Freedom Line Blog

In our Liberty Update this week, CFIF highlights a bizarre new crony capitalist idea to introduce a carbon tax that some entrenched interests in Washington, D.C., have begun to advocate.  Even more bizarrely, they sell their proposal to begin taxing energy as a way to reduce energy costs.  You can’t make this up.

Courtesy of economist Stephen Moore, we have an illustration that helps explain their motivation.  Namely, “green” energy is far more expensive than more efficient fuel sources.  Accordingly, they need to tax those more efficient fuel sources in order to make their “green” energy boondoggles more acceptable by comparison:

Why Climate Extremists Want a New Carbon Tax

From realistic climatologist Bjorn Lomborg, writing in The Wall Street Journal this week, a jarring analysis of the cost of imposing the Biden/Pelosi/Schumer/AOC carbon-free “Green New Deal” agenda for every American annually:

A new study in Nature finds that a 95% reduction in American carbon emissions by 2050 will annually cost 11.9% of U.S. gross domestic product. To put that in perspective: Total expenditure on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid came to 11.6% of GDP in 2019. The annual cost of trying to hit Mr. Biden’s target will rise to $4.4 trillion by 2050. That’s more than everything the federal government is projected to take in this year in tax revenue. It breaks down to $11,300 per person per year, or almost 500 times more than what a majority of Americans is willing to pay.“

But don’t you dare ask any questions.  Just do what they say (not what they necessarily do, of course).

In our latest Liberty Update, we celebrate the environmental, economic, geostrategic and employment benefits of the American fracking revolution.  Today’s “Pepper… and Salt” comic from The Wall Street Journal offers another poignant perspective for climate fanatics to ponder:

Food for Thought, Climate Fanatics

In this week’s Liberty Update, CFIF wonders what Congressman Matt Gaetz (R – Florida) was thinking in throwing Congressional climate alarmists and their “Green New Deal” a lifeline with his “Green Real Deal.”  We noted how the U.S. already led the world in carbon reductions, which they claim is their goal, even without either bill and the economically disruptive policies they’d impose, and after President Trump rightfully withdrew us from the indefensible Paris climate accord.  This helpful image from the American Enterprise Institute illustrates our leadership in that regard:

In our Liberty Update this week, CFIF highlights how this week’s Senate vote on leftists’ “Green New Deal” once again exposed their hypocrisy.  We note how if climate alarmists really meant what they said, they’d support nuclear power, which offers carbon-free, reliable, safe power.  In a Wall Street Journal piece entitled “The Nuclear Option Is the Real Green Deal,” nuclear scientists John Rie and Alan Emery further detail nuclear power’s record of safety:

Is nuclear power dangerous?  The only major nuclear accident in the U.S. – Three Mile Island, in 1979 – caused neither death nor increase in cancer areawide.  The 2011 ‘disaster’ at the Fukushima plant in Japan also directly caused neither deaths nor disease from exposure to radiation.

World-wide, there have been fewer than 150 deaths from nuclear plants, mostly from the 1986 Chernobyl accident, in which bad design and a series of operator errors led to a significant release of radiation into the environment.  Thanks to the Soviet government’s attempt to keep it secret, lifesaving efforts such as the provision of iodine pills to local residents never happened.”

So “Green New Deal” fanatic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D – New York) apparently doesn’t practice what she preaches, as her extravagant personal carbon use doesn’t accord with what she advocates for everyone else.  Now, Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore just absolutely takes her apart on the matter:

AOC, the “Green” Hypocrite

That’s gonna leave a mark.

From our friends at AEI in honor of Earth Day, another “inconvenient fact” refuting hysterical climate alarmist claims:

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Another Inconvenient Fact

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The next time a global warming alarmist cites climatologist “consensus” (which is false, by the way) in support of their argument, offer them this straightforward reminder of past performance, courtesy of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI):

Amid the wreckage of failed political predictions last year, we shouldn’t overlook another year of failed global warming predictions.  One year ago, Cambridge University professor and global warming alarmist Peter Wadhams predicted that in 2016, Arctic ice would either disappear or decline to “record low” levels:

‘My prediction remains that the Arctic ice may well disappear, that is, have an area of less than one million square kilometers for September of this year,’ he said.  ‘Even if the ice doesn’t completely disappear, it is very likely that this will be a record low year.  I’m convinced it will be less than 3.4 million square kilometers [the current record low].  I think there’s a reasonable chance it could get down to a million this year, and if it doesn’t do it this year, it will do it next year.'”

