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Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
CANCUN, Mexico - U.S. negotiators came into the U.N. global warming summit with a weak hand but a bold move: a pledge that Congress and the president will enact climate change legislation well before the decade is through.
It's a promise that the rest of the world has seen the United States make-and break-time and again. At the 1997 Kyoto summit, then-Vice President Al Gore made the same pledge-even as the Senate passed a resolution refusing to ratify the Kyoto treaty. At last year's summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, President Obama declared that the United States would lead the way in forging a treaty to replace Kyoto, starting with action at home. But even with a Democratic Congress, the climate bill went down in flames. And now, with a new Republican House, action on climate-and, very likely, on major clean energy initiatives-seems doomed for at least two years.
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Monday, November 29, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
If you've ever wondered why the international community convenes climate meetings in far-flung locales (Cancun, or perhaps Bali), then look no further than Otto Edenhofer, a German economist and an official with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Such grand confabs are not, as one would suppose, about climate change, its causes, or actions to avert and adapt to it.
In fact, as Edenhofer, an IPCC official, sees it, such things are irrelevant, as the climate conference is "not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War." Indeed.
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Monday, November 29, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
For eight years, the world waited for a U.S. president to help stop global warming and save the planet.
So far, Barack Obama hasn't lived up to the expectations.
Cap-and-trade legislation Obama promised two years ago on the campaign trail is dead and buried, and his administration is attempting to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and cover billions of dollars in pledges without majority support in Congress.
Internationally, heading into the United Nations-led climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, next week, prospects for a multitrillion-dollar transoceanic carbon market are in tatters and a new binding treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol remains years away.
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Monday, November 22, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis, National Security and Energy Independence, Get the Facts on Energy & Gas Prices
Roll Call: Inhofe Is Happy to Stand Apart - "He's not seen as a rebel around here by any means ... but he's an independent thinker," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of the Oklahoma Republican. Inhofe, 76, is comfortable being a contrarian. In an interview last week, he recalled a time when one of his grandchildren "came up to me and said, ‘Pop-I, Why do you always do things that nobody else does?' ... and I said, ‘because nobody else does.'" ..."This earmark debate is a great example" of Inhofe's indifference to public opinion or peer pressure, Graham added. ... Inhofe's colleagues said he is motivated by principles, not politics: "He's very passionate and he can be as partisan as the best of them. But deep down, he wants to help people," a second Republican Senator said ...While most Members look to avoid intraparty confrontation, Inhofe appears to welcome it, taking pride in often being the most hated man in the room.
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Monday, November 22, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
President Obama is now retrenching after his midterm rebuke, and one of the main ways he'll try to press his agenda is through the alphabet soup of the federal regulators. So a special oversight priority for the new Congress ought to be the Environmental Protection Agency, which has turned a regulatory firehose on U.S. business and the power industry in particular.
The scale of the EPA's current assault is unprecedented, yet it has received almost no public scrutiny. Since Mr. Obama took office, the agency has proposed or finalized 29 major regulations and 172 major policy rules. This surge already outpaces the Clinton Administration's entire first term-when the EPA had just been handed broad new powers under the 1990 revamp of air pollution laws.
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Monday, November 22, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, National Infrastructure and Public Works Accomplishments, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis, National Security and Energy Independence, Get the Facts on Energy & Gas Prices
In an era of change, Sen. James Inhofe is unapologetic about standing his ground.
"He's not seen as a rebel around here by any means ... but he's an independent thinker," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of the Oklahoma Republican.
Inhofe, 76, is comfortable being a contrarian. In an interview last week, he recalled a time when one of his grandchildren "came up to me and said, ‘Pop-I, Why do you always do things that nobody else does?' ... and I said, ‘because nobody else does.'"
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Thursday, November 18, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis, Get the Facts on Energy & Gas Prices
Cap and trade may be dead in the Senate, according to newly installed Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, but Republicans warn the news of its demise have been exaggerated.
Manchin told a teleconference of West Virginia reporters Monday that he had received assurances from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that cap and trade would not see the light of day in the Senate - either in the lame duck session or in the 112th Congress.
"I got his commitment that cap and trade will definitely not be on the agenda and won't be on the agenda during the next Congress," Manchin told reporters following his swearing in. "I have a deep commitment and a personal commitment from him that cap and trade is dead."
Observers attribute Reid's reluctance to pursue cap and trade to a lack of votes in the Senate and to opposition from the incoming Republican House majority. Outgoing senators who supported cap and trade, such as Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter, are being replaced in the 112th Congress by Republicans who oppose it.
"They don't have the numbers, but the administration is working hard on imposing cap and trade through regulation," Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe told The Daily Caller.
The senator predicts Carol Browner, President Obama's climate change czar, will circumvent Congress and use executive branch regulatory power to implement cap and trade.
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Thursday, November 18, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Commitment to Oklahoma, National Infrastructure and Public Works Accomplishments, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
This week U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe reportedly was the only member of the Senate's Republican caucus voting against a moratorium on earmarks - the process by which members of Congress designate federal spending on specific projects in their states and districts. Sen. Lisa Murkowski missed the vote because she's in Alaska awaiting the conclusion of her re-election race but says she would've voted against the ban if she had been around.
As he's explained many times, Inhofe believes the earmark moratorium is a lot of hot air over a relatively small amount of money (2 percent to 3 percent of total federal spending). And besides, he argues, the legislative branch is constitutionally empowered to appropriate funds. So, no, he's not concerned about being a lone wolf on earmarks.
Nor on other stuff, either. He was an early opponent to the Obama administration's cap-and-trade bill and his stalwart crusade against anti-global warming measures has earned plenty of bile from advocates. No matter. One of Inhofe's favorite stories is about how he jetted to last year's big climate change conference in Denmark, basically parachuting into Copenhagen for a couple of hours to be a one-man band in opposition - surrounded by a sea of people who didn't agree with him. You need a tough hide to play the role of a voice crying out in the wilderness. Inhofe's most certainly is
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Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis, Get the Facts on Energy & Gas Prices
Senate Democrats who championed climate change legislation before its collapse this year met behind closed doors Tuesday to pick up the pieces and map out their strategy for next year.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who arranged the meeting, acknowledged that cap-and-trade legislation is dead. But he and others see room for passing smaller energy bills with bipartisan support.
There was a "clear understanding" around the table that, "whether we like it or not, cap-and-trade has no chance of passage in the next Congress," Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who co-authored the climate bill, told POLITICO.
"And so we've got to find separate ways to go at it," Lieberman added. Possibilities include energy provisions like support for electric cars, nuclear energy or a "clean energy standard," that includes cleaner forms of traditional energy like nuclear and coal.
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Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
A Senate floor vote on a resolution delaying U.S. EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will depend on Republican cooperation on unemployment insurance extension and other issues, the EPA measure's lead sponsor said today.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said he plans to meet with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) later today to discuss the timing of a vote on his resolution, but that its consideration could largely depend on Republicans.
Rockefeller cautioned that the GOP could effectively "shut everything down" on the unemployment insurance extension, which is set to expire on Nov. 30. That issue, he said, could mean the difference between an abridged lame-duck session -- with little time to vote on an EPA delay -- and a longer stretch of legislating.
Reid also expressed uncertainty that a vote on the Rockefeller resolution would happen. "It is real hard just to say 'Yeah, we can do this,' because we have limited time to go through all the procedural motions," Reid said after the Democratic caucus meeting today. "But if there is a way we can do it, I will be happy to work with him."
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