In The News
Jackson says EPA is losing a public relations war over climate regulations
Tuesday March 9, 2010
Amid a pitched battle over her agency's planned climate regulations, U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said environmental regulators are losing a public relations war to industry lobbyists.
"The people in my line of work have not done the best job in communicating our side of the debate. We've lost the messaging war," Jackson said yesterday at the National Press Club.
The statement comes as Jackson faces bipartisan efforts in both chambers of Congress to either curtail or eliminate her agency's authority to tackle climate change. Industry groups and several states have also lined up legal challenges to EPA's ruling that greenhouse gases should be regulated pollutants.
Jackson said that alarmists are reviving a frequently debunked argument that EPA regulations kill economic growth. The theory that less regulation is good for the economy was thoroughly disproved during the George W. Bush administration, she noted. Instead, she insisted that environmental protections spur the economy by leading to innovation and jobs.
"The people in my line of work have not done the best job in communicating our side of the debate. We've lost the messaging war," Jackson said yesterday at the National Press Club.
The statement comes as Jackson faces bipartisan efforts in both chambers of Congress to either curtail or eliminate her agency's authority to tackle climate change. Industry groups and several states have also lined up legal challenges to EPA's ruling that greenhouse gases should be regulated pollutants.
Jackson said that alarmists are reviving a frequently debunked argument that EPA regulations kill economic growth. The theory that less regulation is good for the economy was thoroughly disproved during the George W. Bush administration, she noted. Instead, she insisted that environmental protections spur the economy by leading to innovation and jobs.
THE SUPREME COURT AND CLEAN WATER
Monday March 8, 2010
Note: EPW Policy Beat presents a new series called "EPW Policy Brief," a weekly communication that will provide fact-based background and analysis on key policy issues. Policy Brief will go beyond the 24-hour news cycle and report substantively on the issues in a manner that doesn't upset the time-information continuum. We want to offer policy practitioners enough detail to enlighten and inform, while refraining from reporting the dross that can easily overwhelm and drive the time-constrained staffer to disinterest and distraction.
Summary: In Policy Brief #1, we respond to a recent story in the New York Times on federal clean water policy in the aftermath of two key Supreme Court decisions. We explain the Supreme Court's rulings in SWANCC and Rapanos, as well as another critical Clean Water Act (CWA) case, Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc. In our view, the Court properly delineated the reach of the federal government's control over water bodies in these cases. Further, we believe S. 787, "The Clean Water Restoration Act," advocated by some as the "solution" to clarify the Court rulings, is the wrong approach. By removing the word "navigable" from the CWA, S. 787 overturns the longstanding federal-state balance of regulatory authority established by the CWA, giving EPA and the federal government sweeping authority to regulate water bodies at the expense of states.
Issue: On February 28, 2010, the New York Times published an article titled "Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling EPA." According to the Times, "Thousands of the nation's largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act's reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators."
Summary: In Policy Brief #1, we respond to a recent story in the New York Times on federal clean water policy in the aftermath of two key Supreme Court decisions. We explain the Supreme Court's rulings in SWANCC and Rapanos, as well as another critical Clean Water Act (CWA) case, Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc. In our view, the Court properly delineated the reach of the federal government's control over water bodies in these cases. Further, we believe S. 787, "The Clean Water Restoration Act," advocated by some as the "solution" to clarify the Court rulings, is the wrong approach. By removing the word "navigable" from the CWA, S. 787 overturns the longstanding federal-state balance of regulatory authority established by the CWA, giving EPA and the federal government sweeping authority to regulate water bodies at the expense of states.
Issue: On February 28, 2010, the New York Times published an article titled "Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling EPA." According to the Times, "Thousands of the nation's largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act's reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators."
In Denial: The meltdown of the climate campaign
Monday March 8, 2010
It is increasingly clear that the leak of the internal emails and documents of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in November has done for the climate change debate what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam war debate 40 years ago-changed the narrative decisively. Additional revelations of unethical behavior, errors, and serial exaggeration in climate science are rolling out on an almost daily basis, and there is good reason to expect more.