So how did that turn out?  Ice levels actually grew by a significant amount:

Dire predictions that the Arctic would be devoid of sea ice by September this year have proven to be unfounded after the latest satellite images showed there is far more now than in 2012…  [W]hen figures were released for the yearly minimum on September 10, they showed that there was still 1.6 million square kilometers of sea ice, which was 21 percent more than the lowest point in 2012.  For the month of September overall, there was 31 percent more ice than in 2012, figures released this week from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) show.  This amounts to an extra 421,000 million square kilometers of sea ice.”

Oh, well.  Although the  climate alarm industry believes that there won’t be a next year, there’s always  next year.

The political tyranny du jour among climate change alarmists is leveraging the power of the state to persecute anyone who contradicts their orthodoxy using actual facts and data.  As we’ve highlighted, that abusive effort has blown up in their faces, including countersuits from targeted organizations.

There’s more good news to report:  The persecutors’ effort has hit a thud in terms of public opinion as well.  In an election season marked by narrow partisan divisions, a new Rasmussen survey demonstrates a rare degree of public consensus against politicians hoping to silence climate realists:

Attorneys general in 15 states are attempting to prosecute corporations and individuals that they believe are misleading the public about global warming.  Their action, which critics claim is a violation of free speech, has prompted a Congressional investigation.  Most voters continue to believe that the scientific debate about global warming is not over, and oppose government action against those who question it.  A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 69% of likely U.S. voters oppose the government investigating and prosecuting scientists and others, including major corporations, who question global warming.  Just 15% favor such investigations.”

It’s rare to find a 69% to 15% public agreement on anything these days, but it’s worth celebrating that despite the constant onslaught of demonizing rhetoric from climate change alarmists, the overwhelming majority of Americans continue to reject their agenda.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

In our latest Liberty Update we highlighted in “10 Years After Katrina, Failed Global Warming Prophecies Accumulate” how global warming alarmists continue to rely on predictions of imminent doom, despite the fact that their record of prediction is one of failure after failure.

Add another glaring and amusing example to that list.  In 2008, ABC News ran a “news” feature entitled “Earth 2100.”  It’s worth watching the 9-minute clip, which suggests such possibilities as milk at $12.00 per gallon and gas at $9.00 per gallon, as recalled by The Daily Caller:

Newsbusters notes that then GMA anchor Chris Cuomo, who teased the special at the time, said to [Bob] Woodruff of the predictions, ‘I think we’re familiar with some of these issues, but boy, 2015?  That’s seven years from now.  Could it really be that bad?’

Woodruff replies, ‘It’s very soon, you know.  But all you have to do is look at the world today.  You know, you’ve got gas prices going up.  You’ve got food prices going up.  You’ve got extreme weather.  The scientists have studied this for decades.  They say if you connect the dots, you can actually see that we’re approaching maybe even a perfect storm.  Or you have got shrinking resources, population growth, climate change.  So the idea now is to look at it, wake up about it and then try to do something to fix it.”

In related news, gas recently dipped below $2.00 per gallon in many parts of the country.  So much for that.

As Barack Obama plays the role of broken record again on his boondoggle to Alaska, it’s imperative to keep in mind how a global warming alarm movement that constantly relies upon predictions of doom maintains a 25-year record of failed predictions.

The Los Angeles Times‘ front-page headline Tuesday comes across as remarkably upbeat: “California is ahead of the game as Obama releases Clean Power Plan.”

But the story’s lead paragraph reads more like a threat than a promise: “President Obama’s plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants over the next 15 years will force states to address climate change by pushing them to act more like California.”

