New study documents harmful effects of “cap-and-trade” and “endangerment” schemes
Guest post by Paul Driessen
Environmental justice demands that the United States address global warming, the gravest threat facing minority Americans, insist the EPA, Congressional Black Caucus and White House. Are they serious?
The alleged threat pales next to unwed teen motherhood, school dropouts, murder and other crime. But even assuming human carbon dioxide emissions will cause average global temperatures to rise a few degrees more than they have already since the Little Ice Age ended, it is absurd to suggest that any such warming would harm minorities more than policies imposed in the name of preventing climate change.
Human activities have not replaced the complex natural forces that drove climate change throughout Earth’s history. But even if manmade greenhouse gases do contribute to planetary warming, slashing US emissions to zero would bring no benefit, because steadily rising emissions from China, India, Brazil and other rapidly growing economies would almost instantly replace whatever gases we cease emitting.
Most important, fossil fuels power the economic engine that ensures justice and opportunity in America today. Policies that make energy less reliable and affordable reduce business revenues and profits, shrink investment and innovation, imperil economic recovery, and hobble job creation, civil rights, and the pursuit of happiness and the American dream.
Whether they take the form of cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, restrictions on drilling and coal mining, or EPA rules under its claim that carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare, anti-energy policies frustrate the natural desire of poor and minority Americans to improve their lives.
As to coping with higher temperatures, restrictive energy policies send electricity prices skyrocketing, making it harder for low-income households to afford air conditioning, and putting lives at risk. They send poor families back to pre-AC misery of bygone eras, like the 1896 heat wave that killed 1,300 people in New York City’s sweltering tenements. In wintertime, they make heating less affordable, again putting lives at risk.
I recently documented the connection between energy policies and civil rights. My “Justice through Affordable Energy for Wisconsin” report focuses on the Dairy State, where I grew up. However, its lessons apply to every state, especially the 26 that get 48-98% of their electricity from coal or have a strong manufacturing base. (The full report can be found at www.CFACT.org)
Energy is the foundation for America’s jobs, living standards, and everything we make, grow, eat, wear, transport and do. Climate change bills, energy taxes and renewable energy mandates deliberately restrict supplies of reliable, affordable hydrocarbon energy – sending shockwaves through the economy.
Fossil fuels generate three-fourths of Wisconsin’s electricity, keeping costs low and enabling its $45-billion-a-year manufacturing sector to compete in a tough global marketplace. Hydrocarbons sustain thousands of jobs in agriculture, tourism and other sectors of the state’s economy. They ensure that hospitals and clinics can offer high-tech diagnostic, surgical and treatment services.
They enable school districts, families, churches, shops and government offices to operate in the black. Soaring fuel and electricity prices would force schools to spend millions more for buses, heating and lighting. That would mean higher taxes – or reduced music, sports, language and special education programs. Poor and minority neighborhoods would be impacted worst.
Small and minority businesses are often young and undercapitalized. Increasing their operating costs, while decreasing the disposable income of their customers, puts them on the verge of bankruptcy.
“A single worker in our Rhinelander fabrication plant can do the work of ten who do not have access to cranes, welding machines, plasma burners and all other machinery that allows us to cut, bend and fabricate steel up to six inches thick, and make all kinds of heavy equipment,” says Oldenburg Group executive vice president Tim Nerenz. But the machinery and facilities are energy-intensive. If energy costs rise, the company would have to cut wages and benefits or lay off workers, as contract prices are fixed and overseas competition is fierce.
Indoor pools and other facilities make tourism a year-round industry, sustaining local economies during frigid Wisconsin winters, making resorts like the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells popular jumping-off points for cross country skiing, snowmobiling and dining. Rising energy costs would reduce family vacations, hammer bottom lines, force layoffs, and cause foreclosures throughout these communities.
In every case, it is blue-collar workers, low and moderate income families, minorities and the elderly that are affected most severely.
Nor are these impacts likely to be offset by “green” jobs. As Spain, Germany and other countries have discovered, wind and solar power require constant infusions of money from increasingly strapped taxpayers and energy consumers. When the economy sours, the subsidies disappear, and so do the jobs.
