All the world mourned the human toll taken by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Thousands of lives were lost; hundreds of thousands more shattered. Of course, natural disasters inflict economic destruction as well, and estimates of the recent disasters’ cost to Japan are now coming in. Catastrophe modeler Risk Management Solutions Inc. (RMS) puts economic losses from the earthquake and tsunami between $200 billion and $300 billion. That estimate, RMS says, “reflects not only property damage but secondary consequences, such as disruption to power supplies, evacuations and decommissioning of several …
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is developing the reputation for moving forward with plans Congress cannot accomplish. Last Congress, Representative Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) tried to expand the powers of the EPA by introducing legislation that would replace the term “navigable waters” in the Clean Water Act with “waters of the U.S.,” which would significantly expand what the EPA could regulate. Reforming the Clean Water Act is necessary, but this is the wrong way to go about it. Congress rejected the Oberstar-Feingold approach, but now EPA …
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) endangerment finding gives the agency justification to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, most notably carbon dioxide (CO2), under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The EPA already began targeting motor vehicles last year and will start regulating emissions from new power plants and major expansions of large greenhouse-gas-emitting plants (more than 25,000 tons of CO2 per year) this year. Several Members of Congress released or plan to release bills to either delay or prohibit the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases. Some ideas are better than others; …
Congress isn’t the only entity that knows how to pick winners and losers for energy sources and technologies. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is doing its best to follow suit by imposing new rules on the natural gas industry and providing exemptions to the biomass industry. For natural gas, the EPA evasively posted a new rule on hydraulic fracturing, requiring a company to obtain permits if the company uses diesel when fracking. Hydraulic fracturing, a long-proven process by which pressurized water and other substances are injected into wells to extract …
Money is a powerful incentive. When it comes to global warming, governments all over the world have created policies that intend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but have led to fraud, scams, black markets, and increased emissions. Mark Schapiro of Reuters reports on the unintended consequences of European companies offsetting their carbon dioxide emissions by paying the Chinese to destroy a much more potent contributor to warming: In order to offset their own greenhouse gases, companies and utilities in Europe that are subject to the emission limits of the Kyoto …
California voters overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 23, the ballot initiative that would have suspended the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) until the state’s unemployment level dropped below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters. AB 32 aims to return greenhouse gas emissions in California to 1990 levels by 2020. Many Californians saw Proposition 23 as a battle between out-of-state oil producers versus environmentalists and in-state venture capitalists spurring a clean energy revolution, so it’s no surprise California rejected it by a 61 percent to 39 percent margin. But the vote …
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is “an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 ‘to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense.’” It can now add “fund plays on climate change” to that list. The New York Times reports that the federal agency will award $700,000 of taxpayer money to a New York theater company to produce a show on climate change. Titled, “The Great Immensity,” the production will explore “the emotional and psychological aspects of the current …
Great Britain’s most prominent scientific body significantly softened its position on global warming after 43 of its members complained that the previous position did not take into account dissenting evidence. Although the Royal Society’s climate change guide still asserts that greenhouse gas gases resulting from human activity contributes to warming, it does so more prudently: There is very strong evidence to indicate that climate change has occurred on a wide range of different timescales from decades to many millions of years; human activity is a relatively recent addition to the …
Yesterday marked the 40th birthday of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Air Act (CAA), and environmentalists celebrated by reminding us how beneficial the regulation has been at improving air quality in the U.S. Now the EPA wants to turn the Clean Air Act’s birthday party into an all-out rager by allowing them to do what elected officials could not: regulate carbon dioxide (CO2). First things first. Air quality was improving before the passage of the 1970 CAA. Environmentalists should give more credit to innovation and less to top-down regulation. …
Much of the justification for subsidies, tax credits, and mandates for increasing wind energy production in the U.S. is that it will create jobs and help cool our planet’s fever. We’ve explained in detail how subsidized green jobs destroy jobs elsewhere, but it also turns out that increased wind power decreases carbon emissions much less than previously thought, and in some instances, could increase emissions. The Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce explains why in his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. First, wind power displaces power from natural gas more than it …