The president cited California’s example when he announced the plan on Monday, recalling the smog that hung over the Los Angeles basin in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “You fast-forward 30, 40 years later, and we solved those problems,” Obama said.

Well, yes, we did — and it’s a good thing, too. But the president is conflating those clean-air rules with policies of a more recent vintage.

California has led the way in pushing utilities to adopt renewable energy from sources such as windmills and solar panels in lieu of natural gas and coal-fired plants. According to the Times: “In 2013, the most recent year available, nearly 19% of California’s electricity came from renewable sources, while less than 8% came from coal, according to the California Energy Commission. In January, Brown proposed an ambitious target of 50% renewables by 2030.”

The story doesn’t mention, however, that the Golden State ranks close to the top in terms of energy prices. It’s no coincidence that the cost of renewable energy in California increased by 55 percent between 2003 and 2013, as the renewable portfolio standard was being phased in. And costs will continue to rise, in no small part because the state Public Utilities Commission earlier this year ordered changes in California’s tiered pricing for electricity, moving from four tiers to two. As a result, the first tier rate will increase significantly, and the second tier rate will rise marginally.

The Times also reports that California is on track to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 as required under AB 32, the “Global Warming Solutions Act” of 2006. Gov. Jerry Brown in January issued an executive order that would accelerate the mandate’s requirements, with the goal of reducing emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. Expect rates to go higher still.

Not surprisingly, Brown hailed Obama’s plan as “bold and absolutely necessary.”

But a new Manhattan Institute report by Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics highlights the real consequences of California’s decarbonization efforts, some unintended, some not. Among Lesser’s key findings:

• California households’ electricity prices have risen as a result of the state’s renewable-energy mandates and carbon cap-and-trade program—and will likely continue to rise at an even faster rate in coming years.
• The aforementioned policies have created a regressive energy tax, imposing proportionally higher costs in certain counties, such as California’s inland and Central Valley regions, where summer electricity consumption is highest but household incomes are lowest.
• In 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced “energy poverty”—defined as energy expenditures exceeding 10 percent of household income. In certain California counties, the rate of energy poverty was as high as 15 percent of all households.

This is the model that President Obama lauds and his EPA wants to emulate. The EPA’s new regulations would mandate that states cut carbon emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.

A tough Wall Street Journal editorial notes that the EPA’s final rule “is 9 percent steeper than the draft the Environmental Protection Agency issued in June 2014,” and opines: “The damage to growth, consumer incomes and U.S. competitiveness will be immense—assuming the rule isn’t tossed by the courts or rescinded by the next Administration.”

Steven F. Hayward, a professor of politics at Pepperdine University and an expert in environmental policy, observed in a post at Power Line on Monday, “By [EPA’s] own admission, full implementation of the emissions targets will avert only 0.018 degrees C of warming by the year 2100. I’m sure we’ll all notice that much change in temps!”

The final rule is nearly 1,600 pages long, and the regulatory impact analysis is nearly 400 pages, so needless to say it will take some time for the lawyers and wonks to sort everything out. But Hayward found an odd paragraph in near the middle of the impact analysis that led him to wonder if the government is putting us on:

As indicated in the RIA [Regulatory Impact Assessment] for this rule, we expect that the main impact of this rule on the nation’s mix of generation will be to reduce coal-fired generation, but in an amount and by a rate that is consistent with recent historical declines in coal-fired generation. Specifically, from approximately 2005 to 2014, coal-fired generation declined at a rate that was greater than the rate of reduced coal-fired generation that we expect from this rulemaking from 2015 to 2030. In addition, under this rule, the trends for all other types of generation, including natural gas-fired generation, nuclear generation, and renewable generation, will remain generally consistent with what their trends would be in the absence of this rule. [Hayward’s emphasis.]

Hayward poses a fascinating question: “if the electricity sector under this new regulation is going to unfold more or less along the lines of business as usual, why are we bothering with this regulation in the first place? Is the EPA seriously admitting that their regulation does nothing substantial at all, or that they’ve spotted a parade going down the street and decided to march at the head of it?”

