Thread: Obama's Climate Action Masks Hidden Agenda

Obama's Climate Action Masks Hidden Agenda

Friday, 28 Jun 2013 08:37 AM
By Peter Morici Twitter @pmorici1

President Obama’s Climate Action Plan won’t do much to curb global warming, but it will please liberals who delight in extending government control over large segments of the economy.

The president argues the overwhelming majority of scientists, including some early skeptics, agree the planet is warming and greenhouse gas emissions are the primary culprit. As CO2 composes 80 percent of those gases, Obama targets coal-fired electric utilities and opportunities to reduce fuel use in heavy transportation.

The president proposes reducing U.S. emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels through strict Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation and oversight, when the market forces are already accomplishing that goal without imposing a command and control regime.

In 2011, the last year data are available, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were already down 8.5 percent from 2005. Simply, responding to changing consumer preferences, Detroit started making more fuel-efficient vehicles even before the president started phasing in tougher mileage standards in 2012. Recently, more abundant and cheaper natural gas inspired electric utilities to start switching out of coal.

If current trends continue, as is likely, these market-driven adjustments in U.S. energy use will take U.S. greenhouse gases well below the president’s target by 2020 without needless and costly government intervention.

If left alone, the power sector in the Midwest, for example, will continue to phase out coal in the most cost-efficient ways — by strategically replacing it with natural gas and purchasing nuclear, hydro and other renewal power from other parts of the country. This will keep down electric utility rates.

Instead, the president will micromanage the process by imposing strict and inflexible requirements on each electric utility similar to corporate fuel economy standards now imposed on car and light truck manufacturers. This will limit flexibility, result in the overuse of natural gas and unnecessarily raise both natural gas and electricity prices for manufacturers, other commercial users and homeowners.

Similarly, competition from rail, complemented by short-haul light trucks, already imposes pressures on long-haul trucking companies and heavy truck manufactures to conserve fuel in the most cost-effective ways. But the president’s program will micromanage their efforts out of the EPA and raise the cost of moving goods around the country without cutting CO2 emissions very much.

All this will make U.S. manufacturing and other commercial enterprises less competitive and send more jobs to China, where businesses pollute with reckless abandon.

With an economy about half the size, China already emits twice the greenhouse gases as either the United States or Europe. Every three years, its emissions grow enough to replace the savings the United States would accomplish over 15 years. Other developing countries, like India, are similarly adding to the problem.

The president proposes to bring China and other nations along through diplomacy, but he has not been able to obtain Beijing’s cooperation on the value of the yuan, cyber piracy or even detaining Eric Snowden. No one can reasonably believe China can be persuaded to rearrange its entire automobile and electrical generation industries to suit the predilections of American environmentalists — especially when American approaches to regulation are delivering growth at less than one-third the pace accomplished in the Middle Kingdom.

The president wants the new EPA standards for power plants finalized by June of 2015 and implemented in 2016. This hasty timetable is necessary to lock in a new regime before its wisdom is debunked and another round of negotiations with China, India and others fail.

Global warming will go unmitigated, and U.S. economic growth and jobs creation will be further harmed; however, the president’s desired legacy will be served. As with Obamacare, the scope of command and control over the private economy will be extended.
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Insider Report from Newsmax.com 1. Obama's Global Warming Plan Called 'Medieval Witchcraft' 2. Mothers as Breadwinners at All-Time High 3. Experts Call for Government Action on Salt 4. Small Businesses Freeze Hiring Over Obamacare 5. Israelis Reject Input From American Jews 6. Foreign-Born Population to Set Record 1. Obama's Global Warming Plan Called 'Medieval Witchcraft' President Barack Obama on Tuesday declared that the debate over climate change and its causes was over, and announced a wide-ranging plan to combat global warming. But despite the president's warnings about the dire consequences of failing to act against global warming, the fact is that the planet basically has not been warming for the past 15 years. Obama's plan includes regulations aimed at reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from power plants, vehicles, and buildings. Yet the Earth's temperature has not risen significantly of late even though human activities have pumped some 400 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past 15 years. As a result of these emissions, "we should have seen temperatures rise by around [0.45 degrees Fahrenheit]," German climate scientist Hans von Storch said in an interview with Spiegel Online. "That hasn't happened. In fact, the increase over the past 15 years was just [0.11 degrees] — a value very close to zero." Storch is a professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg and director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz Research Centre in Germany. He said: "So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. "If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models." One explanation for the erroneous models could be that "greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed," he said. Another possibility is that scientists "have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes," he added. Obama, in his Tuesday speech, sought to debunk skepticism about man-made global warming by declaring: "We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society." But skeptic Marc Morano, founder of the Climate Depot website, said: "President Obama is still parading his ignorance on climate science, linking bad weather to 'global warming,' claiming a mythical 97 percent consensus, and implying that his executive actions can alter the globe's temperature and lessen extreme weather events. "The president has descended into the realm of medieval witchcraft by claiming he can combat global temperature rises and weather patterns through administrative action."