Some of the most egregious policies implemented by Congress have been when Members failed to fully understand the costs and the benefits of that policy. Sometimes it’s haste and other times it’s failing to take into account the seen and the unseen. The question is: If Congress implements a stringent global warming policy or the Environmental Protection Agency restricts greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, is it going to be one of the costliest mistakes ever for the least amount of gain? It might be too early to tell …
As the House of Commons in England was debating global warming legislation, something happened that hasn’t occurred since 1922. Snow started to fall in October. Since the late 1980s, the left has been warning us of impending doom. Liberals say that the Earth’s temperature is rising and that carbon emissions are to blame. Is this really the case? Or are things happening outside of human control? The left would have you believe that it is the fault of human intervention. Liberals have even resorted to politicking fear. The warned the …
Climage change is making its way back into the news and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell and Rep. Rick Boucher managed to do something that other global warming proposals have not: They’ve actually upset the environmental groups that have been clamoring for reductions on carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the first place. Last week Dingell and Boucher released a climate change legislation discussion draft that, similar to past legislation, calls for enormous emissions reductions by 2050 but has looser emissions limits in the earlier years of …
DENVER — The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank. We are not experts on what the left wants. But after four full days spent listening to panels of progressive leaders describe what direction they want Barack Obama to take the country, we have to conclude that the left will, after careful reexamination, eventually be disappointed in Obama’s speech last night. Sure, the rhetoric was great, and the progressives here in Denver are genuinely excited about the Democratic ticket. But when it came to policy specifics on the issues progressives …
If Rick Warren hoped to spark more light than heat at the presidential forum he conducted Saturday evening at his California megachurch, then he succeeded. Americans already had seen “firsts” during the primary season’s flood of debates. The news media chased buzz and ratings by allowing voters to ask candidates questions — some on the mark, some nutty — from the audience, via e-mail or by submitting YouTube videos. To his credit, Warren’s GodTube-friendlier format with Barack Obama and John McCain looked and sounded more like America than the YouTube …
Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is a telling portrayal of what collectivism in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany can lead to: impoverishment and oppression of freedom. Having lived through the communism regime himself, Czech Republic President Václav Klaus recently published his own book that illustrates a green road to serfdom. It’s titled Blue Planet in Green Shackles, What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? Klaus refers to himself as an economist who happens to be in a high political position, and he does a remarkable job …
John McCain delivered his energy and climate speech this afternoon in Houston, and he rightly espoused policies to commence offshore drilling and significantly expand domestic nuclear capacity. As he stressed the difficulty of addressing climate change, he made a compelling case for building new commercial nuclear plants: In Europe and elsewhere, they have been expanding their use of nuclear energy. But we’ve waited so long that we’ve lost our domestic capability to even build these power plants. Nuclear power is among the surest ways to gain a clean, abundant, and …
Often overlooked in the global warming debate is how little actual scientific evidence exists about the specific effects of increased levels of carbon in various regions of the world. Eco-Imperialism author Paul Driessen tackles this issue in his latest column: Climate models do help scientists evaluate possible consequences of changing economic growth, emission, cloud cover and other variables. But they can’t reproduce the actual climate of the past century. They cannot make accurate predictions, even one year in the future, much less fifty. They do not represent reality, and should not be …
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied a waiver of Clean Air Act Preemption for California’s greenhouse gas emission standards. EPA administrator Stephen Johnson signed the 48-page Federal Register Notice claiming that California does not have “compelling and extraordinary conditions” justified to set stricter standards than federal law allows under The Clean Air Act. To no surprise, the decision is already facing much criticism and has California lawmakers and environmentalists across the country outraged. An editorial in yesterday’s New York Times claims that the denial is a “serious blow” …
As opposed to 2007, this year the planet is off to a colder than average start. Empirical evidence suggests that the planet was cooler over the past 12 months. While far from definitive evidence that global warming has been reversed – as a few hyperbolic bloggers have claimed – it is clearly worth noting. Even more so if 2008 continues as a relatively cool year, coming on top of several years of no additional warming. The lack of coverage of the brutal winter is also strong evidence of media bias. …
