For months now, Heritage has warned against any effort by the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide or other so-called greenhouse gas emissions on the grounds that they would lead to an extremely costly and burdensome Pandora’s Box under the Clean Air Act. Even though EPA’s action would at first deal only with motor vehicles any finding that carbon dioxide is a harmful pollutant would spark onerous constraints on perhaps a million or more businesses and farms that use energy or generate greenhouse gas emissions. The costs would be well in …
Tomorrow the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global warming will hold a hearing to discuss the Bush administration’s response to the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision. The Court’s 5-4 decision held that the Clean Air Act’s (CAA) broad definition of “air pollutant” gave the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. However, the decision did not order the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Justice Stevens wrote: “We need not and do not reach the question whether on remand EPA must make an endangerment finding, or …
Anyone who dares to suggest there is any unsettled science related to global warming is quickly ridiculed by the establishment media, but as Debra Saunders documented yesterday environmentalists are far worse when it comes to ignoring science when making public policy decisions. Saunders notes that last week the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission concluded that proposed giant turbines placed under the Golden Gate Bridge would generate power from the bay’s tidal flow at a cost of 80 cents to $1.40 per kilowatt hour. San Francisco’s utility, Pacific Gas and Electric …
When California passed its Global Warming Solutions Act in August 2006 environmentalists hailed it as “a breakthrough piece of legislation” they hoped would lead to “a domino effect prompting other states, other countries, and — who knows? — maybe even the United States government to jump on board.” Of course, like everything else in environmentalist la-la land, the real costs and details of reaching the act’s 25% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 were either completely ignored or papered over with hollow rhetoric about how green industries would create thousands …
From New York, The Heritage Foundation’s Mark Kelly checks in from The International Conference on Climate Change: Thus far has demonstrated that the only consensus on global climate change is that climate does indeed change. Early in the 20th century, the climate warmed. Then, it cooled again. Late in the 20th century, it warmed again – peaking in 1998. Now there is evidence temperatures are cooling again. Across the world, we are experiencing a very cold winter. There are record snowfalls and Antarctica had more ice last winter than at …
The Heritage Foundation’s Mark Kelly checks in from The Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change in New York City. Themes from the first two sessions include: Bias: There is a demonstrated bias toward finding warming in the data collection of temperature. This data is then fed into sympathetic scientific research. And why is a majority of the research showing that global climate change is bad? Last year, $6.2 billion was invested to tilt the findings. Science Changes: For most of our lifetimes, scientists told us there we’re nine planets. …
More highlights from Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) address on FISA at Heritage today: As President Bush has been trying to focus the country on the threat from radical jihadists, Senate and House Democrats demonstrated they had a different focus when they mandated in the 2008 Intelligence Authorization that U.S. intelligence agencies craft an intelligence assessment of climate change. Before the President’s Day recess, the House Intelligence Committee sent staff to the CIA to see how it is analyzing the environment. Given the Democratic leadership’s lack of focus on the threat …
One of the latest environmentalist attempts to do an end run around the legislative process on global warming is to try and get the polar bear listed as an endangered species due to habitat destruction from global warming. The bears would be the first species listed as threatened with extinction primarily because of global warming. Not wanting to rely solely on the Bush administration, environmentally minded Democrats in the House recently submitted the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008, which aims to create a more environmentally favorable …
The Heritage Foundation has many able analysts who have done great work on energy and the environment. But since the absolute farce that is the cap-and-trade “solution” to global warming is now the preferred plan of all three major presidential candidates, the need to highlight succinct analysis from others has never been greater. Bryan Leyland, who is chairman of the economic panel of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, summed up not only why the European Union’s carbon cap-and-trade program is a failure, but also why all carbon cap and …
The Los Angeles Times reports today that “the climate may be right for a global warming bill” due to “big chunk of industry” just wanting to get something done. Unfortunately much of the legislation on Capitol Hill is modeled after the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme, and that effort has abjectly failed. Since the program was implemented EU emissions from relevant sectors have risen .8% and are well above the Kyoto target (See here for why the EU scheme has failed). Now the EU has launched a “20 20 by …
