Free Republic

The Weather: Regulations finalized by the California Air Resources Board establish the nation's first state-run cap-and-trade regime. Despite Solyndra, the state will gather solar panels while it may. The 262 pages of regulations implementing California's 2006 global warming legislation, Assembly Bill 32, approved by CARB last Thursday, will probably reduce employment more than it reduces emissions. The only thing it will cap is economic growth by bleeding a patient that is already hemorrhaging red ink. Signed into law in 2006 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the cap-and-trade regulations are intended to force California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels...

California Air Resources Board due to vote on the adoption of first US mandatory cap-and-trade emissions scheme... the California Air Resources Board was due to vote on Thursday afternoon on the adoption of an emissions trading scheme. "This is the final yes: we are going to move forward with California," said Gary Gero, president of the Climate Action Reserve, a voluntary registry. The decision was seen to be significant because California accounts for about 13% of the world economy, and the state has a history of being the leader on environmental initiatives. "California can drive national action," Gero said. The...

California's plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions and put a price on carbon is set to take effect without delay on Jan. 1 after the Air Resources Board today voted to make final adjustments in the regulation. The board first approved the cap and trade program last December, but in an unusual move the board took up the final pieces of the nation's only comprehensive limit on greenhouse gases. It is the last major regulation the board considered to meet the requirements of AB32, California's greenhouse gas reduction law.

California formally adopted the nation's most comprehensive so-called "cap-and-trade" system Thursday, an experiment by the world's eighth-largest economy that is designed to provide financial incentives for polluters to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. State officials said they hoped other states and Washington, D.C., would follow suit, calling the plan a "capstone" among the suite of tools California can use to reduce the pollution linked to climate change and cut dependence on foreign oil.

California plan(s) to launch their long-promised cap and trade program to fight global warming starting tomorrow (Oct. 20, 2011). (Not coincidentally) Tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal will include these two headlines that are up already online: Japan Reconsiders Plan to Cut Carbon Emissions And, EU Weighs Pullback on Cutting Emissions

John Holdren? Population-control-John Holdren? Mitt, you have a problem. Investor’s Business Daily: The GOP front-runner for 2012 sought advice on global warming and carbon emissions from the president’s current science czar — an advocate of de-developing America and population control. Politics is said to make strange bedfellows, but no coupling in our view is more bizarre than when John Holdren, now President Obama’s assistant for science and technology, once advised GOP presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney on environmental policy. Holdren’s bizarre views are best suited for an adviser to someone like, say, Pol Pot. He views humanity...

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, in danger of losing his 2012 Republican primary front-runner status, Wednesday tweaked his position on global climate change, saying he does not know if humans are the primary cause. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, also said he would not place restrictions on carbon emissions if elected and did not favor spending heavily on climate solutions. He was asked about global warming at a town hall meeting in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and said he believed the world is getting hotter and humans contribute in some way to the change. "Do I think the world's getting hotter? Yeah,...

A large group of 2008 Barack Obama supporters are now banking on Mitt Romney for the upcoming presidential election. That’s according to a report from Fox News that says a shift in Wall Street support could mean as much as a $150,000 boost for Romney’s campaign. “I think Romney could at least split Wall Street with Obama, which is something McCain really didn’t do,” said Charlie Gasparino, a reporter for Fox Business News. None of the expected bank presidents showed up to a recent fundraiser for President Obama, he added.

Economist Greg Mankiw does so here and here. the virtue of market-based policies to deal with externalities is that they are more efficient than command-and-control regulations. In the case of carbon emissions and global climate change, putting a price on carbon is supposed to be a better substitute for government micromanagement. Apparently, that lesson is lost on the writers of the bill now making its way through Congress. Although the bill changes incentives by putting a price on carbon, it also offers a large dose of command-and-control regulation. Essentially, the sponsors don't seem to believe that getting incentives right is...

WATCHING today’s Republicans being led around by an extremist Tea_Party faction, with no adult supervision, I find my mind drifting back to the late 1980s when I was assigned to cover the administration of George H.W. Bush, who I believe is one of our most underrated presidents. I have long admired the elder Bush for the deftness with which he dealt with the collapse of the Soviet empire. But, in later years, I came to admire him even more for the fact that he believed that math and science were not matters of opinion — a view increasingly rare in...