Wind and solar electricity is expensive, intermittent and unreliable – necessitating expensive gas-powered backup generators, and further damaging family and business budgets. Plus, most of the jobs will be in China and India, where low energy and labor costs, and access to rare earths and other raw materials that America refuses to mine, supply wind turbine and solar panel factories that easily under-price US firms.
The entire cap-tax-and-trade, renewable energy and green-jobs edifice is a house of cards, propped up by claims that humans are affecting the Earth’s climate. As EPA and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson repeatedly assert, “Climate change is already happening, and human activity is a contributor.”
However, that is not the issue. The issue is whether our use of fossil fuels is now the dominant factor in global warming and cooling, and whether future manmade climate change will be catastrophic. There is no replicable or credible evidence to support that proposition.
Headline-grabbing disaster scenarios forecast for 50 or 100 years in the future are the product of speculation, assumptions, unreliable computer models, and articles by climate activists falsely presented as peer-reviewed scientific papers in IPCC reports, news stories and political speeches. As my Wisconsin study explains, they are not supported by actual data and observations regarding historic and current global temperatures, ice caps, glaciers, sea levels, rainforests or cyclical weather patterns.
Energy taxes and subsidies, renewable energy mandates, soaring prices for everything we need – and severe impacts on families, businesses, jobs, opportunities, living standards and basic civil rights – might be justified if we did indeed face a manmade climate disaster. But even then we should carefully examine the costs and benefits of any proposed actions.
We should determine whether slashing fossil fuel use will stabilize our planet’s ever-turbulent climate, and whether our limited resources might be better spent on adapting to future changes, natural and manmade, just as our ancestors did.
If global warming science is inaccurate, dishonest, slanted or fraudulent, there is even less justification.
We cannot have justice without opportunity, or opportunity without energy. We cannot have justice by sharing scarcity, poverty and skyrocketing energy prices more equally – especially on the basis of erroneous, speculative or manipulated climate science.
We must therefore be forever vigilant, to ensure that Congress does not slip cap-tax-and-trade proposals through during a post-election lame-duck session – and EPA does not shackle our economy and civil rights progress with its job-killing “endangerment” rules.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
Mike says:
July 31, 2010 at 5:43 pm
I do not agree with Hansen.
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I didn’t think you did Mike. Only a crazy person would.
Don’t show that to the president or the democrats.
David A. Evans says:
July 31, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Good One!!!
A catch 22 has occurred when industry wants government to pay for R and D and government want industry to pay for it.
This ends up having any good technology sitting on the sidelines instead of being worked on to generate jobs and new products.
EthicallyCivil says:
July 31, 2010 at 6:59 pm
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/energy/25545/
“We don’t even need Cap and Trade to give green energy just remove fossil fuel subsidies. Market distortions and resource overuse (e.g. “tragedy of the commons”) are bad things. ”
Unfortunately this article promotes the myth of subsidies for fossil fuels. If you read the original source you will find that the claimed ” subsidy” relates to China subsidizing the CONSUMERS of oil when the oil price was high to enable China’s industry to continue to compete with the rest of the world when the base price of oil was very high high. Note that the so called subsidy went to CONSUMERS not the oil business.
Furthermore the original article points out that these so called subsidies have ended when the oil prices dropped last year, but this fact is omitted in the link.
This is somewhat like claiming the subsidies given directly to “poor” North east folks who heat their homes (consumers) as subsidies to the oil companies.
These folks will lie about anything to mislead the public.
The distortions about subsidies to fossil fuels is a myth to justify the huge subsidies to the “renewable”, scarse, and costly alternative fuels.
“The wholesale, utopian, social engineer determined to impose his long-term policies no matter what the immediate discontents, is by his cloth precluded from learning from his mistakes. Nor can he take account of the insight that there will always be unintended consequences, whether good, bad, or mixed.” ANTONY FLEW, The Politics of Procrustes, 1981.
Allegedly violent crime is on the drop. Based on my own perception of my own area, I’d say that’s true. I’ve even noticed that some people are letting their kids play somewhat unattended, which was getting to be unheard-of by the time I was a teen in the early 90s.
