Even if energy realists and their allies fend off Waxman-Markey, wave after wave of global warming regulation could still sweep across the U.S. economy under the aegis of EPA and the Clean Air Act.
As explained in a previous post, the carbon dioxide (CO2) litigation campaign that begat the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision (April 2007) could shut down much of our economy and replace self-government via the people’s elected representatives with the rule of bureaucrats and courts.
Energy realists need to school themselves in this constellation of issues, because the clock is ticking. On April 17, the Environmental Protection Agency, responding to Mass. v. EPA, published a proposed rule concluding that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to health- and welfare-endangering “air pollution.” …
Yesterday, on a strict party-line vote (34 Nay, 21 Yea), Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee defeated Rep. Fred Upton’s (R-MI) amendment to protect workers from potential job losses due to the Waxman-Markey legislation.
Upton’s amendment is short and to the point:
After section 2, insert the following section and make the necessary conforming changes in the table of contents:
SECTION 3. MAINTAINING DOMESTIC EMPLOYMENT.
…The Administrator [of EPA], in consultation with the Secretary of Labor, shall annually prepare and certify a report to Congress on the average national employment rate for the prior year. If the Administrator determines, in consultation with the Department of Labor, that the unemployment rate for the prior year meets or exceeds 15%, as a result of the implementation of this Act, the provisions of the Act shall cease to be effective.
Is the proliferation of electronic devices in homes and offices causing a net increase or decrease in electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions?
This question has been a topic of heated controversy ever since 1999, when technology analyst Mark P. Mills published a study provocatively titled “The Internet Begins with Coal,” and co-authored with Peter Huber a Forbes column titled “Dig more coal – the PCs are coming.”
Others–notably Joe Romm and researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory–argued that the Internet was a minor contributor to electricity demand and potentially a major contributor to energy savings in such areas as supply chain management, telecommuting, and online purchasing.
Mills and Huber argued that digital networks, server farms, chip manufacture, and information technology had become a new key driver of electricity demand. …