Super Mall!!

The largest mall in the world is in China. It looks more like a theme park to me. Can you imagine how much carbon is emitted from this place?

It’s not easy being Green

On Friday, the Obama administration declared that carbon dioxide (including five other industrial gases) was a grave danger to human health and a threat to the environment. The regulatory agency that will be in charge of crafting environmental regulation will be the Environmental Protection Agency. However, I surmise that it will probably be Congress that creates some sort of all encompassing environmental legislation. This is the moment that environmental groups were waiting for and it is for them a major step into crafting a "green" economy. This is huge. This ruling means that everything that you consume or purchase will essentially become more expensive--EVERYTHING. Congratulations, my dear taxpayers, our nation is now off to a new economic experiment that will never pay off and will bring grimaces of pain when citizens have to settle the bill.

By the way, the "green" experiment of ethanol hasn't worked out well at all yet our government will continue to subsidize it till someone notices the huge money pit that it is. Despite the fact that ethanol plants are closing all over the country, our government wants to mandate even more ethanol use. Of course, this means that the taxpayer remains on the hook to benefit ethanol producers and the states that have them.

Cap and Trade Loses in Senate

You may have missed this since the main stream media is too busy covering Obama's European tour; it seems that the cap and trade scheme that Obama and environmentalists have been pining for has hit a snag in the Senate; Democrats will not be able to ram it through with a simple majority. Senators from manufacturing states, even Democrats, know that the cap and trade scheme would be a major blow to their base and the 2010 mid-term elections aren't that far off for constituents to forget how some Senators voted away their economy--they obviously know where their bread is buttered.

The above chart provided by the Heritage Foundation.

Climate Change Reality

This just in--Al Gore has recanted his stance on Global Warming. Mr. Gore has said recently: "I have, after much studying of the scientific evidence, concluded that there isn't enough hard environmental evidence to support the theory of Global Warming. There are simply too many variables to take into account and several decades worth of data is simply not conclusive." Mr. Gore finished his statement by saying that he was going to turn his attention to alleviating the very real threat of poverty and hunger that continues to afflict the very poor of the world. APRIL'S FOOL!! I really had you going on that one, eh? Al Gore wouldn't come to his senses if an iceberg hit him on the head.

The Cato Institute published this full page ad in various newspapers around the country back in November, 2008. Since the Obama administration is now ready to get into the auto business and it is clear that it will push expensive "green" mandates--hybrid cars and a cap and trade scheme--it would be nice if "Mr. Pragmatic" would actually act like a pragmatist and be concerned with practical consequences and not political expediency or tendentiousness.

It’s not easy being Green

Now that Barack Obama is President and liberal Democrats feel an emboldened sense of political mandate, a test of competing liberal agendas comes to the fore with the issue of greenhouse gas emissions. In one corner we have the United Auto Workers and in the other we have the dreaded environmentalists:

The state of California and the automobile industry are pressing the Obama administration to decide whether states may impose their own limits on autos' greenhouse-gas emissions, an issue that pits President Barack Obama's allies in the labor and environmental movements against one another...

...Gearing up to fight California's request is the National Automobile Dealers Association, which is holding its annual convention this weekend in New Orleans, an event expected to draw 25,000 attendees and feature appearances by former presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The group has prepared a report warning that the California law would impose "a costly and unnecessary burden on an industry already reeling" from the worst year of U.S. vehicle sales in more than a decade.

Mr. Obama expressed support during his campaign for California's bid to regulate auto greenhouse-gas emissions, so called because they trap the sun's heat in the earth's atmosphere, thus contributing to global warming. But he has avoided saying publicly how quickly his administration intends to act on the state's request.

In addition to the question of whether to let states regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, Mr. Obama's administration is bound by a 2007 Supreme Court decision to determine whether greenhouse-gas emissions "endanger" public health or welfare, the legal trigger for regulating them under the federal Clean Air Act…

…A decision in favor of the request would clear the way for more than a dozen other states to enforce laws they modeled on California's. But it also would risk antagonizing the United Auto Workers, which has complained that the law unfairly discriminates against companies whose product mix is skewed toward pickup trucks, sport-utility vehicles and minivans -- which guzzle a lot of gas. A spokesman for the union, which helped Mr. Obama clinch Ohio and Michigan in last fall's presidential contest, didn't respond to requests for comment on California's request.

With the economy in a slump, it will be interesting to see on which side of the fence the Obama administration forcefully lands on. Obama won’t be able to straddle the philosophical line with oratory flourish like he did during his campaign for the Presidency. He will have to make a tough decision and he will indubitably step on some very sensitive toes; the sort of toes that walked to the polls to elect him.