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors encourage a vigorous legal challenge to the new rules, noting:

The Supreme Court did give EPA the authority to regulate carbon emissions in Mass. v. EPA in 2007. But that was not a roving license to do anything the EPA wants. The High Court has rebuked the agency twice in the last two years for exceeding its statutory powers.

“When an agency claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate a significant portion of the American economy, we typically greet its announcement with a measure of skepticism,” the Court warned last year. “We expect Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast economic and political significance.”

Congress did no such thing with the Clean Power Plan, which is a new world balanced on a fragment of the Clear Air Act called Section 111(d). This passage runs a couple hundred words and was added to the law in 1977, well before the global warming stampede. Historically Section 111(d) has applied “inside the fence line,” meaning the EPA can set performance standards for individual plants, not for everything connected to those sources that either produces or uses electricity.

When the EPA rule does arrive before the Justices, maybe they’ll rethink their doctrine of “Chevron deference,” in which the judiciary hands the bureaucracy broad leeway to interpret ambiguous laws. An agency using a 38-year-old provision as pretext for the cap-and-tax plan that a Democratic Congress rejected in 2010 and couldn’t get 50 Senate votes now is the all-time nadir of administrative “interpretation.”

“This plan is essentially a tax on the livelihood of every American,” the Journal‘s editorial concludes, “which makes it all the more extraordinary that it is essentially one man’s order.” As California goes, so goes the nation? Let’s hope not.

In last week’s column about Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment and creation, I pointed out some of the ways climate change alarmists have appropriated the pontiff’s language to advance agendas quite different from that of the Catholic Church. (Population control? Seriously?)

Well, the hits just keep on coming. Actor/activist Robert Redford on Sunday cited Pope Francis in his case for doing something — anything — to address the threat of climate change. 

“As Pope Francis has told us, we have a moral obligation to be responsible stewards of the earth and all it supports,” Redford wrote, which is true as far as it goes. “That means protecting future generations from the dangers of climate change.” Well, maybe.

But what does Redford have in mind exactly? On that point — and as with so many others who share his point of view — he’s maddeningly vague. “Our best business minds grasp the historic opportunity for us to lead the world in the clean energy economy of tomorrow,” he writes. “And a new American generation understands the urgency of acting now.”

He may be referring to the U.N.’s stated desire to “decarbonize the economy” by the end of the century. Or he might be talking about covering the country with solar panels and windmills. Whatever it is that he means, it won’t be cheap and it will require plenty of coercion.

It’s one thing to point out how greens lean on the Pope’s encyclical for their pet causes, but in fairness, Francis hasn’t made himself easy to defend. The Pope’s latest choice in climate change advisors is enough to send the most devout Catholic or free market devotee into the slough of despond. As I mentioned in the column, Francis is hardly a friend of capitalism. But he looks like Milton Friedman compared to Naomi Klein.

Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs, discusses why global warming is not the world’s greatest threat, why Vice President Joe Biden was wrong on his 2010 prediction about Iraq proving to be one of the greatest achievements of the Obama administration, and why former President George W. Bush is not to blame for ISIS.

Listen to the interview here.

Lost amid the charge of “inconvenient truths” and “hockey stick” graphs is a clear notion of what it would take to prove that global warming is real, man-made and alterable.

Robert Tracinski has an answer.

“We don’t know whether current warming departs from natural variation, nor have scientists proven the underlying mechanisms by which humans could cause such an increase,” writes Tracinski at The Federalist. “But even if we did know these things, we would have to be able to forecast with reasonable accuracy how big the effect is going to be. A very small warming may not even be noticeable or may have mostly salutary effects, such as a slightly longer growing season, whereas the impact of a much larger warming is likely to cause greater disruption.”

And therein lies the trillion dollar question: If meteorologists can’t consistently predict the weather from day-to-day, how on earth can humanity justify spending vast amounts of money on temperature predictions that fluctuate from “global cooling” to “global warming” only to settle on “climate change”?