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704113504575264432463469618.html
Driessen’s point is that all the economic strictures placed on society from AGW alarmist policies hurt poor people first. He’s absolutely correct. Poor people do not profit from Exxon-style fiat carbon trading, either. The Liberal power elite talk up their alleged concern for the poor, but it’s a Big Lie. Their policies do serious harm to the most vulnerable in this country and around the world.
Reminds me of the old joke about the New York Times headline announcing an impending doomsday disaster:
World to be destroyed by giant Asteroid – Poor and Minorities Hardest Hit
Climate proposals threaten pursuit of happiness and justice
Not to mention truth, justice, and the American way.
From the essay:
“Wind and solar electricity is expensive, intermittent and unreliable …”
A few days ago I saved a reference to a page explaining why wind power is not very effective. It has to do with velocity but not the fact that wind turbans can’t handle strong winds. It that sense it is doubly silly.
Have a look:
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2469
Understanding E = mc2
By William Tucker
Posted on Oct. 21, 2009
Duncan says:
July 31, 2010 at 5:58 pm
“Unwed teen mothers and high school dropouts are a threat to minorities in America?
A threat?”
I believe he was referring to their social and financial well-being. Quality of life and all that stuff.
Paul Driessen is right on the money on this one. Even if all the dark fantasies of the warmistas are correct, the cure would still be worse than the disease.
There are political elements at work in the inner cities of the USA that need and require a subject poverty stricken and poor mass of people to be used as a power base. An unhappy mass of people injected with a sense of jealousy and bitterness and handed a series of excuses as to why they are poverty stricken and unhappy and unemployed is a prime political instrument for those with enough cynical opportunism to use it for their own ambitions.
A sharp operator within this community can rabble rouse and agitate and blame others while ensuring his power base remains where they are in the greater order of things. We have seen the rise of the community organiser rabble rouser to the highest political heights, they have nothing of substance to offer but rely on the base instincts of the ignorant baying jealous mob and they use the substance of the mob to achieve their ambitions.
The cynical exploitation of poverty and under achievement by a few sharp operators has given the USA some of its most pressing problems.
I/my family/friends/business associates did no such thing; at one time, however, those ‘sources’ were near my Mom’s and Dad’s (respective) parents neighborhoods though, and through time, things changed (migration of families, groups … and yes, an exodus perhaps, see: Detroit, late sixties) …
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I’ve been a fan of Paul Driessen for several years. One does not need “quantitative analysis” of his assertions, they are abundantly obvious. And one should NEVER refer to the CBO (name ONE thing they have ever scored accurately) or Paul Krugman as references.
The multi-millionaires of our ruling class will not be even slightly disadvantaged if energy costs were to increase 5-fold. But suppose you had a FT job paying $20/hr and you had to travel 10 miles from your home to your place of work. Assume you only drive your car which gets 30 mpg 125 miles a week. If gasoline prices were to increase to $10 (from today’s prices of about $3/gal), you would spend an additional $1,500 per year for fuel. A tripling of gas and electricity rates could cost you an additional $2,400/yr if your current utility costs are about $100/month. So…you’re fortunate enough to have a job and you’re grossing $41,600/yr. You probably have a net income of under $28,000/yr after taxes. Tripling the cost of gasoline, gas and electricity in the name of “saving the planet” from catastrophic climate which MIGHT happen long after you’re dead (and LONG before Social Security becomes insolvent) will siphon off an additional 14% of your net income.
I earn a decent living and “skyrocketing” energy costs will hurt, but they probably won’t cripple me. However, I’m in the top 20% of all wage earners (you would be surprised to know how little you have to earn to make it into this august club of taxpayers). It would hurt a LOT more for anyone making less than I do. Obama’s plan is to tax carbon and redistribute a portion of this confiscated wealth to offset increased energy costs for “the poor”. Of course, everybody in the top 80% of wage earners gets screwed, but the folks who REALLY get screwed are those in the top 21-79% of wage earners (i.e. “the middle class” and the working poor). This is little more than socialism sold under the guise of “saving the planet”. Saving the planet from what? CO2? An essential trace gas?
Monckton has demonstrated that if we assume the IPCC is absolutely correct and we completely shut down all economies of the world for 30 years we MIGHT be able to prevent about 1 degree of global warming due to CO2. In 30 years those of us left would be living in caves and average life expectancy would drop precipitously. Is this human progress?
