Free Republic

Energy: The president's proposed Energy Security Fund will stifle the private energy sector boom and provide permanent funding for future Solyndras and electric cars that nobody wants. And what about that pipeline, sir? A nonexistent crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and in justifying his proposal for a cap-and-tax scheme, President Obama claimed in his State Of The Union that "the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15." He was lying. The fact is, according to new data released quietly last October by Britain's Met Office, the world's natural post-Ice Age warming trend stopped...

NEW: Edison bailed out CA Cap & Trade auction The facts slowing coming out about the state’s first Cap and Trade auction seriously question whether the system is already being gamed by government, together with electric utilities. Edison International made an announcement on Dec. 20, 2012: At California’s first Cap and Trade auction held back on Nov. 14, 2012, it offered to buy 21 times more pollution permits than allowed. Edison’s overbidding error ended up amounting to 72 percent of all the bid offers and bailed out the Cap and Trade auction from failure. About a month later, Edison’s unregulated...

Ever since the Senate rejected President Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme in 2009, his administration has been hard at work to find other ways to implement a radical, environmentalist agenda. Obama made these intentions clear at a press conference in 2010 when he explained, “Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat. … It was a means, not an end, and I am going to be looking for other means to address this problem.” And this is a promise he’s doing his best to keep. With the help of the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments, this administration has...

BENICIA -- Rumors are swirling that Valero is putting its two California oil refineries on the market, including one in Benicia that is the city's largest employer. The speculation follows a Wall Street Journal report last week that said the San Antonio-based company has enlisted Citigroup Inc. to help find a buyer for the facilities. The article cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter. Valero operates a 78,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Wilmington outside Los Angeles and a 132,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Benicia. Together, the plants represent about 10 percent of the company's U.S. refining capacity. Valero, which has been critical of California's...

President Obama is among the slickest practitioners ever of the Washington Wink-Wink -- what professional politicians in both parties do when they say one thing while planning to do something else entirely. There was, for example, Obama's 2008 campaign promise to "cut the federal deficit in half." And that "net federal spending cut" he would achieve by the end of his first term? Anybody think he didn't know then that his first term would explode the deficit and spending to historic highs? Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sees more...

California's top air pollution regulator issued a spirited defense today of the state's new cap-and-trade greenhouse gas market, rejecting pleas from businesses to make significant changes to the program. Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, said the carbon market is designed to minimize the impact on businesses. Big business groups, like the California Chamber of Commerce, were scheduled to testify later today about their objections to the cap and trade market, the centerpiece of the state's global warming law, AB 32. Businesses say the market amounts to a $1 billion-plus annual tax that will destroy jobs and...

Come November, California will open North America's first full-scale carbon market, in which companies buy and sell the right to emit greenhouse gases from their factories, power plants and oil refineries. It's a major undertaking involving hundreds of companies and - potentially - billions of dollars. Success or failure could have big implications for California's fight against climate change, not to mention the state's fragile economy. So on Thursday, California officials plan to stage a dress rehearsal. The California Air Resources Board will hold a practice auction, giving future players in the carbon market a chance to see how the...

Extraordinarily smart people at the California Air Resources Board have taken to using the term "leakage" as they go about devising the experimental cap and trade system for reducing greenhouse gases. Homer Perez, head boiler mechanic at Pacific Coast Producers' tomato cannery off East Main Street in Woodland, might use a word that is more familiar to the rest of us: "layoff." The cannery has been operating under one owner or another since the 1920s. A cooperative of 16 growers in Yolo, Solano and Sutter counties owns it now. Perez has worked there for 28 of the past 29 years....

Pending auctions of greenhouse-gas permits will benefit only California’s government. It's probably no coincidence that Gov. Jerry Brown recently launched a website to scare Californians into embracing his global-warming hype. The state is about to launch a cap-and-trade scheme that potentially will raise billions of dollars for the government, ostensibly to fight global warming.In reality, the money is likely to be diverted to more mundane political uses – like backfilling the huge budget hole perpetuated by Mr. Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

We got a phone call this morning from an Orange County businessman who had attended a conference this week in which a university professor lauded the benefits of cap and trade. Obviously, this prof doesn’t work in an industry that will have to directly assume the burden of this added tax, disguised as a fee. But our caller does. Our caller and the prof do share this in common – their cost of living as consumers will go up as California state government ratchets up its taxes through cap and trade auctions, ostensible to rid us of horrid CO2 emissions,...

