… all of which leads to a question of where we’re putting our priorities, as we focus on climate change but ignore the poor: “International bodies on Saturday urged concerted action to help developing nations confront the global economic crisis, but the absence of major leaders at a UN aid conference dampened hopes of concrete initiatives.” …
… and it wouldn’t be a UN party without a scare to get everyone ginned up: “Earth’s climate appears to be changing more quickly and deeply than a benchmark UN report for policymakers predicted, top scientists said ahead of international climate talks starting Monday in Poland”
The EPA wants to regulate just about anything … most importantly, the bureaucracy has set its sites on regulating carbon dioxide. It will restrict how much we can emit from, you know, pretty much any economic activity. It’s the proposal — you may have heard of it — that would allow the government to regulate everything down to your lawnmower. (see our recent GoredEarth cartoon embedded in this post.)
Luckily, as part of our nation’s ability to rein in horrible ideas of government overreach, we have some say in the matter. The EPA is accepting comments from the public, and not just experts. Everyone can comment, and you should. Here are a couple reasons:
On most environmental proposals, only hardcore environmentalists weigh in, so the odds are tilted against solid economic policy
Bureaucrats count the number of the statements on each side
You don’t need to be an expert — you have a right to comment on government plans that will harm our economy
It’s a great way to start fighting off ridiculous, expensive “solutions” to global warming
In case you’re wondering what you should say, consider this handy model from IFL, and if you wish to send your comments directly to the government, send them here:
To the Assistant Administrator for Air and Water:
I am submitting comments in response to the EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on “Regulating “Greenhouse” Gases Under the Clean Air Act. The Docket ID is EPA-HQ-OAR-2008-0318.
I am writing to urge EPA to not use the Clean Air Act to regulate so-called “greenhouse” gases. The Supreme Court, in their decision Massachusetts v. EPA, left the door open for EPA to decline to regulate such gases, provided that no finding of “endangerment” was made. I believe that there such a finding would be warrantless—and that not only does the science not bear out the classification of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a “pollutant”, but that any regulations that would be created out of such a classification would devastate the American economy, especially small business.
There are countless human activities that generate CO2, most especially breathing. And while breathing itself wouldn’t be regulated (yet), the Clean Air Act’s mandates on how much of a substance can be released into the environment would mean that even a medium-sized office building or restaurant would now be treated like a major industrial polluter by EPA. More than a million new buildings would become “facilities”, forcing the owners of those buildings into an incredibly complicated maze of regulations.
Currently, the regulatory state costs the American economy more a trillion dollars annually. For small business owners (with fewer than 20 employees), this translates into more than $7700 per employee, per year. Americans spent 8 billion hours doing paperwork last year, at a cost of more than $400 billion. This regulatory regime would, by EPA’s own estimates, add millions more hours of paperwork, and impose regulatory costs in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Moreover, there is no guarantee that any of the regulations that would be created would to anything to curb the emissions of CO2 and other so-called “greenhouse” gases, or that after spending all this money we would be doing anything to impact the environment.
Given the current economic hardship the nation is facing, our economy simply cannot handle the burden that such a draconian and far-reaching regulatory structure would impose. When one considers the marginal benefits, it simply does not make sense. Please do not classify CO2 as a pollutant.
Oh, those horrible westerners creating a large carbon footprint. It’s like some of them choose to burn fossil fuels by the mountain. In fact, that’s exactly one man’s admission today. From OpenMarket:
Despite my inconspicuous consumption, I have an enormous carbon footprint. Indeed my carbon footprint is so big that it rivals that of a mega-consumer like Leonardo de Caprio, or even a super-mega consumer like Al Gore.
How is that possible? My ex-wife and I buy ten thousand pounds of coal every fall for the Kyrgyz family with whom we lived while we served in the Peace Corps. Burning a ton of coal emits about 3 tons of carbon into the atmosphere, so we are responsible for 30 tons of green greenhouse gases! For environmentalists in rich countries, that’s a cause for alarm. For the Kamchibekova clan in Talas, Kyrgyzstan, it’s a reason to cheer.
Is it really “beyond dispute” that global warming already has produced drought, famine, and stronger storms? New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin notes that “the statement about ’storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season’ is hard to square with the science on hurricanes in a warming world, which has gotten more nuanced of late.”
Even if Obama were right about current conditions, and right that things will only get worse, what evidence is there that his cap-and-trade plan will ameilorate the trend enough to justify the cost? Assuming we meet his goal of an 80 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 (a conveniently distant deadline), how much will it cost, what impact will it have on global warming, and how much damage will thereby be avoided.
Earlier this year, researchers from Penn State and the State University of New York estimated that between 168 and 516 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – a mother lode five times the size of the Alaska deposit and about 14 times current U.S. production- is trapped in deep shale deposits under parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. Geologists say gas trapped in the Marcellus shale could be recovered using horizontal drilling techniques. Unlike Palin, however, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, seems to be doing everything he can to prevent drilling companies from creating thousands of “green” jobs that Obama says will be a lynchpin of his national energy policy. Rendell is considering a new tax on natural gas and his environmental agency has created so many permitting delays and other regulatory obstacles that some drilling company executives are now seriously reconsidering their plans.
Will Obama take the Palin approach and develop new domestic energy resources, even if it means bucking the special interests in his own party? Or will he take the Rendell way, and throw up so many regulatory roadblocks that the clean-burning natural gas Americans need and want never makes it to their homes and businesses?
Reuters: “Impatient with the pace of national governments in fighting global climate change, 13 U.S. state governors joined counterparts from six other countries on Wednesday to pledge cooperation to curtail Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions.”
Also Reuters: “Nike Inc, Starbucks Corp and investor coalition Ceres are among the founding members of a new coalition calling for strong U.S. climate and energy legislation in early 2009.”
Some industry leaders and members of Congress have suggested that Mr. Obama’s climate proposal would impose too great a cost on an already-stressed economy — having the same effects as a tax on coal, oil and natural gas — and should await the end of the current downturn. A bill similar to Mr. Obama’s plan failed to clear the Senate earlier this year, largely because of concerns about its impact on the economy.
The EPA wants to regulate just about anything … most importantly, the bureaucracy has set its sites on regulating carbon dioxide. It will restrict how much we can emit from, you know, pretty much any economic activity. It’s the proposal — you may have heard of it — that would allow the government to regulate everything down to your lawnmower. (see our recent GoredEarth cartoon embedded in this post.)