A year after President Barack Obama signed into law the most extensive financial regulations since the Great Depression, Wall Street so far is putting its political money elsewhere. Employees of Goldman Sachs Group gave Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney $238,250 in the last three months, more than workers at any other company, according to a computer-assisted analysis of Federal Election Commission data. Obama took in $10,113. Four years ago, employees of New York-based Goldman gave $994,795 to Obama and $234,275 to Romney, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group. For both candidates, it was more than...

Green Corruption: The Environmental Protection Agency is giving funds to charitable organizations to attack GOP members of Congress. Did you know telling the truth about climate change causes childhood asthma? We have heard the litany of horrors that climate change is said to bring about — retreating glaciers, rising sea levels, drought and flooding, disease and famine. Now we are told that fighting the EPA's power grab to regulate greenhouse gases will lead to an increase in childhood asthma. The American Lung Association, considered one of America's most credible and worthy charities, has placed four billboards in Michigan's 6th Congressional...

en. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday that he's open to reviewing the use of nuclear power in the United States. Speaking on radio station 550 KFYI, McCain said that although he's not ready to "abandon" nuclear power, he's open to reviewing how and where it's used in the United States, once the nuclear reactor crisis in Japan is resolved. "I'm not prepared by the way to say that we should abandon nuclear power because I think it's a major contributor [to] our energy needs but I am prepared, once this is over, to make an evaluation as to whether our...

Key senators said Tuesday they hope rising gasoline prices will serve as the impetus to reincarnate a bipartisan “gang” of lawmakers who worked in 2008 to develop a compromise energy bill. The lawmakers hope to revive a now-disbanded group of senators who developed an energy plan in 2008 – when gas prices were at an all-time high – that would have expanded offshore drilling and provided incentives for alternative vehicles, among other things. (snip) Klobuchar said she has reached out to Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), two of the founding members of the group, about whether they...

Obama said in 2007: [VIDEO AT SITE] or HERE"It is important for us to send some price signals to change behavior" "It's not going to be painless" He said one of the goals of his Cap and Trade was to ensure no one could build a coal powered plant, or if they did, it would bankrupt them. Now, we're all going bankrupt on rising gas prices: Gasoline prices are up again by double digits in all areas around the country compared to the week before. The national gasoline average is $.77 above the price this time last year. 77...

Ban Ki-moon, the normally buttoned-up Secretary General of the United Nations, swept into Los Angeles during Oscar week playing the role of Hollywood pitchman. His message: Make global warming a Hot issue. "I need your support," he told entertainment industry insiders during a daylong forum Tuesday that focused on recent heat waves, floods, fires and drought, which scientists link to human-induced climate change. ....about 400 writers, directors, producers, agents and network executives attended the outreach events. ....To coordinate with Hollywood, the U.N. has set up an office, the "Creative Community Outreach Initiative" in partnership with the United Nations Foundation, funded...

RGGI Is The Prototype For More Regional Cap & Tax Entities Soon RGGI will expand to every state and stick you with astronomical energy prices. RGGI is the model for two new stealth cap & tax entities. The Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord would bring the tax scheme to Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas. The Western Climate Initiative will force California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Montana to start paying through the nose for energy. Both programs are set to start in 2012. The corruptocrats in Washington are completely responsible for this gigantic waste of tax...

Thanks to Ronald Reagan’s legacy and a legal miscalculation by leftist environmentalists, this week a California judge stopped the implementation of California’s Cap and Trade law: better known as Cap and Tax. This is the same type of carbon trading that Al Gore has hawked for years, but failed to get through the most radical Democrat Congress in generations. That’s how bad it was. Of course, that didn’t stop whacked out California from passing a Draconian version of the same job killing scheme.

House GOP Readies Ban on EPA Greenhouse Gas RegulationsPublished February 02, 2011 Associated Press WASHINGTON – In a sharp challenge to the Obama administration, House Republicans intend to unveil legislation Wednesday to ban the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and expect to advance the bill quickly, officials disclosed Tuesday night. The officials said the bill would nullify all of the steps the EPA has taken to date on the issue, including a threshold finding that greenhouse gases constitute a danger to the public health and welfare. In addition, it seeks to strip the...

Last night’s State of the Union Address shows that President Obama learned only one lesson from the failure that was Copenhagen, the farce that was Cancun, the death of cap-and-trade, and the “slaughter” of House Democrats who voted for Waxman-Markey. Namely, dissemble, repackage Kyotoism in new verbiage, and press on with an agenda that voters rejected in November. Anyone paying attention to Obama EPA’s campaign to ‘legislate’ climate policy through the regulatory backdoor would expect as much. But — true confession — I was surprised when Obama proposed to restructure the U.S. electric power sector along the lines contemplated by H.R. 2454, the American Clean...

