By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
In his speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday, President Obama announced, “So today…I’m directing the Environmental Protection Agency to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants and complete new pollution standards for both new and existing power plants.” This is the first proposal in the President’s new climate initiative. The President also called for expanded efforts to use “clean energy” and for the US to lead the world in bold actions to “combat climate change.”
For the last decade, an obsession with global warming has dominated a wide array of US government policies. Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, skews federal automobile, transportation, energy, and infrastructure policies. Billions are spent in the ongoing effort to fight climate change.
Today, US policies toward the automobile industry are “driven” by Climatism. In his speech, the President praised new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards that rise to 54.5 miles per gallon by year 2025 and that are designed to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Plug-in electric vehicles are promoted and subsidized as a solution to global warming.
Transportation is shaped by climate policy. Ethanol mandates result in the consumption of 40 percent of the US corn crop in vehicle fuel. Biodiesel is promoted as a way to reduce emissions. Even high-speed rail is proposed as a solution to move citizens from airplanes to trains to reduce emissions.
US energy policy is dominated by Climatism. Earlier this week, Dr. Daniel Schrag, an advisor to the president on climate, stated that “a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.” Despite the fact that more than 30 percent of US electricity is produced from coal today, regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency will make it impossible to build a new coal-fired plant. At the same time, the Obama administration provides loans and subsidies that promote wind, solar, and other forms of renewable energy.
At Georgetown, the President addressed the proposed Keystone Pipeline, which has been delayed for almost five years, stating, “…the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determine whether this project will be allowed to go forward.” When operating, the Keystone Pipeline can replace 45 percent of Persian Gulf oil imports with oil from Canada and the northern United States. But our President considers emissions to be a larger issue than reducing OPEC oil imports.
US infrastructure policies are heavily impacted by global warming fears. Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is at the core of LEED building standards. Urban planning aims to reduce emissions by replacing private automobile transit with public transit. The current administration proposes tens of billions for a “smart electrical grid” to promote renewable energy and residential “smart meters” to promote energy efficiency, both pushed forward by the ideology of Climatism.
The bad news is that US citizens pay twice for the President’s war on climate. First, taxpayers subsidize green energy. The Production Tax Credit for wind energy will cost over $12 billion this year. Department of Energy loan guarantees to more than 20 bankrupt renewable energy companies, including Abound Solar, Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Solar Trust, and Solyndra have cost taxpayers billions. Taxpayers also pay for US military efforts to make biofuel out of algae at exorbitant prices.
Second, citizens pay higher costs for electricity, automobiles, and housing from green policies. The Department of Interior offshore wind program will deliver electricity to homeowners at three times the price of conventional power. Fuel economy mandates will raise the price of automobiles. Consumers must pay for smart meters that can curtail electricity usage.
The good news is that, despite fears, man-made emissions have very little effect on Earth’s climate. Water vapor, not carbon dioxide, is Earth’s dominant greenhouse gas. Emissions from human industry cause only about one percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect. And contrary to predictions by all 73 of the world’s top climate models, global temperatures have failed to rise over the last 15 years.
Someone needs to inform the president.
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
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The title says “bad news and good news” ….Where was the good news? I know you mentioned some good news, but all of it is old, rehashed, tired, wan & listless news. Obama has lost it. He’s appeasing the green lobby, with unattainable gobbledegook. Directing the EPA to become climate nazis. This the day I begin to mourn the decline of the USA in earnest. Even if the KXL is built, the US economy will be so wrecked that it won’t make a difference….and the envioro-klatch will have simultaneously gotten what they want, and created the seedbed for revolution, provided, of course, that the sheeple can notice it. Obama is pure evil, I’m afraid. An ignorant narcissist. The worst kind.
Maybe Obama needs to do this, pursue international Marxism for USA, to get a place or good job in this international political movement?
What the voters should do is to defund it as soon as possible?
Biofuel kills! How would You like to be the woman in Asia or Africa watching your child die because your meager income can no longer purchase subsistence food? Forty per cent of US corn farmland is devoted to biofuel; how many people,, poor and starving, in the “undeveloped” world would be saved if we stopped this nonsense. Is one of them the next Gandhi? Television commercials tell us to contribute to “Save the Children” and “Care”. If you really want to do something for those starving children; stop the nonsense, stop biofuel. Now.