  As I’ve written before, I’ve actually shared the dais with Mr. Van Jones and have been keeping up with him ever since.  Glenn Beck did his best work in discovering that Van Jones has been in leadership of key radical Leninist organizations  including the Ella Baker Center, which sent an appeal to allocate 10% of the new global warming tax (cap and trade) for Van Jones slush fund.  The “SNAP” line is here: African Americans in Los Angeles are nearly twice as likely to die from a heat wave than other Los Angeles residents. HUH?  I’m sure the predominantly...

In January 2008 Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.” He promised that his plan would cause electricity rates to skyrocket. He wasn’t kidding. Now thanks to Barack Obama’s radical energy policies, electricity rates are skyrocketing across the country and coal plants are shutting their doors. New regulations by the Obama Administration is forcing Arch Coal, Inc. to lay off 750 workers in Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia.

A coalition of environmental groups is alleging that California's Cap and Trade program violates the 1964 Civil Rights act. The groups filed a complaint Friday against the California Air Resources Board charging that minority groups will be disproportionately harmed by the program that allows polluters to discharge more emissions by buying credits from other less-polluting industries. The complaint alleges that African-Americans, Latinos and Asians are more likely to live in the low-income neighborhoods near refineries and power plants and will not receive the benefit of emission reductions intended under Cap and Trade.

The Los Angeles Times published an article last week about Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad's efforts to recruit California businesses to his state, citing complaints about California's business climate.Gov. Jerry Brown's spokesman, Gil Duran, told the Times in response, "This is a Republican myth that is often repeated yet simply not true. Reputable studies have shown that businesses are not fleeing the state for the cold, empty and desolate hinterlands."The response typified the Capitol's dismissive attitude toward any suggestion that we have become economically uncompetitive. . . . Making California hospitable to that job-creating investment should be Job No. 1 in...

With the state budget mired in deficits, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators, especially his fellow Democrats, are searching under every fiscal rock for money to spend. That search has spawned an odd syndrome involving what could be three big pots of money – a competition among liberals over how they should be spent if, indeed, they materialize. The pots: • What could be several billion dollars a year in "cap-and-trade" fees that industries must pay as part of the state's anti-greenhouse gas crusade. • Another billion-plus bucks that it's believed would appear were the state to change taxation of multi-state...

Limbaugh’s Climatologist Defends Newt’s Past Position + Romney says Coal Plants KILL PEOPLE | @PolitiJim's Rants | http://bit.ly/IV0n8i

For the past 10 years, California has struggled with huge budget deficits and wrenching cuts. Suddenly, however, the state is poised to raise billions from an unusual new source: the proceeds from its landmark global warming law. The windfall could come as soon as this fall, when state officials are set to begin auctioning off pollution credits to oil refineries, power plants and other major polluters as part of a new "cap-and-trade" system. The amounts are potentially enormous: from $1 billion to $3 billion a year in 2012 and 2013, jumping to as high as $14 billion a year by...

Hey, take a look at what I found on the EPA's website (Yes, I have a life. Really. I do. Promise.): ********************************** "Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Fair treatment means that no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies. Meaningful involvement means that: (1) people have an opportunity to participate in decisions about activities that may...

New rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions will make it nearly impossible to build new coal power plants The Obama administration effectively blocked the construction of any new coal-fired power plants on Tuesday, introducing rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the next generation of plants. The proposed new standards would cut carbon dioxide emissions on new power plants in half and will, over time, help move America away from the carbon-heavy plants that currently produce nearly half of the country's electricity, Lisa Jackson, the head of the environmental protection agency, told a conference call with reporters. "Right now there...

If you thought gas prices will never stop rising, just wait until you see what happens to electricity after the Barack Obama’s EPA gets its way.  The agency will deliver on Obama’s election promise to bankrupt any new coal-fired electrical production in its first-ever regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions, the Washington Post reports.  The new regulatory regime will all but guarantee that new coal-fired plants won’t be built to replace others shutting down: The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the first limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants as early as Tuesday, according to several people briefed on the proposal. The move...