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Can the Endangered Species Act Compel America to Abandon Fossil Fuels?

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#mlewis">Marlo Lewis</a> -- October 25, 2010

Can the Endangered Species Act (ESA) compel America to abandon fossil fuels?

My colleague William Yeatman alluded to this question last week after attending a symposium at the Heritage Foundation entitled, “Saving the Polar Bear or Obama’s CO2 Agenda?”

The short answer is yes and no. Yes, because once the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) listed the polar bear as a “threatened species” on the supposition that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are melting the bear’s Arctic habitat, the ESA logically requires that people stop engaging in CO2-emitting activities. The potential for mischief is vast. Carbon dioxide emissions come from fossil energy use, which in turn derives from economic activity. There is hardly any economic activity in the modern world that does not, directly or indirectly, produce CO2 emissions. Hence, almost any economic activity can be deemed to threaten the polar bear and, thus, violate the Act!  …

Is GOP Opposition to Cap-and-Trade Self-Contradictory?

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#mlewis">Marlo Lewis</a> -- August 17, 2010

Barring the trickery of a lame duck conference committee, cap-and-trade is dead in the 111th Congress. Some blame President Obama for not taking a more hands-on role. Others blame environmental groups for waging a $100 million lobbying campaign without winning a single GOP convert to the Kerry-Lieberman bill. Others blame the allegedly “well-funded denial machine,” even though proponents, who include major corporations like BP as well as Big Green, must have outspent free-market and conservative advocacy groups by more than 100 to 1.

The August 11 edition of Climatewire (subscription required) featured interviews with Exelon Corp. VP Betsy Moler and Resources for the Future President Phil Sharp, who lament that Republican lawmakers, the “inventors” of “market-based” environmental policy, turned against their own “invention.” Moler and Sharp are trying to spin GOP opposition to cap-and-trade as self-contradictory, hence as unstable, hence as reversible. …