Energy: Keeping a campaign vow to bankrupt the industry, the administration revokes the permit for an approved, working coal mine in West Virginia. Guess those electric cars will have to get their energy elsewhere. We and others have warned that in the wake of November's "shellacking," the Obama administration would attempt to implement its agenda through regulations and rule making. As West Virginia's coal industry has found, it matters not even if you follow the rules. In pursuit of this agenda, the rules can be changed on the fly. The Environmental Protection Agency has revoked the coal mining permit for...

In a petition filed Tuesday with the state Supreme Court, New Energy Economy Inc. alleged that the administration circumvented the state's rule-making process and encroached on the powers of the Legislature and the state Court of Appeals. The petition filed by the New Mexico Environmental Law Center asks the state's highest court to order the new regulation reinstated and order Martinez to stop interfering with the rule-making process. Martinez's office did not respond to a request for comment on the petition. Immediately after she took office on Jan. 1, the Republican governor ordered a 90-day hold on proposed or pending...

Gov. Susana Martinez on Tuesday took aim at the controversial Environmental Improvement Board, announcing that she was removing all members over concerns about the board's approval in recent months of what she considers "anti-business" policies. The board — made up of members appointed by former Gov. Bill Richardson — was at the center of a heated debate last year over whether New Mexico should regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. The board ultimately decided to approve two proposals — one from an environmental group that aimed to limit the emissions of the state's largest polluters and another from the state Environment Department that...

“I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem -and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?” Dwight D. Eisenhower. Driessen and Soon‘s article in New Year’s day CanadaFreePress (CFP) identifies the growing conflict as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tries to take control of energy in Texas. EPA is manipulating a completely unnecessary and scientifically unjustified control of energy and must be stopped. Fortunately, the Texas case is currently stayed by a court order, but EPA history is to do anything to achieve their goal.

(snip) Dig long enough and just about every Republican has a green skeleton in their closet. Many of them have their last presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, a longtime cap-and-trade enthusiast, to thank for it. (snip) "I support a reasonable cap-and-trade system," [Pawlenty] said. "I think it'd be good for the federal government to take that up rather than have states take it up as clusters of regions." Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, appealed to a New Hampshire audience in October 2007 on moral grounds by saying he backed a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gases and faulted the...

Environment: Ignoring both Congress and the voters, the Environmental Protection Agency starts the new year governing by decree with job-killing regulations. Take a deep breath, but if you exhale you're a polluter. Cap-and-trade is dead, long live cap-and-trade in the form of regulations promulgated in the coming year by what George Orwell might call the Ministry of Environment. It claims that the Clean Air Act and a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 let the EPA regulate carbon dioxide as a planet-warming pollutant. We recently commented on the EPA's recent commandeering of the permitting process from Texas, with which it is...

With Republicans controlling the House and ramping up oversight and investigations of the Obama administration, focus at least initially in the next Congress will be on the Senate to lay a potential pathway for legislative compromise on energy and environmental policy. “The Senate will set the energy agenda especially at the beginning,” said Paul Bledsoe, a senior adviser with the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Senate Democratic aide. (snip) Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) Sen....

AK Steel announced Tuesday it plans to close its Ashland, Ky., coke plant permanently in 2011, a decision that will affect its 263 employees. Procedures for the closure will begin immediately and be completed early in the second quarter of 2011, according to a press release from the company. ------------------------------------------------------ Ray Finley, 54, of South Point, has been a contracted employee at the plant for the past three years. Finley blamed the Obama Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency for the closure. “It’s sad that the federal government is going to let the American people starve,” while jobs go to...

And so it begins, and on the most fertile red-state territory in the nation. Texas, which got four more seats in the House through the 2010 Census reapportionment, has had its air-quality rules superceded by the EPA as part of its aggressive new action on carbon emissions. Governor Rick Perry promises a fight: The federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday effectively declared Texas unfit to regulate its owngreenhouse gas emissions and took over carbon dioxide permitting of any new or expanding industrial facilities starting Jan. 2.The EPA also set up a framework for regulating greenhouse gas emissions in seven other...

Complete title: EPA To Require Power Plants and Refineries To Use Pollution-Reduction Technologies To Trim Greenhouse Gas Emissions (CNSNews.com) -- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, it will decide which pollution-reduction technologies work best for power plants and refineries and will then set regulations over the next two years that require those industries to implement similar pollution-reduction technologies.However, the EPA acknowledged that it does not yet know how much greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced through its new regulatory plan. Also, the American Petroleum Institute criticized the EPA's action...

