Cooler Heads Digest 17 May 2013

17 May 2013

Announcements

The Competitive Enterprise Institute will hold a Congressional staff and media briefing on “EPA’s FOIA Scandals: ‘Richard Windsor,’ Gina McCarthy, and the Abuse of Power,” given by Chris Horner, author of The Liberal War on Transparency and CEI Senior Fellow, from 3 to 4 PM on Monday, May 20, in room 406 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building. Please email mebell@cei.org from more information.  

In the News

Vitter: EPA FOIA Scandal ‘No Different than the IRS Disaster’
Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller, 17 May 2013

No Fine if Wind Farm Kills Endangered Condors
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 17 May 2013

Wind Behaving Badly
Lisa Linowes, Master Resource, 16 May 2013

North Dakota Proves Obama Doesn’t Get Energy
Thomas Pyle, Real Clear Energy, 16 May 2013

Obscure White House Climate Warrior Wields Vast Powers
Ron Arnold, Washington Examiner, 16 May 2013

Ex-EPA Region 8 Administrator To Receive Award, Despite Resigning in Transparency Scandal
William Yeatman, Energy Policy Center, 16 May 2013

From the IRS to the EPA?
Jason Riley, Wall Street Journal, 15 May 2013

Wind Farms Get a Pass on Eagle Death
Dina Cappiello, Associate Press, 14 May 2013

Farm Bill Wastes More Taxpayer Money on Green Subsidies
Nicolas Loris, The Foundry, 13 May 2013

News You Can Use
EPA Demonstrates IRS-Like Bias on FOIA Requests

The IRS isn’t the only federal agency to discriminate against conservative groups. The EPA waived fees from Freedom of Information Act requests by green groups 92% of the time. Meanwhile, EPA denied fee waiver requests from the Competitive Enterprise Institute 93% of the time.

Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell

EPW Committee Sends McCarthy’s EPA Nomination to Senate Floor on Party Line Vote

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on 16th May approved the nomination as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency of Gina McCarthy on a straight party line vote of 10 to 8.  This sends the nomination to the Senate floor for a vote on confirmation.

Last week, the committee could not take a vote because all eight Republicans boycotted the meeting, thereby denying a quorum.  This week they showed up for two reasons.  First, the Democrats managed to get Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) down from his sickbed in New Jersey to the meeting.  Lautenberg’s presence meant that all ten Democratic members and thus a majority of the committee were present, which under Senate rules constitutes a quorum.  Thus the Democrats could vote the nomination out whether the Republicans were present or not.

Second, Senator David Vitter (R-La.), ranking Republican on the committee, announced in a press release that real progress had been made in a meeting with EPA Acting Administrator Robert Perciasepe on complying with their five requests for greater transparency at the agency.  When the committee met, Vitter went on to say that if Perciasepe commits to making further significant progress, then he will not try to block a floor vote on confirmation by requiring cloture (which requires 60 votes rather than a majority), and that if the EPA fully satisfies all five requests, then he would vote to confirm McCarthy.

A loose coalition opposing McCarthy’s confirmation is forming.  Here are the non-profit free market and conservative groups that I know are opposed: American Commitment, American Conservative Union, American Energy Alliance, Americans for Limited Government, Americans for Tax Reform, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Freedom Action, Let Freedom Ring, National Center for Public Policy Research, and 60 Plus Association. 

Carbon tax drumbeat continues

The apparently well-funded effort to convince conservatives to support a carbon tax continues.  This week, Ike Bannon, a senior fellow and research director at the R Street Institute, published an op-ed titled, “Why you just may come to like a carbon tax.”  Bannon makes a point that I have made many times: in putting together a comprehensive tax reform or budget deal, the only huge new source of additional revenues on the table is a carbon tax.  Unlike me, however, Bannon thinks that that is a good thing.

Even worse, Bannon argues that a big advantage of a carbon tax is that it’s hidden and therefore people won’t notice that it’s why they are paying more for energy and other goods and services.  He writes: “Besides its intended purpose of reducing carbon emissions, it is politically advantageous, in that it is a tax that is relatively hidden.”  If any conservatives in Congress fall for this, they deserve what voters will give them. 

