President Obama has a solution to the Gulf oil spill: $7-a-gallon gas. That’s a Harvard University study’s estimate of the per-gallon price of the president’s global-warming agenda. And Obama made clear this week that this agenda is a part of his plan for addressing the Gulf mess. So what does global-warming legislation have to do with the oil spill? Good question, because such measures wouldn’t do a thing to clean up the oil or fix the problems that led to the leak. The answer can be found in Obama Chief …
The Washington Post asks: “What does it mean for a nation to be energy independent? Is it realistic and if so how should that be achieved?” Energy Independence is a mixed bag — both good and bad energy policy ideas are promoted under its banner. The bad outweighs the good, and in any event energy independence shouldn’t supplant free markets as the overarching principle for sound energy policy. Among the few good ideas spurred by the desire to achieve energy independence is expanding domestic energy production. As it is, the …
The same ethical advice for doctors also makes sense for Congress as it considers several pending global warming bills – first do no harm. Given serious questions about global warming science as well as the efficacy of costly proposals to address it, the best choice for Washington is none of the above. With economy-wide cap and trade stalled in the Senate, a number of slightly scaled back variants have been proposed, including measures targeting selected industries or a carbon tax. All threaten to do more harm than good.
The following Q&A with The Heritage Foundation’s Ben Lieberman is cross-posted from The Washington Post’s Planet Panel: Q: As the controversy swirling around the IPCC deepens at the same time some are questioning the significance of global warming now that large portions of the U.S. are buried under record-breaking snow, what kind of information do policymakers need to make decisions about climate change? Any risks of global warming need to be weighed against the risks of global warming policies. Policymakers must have accurate information on both sides of the equation …
The Washington Post asks: “Recently, a U.N. scientific report was found to have included a false conclusion about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. That followed the release of stolen e-mails last year, which showed climate scientists commiserating over problems with their data. Is there a broader meaning in these two incidents, and should they cause the public to be more skeptical about the underlying science of climate change?” You can’t call them isolated incidents now that they are coming in droves. It is clear that global warming science has been …
Q: If we’re so worried about global warming why has it been so cold here in the U.S., in Europe and other parts of the globe? What do weather statistics say has happened during the past 50 years? And how does weather differ from climate (is there a difference)? Turnabout is fair play for activists who insist that a single event like the current cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming. They’re right that it doesn’t, but neither does a summer heat wave prove it — yet this has not stopped …
To fully appreciate what a step backwards the final Copenhagen accord is, one has to recall the buildup to it. For the last two years, global warming activists and UN officials had circled December 2009 on their calendars as the watershed moment for creating a new carbon-constrained global economy for decades to come. And in the nick of time, they would argue, as the existing targets in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol are scheduled to expire in 2012. Furthermore, with the Bush administration gone in 2009, many in the international community …
The Heritage Foundation’s Steven Groves and Ben Lieberman are live at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference reporting from a conservative perspective. Follow their reports on The Foundry and at the Copenhagen Consequences Web site. Rather than the much anticipated (by environmental activists) or much feared (by those concerned about the economy and American sovereignty) binding new greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to replace the expiring provisions in the existing Kyoto Protocol, the final Copenhagen agreement is shaping up to be much less than that. Though this modest outcome had been …
The Heritage Foundation’s Steven Groves and Ben Lieberman are live at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference reporting from a conservative perspective. Follow their reports on The Foundry and at the Copenhagen Consequences Web site. It is hard to do any more wrong by the American people than cap and trade. Whether done by domestic legislation or international treaty, significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions (like the 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 in the House Waxman Markey bill which the Obama administration had hoped to match at …
The Heritage Foundation’s Steven Groves and Ben Lieberman are live at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference reporting from a conservative perspective. Follow their reports on The Foundry and at the Copenhagen Consequences Web site. “Collapsing in chaos” is a phrase the media is using to describe the Copenhagen climate conference, and that certainly is the feeling among many here at the Bella Center. Little has gone right, and indeed many registered participants were never even let in. The Danish minister in charge has resigned. Now, those of us who managed …
