Chip Knappenberger was perhaps the first analyst to demonstrate the negligible impact on global temperatures that would result from unilateral U.S. adoption of the pending Waxman-Markey bill. Knappenberger showed that even if the U.S. cut its emissions by 83% (of the 2005 level) by the year 2050, and then capped them at that level indefinitely, the schedule of global temperature increases would only be postponed by about five years.
Naturally, supporters of strong government action argued that the whole point of Waxman-Markey was to give American negotiators credibility when they demanded reciprocal action from other countries; Paul Krugman says as much in a recent blog post. Yet this leads to the next major problem: If the whole world adopted the stringent emission cutbacks in Waxman-Markey, then the costs to the global economy would far outweigh any reasonable estimate of the benefits (measured in avoided climate damage).…
Continue ReadingMany analysts (including myself) have written about the innumerable problems with cap-and-trade, mostly focusing on the bogus nature of the trade. And most of the problems we’ve predicted have found their way into the current cap-and-trade law working its way through Congress, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Waxman-Markey climate bill).
As was widely predicted, Waxman-Markey has degenerated into little more than a special-interest pork-fest, where the political system is getting ready to give away at least 85% of the valuable emission permits to favored energy constituencies such as electrical utilities, university researchers, low-income households, renewable manufacturers, anti-deforestation programs, and so on. The Obama administration’s pledge to auction off 100% of the emission permits was a joke on the face of it: virtually all emission trading programs feature extensive “grandfathering” of polluters and favored constituencies.…
Continue ReadingEven 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.” …
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