Across the States
William Yeatman

California Governor Brown Takes  Enviro Heat for Endorsing Fracking

California Governor Jerry Brown (D) this week caused a stir among environmentalists by mildly endorsing more drilling in the Golden State. California’s Monterey Shale, which covers much of the southern half of the State, is believed to hold as much as 15.5 billion barrels of petroleum that has become recoverable only in the last half decade, with the development of smart drilling technology. Governor Brown told EnergyWire (subscription required) that the Monterey Shale could be a “fabulous opportunity.” This is an uncharacteristically sound energy policy pronouncement by the Governor, who during his two stints as the State’s chief executive has done more than anyone to implement the environment regulatory regime that chased away the State’s heavy industry.

Naturally, Governor Brown was quickly rebuked by both the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity. He’s likely to hear further protests next week, when he’ll be in Maryland for the Democratic Governor Association’s spring policy session. On May 22, the alarmist activist group 350.org will hold a protest at National Harbor, near Washington, D.C. to pressure Democratic Governors “to stop fracking.”

Around the World
Myron Ebell

Matt Ridley Warns that Rising Energy Prices Threaten UK Economy

Matt Ridley, the highly regarded science writer, devoted his maiden speech in the British House of Lords to the threat that rising energy costs pose to the British economy.  According to NE Business, the fifth Viscount Ridley said that, “Household energy costs have doubled in the past 15 years. In the US, where [natural] gas prices used to be the same as they are here, they are now one-quarter or one-fifth of the level here.  That is an enormous competitive advantage to the US and a disadvantage to us.  The chemical industry, as a result, is very keen to move to the United States, and other industries, including the cement industry, are feeling the pinch from high energy costs.” 

Ridley continued: “Near where I live at Lynemouth on the North East coast, the country’s largest aluminium smelter recently closed with the loss of 515 jobs, largely due to the rising cost of energy.  A nation can compete on the basis of cheap labour or cheap energy, but if it has neither,then it is likely to be in trouble.”

Ridley, who earned a Ph. D. in zoology, writes a column for the weekend Wall Street Journal and is the author of several books, including Genome, Nature versus Nurture, and most recently The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves.  He is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Hayek Prize and CEI’s Julian Simon Memorial Award.  Here is the sparking lecture about the bogus claims of eco-pessimism and global warming alarmism that Ridley gave at the Simon Award presentation in 2012.    In 2011, he gave the Royal Scottish Academy’s Angus Millar lecture on the subject of “Scientific Heresy.” 

Science Update
Anthony Ward

Greenland Expected to Have Little Effect on Sea Level Rise

According to a study published in Nature, melting ice in Greenland will make an insignificant contribution to sea-level rise. Researchers now predict the melting of the Greenland ice sheet will cause sea-level rises amounting only to 0.75 to 1.25 inches by 2200.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.GlobalWarming.org.

Cooler Heads Digest 3 May 2013

3 May 2013

Announcements

The Marshall Institute today published a new report titled, “A Skeptical Look at the Carbon Tax,” by James DeLong of the Convergence Law Institute. Click here to read the report.

In the News

Does Big Green Care about People or Nature?
Ron Arnold, Washington Examiner, 3 May 2013

How Oil Made Working-Class North Dakota Rich
Jordan Weissman, The Atlantic, 2 May 2013

Oil Drilling Leaps, Clean Energy Lags
Jonathan Fahey, AP, 2 May 2013

The High Cost of Zero
Paul Driessen, Washington Times, 2 May 2013

Right Stuff: NASA Scientists Weigh In to Undo Hansen Damage
Robert Bradley, Jr., Master Resource, 1 May 2013

EPA Chief Pretended To Be ‘Richard Windsor’
Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, 1 May 2013

Washington Wind Turbine Toppled by 35 mph Gust
Andy Matarrese, Daily Record, 30 April 2013

Government’s Bad Bet on Fisker
Charles Lane, Washington Post, 30 April 2013

News You Can Use
Obama’s EPA Has Imposed $37.8 Billion in Annual Costs

According to a Heritage Foundation report published this week, EPA has imposed $37.8 billion in annual regulatory costs since President Barack Obama took office. The report, Red Tape Rising, is available here.

Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell

Senate EPW Schedules Vote for EPA Nominee

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has scheduled a vote on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency for the morning of Thursday, May 9th. All the Democrats on the committee will vote for McCarthy. Since they hold a ten to eight majority over Republicans, it is certain that the committee will send the nomination to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote.