Obama more and more shows his true leftist elitist colors, consistent with his alma mater and the teachings of professors like Elizabeth Warren. A partial answer is to insure that the 2014 election preserves the House and recaptures the Senate. Then things like the legislatively delegated EPA mandate scope can be revised to stop the nonsense if the body politic so votes. Obama obviously thinks actions such as he has just taken will help the Democrats recapture the House from Luddite Republicans who disagree with him on many things including climate change. So the election season has begun.
What Obama says seems to indicate that he is a totalitarian with a third-world mentality who hopes to strangle free market and individual freedom in America.
What Obama does seems to indicate that he works for sheiks.
Mutually exclusive possibilities? Not necessarily.
@Alexander Feht…
“Mutually exclusive possibilities?” Heck no!
Just taking a leaf out of Al Gore’s book.
Well, here in the PDREU state of UKoGB&NI, we have Building Regulations. These came about largely after the Great Fire of London, to prevent such a occurrence happening again. They recommended how a building should be built to prevent structural failure in service, & protect them against fire, etc. Well since the “Oil Crisis of the mid 70s, they have concentrated on the insulation of our homes, workplaces, & factories. Now, don’t get me wrong, like any engineer, I like more bang for my buck, & using less energy to light & heat my home means less buck is spent on doing so, so that more can be spent on enjoying life. Unfortunately like many rules, they are based on lab experiments, under lab conditions. They are not based on day to day usage, but upon “simulations” (may the lord forgive) of day to day reality in use! They are well meant & well intended. However, the cost of heating & lighting our homes has not reduced in real terms, the energy companies are share-holder profit driven, nothing wrong with that. But it also means that the energy companies have to produce returns for the shareholders, which means prices have to rise accordingly & proportionately to adjust for any reduction in usage of said energy! Couple that with taxation on energy, introduce some PDREU style renewable energy obligation bollocks, & the price will skyrocket, making people poorer, with less dosh to spend on enjoying themselves, which of course is the whole raison detre of the ecostalinist movement! It really is amazing that people swallow this crap, it’s a classic intellectual onanistic approach to life, I have, I want more, but I don’t want the plebs to rise out of the gutter I put them in, because I am an intellectual, probably a lawyer to boot,……oh, I forgot, that’s what President Obama is, isn’t he? So was Clinton, why is it that the Democrats seem to get caught with their zipper undone? Why is it that socialists seem to know what is good for everyone else? Just wait, he’ll introduce a Human Rights Bill before too long, just like we have enshrined in British Law now, where murderers, rapists, paedophiles, terrorists, & the like, get to have rights to a family life, to reside where they choose, oh & mustn’t be offended by people, they get upset, apparently. Their victims? They get Sweet FA. Another brilliant, egalitarian, left-leaning, well intentioned, badly thought through piece of crap legislation produced by lawyers, used & abused by lawyers to get their clients off the hook! End of rant, thank you.
“Alan the Brit says:
June 27, 2013 at 2:01 am”
Still, it was a very good rant. And in the, once, Great Britain, those public utilities were once all owned by the state and paid for by the taxpayer and should have remained so (I am not ignoring the fact that privatisation brought with it, as well as higher prices, improvements) IMO.
This the continuation of the policy of using the EPA to by-pass Congress. This is what Lisa Jackson said to a “Power Shift” ralley in 2009, described here,
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/lisa_p_jackson_epa_administrator_fulfilling_the_un_mission.html:
“The new Administrator also promised the (2009) crowd, that she would seek to overturn the Bush administration “midnight regulations”. The most critical of these to the environmental lobby was the memorandum by outgoing EPA chief Stephen Johnson, which stated that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant to be regulated and officials assessing applications by utilities to build new coal-fired power plants could not consider their greenhouse gas output when approving power plants.