California often leads the nation, especially in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The act of leading is one thing, however. Leadership's outcome is another matter entirely. On Friday, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the bureaucracy charged with implementing AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, adopted a cap-and-trade scheme to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions by about 15% by 2020. CARB's regulations go into effect in 2012. The unelected officials at CARB intend to reorder California's use of energy. In so doing they blandly declaim that their rules will create jobs while admitting to higher energy costs...

We now know how cap-and-trade will be rebranded for the start of the 112th Congress - and we also know the Republican weak spot in the Senate. As reported today by Energy & Environment News, [A] proposal for a clean energy standard, which has been batted around for years and introduced most recently by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), has created a buzz on and off Capitol Hill in recent weeks. What is a "clean energy standard" (CES)? Graham's CES is essentially a national renewable electricity standard (RES), where nuclear power and so-called "clean coal" qualify to meet the RES. Reportedly,...

Is a 2011 Senate coalition on energy starting to take shape? Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) said he called Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) late last week after learning that the South Carolina Republican wants to be a player again on energy in the next Congress. The freshman Begich says he, too, wants to be in the thick of talks aimed at crafting a long-term U.S. energy policy – a politically tricky and elusive task. “That is what I am going to be pushing hard for,” Begich said in the Capitol Monday. “I will continue reach over the aisle with other Republicans...

Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions. In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of world’s most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough. Unless emissions are reduced dramatically in the next ten years the world is set to see temperatures rise by more than 4C (7.2F) by as early as the 2060s, causing floods, droughts...

Just three years ago, George H. Stein, a managing director at New York-based recruiter Commodity Talent, was seeing a brisk volume in calls from Wall Streeters looking to make a career switch. While oil traders were getting pilloried on Capitol Hill, a new line of work promised to deliver wealth and social benefits: buying and selling carbon permits in the emerging market designed to control global warming pollution. "There was such a great deal of interest in carbon trading," recalls Stein.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will name Warren Buffet as one of fifteen winners of the 2010 Medal of Freedom, a White House official said on Wednesday. Buffet, one of the world's most successful investors who has donated a vast chunk of his multibillion dollar fortune to charity, will receive the medal at a White House ceremony early next year. .. Buffet is one of Obama's closest defenders in the business community..

Rove is right. He predicted how O'Donnell would flop and hinted that it could cost the GPO additional senate seats.... In my personal opinion, he was thinking about Alaska, Nevada, Colorado, Washington, etc. All of these should have been captured by the tea party. Personally, I think O'Donnell cost real conservatives senate seats. Say what you will... but Rove was right. Don't hate the messenger.

Are market solutions, long touted as having a key role in combating global warming, on the way out? Or is news last week of the upcoming closure of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) a sign that "cap and trade" is an idea whose time has passed? At issue is the question of how to encourage companies to reduce carbon emissions, without heavy-handed micro-management from above. The problem lies in the fact that companies at present incur very little penalty, beyond the raw cost of the fuel itself, for profligate use of energy (and therefore, excessive output of CO2). Governments can...

The New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board (EIB) adopted by a vote of four to three the most comprehensive greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution reduction regulations in the nation. The rules, proposed by the New Mexico Environment Department, will reduce global warming pollutants through a regional cap on GHG emissions. “Addressing climate change immediately is the right thing to do—I am pleased that the EIB adopted the program I have worked so hard to develop,” Governor Bill Richardson said. “I call on the federal government to build on New Mexico’s program and the WCI to implement a national cap-and-trade system.” “I applaud...

There is a revolution coming that is likely to burst the green global warming bubble: the temperature trend used by the IPCC (the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) to support their conclusion about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is likely to turn out to be fake. The situation will become clear once Virginia's attorney general, Kenneth Cuccinelli, obtains information now buried in e-mails at the University of Virginia. Or Hearings on Climategate by the U.S. Congress may uncover the "smoking gun" that demonstrates that the warming trend used by the IPCC does not really exist. It has become increasingly clear...

It's high time we recognize that carbon dioxide has been treated unfairly. Not only have the good deeds of that wonderful molecule so essential to rain forests, begonias and plants that feed God's creatures been ignored, it has even come to be demonized as an endangering pollutant and climate-ravaging menace. What real evidence has been offered up to support these defamatory charges? Absolutely none. Take the EPA's CO-2 endangerment finding, for example. Shrouded under the ever- expanding blanket of the Clean Air Act, it is being applied to validate an unprecedented regulatory takeover of carbon-emitting energy and construction industry permitting....