What is less certain is whether Senator David Vitter (R-La), ranking Republican on the committee, will have the committee's seven other Republicans with him in voting against McCarthy. If he does, then the next question is whether Vitter will lead an effort to block a floor vote.

It takes 60 votes to invoke cloture to end debate and move to a vote. So Vitter needs to round up 41 votes to block McCarthy's confirmation. There are 45 Republicans in the Senate. If Vitter leads the effort against McCarthy, it is likely that he will have two or three Democrats with him. But there are also a number of Republicans who might defect. Several of them don't like McCarthy, but believe that deference should be given to the President's nominees unless they are manifestly unqualified or corrupt.

The argument for blocking McCarthy's confirmation is simply that it is one of the very few shots that Senators will have during the 113th Congress to push back the EPA's ongoing regulatory onslaught against affordable energy. McCarthy, as Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation for the past four years, has been in charge of writing and promulgating the several Clean Air Act regulations that are designed to close coal-fired power plants. In my view, those Senators who oppose the EPA's agenda should not be voting to promote the point person for implementing that agenda. She also misled both the Congress and the public about the design and impact of two of the most expensive regulations—new fuel economy targets and the Carbon Pollution Standard. My colleagues Marlo Lewis and Anthony Ward explain her duplicity here.

Across the States
William Yeatman

Renewables Repeal Resuscitated in North Carolina

Last Friday, I reported that the North Carolina House Public Utilities and Energy Committee voted down H.B. 298, legislation that would have prevented the state’s green energy mandate increasing from 3% to 12% of electricity sales. This week, however, the bill was resuscitated, thanks to the commitment of its sponsor, Rep. Mike Hager (R). Rep. Hager, who chairs the Public Utilities and Energy Committee, told reporters that he would use his prerogative as committee chairman to keep the bill in play indefinitely, and that his goal was to get a floor vote. Hager’s bill received another boost this week when its companion legislation was passed out of the Senate Finance Committee by a voice vote.

EPA Shaking Down Contractors?

In January, there was a split in the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA), an organization that represents air quality officials in state government. Delegations from seventeen states broke off and formed their own organization, the Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies, due primarily to a disagreement over NACAA’s support for the Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality regulations. Unlike the NACAA, the breakaway groups objected to EPA’s regulatory assault, and they sought to create an independent voice.

The new group contracted Battelle, a prominent consulting firm, to administer its launch.  Last month, Inside EPA reported that Battelle dissolved the contract with AAPCA as a result of EPA pressure. Sources told Inside EPA that the agency bullied Battelle into dropping the contract, by thretening to block current and potential future contracts with the federal government. This week, the American Tradition Institute sent EPA a Freedom of Information Request Act seeking information about this alleged instance of “gangster government.” Also,Texas state officials sent a letter alleging that EPA had “threaten[ed]” Battelle, and demanded to know why.

Around the World
William Yeatman

Another Pointless Climate Confab Concludes

Today marks the conclusion of an intercessional meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, the purpose of which was to prepare for negotiations at the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC this December in Warsaw, Poland.

According to Bloomberg, almost 190 UNFCCC delegates in Bonn are working towards a deal in 2015 that would establish binding greenhouse gas emissions targets for….2050.This is a pathetic goal, even by the pitiful standards of these climate confabs. The Kyoto Protocol, which was the result of COP-3, created binding targets that its signatories ignored. In 2007, after having spent a decade monitoring the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, climate diplomats at COP-13 in Bali, Indonesia established “aspirational” goals to achieve binding emissions targets for 2020 by COP-15. Two years later, the “Bali Roadmap” dead-ended at COP-15 in Copenhagen, Denmark, where negotiations completely disintegrated.

Since the disaster in Denmark, the UNFCCC has been aimless, and this new target is effectively an admission of total failure. A 2050 target is so distant as to be meaningless in practice. It's a goal I could support, and I'm a "denier." Of course, an empty agreement of this sort is the only one that nations of the world would ever submit to, for reasons that I explain here.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.GlobalWarming.org.

ALG's Daily Grind - U.S. lends $35 billion through IMF foreign aid slush fund

April 30, 2013

Editorial: U.S. lends $35 billion through IMF foreign aid slush fund

Total represents more than 24 percent of the agency's $145.4 billion of outstanding loans. Well above its 17.7 percent quota, the U.S. is funding a disproportionate share of IMF loans.

