For his sake, let’s hope that Bruce Arnold at the Congressional Budget Office doesn’t get the Gabriel Calzada treatment from the American Wind Energy Association and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. To freshen your memory, Gabriel Calzada is the economist at the King Juan Carlos University who got out his calculator and analyzed the green job situation in Spain—the same Spain whose job-crushing subsidies are supposed to be a model for our green recovery. The professor found that subsidizing green energy costs more traditional jobs than are created in the …
Speaking to Politico, John Kerry told them it was up to Harry Reid to pass Cap-and-Trade In the end, it will be Sen. Reid’s responsibility, as majority leader, to put the pieces together as he did on health care and to decide how the Senate is going to proceed. In other words, the Senate plans to force sweeping, expensive, job-destroying changes to America’s energy policy in much the same way they forced ObamaCare upon unwilling Americans. Next week, Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) plan …
From the Monthly Weather Review: The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas about Sitzbergen and the eastern Arctic, all point to a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto unheard-of high temperatures in that part of the earth’s surface. The oceanographic observations have, however, been even more interesting. Ice conditions were exceptional. In fact, so little ice has never before been noted. The expedition all but established a record, sailing as far north as 81 degrees 29′ in ice-free …
California legislators passed a statewide cap and trade bill in 2006 that is set to begin in 2012, but a growing opposition is seeking to include a ballot measure that would postpone a carbon cap until the state’s economy recovers: “The ballot measure would bar the state from implementing the law until its jobless rate stabilized at or below 5.5% for a year, which supporters say would signal the return of a strong economy. The state’s jobless rate topped 5.5% in October 2007 and now stands at 12.5%. Supporters and …
As the Obama administration makes it clear they want to pursue a carbon capping policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the French government announced that it would abandon plans to impose a similar carbon tax on domestic energy and transportation fuels. The reason for the French government’s change of tune is obvious. Sarkozy’s party knows that the carbon tax, which would have raised gasoline prices by 17 cents per gallon and domestic gas bills by 7 percent, would have significantly harmed the intra-continental and international competitiveness of French businesses and …
It’s a common misconception that a tradeoff exists between economic growth and environmental cleanliness. For decades Gallup has been conducting a poll asking about this very tradeoff. According to its latest one, “53 percent said economic growth should be the nation’s top priority, even if the environment has to suffer. Just 38 percent put their priority on environmental protection, even if it limited growth. The share of Americans favoring the environment over growth is the lowest since 1984.” In 1990, the results were 71 percent preferred protection of the environment …
Last Friday, Van Jones debated Andy Morriss, Law Professor at the University of Illinois in The Economist on the topic of green jobs. Surprisingly, Morriss says, there’s one thing we can all agree on: Van Jones and I agree that ‘the private sector, not the government, can and must be the main driver in creating green jobs.’ We agree that government subsidies for coal, oil and nuclear power are a serious problem. With the exceptions of their sentiments on corn-based ethanol and the need for innovation, the agreement stops there. …
The state of California likes to sell itself as a leader in the transition to a green economy. The only problem is, their policies are making that transition harder—and they’re not producing the job boom that politicians have been promising. The California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) recently reviewed the impact of the state’s 2006 climate change legislation, which mandated a cut in GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. A letter from the LAO to the state senator that requested the analysis stated that the aggregate net jobs impact of …
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.
Businesses have to deal with nearly unprecedented levels of uncertainty due to Washington’s inability to give them a clear roadmap of what policy changes lay ahead. A large part of this uncertainty is about the level of future taxes and increased regulations. Businesses are reluctant to hire when they could be facing additional labor costs due to government policies. This, at a particularly vulnerable time due to the credit crunch and financial crisis, spells a death sentence for many small businesses, and stunts the growth of others. The health care …