The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), hitherto the gold standard in climate science, is under fire for shoddy work and facing calls for a serious shakeup. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the self-serving coalition of environmentalists and big business hoping to create a carbon cartel, is falling apart in the wake of the collapse of any prospect of enacting cap and trade in Congress. Meanwhile, the climate campaign's fallback plan to have the EPA regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the cumbersome Clean Air Act is generating bipartisan opposition. The British media-even the left-leaning, climate alarmists of the Guardian and BBC-are turning on the climate campaign with a vengeance. The somnolent American media, which have done as poor a job reporting about climate change as they did on John Edwards, have largely averted their gaze from the inconvenient meltdown of the climate campaign, but the rock solid edifice in the newsrooms is cracking. Al Gore was conspicuously missing in action before surfacing with a long article in the New York Times on February 28, reiterating his familiar parade of horribles: The sea level will rise! Monster storms! Climate refugees in the hundreds of millions! Political chaos the world over! It was the rhetorical equivalent of stamping his feet and saying "It is too so!" In a sign of how dramatic the reversal of fortune has been for the climate campaign, it is now James Inhofe, the leading climate skeptic in the Senate, who is eager to have Gore testify before Congress.
The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), hitherto the gold standard in climate science, is under fire for shoddy work and facing calls for a serious shakeup. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the self-serving coalition of environmentalists and big business hoping to create a carbon cartel, is falling apart in the wake of the collapse of any prospect of enacting cap and trade in Congress. Meanwhile, the climate campaign's fallback plan to have the EPA regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the cumbersome Clean Air Act is generating bipartisan opposition. The British media-even the left-leaning, climate alarmists of the Guardian and BBC-are turning on the climate campaign with a vengeance. The somnolent American media, which have done as poor a job reporting about climate change as they did on John Edwards, have largely averted their gaze from the inconvenient meltdown of the climate campaign, but the rock solid edifice in the newsrooms is cracking. Al Gore was conspicuously missing in action before surfacing with a long article in the New York Times on February 28, reiterating his familiar parade of horribles: The sea level will rise! Monster storms! Climate refugees in the hundreds of millions! Political chaos the world over! It was the rhetorical equivalent of stamping his feet and saying "It is too so!" In a sign of how dramatic the reversal of fortune has been for the climate campaign, it is now James Inhofe, the leading climate skeptic in the Senate, who is eager to have Gore testify before Congress.
More Carbon Dissidents - Gas at $7 a gallon ? - Democrats Revolt Over Energy
Friday March 5, 2010
Washington Times: Climate scientists plot to fight back at skeptics - "Most of our colleagues don't seem to grasp that we're not in a gentlepersons' debate, we're in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules," Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails. Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work. The scientists have been under siege since late last year when e-mails leaked from a British climate research institute seemed to show top researchers talking about skewing data to push predetermined outcomes. Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authoritative body on the matter, has suffered defections of members after it had to retract claims that Himalayan glaciers will melt over the next 25 years.
Wall Street Journal : Editorial : More Carbon Dissidents - So eight senior Senate Democrats think that Congress-instead of the Environmental Protection Agency-should decide whether or not to regulate carbon. Imagine that: Policy choices that carry enormous consequences for "the workers, industries, taxpayers and economic interests of our states" should be made by duly elected representatives. That's how the coal-state Senators-led by Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and including Ohio's Sherrod Brown and Michigan's Carl Levin-put it in a recent letter to EPA chief Lisa Jackson, who is set on using clean-air laws written in the 1970s to impose the carbon limits that Congress won't pass. A bill is pending in the Senate that would strip the White House's green bureaucrats of this "endangerment" authority. Last week House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson and Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton introduced a resolution that would effectively veto the EPA's ruling.
Wall Street Journal : Editorial : More Carbon Dissidents - So eight senior Senate Democrats think that Congress-instead of the Environmental Protection Agency-should decide whether or not to regulate carbon. Imagine that: Policy choices that carry enormous consequences for "the workers, industries, taxpayers and economic interests of our states" should be made by duly elected representatives. That's how the coal-state Senators-led by Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and including Ohio's Sherrod Brown and Michigan's Carl Levin-put it in a recent letter to EPA chief Lisa Jackson, who is set on using clean-air laws written in the 1970s to impose the carbon limits that Congress won't pass. A bill is pending in the Senate that would strip the White House's green bureaucrats of this "endangerment" authority. Last week House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson and Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton introduced a resolution that would effectively veto the EPA's ruling.
WSJ: Democrats Revolt Over Energy
Friday March 5, 2010
President Barack Obama's energy strategy came under attack on at least three fronts Thursday, highlighting the conflict that has hobbled one of the administration's top domestic priorities.
On Thursday, big utility operators and some state officials blasted the administration's formal announcement that it would drop plans for a federal nuclear-waste vault beneath Yucca Mountain, Nev., and instead consider what it believes are better options. On Capitol Hill, a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation to block the administration from using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers urged the administration not to use federal stimulus dollars to help finance a wind-energy project that involves a Chinese maker of wind turbines.