What would lift Africa out of poverty faster, climate reparations from the West or the availability of abundant, affordable electricity? Electricity is the lifeblood of modern society and currently we have no viable alternatives to the burning of hydrocarbons.
My grandparents (who voted for FDR) never concerned themselves with the fact that Social Security would inevitably become insolvent (but only before it burdened their grandchildren with unsustainable debt). They left that for us to figure out and suffer through. Personally I think CO2/AGW is a failed hypothesis and an absolute fraud. Even if it is not we can easily wait 30-50 years, collect careful empirical data and see what happens. If we destroy the progress of mankind and the global economy now we will leave our children with a world far worse off than one that’s a few degrees warmer.
Yawn …
(Not even going to expend the energy and ask “cite please?” on that one)
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ7LcplfkgY&hl=en_US&fs=1]
All of the coincidental tragedies you feel are happening for a reason. Small doses of Socialism (Progress) that in effect have regressive tendencies. The only people who benefit are the ones with no apparent ties to America. Just look at Canada, waking up from 30 years of Lieberal Trudeaupia Hell. At least you have a great founding to fall back on. Our crappy Charter was written for Canada to be owned by the world.
Anyone else clock watching 2012 for the obvious reason?
I have been watching this site for a long time and just now feel the need to speak. I took the warmth and comfort of my home into my own hands and got rid of the oil tank and replaced with a far better fuel: A BIG BLACK PILE OF COAL. Now I can keep my home in northern Pennsylvania at 78 degrees fahrenheit for 45 cents a day. It is mined by Americans in my home state not 50 miles from my house. My heating dollars are feeding families here at home. Now on Earth Day I can stoke up both stoves open the windows and laugh.
Jim,
Why don’t you just google it?
Here, did it for you… WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-2749
SEC. 133. AUTHORITY TO PROHIBIT OR RESTRICT THE MOVEMENT OF FOOD.
(a) Prohibited Act- Section 301 (21 U.S.C. 331), as amended by sections 110 and 111, is amended by adding at the end by adding the following:
‘(ww) The violation of a prohibition or restriction under section 304(i).’.
(b) In General- Section 304 (21 U.S.C. 334) is amended by adding at the end the following:
‘(i) Authority to Prohibit or Restrict the Movement of Food Within a State or Portion of a State-
‘(1) AUTHORITY TO PROHIBIT OR RESTRICT THE MOVEMENT OF FOOD-
‘(A) IN GENERAL-
‘(i) After consultation with the Governor or other appropriate official of an affected State, if the Secretary determines that there is credible evidence that an article of food presents an imminent threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals, the Secretary may prohibit or restrict the movement of an article of food within a State or portion of a State for which the Secretary has credible evidence that such food is located within, or originated from, such State or portion thereof.
‘(ii) In carrying out clause (i), the Secretary may prohibit or restrict the movement within a State or portion of a State of any article of food or means of conveyance of such article of food, if the Secretary determines that the prohibition or restriction is a necessary protection from an imminent threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.
‘(2) NOTIFICATION PROCEDURES- Subject to paragraph (3), before any action is taken in a State under this subsection, the Secretary shall–
‘(A) notify the Governor or other appropriate official of the State affected by the proposed action;
‘(B) issue a public announcement of the proposed action; and
‘(C) publish in the Federal Register–
‘(i) the findings of the Secretary that support the proposed action;
‘(ii) a statement of the reasons for the proposed action; and
‘(iii) a description of the proposed action, including–
‘(I) the area affected; and
‘(II) an estimate of the anticipated duration of the action.
‘(3) NOTICE AFTER ACTION- If it is not practicable to publish in the Federal Register the information required under paragraph (2)(C) before taking action under paragraph (1), the Secretary shall publish the information as soon as practicable, but not later than 10 business days, after commencement of the action.
‘(4) APPLICATION OF LEAST DRASTIC ACTION- No action shall be taken under paragraph (1) unless, in the opinion of the Secretary, there is no less drastic action that is feasible and that would be adequate to prevent the imminent threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.
‘(5) NONDELEGATION- An action under paragraph (1) may only be ordered by the Secretary or an official designated by the Secretary. An official may not be so designated unless the official is the Commissioner of Food and Drugs or the Principal Deputy Commissioner.
