Shipping Containers

By Nick Loris 

Protectionism is always bad policy. But protectionism during an economic downturn, after taxes have already risen, and in addition to a massive $2 trillion tax on energy consumption is, well, not good.

Yet that is exactly what Energy Secretary David Chu seems to be edging towards.

In response to the notion that American companies will move overseas when CO2 is capped, Secretary Chu suggested that the U.S. simply levy a carbon tariff on imports.

This is why Secretaries of Energy should stick with energy and not economic policy. This is why free-markets work and command and control economies do not.

At any rate, the supposed logic goes something like this.

Since energy, predominately fossil fuel, is the lifeblood our economy, industries across the board will be hit with higher energy costs. Particularly hit hard will be the manufacturing sector. In the first 20 years, the Lieberman-Warner cap and trade bill would have destroyed over 900,000 jobs, caused nearly 3 million job losses in the manufacturing sector by 2029, caused some manufacturing sectors (e.g., paper, chemicals, and plastics).

The logical solution for these companies is to move overseas where they can make more efficient use of labor and capital and won’t be put at a competitive disadvantage in the United States. In response, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Tuesday advocated adjusting trade duties as a “weapon” to protect U.S. manufacturing, just a day after one of China’s top climate envoys warned of a trade war if developed countries impose tariffs on carbon-intensive imports.

Mr. Chu, speaking before a House science panel, said establishing a carbon tariff would help “level the playing field” if other countries haven’t imposed greenhouse-gas-reduction mandates similar to the one President Barack Obama plans to implement over the next couple of years. It is the first time the Obama administration has made public its view on the issue.

‘If other countries don’t impose a cost on carbon, then we will be at a disadvantage…[and] we would look at considering perhaps duties that would offset that cost,’ Mr. Chu said.”

The Heritage Foundation has already documented how costly a cap-and-trade implemented in the United States would be. Our Center for Data Analysis calculated the costs of global warming cap-and-trade legislation in the U.S. alone and the cumulative GDP losses for 2010 to 2029 approach $7 trillion. Single-year losses exceed $600 billion in 2029, more than $5,000 per household. Annual job losses exceed 800,000 for several years. That’s a scary price to pay for what little, if any, environmental benefits we receive.

A carbon tax on imports makes all of that worse.

Read the rest of this article at The Heritage Foundation.

Paul Walsh

A record 41 percent now say news coverage of global warming is exaggerated, while 57 percent say coverage is generally on the mark or underestimated.

 

By Paul Walsh

More Americans are skeptical about the seriousness of global warming than ever before, according to a survey released this week by the Gallup organization.

A record 41 percent now say news coverage of global warming is exaggerated, while 57 percent say coverage is generally on the mark or underestimated. As recently as 2006, Gallup found that 30 percent viewed news coverage of global warming as exaggerated vs. 66 who did not.

Read the rest of this story at Star Tribune.

EU and Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus

By Pete Chagnon 

Speakers at a conference on climate change are making the case that the alarmism behind the global-warming bandwagon is politically motivated, has nothing to do with science, and could affect the sovereignty of the U.S.

The second annual International Conference on Climate Change hosted by The Heartland Institute is well under way in New York City. More than 700 registrants have gathered in the Big Apple to hear more than 70 scientists — representing the views of tens of thousands of their colleagues — make the argument that media and environmental advocacy groups have it all wrong, that global warming is not a crisis.
 
One of the headlining speakers to open the event Sunday evening was European Union and Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, who was welcomed with a standing ovation. Klaus, one of the most outspoken critics of manmade global warming in Europe, says those who propagate global-warming hysteria are like the communists of old Europe. Like global-warming alarmists, he stated, the communists did not listen to opposing views.

“They didn’t even try to argue back,” said Klaus. “They considered you a naïve, uninformed and confused person, an eccentric complainer….It is very similar now.”
 
Klaus believes that politicians who propagate global warming hysteria only have one goal in mind: control of the public. “It is evident that the environmentalists don’t want to change the climate,” he said. “They want to change our behavior…to control and manipulate us.”
 
And he warns that those same politicians wish to engage in energy rationing — all because of a problem that he believes does not exist. Klaus concluded his speech with this remark.
 
“The environmentalists speak about saving the planet. We have to ask — From what? And from whom?” said the EU leader. “I think I know [those answers] for sure. We have to save the planet, and us, from them.”

Read the rest of this story at One News Now.

As temperatures fail to meet alarmist predictions, and ever-increasing dire warnings of catastrophic, accelerating runaway warming are being refuted by simple observation, the global warming apologists keep rolling out the excuses. Here’s an article from Discovery News.

By Michael Reilly

For those who have endured this winter’s frigid temperatures and today’s heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may seem, well, almost wishful.

But climate is known to be variable — a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn’t mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.

Earth’s climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.

“This is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. “Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn’t have one.”

Read the rest of this article at Discovery News.

It was snowing irony in Washington on Monday when global warming activists descended on the District like a storm — but got beaten to the punch by a blast of wintry weather that incapacitated the city.

By Joseph Abrams 

Global warming activists stormed Washington Monday for what was billed as the nation’s largest act of civil disobedience to fight climate change — only to see the nation’s capital virtually shut down by a major winter storm.

Schools and businesses were shuttered, lawmakers cancelled numerous appearances and the city came to a virtual standstill as Washington was blasted with its heaviest snowfall of the winter.

It spelled about six inches of trouble for global warming activists who had hoped to swarm the Capitol by the thousands in an effort to force the government to close the Capitol Power Plant, which heats and cools a number of government buildings, including the Supreme Court and the Capitol.

The snowy scene, with temperatures in the mid-20s, was reminiscent of a day in January 2004, when Al Gore made a major address on global warming in New York — on one of the coldest days in the city’s history.

Protest organizers said about 2,500 people braved the blizzard to oppose greenhouse gas emissions, but the shroud of snow wasn’t the only wet blanket in the nation’s capital Monday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who called on the architect of the Capitol to stop burning coal at the power plant last week, cancelled her appearance at the rally because her flight to Washington was cancelled.

Michelle Obama canned a public “Read Across America” event and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan canceled a meeting with the Democratic Caucus because the members of Congress couldn’t get to D.C. An honor cordon at the Pentagon for Afghanistan’s defense minister also had to be called off.

Some protesters couldn’t make it as dozens of flights in the area were delayed or called off, and some couldn’t face the dangerous roads or blustery weather, leaving hundreds safe, if sorry, back at home.

One protester named Kat had planned to get arrested and be bailed out Monday but decided to stay put and donate her money to a good cause instead.

“I don’t want to travel in the snow today. However, I am donating my bail money to fight mountaintop removal,” she wrote to the Climate Action Web site.

Read the rest of this story at Fox News.