Cartoon: Obama's cleaver

The White House wants to make certain you feel sequester, even if it is not necessary.

Church of Global Warming feels the heat

Seventeen straight years of climate stability will straighten even the most ardent true believers hockey stick.

UK Telegraph: Cyprus parliament to vote on savings deposit tax again

"While Cypriot finance minister Harris Georgiades last week voiced confidence that the island's fractious parliament will approve the deal, the vote is likely to put the bail-out on a knife-edge as nearly half of the 56-member house is considered likely to oppose or abstain."

Cooler Heads Digest 26 April 2013

26 April 2013

In the News

The Climate Circus Leaves Town
Steven Hayward, Weekly Standard, 26 April 2013

Debunking the Gasland Sequel
Steve Everley, Energy in Depth, 25 April 2013

Fisker = Solyndra
Ronald Bailey, Hit & Run, 24 April 2013

Obama Administration Missed Clues on Fisker
Matthew Daly, AP, 24 April 2013

Reform the Wind PTC in 2013!
Lisa Linowes, Master Resource, 24 April 2013

Boxer’s Claims on Behalf of EPA Nominee Don’t Hold Water
Brian McNicoll, Daily Caller, 23 April 2013

Explaining Energy Gridlock
Marlo Lewis, National Journal, 22 April 2013

Dysfunction Rampant at Energy Department
Paul Chesser, National Legal & Policy Center, 22 April 2013

Europe Is Becoming a Green Energy Basket Case
Washington Post editorial, 21 April 2013

News You Can Use
Is Tesla Next?

Fisker Automotive, a luxury electric car manufacturer that benefited from almost $200 million in stimulus benefits, is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, informed opinion on Wall Street predicts a similar fate for Tesla Motors, another luxury electric car manufacturer that benefited from almost $460 million in stimulus benefits. According to CNN, more than 40% of the company's available shares were being held by investors who are betting the stock will go down.

Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell

D.C. Circuit Backs EPA's War on Coal (Although There Is a Silver Lining)

The federal D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals this week overturned a lower court decision that the Environmental Protection Agency could not use its veto over Clean Water Act dredge and fill permits retroactively after the Army Corps of Engineers had issued the permit. This means that the EPA acted legally in yanking the permit of Arch Coal’s Spruce Number One surface coal mine in Logan County, West Virginia, several years after the investment was made and the mine started producing coal.

“The unambiguous language of subsection 404(c) manifests the Congress’s intent to confer on EPA a broad veto power extending beyond the permit issuance,” wrote Appeals Judge Karen Henderson. The two other judges on the panel, Brett Kavanaugh and Thomas Griffith, agreed with Henderson’s opinion. 

If upheld on further appeal, this means that investing in surface mining projects will be a gamble. Hundreds of millions of dollars could be lost if the EPA decides that it doesn’t like the looks of someone and cancels the permit years after it has been issued. West Virginia's congressional delegation have introduced a bill, H. R. 524, to prohibit retroactive vetoes of section 404 permits.

William Yeatman, my CEI colleague, noted in a press release that the Appeals Court sent the case back to the federal district court to determine whether the EPA's scientific case for vetoing the permit was sound.  According to William, "When all the hyperbole is stripped away, EPA’s only ‘evidence’ to justify its actions is a putative threat posed by saline effluent from the mine to an order of short-lived insects, which aren’t even an endangered species. This is plainly unreasonable: EPA shouldn’t be trading jobs for bugs absent a Congressional mandate to do so." See William's 2011 study that shows why the EPA's science is shoddy here.

EPA Critiques State Department on Keystone XL

The Environmental Protection Agency this week filed a lengthy comment on the State Department's draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on the long-delayed Keystone XL Pipeline. The EPA challenges the SEIS, which finds no major environmental problems, as being based on "insufficient information in regard to alternative routes, additional greenhouse gas emissions, and the impacts of spills.” 

The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline would carry oil from Alberta's oil sands and North Dakota's Bakken field to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The pipeline requires a presidential permit because it crosses the international boundary with Canada. President Barack Obama has denied issuing the permit twice on specious grounds. The new application addresses the President's objections.