Update: Mr. Obama has chosen with the Greens. The American auto industry, already on the ropes, may have been dealt a final blow. Break out the popcorn, this may get interesting.

Unintended consequences in lithium batteries

The electric-hybrid cars with lithium batteries that we are constantly told should be built and marketed to the public come with an environmental and social cost. Not only is lithium a finite resource, but the people of the communities in Bolivia where the world's largest reserves of lithium lie have great reservations of mining the resource due to environmental concerns and also simple resistance to having, as they say, industrialized countries exploit them for the lithium. In this case it seems that as the Western world tries to move away from oil, in some respects due to the hostility of the nations that have the largest reserves and due to climate change, it also falls into the same sort of trap it desperately wishes to leave behind. It's not easy being green.

Markets in all things

Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes

Best post I've read today...

Jeff Perren over at Shaving Leviathan comments on Barack Obama and his derisive stance on the coal industry while shunning nuclear power as a viable alternative to meet our energy needs of the future:

Once again, the goal is to use the power of government to rush ahead of the market to create a 'clean' source of energy. The cover story for this is to usher in a new age of energy production with no alleged downside: solar, wind, biodiesel. The fact is, that all these have significant drawbacks both economically and environmentally.

Beyond that, they have one major drawback that no one knows how to overcome yet. They don't exist, not on anywhere near the scale that would be required to replace coal as an energy source. (Coal is used to power over 48% of all U.S. electricity production.

The only viable replacement for coal, and it's a superb one both from the standpoint of cost and pollution, is nuclear fission power plants. That technology is safe, cost-effective, and well-developed. There are also immediately deployable improvements that would make it lower cost, safer, and provide for long-term energy supply.

The danger of subsidizing renewable energy

Reason.tv has a great video on the fiasco that Bio-fuels made from corn ethanol has brought on the world.

When government ends up subsidizing an industry or a program that ends up having poor unintended consequences, like we have experienced with corn ethanol, my trail test to those that favor deep government subsidies for projects that they deem essential to society is what happens if that program or policy turns out to not work as initially expected? Since Democrats, environmentalists, and even some Republicans continuously call for subsidizing “renewable” energy or “alternative” energy, what happens if government picks a loser and ends up wasting billions of taxpayer funds chasing a viable technology? I find it difficult to imagine that many of these groups would be comfortable with such a waste.

Now that many national and international organizations and government bodies have acknowledged the problems with corn ethanol, how long will it take our government to fix the problem? I bet that it will take at least a decade before subsidies for corn ethanol bio-fuels are reversed.

The magical realism of the Kyoto Treaty

Remember all the static and noise by environmentalists and lefty’s everywhere regarding the Kyoto treaty? And how the “evil” George W. Bush was responsible for the destruction of the earth because he didn’t sign it? (Even though the Senate rejected the treaty in the first place-but let’s not let facts get in the way of a good Bush bashing.) Well, as I have commented before, the Kyoto treaty doesn’t work as well as its' proponents shrill. Even though I am not a big fan of Mr. Bush, I do agree with him on his stance on Kyoto. And it looks like most member nations of the G-8 are also starting to see the light of reason.

California Wild Fires

Since last Monday, I have been forced to stay indoors with my windows shut due to the pall of hazy smoke hanging in our air. We have had a plethora of wild fires in California and they have created a major health hazard. I work from home but I still had to run errands and even though I limited my exposure to the smoky air, I could still feel heaviness in my chest due to polluted air. Interestingly, the usual suspects of environmentalist groups have been rather silent during this whole fiery event.

Today, the air is clearer and visibility has improved. I can finally open my windows and the sun doesn’t glow a hazy red-orange. The stench of burnt wood has subsided. But I can’t help but to feel annoyed and peeved at the hypocrisy of groups like the Sierra Club who have successfully managed (through lawsuits) to obstruct management of our forests and wooded areas in the name of “saving” them. Incredibly, the Sierra Club has been hostile to clearing brush and to even creating fire trails. I have no doubt that the extent of these wild fires could have been reduced if a sensible land management plan was currently in place.

The amount of carbon dioxide that has been pumped into the air over the last week must have been massive (there are still fires that are currently burning and may burn for the entire summer) and the amount of state resources needed to combat the fires have also been massive. I don’t understand how environmental groups--who purport to want to save the planet from global warming by reducing carbon dioxide--adopt policies that would invariably, do harm to the environment!