Sometimes being first to do something historic is commendable. Other times, it's foolhardy. Tuesday's action by the state Environmental Improvement Board, buried by election-day news, falls in the latter category. The board — on a 4-3 vote mostly along the lines of environmental activists vs. industry supporters — approved what the state calls the most comprehensive greenhouse gas emission regulations in the nation.~~snip~~Gov.-elect Susana Martinez, who opposes cap and trade, said Thursday her staff is already researching the best way to reverse the EIB decision. Critics have said the program would cost New Mexico revenue and jobs, raise consumer prices...

President Barack Obama said he will look for ways to control global warming pollution other than Congress placing a ceiling on it. The new battle over global warming in Congress will target the Environmental Protection Agency, which is poised to regulate greenhouse gases for the first time, after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that it could treat heat-trapping gases as pollutants.

SANTA FE — The Environmental Improvement Board voted 4-3 Tuesday to adopt a controversial cap and trade plan for New Mexico to begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions believed to be contributing to global warming. The decision, supported by EIB chair Gay Dillingham, Abbas Ghassemi, John Horning and James Gollin, is another step in an initiative begun by Gov. Bill Richardson in 2005. The plan was opposed by both candidates for governor, dozens of lawmakers, some cities like Farmington and utility and oil and gas groups which argued it would raise consumer prices, destroy thousands of jobs and put New Mexico...

House Democrats who voted for the 2009 bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions – dubbed cap-and-tax by GOP opponents – had a terrible night. Over two dozen lawmakers who favored efforts to clamp down on heat-trapping emissions were swept away on Tuesday's anti-incumbent wave, ushering in a new class of Republicans who doubt global warming science and want to upend President Barack Obama's environmental and energy policies. Democrats who voted for the controversial House climate bill were slaughtered at the ballot box, including Rep. Rick Boucher, the 14-term Virginian who helped broker some of the key deals instrumental to its...

New Mexico regulators are set to decide today whether to adopt a state proposal that would establish a cap-and-trade program to control greenhouse gas emissions. The New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board is considering a petition by the Environment Department that would allow the state to participate in a regional cap-and-trade program with other Western states and Canadian provinces that make up the Western Climate Initiative.~~snip~~Jim Norton, director of the department's Environmental Protection Division, said New Mexico has a chance to be a leader when it comes to adopting climate regulations. With global warming, he said the state could face more...

Cap and trade is the most flexible, cost-effective way to curb greenhouse gas emissions believed to be contributing to global warming, the New Mexico Environment Department contends. The agency argues that putting the state on a path to do its part to avoid catastrophic effects of climate change can be achieved with a modest, likely positive, impact on the state's economy and provide a springboard for other economic opportunities such as renewable energy development. The consequences of doing nothing, it says, are far greater: A $3.2 billion added cost to the state due to increased health problems, more droughts, decreased...

Republican leaders have begun gathering evidence for sweeping investigations of Barack Obama's environmental agenda, from climate science to the BP oil spill, if as expected, they take control of the House of Representatives in the 2 November mid-term elections, the Guardian has learned. The new Congress will not be installed until next January, but Democrats and environmental organisations say they are braced for multiple, aggressive investigations from the incoming Republican majority. Republican leaders have also raised the possibility of disbanding the global warming committee in Congress, established by the Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Abstract: The only consensus over the threat of climate change that seems to exist these days is that there is no consensus. The much-heralded 2007 United Nations report on greenhouse gas emissions has served as a catalyst for lawmakers to burden traditional energy sources with regulations in favor of so-called clean energy. The private sector has begun to “chase” these policies, shaping business decisions to align with policies preferred by politicians, not the market or the public. Recent revelations of erroneous and misleading data in the report have led many to question the wisdom of government-mandated emissions caps and costly...

In the United States, several regulations are being proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that directly affects the electric industry. Depending on the outcome of any or all of these regulations, the results could accelerate the retirement of a significant number of fossil fuel-fired power plants. EPA is currently developing rules that would mandate existing power suppliers to invest in retrofitted environmental controls at existing generating plants or retire them. The most significant proposed EPA rules have been in development for over ten years and are currently undergoing court-ordered revisions that must be implemented within mandatory timeframes. The...