The EPA's official comments are largely repeated in stronger terms in many public comments filed by opponents of the pipeline. The EPA's comments do not constitute a formal objection. That could come later, which would mean that the SEIS had become an inter-agency dispute. Such disputes under the National Environmental Policy Act are resolved by the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  At the end of the day, President Obama will make the decision. EPA's intervention gives him grounds to once again deny the Keystone permit.

Across the States
William Yeatman

Green Mandate Freeze Fails in North Carolina

By a 13-18 vote, the North Carolina House Public Utilities and Energy committee voted down SB 298, legislation that would have prevented the state’s green energy mandate increase from 3% to 12% of electricity sales. The bill had previously been passed out of the House Commerce and Job Development Subcommittee on Energy and Emerging Markets. Although North Carolina’s renewable energy mandate is small relative to similar production quotas in 28 other states, professional environmentalists and the green energy lobby reacted strongly in opposition to the bill, out of fear that it would engender a domino effect leading to the repeal of green energy mandates in other states.

L.A.’s Decision To Kick Coal Will Cost Ratepayers Big Time

During the 2000-2001 electricity crisis in California, Los Angelinos were spared the energy price spike that afflicted other Californians because the city-owned utility received almost 40% of its power from coal. This arrangement changed last month, when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the city-run utility, succumbed to a long-term campaign waged by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to divest from coal. This week, the L.A. City Council added teeth to the utility’s announcement, by approving a plan to pay for a fuel switch from coal to gas at a 600 megawatt power plant in Utah with which the utility has a contract to purchase power. The City Council passed the measure unanimously (12 to 0) despite a warning from a ratepayer advocate, employed by the city, that the switch would carry a $500 capital cost, and an additional $150 million in added fuel costs.

Around the World
William Yeatman

Japan Turns To Coal, Because It’s Cheaper

Among the many harmful impacts of the Fukushima Daitchi disaster was the loss of almost 4,500 megawatts of nuclear-powered electricity generation. This is the equivalent of almost 9 average-sized power plants, and it represented a significant strain to the nation’s electricity grid. Initially, Japan relied on imported oil and gas to make up the difference in electricity generation, but this proved to be exorbitantly expensive. As a result, the country is turning to coal. Tokyo Electric, the largest state-regulated electric utility in Japan, recently added 26,000 megawatts of coal-fired electricity generation. And earlier in the month, the utility negotiated unusually aggressively in securing a historically low price on coal imported from Australia. Finally, Japan's environmental regulators this month announced that they would accelerate permitting for new coal-fired power plants from 3 years (on average) to 1 year.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.GlobalWarming.org.

CEI Today: Congress & global warming, Cordray nomination, and the UN vs free speech

CONGRESS & CLIMATE POLICY - MARLO LEWIS

Globalwarming.org: Why Is Congress Lethargic about Energy?

This week National Journal’s Energy Experts Blog poses the question: “What’s holding back energy & climate policy.” There is no momentum building for the kind of comprehensive energy legislation Congress enacted in 2005 and 2007.  > Read the analysis

> Interview Marlo Lewis

DODD-FRANK, CFPB - AMMON SIMON National Review: Jeb Hensarling on Richard Cordray President Obama’s attempt to circumvent the Senate by unilaterally appointing Ohio politician Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may have been premised on his expectation that he would get away with it. If so, he seems to have miscalculated, because the other two branches of government are providing him with a Sesame Street demonstration of the concept of “checks and balances.” >Read more > Interview an expert

FREE SPEECH - HANS BADER Openmarket.org: Lawsuits Over “Customary International Law”: A Menace To Free Speech, Our Liberties, Our Companies, And Our Economy The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has ruled that Germany violated international law by not prosecuting a former German legislator for an interview with a cultural journal in which he said negative things about immigration and the alleged dependence on welfare of Turkish immigrants to his country. That ruling illustrates that international-law norms can be inimical to American civil-liberties such as freedom of speech, making it inappropriate for U.S. courts to enforce such foreign norms.  > Read more > Interview Hans Bader

More in the news... Capitalism’s Survival Depends on Politics CEI Study: Cost Of Keeping One Unauthorized Immigrant From Getting A Job — $13,000 Why FAA’s Child Seat Campaign Is Deadly The spreading of ‘right to work’ ... where will it show up next?

CEI ANNUAL DINNER & GALA FEATURING THE HONORABLE RAND PAUL JUNE 20, 2013 cei.org/ceidinner

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.