Global Environment Fund founder and chief executive Jeffrey Leonard (not 1987 National League Championship Series MVP Jeffrey Leonard) wrote in The Washington Post last week: If Obama wants to set us on a path to a sustainable-energy future – and a green one, too – he should propose a very simple solution to the current mess: eliminate all energy subsidies. Yes, all of them – oil, coal, gas, nuclear, ethanol, and wind and solar. This is a fabulous idea which we genuinely hope President Obama adopts. Subsidies distort market signals …
The Washington Post‘s Juliet Eilperin reported yesterday that “U.S. environmentalists are engaged in their most profound bout of soul-searching in more than a decade” and are planning to “redirect strategies” in the coming year. Faced with the failure of cap and trade and the defeat of “many of their political allies on both the state and federal level” the enviros are shifting focus away from “the toxic partisanship of Washington” and back to “the grass roots.” And just what type of grass roots activism will the left be pursuing at …
With cap and trade out of the realm of possibilities, Members of Congress have turned their attention to mandating so-called clean energy. Some Members hoped for a lame duck vote on a renewable electricity standard (RES), which would require that a certain percentage of our nation’s electricity production come from wind, solar, biomass, and other government-picked renewable energies. With that looking less likely, Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu mentioned a clean energy standard that includes other carbon-free sources of energy as a possible compromise between Democrats and Republicans next …
Today the Labor Department released its monthly jobs report, which showed that the U.S. economy added an anemic 39,000 jobs this month and that the nation’s unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent. That marks the 19th month in a row that the unemployment has been over 9 percent, a post–World War II record. So how is this lame duck Congress, a Congress that was thoroughly rejected at the polls just last month, greeting this news? By raising taxes on the American people by $700 billion. Is this what the American …
The American people know that cap and trade energy policies will lead to higher energy costs and fewer jobs. That is why even Democratic candidates like Sen.-elect Joe Manchin (D-WV) famously shot President Barack Obama’s cap and trade bill in a television commercial this fall. But the progressive campaign to force Americans to pay higher energy costs did not die with cap and trade. The New York Times reports today: Deals to buy renewable power have been scuttled or slowed in states including Florida, Idaho and Kentucky as well as …
Cap and trade legislation is dead. The left abandoned the policy this summer when it became clear it was a liability. Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) told Politico: “You can’t use cap and trade anymore because it is like manure on the trough. It’s defined, and people are opposed to it.” But that doesn’t mean the left has abandoned plans to hike up our nation’s energy costs in a vain attempt to save the world. All they did was pick a new a set of government mandates and repackage it as …
Google is coming to a (future) offshore wind farm near you. In an announcement Tuesday, the technology giant said it is joining with investment firm Good Energies in a $5 billion investment to secure permitting for and begin constructing an underwater electricity transmission line. Also party to the venture is the Japanese trading company Marubeni and the Maryland transmission company Trans-Elect. The electricity “backbone” will extend 350 miles in federal waters off the Atlantic Coast, from northern New Jersey to Norfolk, Virginia. In the article, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman …
This week, National Journal hosted an energy, environment, and economic policy summit on the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES). Participants included Sens. Mark Begich (D-AK) and Sam Brownback (R-KS); Dr. Robert Simon, the Majority Staff Director of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources; David Friedman, the Research Director of the Union of Concerned Scientists; and Phil Sharp, the President of Resources for the Future. RES proponents acknowledged that the nation’s current double digit unemployment makes near term adoption of RES politically impossible, but they also outlined a long-term strategy: …
The probability of cap and trade becoming law rapidly diminished as more and more people saw it for what it truly is: a national energy tax. Since 85 percent of our energy comes from carbon-emitting fossil fuels, and the goal of cap and trade is to reduce carbon dioxide, a cap-and-trade system would raise the price of energy to discourage its use. Politicians knew very well that Americans wouldn’t stand for a national energy tax—especially during an election year—so despite several murmurs, the Senate failed to move legislation forward. Now, …
It seems that many in Washington had their books upside down when they studied economics. In the midst of a serious recession, they are proposing to jack up income tax rates, which would add hundreds of thousands to the already sky-high unemployment rolls. Now we hear that the Senate is thinking about forcing high-cost electricity on already struggling businesses and households, a policy that could put hundreds of thousands more out of work. Senator Harry Reid (D–NV) recently indicated that legislation mandating a renewable electricity standard (RES) is a possibility …