The actions add up to a significant challenge to Mr. Obama, who took office promising a fresh approach to energy policy that would promote jobs, slash greenhouse-gas emissions and put the U.S. in the forefront of new energy-technology development. More than a year into his presidency, Mr. Obama's policies are encountering resistance from big industries and members of his own party.
The Energy Department's move to formally drop its application for the Yucca Mountain waste site could hobble efforts to build more nuclear power plants-a strategy the Obama administration
On Thursday, big utility operators and some state officials blasted the administration's formal announcement that it would drop plans for a federal nuclear-waste vault beneath Yucca Mountain, Nev., and instead consider what it believes are better options. On Capitol Hill, a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation to block the administration from using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers urged the administration not to use federal stimulus dollars to help finance a wind-energy project that involves a Chinese maker of wind turbines.
The actions add up to a significant challenge to Mr. Obama, who took office promising a fresh approach to energy policy that would promote jobs, slash greenhouse-gas emissions and put the U.S. in the forefront of new energy-technology development. More than a year into his presidency, Mr. Obama's policies are encountering resistance from big industries and members of his own party.
The Energy Department's move to formally drop its application for the Yucca Mountain waste site could hobble efforts to build more nuclear power plants-a strategy the Obama administration
Washington Times: Climate scientists plot to fight back at skeptics
Friday March 5, 2010
Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be "an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach" to gut the credibility of skeptics.
In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of "being treated like political pawns" and need to fight back in kind. Their strategy includes forming a nonprofit group to organize researchers and use their donations to challenge critics by running a back-page ad in the New York Times.
"Most of our colleagues don't seem to grasp that we're not in a gentlepersons' debate, we're in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules," Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.
Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work.
"This was an outpouring of angry frustration on the part of normally very staid scientists who said, 'God, can't we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,'" said Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford professor and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment who was part of the e-mail discussion but wants the scientists to take a slightly different approach.
In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of "being treated like political pawns" and need to fight back in kind. Their strategy includes forming a nonprofit group to organize researchers and use their donations to challenge critics by running a back-page ad in the New York Times.
"Most of our colleagues don't seem to grasp that we're not in a gentlepersons' debate, we're in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules," Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.
Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work.
"This was an outpouring of angry frustration on the part of normally very staid scientists who said, 'God, can't we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,'" said Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford professor and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment who was part of the e-mail discussion but wants the scientists to take a slightly different approach.
Strassel: Carbon Caps Through the Backdoor
Environmentalists pressure the insurance industry
Friday March 5, 2010
Copenhagen was a flop. Congress's cap-and-trade bill is stalled. The EPA has delayed its climate rules. If you think this means American business is escaping the threat of carbon restraints, think again.
Most of the climate debate focuses on Washington. This misses a more clever and committed force-environmental groups that impose their agenda on companies via pressure, legal threat and sympathetic regulators. A textbook example has been quietly unfolding in the insurance sector. The question is whether governors will stand by to let green activists effectively regulate their businesses.
Since the beginning of the climate debate, environmental lobbies such as Ceres (a coalition of activists and investors that pressures companies to go green) have expressed particular interest in insurers. Rather than nitpick every company to adopt climate-change policies, these organizations realized it would be more efficient to target a gatekeeper. Everybody needs insurance. If insurers could be bludgeoned into requiring policyholders adopt carbon-mitigation practices as a requirement for insurance, the activists would have imposed their will widely and quickly.
Most of the climate debate focuses on Washington. This misses a more clever and committed force-environmental groups that impose their agenda on companies via pressure, legal threat and sympathetic regulators. A textbook example has been quietly unfolding in the insurance sector. The question is whether governors will stand by to let green activists effectively regulate their businesses.
Since the beginning of the climate debate, environmental lobbies such as Ceres (a coalition of activists and investors that pressures companies to go green) have expressed particular interest in insurers. Rather than nitpick every company to adopt climate-change policies, these organizations realized it would be more efficient to target a gatekeeper. Everybody needs insurance. If insurers could be bludgeoned into requiring policyholders adopt carbon-mitigation practices as a requirement for insurance, the activists would have imposed their will widely and quickly.