Jackson also revealed the administration’s pre-determined policy on CO2, when she said that:
“Our first steps on taking office were to resume the CO2 endangerment finding and to seek fuel efficiency standards to reduce carbon pollution. The Law says Greenhouse Gases are pollution.”
Cultivation of biofuel is at best foolhardy or as stan stendera says it kills, and IMO it is stupid, criminally so. It puts a brake on America exploiting it’s own and Canada’s natural resources. Instead biofuels will be forced onto the market at (taxpayers’) subsidized prices, ensuring that food prices rise as more land that could be used for food production goes to biofuel. This will cause transport fuel prices to rise. If more ethanol goes into gasoline you’ll notice as your MPG drop and engine performance reduces. Thus you’ll be forced to buy more fuel.
From Anthony’s link above.
All this and the additional cost will trickle down to cripple some companies and cause even more unemployment. Companies will fail with this extra burden to carry. Biofuel production is not truly green either as the cost of the displaced plants were never put into the original cost/benefit analysis.
Meanwhile as outlined by Anthony above, Obama is promising to pump more money into his crony’s schemes of windmills and solar. We all know that billions have been wasted on so many taxpayer funded foolishness already – so how can it possibly be different this time?
The foreign oil companies will make even more (see http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/PET_MOVE_IMPCUS_A2_NUS_EPC0_IM0_MBBL_A.htm for crude oil import figures) as Obama penalizes coal – the America’s most abundant and cheapest fuel http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Energy.html and coal fired electricity generation becomes evermore expensive. Remember Obama has promised to bankrupt businesses that rely on coal (seehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCk8b2-Vs24). This is to whose advantage? Foreign oil and crony green energy hucksters.
So how will any of this help industry and jobs. Ever higher costs mean that US companies that mostly export will now be less competitive and their market share will reduce, foreign competition wins. US jobs will be lost. For the domestic market prices will rise, imports (not having to carry the extra burden) will be cheaper. Again jobs will be lost.
But for the big player there is a bigger question – why stay in the US when manufacturing abroad is so much cheaper, so much less hassle. Even more jobs will lost.
But that’s OK there’s the dole. Advocates of these green initiative have argued with me just this week saying that the poor are protected, they’ll get more handouts. People don’t want handouts they want productive, regular, employment.
Big governments everywhere LOVE putting people on the dole because it ensures you’re dependent. It also instills a culture of enfeeblement in the unemployed, a lack of confidence, a reduction in self-worth. It is insidious but this government wants you dependent not independent. There will be a change from ‘It my responsibility to do something’, to ‘it my right to get something from the government’. A cultural shift – a culture of dependency. The will to forge ahead, to make something new will erode and dissipate –
the land of the free will become the land of the dependent.
.
.
.
But only if you let it!
I see my comments (June 27, 2013 at 2:59 am) are still in
purdaher..purgatoryno, uhlimboer… awaiting moderation.In he state of ASSR (Australasian Soviet Socialist Republic) our esteemed leader, Joooliar, has been Jooliard. Now we have more esteemed leader KRudd. With Obummer being able to wield far more power in the US of A then I feel very very sorry for you poor 3rd world peasants.
/sarc (sort of)
Patrick, privatizing your public utilities or greening your isle, which is the real poison pill?
As long as one remembers Obama and the Left (collectively, including the politicians and the greens, and the Mann’s, et al) are driven by their agenda, not issues. Climate “Whatever” is merely one issue. As one pundit pointed out, their agenda is not to seek compromise over practical solutions to complex problems; rather, it is to achieve power to create a state where they control all of society according to the dictates they alone determine.
Climate is a nearly perfect issue similar to the “war on women” issue. “Climate”, like most of their issues, never goes away. It’s sort of like fighting a bowl of gelatin dessert with a spoon. Unless you empty the bowl, the gelatin is still there and will merely appear later, reconstituted, so to speak.
If one is to engage them, one should use their weapons against them. You need to firstsargue how their proposals are unjustice their; the impact on minorities; the impact of the third world; the misery they’ll create; the deaths they’ll cause; the starving women and children… And, of course, you can easily counter their “science” but remember, if you start with “the science”, you’ll lose even if you apparently win. For example, suppose one wins one of “the ugly” ones. The Left will merely note the point and either re-assert it later or create yet another “solution”. Oh, and they’ve advanced their agenda even then since they’ll state that the good that must be done, may have to be accomplished using another solution.