As Tracinski says, “Given the abysmal record of climate forecasting, we should tell the warmists to go back and make a new set of predictions, then come back to us in 20 or 30 years and tell us how these predictions panned out. Then we’ll talk.”

Like clockwork, climate alarmists attributed Hurricane Sandy in 2012 to anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming.  In one typically irrational commentary, Paul Barrett equated global warming to steroids in its effect on the storm.

With that hyperbole and hysteria in mind, a Discovery Channel item this week provided appropriate humor.  Entitled “Thought Sandy Was Bad?  Revisit This 1821 Hurricane,” its historical piece offers beneficial perspective:

Remember all the hype about Hurricane Sandy being a ‘superstorm,’ a once-in-500-years convergence of meteorological nastiness?  According to a newly-published study by a Swiss insurance firm, Swiss Re, things could have been a lot worse.  Though the combination of factors that created Sandy was indeed unusual, Sandy wasn’t the most powerful storm that’s ever hit the U.S. East Coast.  That distinction probably belongs to the massive 1821 Norfolk and Long Island hurricane, which moved along the Mid-Atlantic before striking the New York/New Jersey coastline with wind speeds of 156 miles per hour.”

Too bad the alarmists weren’t around in 1821 to attribute causation to steam engine technology.  But perhaps contemporary alarmists can instruct us on how this only substantiates their ongoing charade.

CFIF’s Timothy Lee, Senior Vice President for Legal and Public Affairs, discusses this week’s United Nation’s summit on climate change, more inconvenient truths about global warming, and Harry Reid’s court packing efforts.

Listen to the interview here.

With California’s tax policy, the only certainty is that consumers will lose money.

The latest example is the growing fight over whether to include fuel distributors in the Golden State’s controversial global warming regulatory scheme. Doing so would subject them to the same cap-and-trade system applied to industrial facilities, and could add between 12 – 40 cents-per-gallon to fuel purchases within the next year. The leading alternative would opt for a flat 15 cent-per-gallon carbon tax, which grows to 40 cents by 2029.

In short, California lawmakers have agreed that gas should cost an additional 40 cents-per-gallon. They’re just torn over how long to wait before imposing it on taxpayers.

This is what passes for deliberation in a state dominated by tax-and-spend liberals.

No wonder the middle class is fleeing in droves.

In a chilling decision to silence discussion about climate change, the Los Angeles Times opinion page announced that letters to the editor that “deny global warming,” imply that “climate change is a hoax,” claim global warming is “a scheme by liberals to curtail personal freedom,” or dispute that “that human activity is indeed linked to climate change” are banned from its pages.

The choice by the hysterically hyper-environmentalist loons that run the LA Times opinion pages to restrict sincere debate and differences of opinion from a forum that is intended to challenge readers’ views is equal parts depressing, disgusting and alarming.

The LA Times opinion page points out that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently claimed “it was was 95 percent certain that we fossil-fuel-burning humans are driving global warming.” The problems with that statement are numerous. For one, that nagging 5 percent of doubt should be enough to keep the channels of discussion and debate open. Also, there remains a significant minority of members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who disagree with the assertion that humans alter the Earth’s climate. Many others debate the extent to which human action is responsible for changes in the climate.  In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s majority rule structure, their voices are powerless.

Even if there were indisputable proof that human actions directly cause climate change, there would be the question of “how much?.” Solar activity appears to play a much larger role in climate change than humans ever could – and we can’t do anything about that.

That means the real debate should be: “If humans play a minute role in climate change, what reactions are actually justified?”

If human activity causes temperatures to rise or fall a tiny fraction of a degree over some long period of time, should we prevent developing countries from rising out of poverty? Should we stand in the way of economic growth that would lead to greater global stability, improved health and educational outcomes, and increased longevity? Should the poorest people in the world be left without food, medicines and clean drinking water in the name of stopping them from producing CO2?

Those are serious questions that must be raised, considered and debated in years to come. Sadly, it appears the LA Times is more than happy to keep such discussions out of its pages.