Barrasso Releases Report Detailing Majority's Failure to Investigate Administration Actions Undermining Transparency and Sound Science
Thursday March 4, 2010
WASHINGTON, DC - Today, US Senator John Barrasso, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, released a report detailing the Subcommittee's lack of oversight on a number of key Administration activities that undermine transparency and sound science. Barrasso discussed the report on the floor of the U.S. Senate while speaking about Mr. Arthur Elkins' nomination to serve as Inspector General of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"Mr. President, I rise today because the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will soon be meeting to discuss the nomination of Mr. Arthur Elkins to be Inspector General at the Environmental Protection Agency.
"I support Mr. Elkin's moving out of the committee. To date he has truthfully answered the questions that I have posed to him.
"Before the full Senate vote, I do have some additional questions based on a report that I am releasing today.
"Mr. President, as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, I care a great deal about ensuring oversight over the agencies within our jurisdiction, the most important of which is the EPA.
"Mr. President, I rise today because the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will soon be meeting to discuss the nomination of Mr. Arthur Elkins to be Inspector General at the Environmental Protection Agency.
"I support Mr. Elkin's moving out of the committee. To date he has truthfully answered the questions that I have posed to him.
"Before the full Senate vote, I do have some additional questions based on a report that I am releasing today.
"Mr. President, as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, I care a great deal about ensuring oversight over the agencies within our jurisdiction, the most important of which is the EPA.
Washington Times: Editorial: Global warming winners
Thursday March 4, 2010
The greatest scandal connected to global warming is not exaggeration, fraud or destruction of data to conceal the weakness of the argument. It is those who are personally profiting from promoting this fantasy at the expense of the rest of us.
Al Gore is the most visible beneficiary. The world's greatest climate-change fear-monger has amassed millions in book sales and speaking fees. His science-fiction movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Academy Award for best documentary and 21 other film awards. He was co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
Meanwhile, Mr. Gore was laying his own foundations. As he was whipping up hysteria over climate change, he cannily invested in "green" firms that stood to profit in the hundreds of millions of dollars (if not more) from increased government regulations and sweetheart deals from connected politicians and bureaucrats. The multimillionaire climate dilettante was given a free pass by reporters, who refused to ask him hard questions about the degree to which he was profiting from the panic he was causing.
With the global-warming story line unraveling, the New York Times allowed Mr. Gore to run what amounted to an unpaid advertisement for his brand of climate-change hysteria. This screed, published Saturday, reiterated his claim that the world faces an "unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it." That's pretty good rhetoric for the person with the largest carbon footprint in the world.
Al Gore is the most visible beneficiary. The world's greatest climate-change fear-monger has amassed millions in book sales and speaking fees. His science-fiction movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Academy Award for best documentary and 21 other film awards. He was co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
Meanwhile, Mr. Gore was laying his own foundations. As he was whipping up hysteria over climate change, he cannily invested in "green" firms that stood to profit in the hundreds of millions of dollars (if not more) from increased government regulations and sweetheart deals from connected politicians and bureaucrats. The multimillionaire climate dilettante was given a free pass by reporters, who refused to ask him hard questions about the degree to which he was profiting from the panic he was causing.
With the global-warming story line unraveling, the New York Times allowed Mr. Gore to run what amounted to an unpaid advertisement for his brand of climate-change hysteria. This screed, published Saturday, reiterated his claim that the world faces an "unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it." That's pretty good rhetoric for the person with the largest carbon footprint in the world.
CONSENSUS EXPOSED, PART 3: 'HIDE THE DECLINE'
Wednesday March 3, 2010
In our last excerpt from the Senate EPW Minority Report on the CRU controversy, we provide our take on the infamous "hide the decline" email. As one can see, the story behind that email is not an innocent one; in fact, it shows deliberate efforts to massage data to fit a preconceived conclusion about climate change.
From Section 1, "Inside the Email Trail" (pages 15 to 18):
Perhaps the most infamous example of this comes from the "hide the decline" email. This email initially garnered widespread media attention, as well as significant disagreement over its implications. In our view, the email, as well as the contextual history behind it, appears to show several scientists eager to present a particular viewpoint-that anthropogenic emissions are largely responsible for global warming-even when the data showed something different. Here is the email as written in 1999 by the CRU's Jones:
From Section 1, "Inside the Email Trail" (pages 15 to 18):
Perhaps the most infamous example of this comes from the "hide the decline" email. This email initially garnered widespread media attention, as well as significant disagreement over its implications. In our view, the email, as well as the contextual history behind it, appears to show several scientists eager to present a particular viewpoint-that anthropogenic emissions are largely responsible for global warming-even when the data showed something different. Here is the email as written in 1999 by the CRU's Jones:
