cap and trade

In a small victory (for sanity) in the ongoing climate wars, Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem) admitted defeat in his and Gov. Kate Brown’s attempt to force unwilling Republicans to vote on a controversial cap-and-trade bill.

Northam is threatening to veto legislation recently passed by the General Assembly that would require a two-thirds’ majority vote from the Assembly and Senate to allow the Commonwealth to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

Some on the political right are floating a new “supply-side” idea for reducing carbon dioxide emissions without creating more market distortions: clean tax cuts. Proponents of the cuts want to reduce or end all taxes on investments in technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

During the week of July 28, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held hearings in four cities: Atlanta, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Washington. DC. The two-day sessions were to allow the public to have their voice heard about the proposed rules it released on June 2 that will supposedly cut CO2emissions by 30 percent. Many, including myself, believe that these rules are really an attempt to shut down coal-fueled electricity generation and implement a cap-and-trade program that the Administration couldn’t get through Congress in 2009, when cap-and-trade’s obvious allies held both houses of Congress.

America is poised to become the “no pee” section of the global swimming pool and the useless actions will cost us a bundle—raising energy costs, adding new taxes, and crippling the economy. Even some environmentalists agree. Yet, for President Obama, it’s all about legacy.

With the failure of Cap-and-Trade legislation, so-called smart meters (representing a power takeover), are being forced upon consumers by electric utilities, including Illinois’ ComEd, as just another technology that will achieve government-sponsored extortion of American citizens. It was in 2009 that the U.S. government allocated $11B of taxpayer funds from the 2009 bailout package to develop a “smart” grid, including “smart” meters for every home’s electricity, gas and water. Accordingly, smart meters have now become an integral part of the infrastructure to implement U.N. Agenda 21, the resulting document of the 1992 Rio Conference in Brazil (Informal name: The Earth Summit), whose principal themes are the environment and sustainable development.

While the president regularly demonizes CO2 and “Big Oil” with his lips, his actions have directed something entirely different.

Well, well, well.  It seems California is not all that interested in the environment after all. As this editorial in the Wall Street Journal notes (June 18, 2013, p. A18),…

General Electric Co.’s decision to cut off financing for a few dozen gun retailers will impose “an insignificant and immaterial” effect on  GE’s balance sheet, but the gun gambit provides this…

You’ve heard the cliché: “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.” Within the past month, I’ve experienced both sides of that adage—in reverse. On April 2, I was driving from Albuquerque…

Campaigning in San Francisco during the Democrat Party primaries in January 2008, Presidential Candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered…

Steve Chapman is Chicago’s best libertarian columnist. I’ve admired and learned from his work for years, so it was disappointing to read his column in today’s Chicago Tribune titled “Republicans vs. the…

Arnold Schwarzenegger says as California goes with a ruinous cap-and-trade scheme, so the nation should follow. Fresh from crushing “greedy Texas oil companies” and seeing his political enemies driven before…