President Obama traveled to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today to deliver a speech on climate change. Part of the speech focused on innovation and the benefits of entrepreneurial risk taking while the other focused on government investments for renewable energy and the importance of climate change legislation. There was both good and bad parts of President Obama’s speech. The good: “Dr. Moniz is also the Director of MIT’s Energy Initiative, called MITEI. And he and President Hockfield just showed me some of the extraordinary energy research being conducted at …
Our Tuesday rendition of Cap and Trade Calamities discussed how only the EPA was given the semi-draft form of the Boxer-Kerry cap and trade bill to model the economic effects. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, along with several other organizations (including other government organizations) that modeled the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, do not have access. We have another call for transparency – this time from the House side. On October 2, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Henry Waxman sent a letter to Heritage’s David …
Heritage’s David W. Kreutzer: Waxman-Markey
As you read this, the Environmental Protection Agency is modeling the economic impacts of a semi-draft form of the Boxer-Kerry cap and trade legislation. “Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer said a bill EPA is analyzing should be marked up in her panel by the second week in November. An EPA official said the agency has pledged to deliver the cost analysis Friday, in time for a three-day set of hearings starting Oct. 27.” We’d do it too. But we can’t. According to Congressional Quarterly, the senators “produced a …
Last night Heritage hosted the world premiere of “Not Evil Just Wrong,” a feature-length documentary that reveals the true cost of global warming hysteria and the unintended consequences of radical environmental policies that have been going on for decades. The film was broadcast live on Ustream.tv and screened at 6,000 different locations in 27 countries. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis recently exposed what would be the unintended consequences of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade legislation. CDA found that far more jobs would be destroyed than green jobs created, …
Maybe John Kerry and President Obama and proponents of a cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions still have time to change message. “I don’t know what ‘cap and trade’ means. I don’t think the average American does,’ Kerry said recently. And he’s right. According to a new poll released from the Pew Research Center, “just 23% of Americans are aware that legislation often referred to as “cap and trade” concerns energy and environmental policy.” The other choices were banking reform, health care and unemployment. To be fair, …
Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf testified on October 14 before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to discuss the economic effects of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the effects – most notably the effects of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade legislation. Although Elmendorf felt that Waxman-Markey could greatly reduce the long-term risks of climate change, he acknowledged that “such legislation would also reduce economic activity through a number of different channels.” Note: Director Elmendorf’s expertise is budgets and economics, not climate science. Some of the channels mentioned …
The cap and trade bill introduced by Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) and passed in the is 1,427 pages and includes much more than a cap and trade system to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. We’ve been detailing these economically harmful provisions in our cap and trade calamities, but Kathleen Hartnett White at the Texas Public Policy Foundation provides a tremendous synopsis of the entire bill and asks many tough questions in her policy paper, A Federal Leviathan: The American Clean Energy and Security Act …
Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced the Senate companion to the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation today and while many pieces are missing, the framework in place spells bad news for every American energy consumer, especially low income ones. Like Waxman-Markey, the focus is a cap and trade system, but takes the House bill’s 17 percent reduction of 2005 emissions by 2020 to a more stringent 20 percent cut. Unlike the House version, which gives away emission allowances to special interests groups that lobbied hard to protect their …
President Obama’s speech to the UN on climate change last Tuesday points to an interesting and fairly recent shift in the left’s environmentalist philosophy: the definition of “pollution” has changed. Even ten years ago, concerns for pollution centered around problems of smog, litter, and toxins in the air and water. However, such concerns for largely visible pollution have been trumped recently by a concern for invisible pollution which Obama claims is the most dangerous of all: “greenhouse gas pollution” and “carbon pollution.” While most visitors to the state of Wyoming …