Patrick says:
June 27, 2013 at 2:17 am
“Alan the Brit says:
June 27, 2013 at 2:01 am”
And in the, once, Great Britain, those public utilities were once all owned by the state and paid for by the taxpayer and should have remained so (I am not ignoring the fact that privatisation brought with it, as well as higher prices, improvements) IMO.
=============================================
Patrick, privatisation, without a true free market does not lead to the best cheepest energy. (I Aam not advocating that there be no regulations on real polution) Things run by the state, are free to run at a loss.
Right now much of the world is operating in the red and practicing currency debasement policy. Governments around the world call this stimulus. It is not turning out well for them.
Profit, in a semi free market, ensures efficency, which is destroyed by all government run price control systems. Sooner or later, the inefficencies bankrupt the system.
Place a few thousand diversely educated and qualified people in a true free market ,with or without an existing infrastructure, and watch them rapidly find full employment in necessary and service related jobs. Create a system run by goverment decree and mandates, and watch millions of educated talented individuals, sit and do nothing while on the government dole, paralysed by a beauracratic nightmare of regulations and inefficincies,
Oh, thanks this info from your blog. This blog help me to know about global warming and climate
“Joe says:
June 27, 2013 at 3:38 am”
Greening as in wind and solar power farms etc? Then yes, greening is the poison pill.
the president is merely shilling for the following, so watch your retirement funds:
20 June: Ethical Investor: Ross Kendall: International investors will display climate change investments
The development of a Low Carbon Investment Registry to showcase investor action to combat global warming was a major outcome of the First Global Investors Forum on Climate Change held in Hong Kong…
The Registry will be open to institutional investors from around the world, with participants in the recent Global Investor Survey on Climate Change contributing the first entries. The GICOCC will publicly launch the Registry in early 2014…
Video keynote speakers at the forum, Ban Ki-moon, United Nations secretary general and former US vice-president Al Gore, both stressed the essential role of the financial services industry in combating climate change.
http://www.ethicalinvestor.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4743&Itemid=373
Steve Gorham is from the “Heartland” (anti-science) Institute and is author of a two books that mock science using his term ‘climatism.” Not sure why anyone would pay attention to what he writes. He should go back to discrediting the science show that smoking is not healthy.
Yes, I like the pied piper metaphor but personally think a cartoon of King Canute holding back the water (vapor) would be a more fitting allegory. : > )
“david says:
June 27, 2013 at 3:48 am”
I am no socialist with desires for “the state” to provide all things such as existed in the USSR for example. However, privatisation of a state asset, paid for by the taxpayer, sold back to the taxpayer (Usually through “bribes” in the form of “shares”. As a UK taxpayer at the time I recall getting my BT shares, but I don’t recall being asked to “sell” the GPO) and “investors”, leads to all the problems we see in the current system (Higher prices, no re-investment, borrowing to pay “investors” dividends etc etc). Plenty examples of this around.
BillD says:
Typical response by an adherent to the Climatist faith; an ad hominem smear.
What he says threatens your belief system because, deep down, you know he’s right, and that clash creates what’s known as cognitive dissonance.
What drives Climatism which I liken to the Crusades, is greed and lust for power, with the result being a systemic corruption, like a cancer, which spreads throughout the fields of science and into the sociopolitical sphere. Truth is the only cure, but it will take some time, I’m afraid, to rid ourselves of the greatest menace to human society since the evils of once-rampant Communism, and Nazism.
Unfortunately, majority Republican control of the Congress will not stop the statists in the Obama administration from pursuing their goal of wrecking the American economy by administrative fiat. It will take veto-proof majorities in both houses, majorities not necessarily of Republicans but of members of either party willing to rein in the rogue EPA and the rest of this unconstitutional regime.
/Mr Lynn
By the time the less educated voters figure out how much this will cost them, it will be way too late.
BillD – disparaging the messenger rather then the addressing the message. Hum