On environmentalists that oppose cap and trade

There is a great post by A Disgruntled Republican on how some environmental groups opposed the Lieberman-Warner Bill; I understand that many were primarily concerned with the bill allocating some funds for Nuclear power plants. I think that this country needs more nuclear power and less coal plants. And I have always felt that environmentalist groups (like Greenpeace) have been primarily responsible for polluting our air and making some of our citizens suffer from breathing ailments due to their zeal in blocking the construction of nuclear plants but not stopping (with the same zeal) the construction of coal fired plants. Yes, you read it correctly—groups and individuals that resist nuclear power plants (This includes the great eco-messiah, Al Gore) have done more to destroy and despoil our environment than even the federal government---the greatest polluter in the country.

Yet, on the Lieberman-Warner bill, groups like Greenpeace and I found common ground.

Lieberman-Warner boondoggle goes down in flames

If you haven’t heard, the bill failed cloture by a vote of 48-36. Whew. I’m sure that it will be back up in a new ugly form sometime next year. We must be vigilant against this money sucking bill.

New cap and trade chart!

I received this new chart from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It is simply mind-boggling. This cap and trade scheme is a bureaucratic nightmare.

Click here to see the full chart in PDF
HT: Brad Peck at Chamberpost

Climate bill in Senate turns into a squabble

From Road Runner: A Senate debate over global warming legislation turned into late-night drama Wednesday marked by an eight-hour reading of the 492-page bill and a call for senators to return _ some of them from their homes _ to cast a procedural vote not long before midnight.

An angry Majority Leader Harry Reid demanded senators return to the Capitol for the late-night vote after Republicans blocked his attempt to limit amendments on the bill, arguing there were not enough senators in the chamber for Reid to proceed.

Comment: One of the law-makers had to show up in shorts and a t-shirt for the procedural vote that eventually failed. Majority leader Harry Reid had the temerity to accuse the Republicans of “making political points” because they disapprove of this massive bureaucratic bill. Yet, the entire spirit of the bill is about scoring “political points.” If the sponsors of this bill really cared about carbon emissions, why don’t they push for a far simpler carbon tax? They don’t because they want to hide the true cost of this boondoggle from the American taxpayer. Is it any wonder why the legislative branch of government has a lower approval level than the hated George W. Bush?

A big Hat Tip to Bobo at The BoBo Files for this story.

The failure of CAFÉ standards

In another example of how a government mandate has failed to accomplish its stated lofty goal, this article by the Foundation for Economic Education sums up the canard that gets repeated over and over by those that believe that CAFÉ standards aren’t strict enough: The inconvenient truth is that CAFÉ standards do more harm than good.

Cap and Trade is not a market solution

Here is a great article on the cap and trade scheme and how it is a poor way to reduce carbon emissions. Note that the article points out that most politicians favor cap and trade because they fear the word “tax.”

Cap and Trade debate

I spent several hours watching C-Span yesterday as Senators debated one another regarding the Lieberman-Warner “Cap and Security Act” scheme. One of the constant defenses thrown around by advocates (Senators Boxer, Kerry, Warner, and Lieberman) for this scheme was that a similar cap and trade model worked to perfection in the Northeastern United States during the 1980’s when it came to reducing acid rain.

Of course, what they fail to mention is that part of the program’s success back then was the fortuitous timing of the price of low-sulfur coal: It had started to drop just around the time of the cap and trade enforcement. Many coal fired plants switched over to the cleaner burning coal and therefore found an easy and less expensive way to clean up their act. Secondly, the technology needed to trim sulfur dioxide was available at the time of that cap and trade scheme. The sort of technology that is needed to cut carbon dioxide on such a grand scale as the Lieberman-Warner bill mandates is not yet available. Also, somebody could inform the Senator’s (sadly, John McCain backs this bill) backing this bill that the current cap and trade scheme in place in Europe is not working as planned. Why do we want to adopt a huge bureaucracy that doesn’t work? That means that this bill, if made into law, will be another expensive large government program.

And just like the Farm Bill, get ready to empty your wallets dear taxpayer---Cha-Ching!

Trade barriers blamed for high food prices

It’s becoming more popular in the U.S. to consider trade protectionism in the name of “fair” trade and alleged worker protection; The Democrats have justified a block a of free trade deal with Colombia under such dubious reasons. Yet, even the U.N. has recently admitted that trade barriers, and in a particular-- food prices, have an adverse effect on world food prices and the world’s poor. In the long run, trade protectionism and government subsidies to hand picked industries do more harm than good.

What a Cap and Trade bureaucracy would look like!

Holy crap!! The following chart is from the U.S. Chamber of commerce and it carefully details how the Lieberman – Warner climate bill would work. Woe to us if this bill ever gets put to law. This would be just another big and expensive government mandate that promises more than it can deliver. See the whole report in PDF form here

HT: Heritage Foundation