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An Expensive and Unworkable Federal Power Grab June 18, 2009 How bad is H.R. 2454, the “American Clean Energy and Security Act”? It’s so bad, it’s designed to address a “problem” that does not exist. It’s so bad, evidence from Europe suggests that it won’t accomplish its misguided goals. It’s so bad, it’s guaranteed to drive up energy costs during a particularly brutal economic period. Finally, it’s so bad, U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) supports it. The 932-page bill, passed last month by the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the U.S. House of Representatives, is comprised of two parts. The first is a cap-and-trade scheme aimed at reducing “dangerous carbon emissions that cause global warming.” The second is a raft of new mandates for both motor and power-producing fuels. Let’s start by giving global-warming nonsense the miniscule attention it deserves. James R. Barrante, a Southern Connecticut State University professor of physical chemistry and relentless debunker of the dubious claims of manmade “climate change,” notes that over the millennia, the planet has undergone countless “warmings and coolings, some involving temperature changes of several degrees over 100 years.” Solar activity seems to be the major culprit in these swings -- not the amount of carbon dioxide, a chemical whose atmospheric concentration the professor says is akin to “a single crystal of salt in an 8-ounce glass of water.” (The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change has suggested that increased carbon dioxide levels could have many beneficial outcomes.) But even if one believes that the “greenhouse effect” is destroying the planet, the American Clean Energy and Security Act is unlikely to do much about it. The “allowances” under cap and trade, notes the Heritage Foundation’s Nicolas Loris and Ben Lieberman, are essentially taxes on fossil fuels, which meet “85 percent of America’s energy needs.” The tax-them-back-to-the-pre-carbon-age approach hasn’t worked in Europe. In testimony earlier this year, Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Congress that “gasoline taxes in major European Union member nations are now three to four dollars a gallon. This translates roughly into three to four hundred dollars per ton of carbon dioxide. Yet according to the European Environment Agency, greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector increased 26 percent in the EU-15 between … 1990 and 2006.” The measures in H.R. 2454 to expand low- and no-carbon energy are as likely to fail as the cap-and-trade program. For decades, Washington and state governments have showered subsidies on “renewables.” Taxpayers’ return on this “investment” has been niggardly. Connecticut’s a prime example. Contrary to the deeply held beliefs of green-power dreamers, “clean” energy is nearly nonexistent here. In 2007, the sources of the Nutmeg State’s electricity were: * nuclear: 49 percent Solar, wind, and hydrogen, the “energies of the future,” contributed a whopping 2.2 percent to the state’s power production. The remaining 2.8 percent was generated by biomass, a once-fashionable source that most greens now disdain. (Witness the opposition to Plainfield Renewable Energy’s plan to build a scrapwood-burning plant in eastern Connecticut.) The American Clean Energy and Security Act furthers the fantasy of non-hydrocarbon electricity by the imposition of a requirement that 25 percent of the nation’s power be “alternative” by 2025. (Connecticut already has a doomed-to-fail renewable dictate of its own: 20 percent by 2020.) It’s tempting to dismiss climate hysteria as the selfish machinations of humanity-haters, power-crazed politicians, and welfare-seeking corporations. (Global warming is even tougher to swallow when Connecticut is experiencing the coldest spring in recent memory.) But alarmists’ lobbying muscle cannot be questioned. Neither can the destructive results that will surely come from their latest power grab -- e.g., higher prices for electricity, gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, durable goods, medical services, food, and transportation. Connecticut’s consumers and taxpayers are already “benefitting” from a regulatory monstrosity founded on the weak science of professional warmists: the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. But the RGGI, an agreement Northeastern states signed in 2005, is voluntary. Connecticut can (and should) get out. It can’t escape federal law. Stopping the American Clean Energy and Security Act won’t be easy. As they have for decades, radical greens (including Rep. Murphy, a Committee on Energy and Commerce member who voted for the bill) control the debate. But as Americans learn about the bill -- in a recent poll, more citizens thought “cap and trade” referred to Wall Street regulation than the environment -- a majority might oppose unaffordable legislation crafted to tackle a fictitious crisis. D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and lecturer. His website is www.dowdmuska.com. # # # # #
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