Editor note: This post from one year ago is reprinted for its continuing relevance to the climate-change debate. The “bootleggers” are hard at work in the post-Enron era with nearly 150 companies, lead by Exelon Corp., Entergy Corp., and Constellation Energy Group Inc., buying 30-second television spots running from today through President Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday. 

The climate-change public policy debate might be thought of as a straightforward morality play. In one corner, we have the good guys laboring mightily against all odds to save the planet from rampant consumerism, human short-sightedness, and corporate greed. In the other corner, we have the bad guys, laboring mightily to preserve their profits by stoking materialism, economic selfishness, and fear of big government. Behind the curtains of this morality play, however, is a fascinating dance between the “good guys” (the Baptists) and “bad guys” (the bootleggers) to pass some form of mutually beneficial prohibition.…

A powerful argument against climate alarmism is the failed worldview of modern neo-Malthusianism, which has promoted fear after fear with an intolerant, smartest-guys-in-the-room mentality. Remember the “population bomb” where many millions would die in food riots? Well, obesity turned out to be the real problem.

Remember the Club of Rome’s resource scare? In 1972, 57 predictions of exhaustion were made regarding 19 different minerals. All either have been falsified or will be.

Remember the global-cooling scare promoted by, among others, the Obama administration’s science czar, John Holdren? (Yes, global cooling was a big deal, although it was not a “consensus.”)

And all of the above doom merchants were uber-confident and still are loath to admit they were ever wrong. Holdren, for example, is sticking to his prediction that as many as one billion people could die by 2020 from (man-made) climate change.…

The American Clean Energy and Security Act, better known as the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, has been shown to be completely ineffective at slowing the rise in global temperature that is projected by climate models to accompany mankind’s continued reliance on fossil fuels for energy production. And this, despite the bill’s mandated cut-back of U.S. greenhouse gases emissions by a whopping 83% below 2005’s levels by the year 2050. As the primary purpose of the bill is to mitigate “global warming” and any follow-on impacts, Waxman-Markey, on its own, would seem an abject failure.

If you need any more proof, consider the bill’s effect on projected sea level rise. Recall that the specter of rapid sea level rise is one of the pillars of alarmist claims for impending climate catastrophe and calls for immediate action.…

“This agreement will be good for Enron stock!!”

– John Palmisano, “Implications of the Climate Change Agreement in Kyoto & What Transpired” (1997)

The 219–212 passage of HR 2454 inspires another look at Enron’s infamous “Kyoto memo,” written almost 13 years ago by company lobbyist John Palmisano. Indeed, an Enron memo upon House passage of the Waxman-Markey climate bill would have been similar! Change the dates and some other specifics and the bottom line would be the same–potential gains for Enron’s profit centers in wind, solar, CO2-emissions trading, energy outsourcing, and natural gas.

One can imagine a quotation like this from Enron’s fabled public relations department, hyperbolizing a half-victory into something bigger in the attempt to create a bandwagon effect:

“This historic vote was heard ’round the world,” stated Kenneth L.