eat it, too, implies Mr. Johnson, and he cites two studies to prove…

Last week, EPA leaked a Power Point presentation revealing that the agency plans on April 30 to propose a finding that “air pollution” from emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), principally carbon dioxide (CO2), ”endanger public health and welfare.”

The endangerment proposal, part of EPA’s response to the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA (April 2, 2007) decision, is the essential first step towards establishing GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles under Sec. 202 of the Clean Air Act (CAA).

As I explain in this column, EPA cannot establish GHG standards for new motor vehicles without triggering a regulatory cascade through multiple CAA provisions. The impacts on energy markets and the economy will be subject to the vagaries of litigation, and potentially would be far more costly and intrusive than…


Energy Chief Open to a Carbon Trade War
Iain Tally & Tom Barkley, Wall Street Journal, 18 March 2009

Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Tuesday advocated adjusting trade duties as a “weapon” to protect U.S. manufacturing, just a day after one of China’s top climate envoys warned of a trade war if…

Showing that he believes Al Gore’s typical misunderstanding that the Chinese word for crisis is made up of the characters for threat and opportunity (it isn’t), Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Program, has said that the global financial crisis provides an opportunity for a global green new deal:

The UNEP report said investments of one percent of global gross domestic product, or about $750 billion, could bankroll a “Global Green New Deal” inspired by the “New Deal” of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt that helped end the depression of the 1930s. [sic]

Investments should be split between more energy efficient buildings, renewable energies, better transport, improved agriculture and measures to safeguard nature — such as fresh water, forests or…

Fiona Harvey of the FT is one of the better journalists covering the environmental beat, but I’m afraid that is a bit like saying that someone is one of the better members of Congress. In this blog entry on green jobs she commendably raises some objections to the idea that “green jobs” can be a panacea, but then shows her own biases with an unsupportable assertion:

That said, the move to a low-carbon economy requires such major changes in the way the whole of the economy - from house building to vehicle manufacturing to recycling our rubbish to redesigning our cities - that it is sure to entail a large number of new jobs, which will almost certainly far outweigh the…

Thanks, Fran, for blogging on the carbon tariff threat to the peace and prosperity of the world.

We should all remember that carbon tariffs are no mere quirk of this or that administration, political party, or government agency. Protectionism is an inherent feature of carbon suppression policies, for three reasons:

(1) Companies and labor unions in carbon-constrained countries will demand carbon tariffs to “level the playing field” vis-a-vis firms in non-carbon constrained countries. Absent carbon tariffs, domestic industry and labor will not support cap-and-trade or carbon taxes.

(2) Carbon suppression programs all exhibit the classic collective action problem. However much it might be in the collective interest of every nation to “save the planet,” it is in the separate interest of each nation to free-ride on the sacrifices of others.…
For more on the insanity of carbon tariffs, there’s an excellent 2008 article by the National Post’s Terence Corcoran appropriately titled “Blowing up the WTO.” Here’s what he says:

This is a legal and practical quagmire. To figure out the appropriate tax level would require a mind-blowingly elaborate carbon-measurement scheme, created on a global scale. It would have to be able to determine how much carbon emissions are embedded in the power drill that is nominally made in China, but is actually assembled from parts made in a dozen other countries. Some of those countries may or may not have carbon control programs in place.

Corcoran concludes:

. . . all this is a recipe for global trade wars. It would mean, in effect,…

Just as the World Bank put out a report on increased trade protectionism in the world, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu came out in favor of using carbon tariffs as a “weapon” against countries that aren’t taking steps to reduce their carbon emissions and as a way to protect U.S. manufacturers.


He seemed not to notice that the day before China’s top climate change official Li Gao had warned that carbon tariffs imposed on developing countries would be a “disaster” and perhaps start a trade war.


Li had suggested too that maybe those rich countries that import goods from China might themselves pay for offsetting the emissions in their production.

We are at the low end of the production line for the global economy. We produce products…

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