‘(6) DURATION- Fourteen days after the initiation of an action under paragraph (1), and each 14 days thereafter, if the Secretary determines that it is necessary to continue the action, the Secretary shall–
‘(A) notify the Governor or other appropriate official of the State affected of the continuation of the action;
‘(B) issue a public announcement of the continuation of the action; and
‘(C) publish in the Federal Register the findings of the Secretary that support the continuation of the action, including an estimate of the anticipated duration of the action.
‘(7) RULEMAKING- The Secretary shall, consistent with national security interests and as appropriate for known hazards, establish by regulation standards for conducting actions under paragraph (1), including, as appropriate, sanitation standards and procedures to restore any affected equipment or means of conveyance to its status prior to an action under paragraph (1).’.
Good points raised.
Talk about chickens coming home to roost. After so many decades of folks looking to the government to take care of them and their fantasy needs and desires posing as rights, we’re increasingly paying the price in reduced rights and freedom of action.
So law after law is passed telling us all what we can do, when we can do it, and how we can do it, assuming we are allowed to do it. And who gets to input their wishes to these self annointed protectors and guardians? The small business down on Main Street or large corporations with legions of experts and lobbyists “advising” Congressional critters on how to write the laws and how the myriad regulatory agencies should word the many regulations they draft to manage enforcement of the many laws.
Dorothy Parker nailed it — “The power to do things for you is the power to do things to you.”
Or as Ayn Rand once wrote, “Who will protect us from our protectors?”
This might be a bit off the wall, but has anyone considered the unintended consequences of all the so called “green” energy projects? For example, a windmill works by essentially capturing the energy of the atmosphere as it moves past the blades and spins the generator. Well doesn’t this rob the atmosphere of energy, and thereby cause a change in the available energy to create weather, such as a faster breeze, or perhaps a potential storm front? Surely one windmill has little effect on the afternoon breeze, but thousands of them lined up could cause a disturbance in the fragile ecosystem much as a butterfly flapping it’s wings created Katrina.
Same thing with the equipment that captures energy from the tides, or solar cell arrays robbing the Earth of it’s fair share of solar energy. Just the sort of things that keep me awake late at night…..
Max Hugoson says:
July 31, 2010 at 7:01 pm
I’d be wary of associations with CORE: From Wiki – – –
Thanks so much for the warning – NOT.
Roy Innis is top shelf. An outspoken, black American, civil rights pioneer that refused to drink the red koolaid and broke free of the Democratic Socialist party that still enslaves a majority of his/my people. He is cursed and hated by liberals and treated as if he is a fugitive slave, which is something Democrats specialized in prior to the Civil War.
I wonder how a (white? liberal?) person like yourself so quickly pulls Wiki propaganda talking points to attempt to smear this article? Do they have an app for that?
So Max, your warning has been duly noted and, well, disregarded. Thanks for playing though.
The last thing liberals want is Americans to pursue wealth, happiness, or freedom. That is reserved for the elite. Elite often means glib morons that spout nonsense. Nonsense that intrigues fools with the promise of easy wealth that others have earned and knowledge that is fake but seems trendy.
The real threat to all poor people in the USA would be in the form of higher energy bills for families living in cities that hit below freezing in winter, higher food costs, higher transportation costs etc. How does this help? If the EPA achieves its aims then America will see the “law of unintended consequences” at work. Consider my law that says “cheap energy reduces poverty.” Ask the millions of Africans and Indians who do not have access to electricity and ask them how their children read at night? Candles and toxic pumped fuel lamps.
/end rant
There most certainly is. But that’s not a discussion for this blog.
“they have nothing of substance to offer but rely on the base instincts of the ignorant baying jealous mob and they use the substance of the mob to achieve their ambitions.”
This quote, from an above post, applies to uninformed commentary on all sides.
Before physics had calculus, it resembled this comment section and the blog post that incited this whole pile of commentary.
Social science, which is what’s going on here, in the same way chemistry is being done by peeing in the pool, doesn’t have science, so every person with a keyboard and an internet connection is now an expert.
Bad information will drive out the good information, and like radio, TV and writing, the good will succumb to the ego.