July 2004 Archives

Excerpted from Tech Central Station

Environmental activists continue to mis-diagnose air pollution's causes and cures and to obscure or ignore positive trends in pollution emissions and ambient levels. "Highway Health Hazards," a new report from the Sierra Club, is the latest example.

Of course, all else equal, more driving means more pollution. But the U.S. has achieved large pollution reductions in spite of rapid growth in driving. For example, between 1975 and 2003 total vehicle miles driven increased by more than 110%, but the average number of 8-hour ozone exceedances per year decreased more than 60%, and the average number of 1-hour ozone exceedances per year decreased more than 90%. Average levels of fine airborne particulate matter (PM2.5) decreased more than 40%. Where 60% of the nation's monitoring locations violated the 1-hour ozone standard in the late 1970s, only 10% do so today. All other pollutants declined as well and virtually the entire nation attains federal air standards for carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and lead.

Technology is winning the war on air pollution by decreasing emissions per vehicle much more rapidly than driving is increasing. Fleet turnover to inherently cleaner vehicles ensures these improvements will continue.

You won't see any of this good news in "Highway Health Hazards." The Sierra Club instead makes the ridiculous claim that "the number of regions with unhealthy air will more than double in the next few years." And despite the fact that automobile emissions per mile are dropping by about 10% per year, while miles driven is increasing only about 2% per year, a heading in the report proclaims "More Highways, More Sprawl, More Pollution." Indeed, the report discusses increases in driving, but provides no data at all on actual trends in vehicle emissions or ambient pollution levels.

The Sierra Club also ignores the inconvenient fact that suburbs and automobile-based lifestyles are not foisted upon the public, but are voluntarily chosen. A recent study by researchers from Harvard and Tufts concluded that suburbanization has indeed improved people's overall welfare, and that as people get wealthier they are more likely to choose suburbs and to drive more. Perhaps people know more about their preferences than the Sierra Club's "experts."

It's no surprise that the Sierra Club fails to discuss positive air pollution trends and the problems with its policy prescriptions, and ignores people's lifestyle preferences. After all, the Sierra Club's goal is to override people's individual choices and instead bend them to its collectivist vision of how people ought to live -- all for their own good, of course. As Adam Smith aptly put it more than 200 years ago "virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience."

See the full column at Tech Central Station

but it's pretty clear where the debate -- or at least an agenda -- has returned, if subtly.

We are at a policy crossroads (again), as readers may have noticed. One candidate has made clear he opposes further "drilling" at home (what the Teamsters claim he told them in private notwithstanding). He just reaffirmed that it's time to restrict imported oil, too.

Now, unless you're talking about several-hundred-miles-per-gallon CAFE, I'm not sure what's going to run those engines, and even then there's only so much growing on the trees.

I seem to recall a phrase, that when openly discussed went over not too well, something about "...eliminate the internal combustion engine...", and through fiat and not the market.

So, it remains as true as ever that when we exit the fossil fuel age it will not be for want of fossil fuels. It should be because of innvation, however, not (further) artifical scarcity either of supply or demand. Let us hope the next 12 weeks openly revive debate over the wisdom of articifically, and expensively, forcing ourselves out of our most abundant reliable energy sources.

The belief that "we're running out of oil" is one that dies hard, and drives any number of environmental policies. But there's one problem: it's not true.

Before an audience at the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, G. Campbell Watkins gave a speech on May 27 titled "Are We Running Out of Oil?" He noted that if he limited his remarks to that question, "this is going to be a very short address indeed, because I’d say no, and not only no, but the question isn’t really meaningful."

While "US President Jimmy Carter proclaimed in 1977 that we could use up all the proven reserves in the entire world by the end of the next decade," world reserves actually increased by 500 billion barrells from 1973 through 2002.

The reason? Increased technical knowledge, combined with economic incentives. Non-OPEC oil sources have risen from 40 to 60 percent of world output.

Watkins is one of the editors of Energy Journal. His remarks to the Halifax Club are available in PDF here.

EPA to get Treaty Powers?

The United States' founding fathers reserved the treaty-making power to those measures that receive two-thirds of those Senators voting. Only the most serious subjects received such "super-majority" treatment. Yet a bill currently before that body illustrates how the Senate continues to erode its constitutionally granted role in providing "advice and consent" on foreign commitments.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s authoritative “Treaties and Other International Agreements: The Role of the United States Senate” (S.Rpt. 106-71, 2001), offers many lessons on the modern treaty process. Among them is a recounting of the Committee’s lack of success reining in creative Executives. Of specific interest is the recent trend of agreements prohibiting Senate “reservations”, and employing treaties not as literal commitments but omnibus grants of authority in a particular realm.

Current developments make this attempt at oversight, and even those past outrages drawing Committee ire, seem like the golden age of treaty-making constitutional adherence.

Read More »

I generally support the use of common law nuisance actions to address environmental problems. Where a given property owner is infringing upon the ability of another property owner to enjoy his or her property, I much prefer reliance upon the common law -- or at least common law principles -- than reliance upon regulatory mandates. But the common law, as we know it, is not applicable to every environmental situation. One area where it is certainly not applicable is climate change -- at least as advanced by several state attorneys general last week. As I explain in this TCS column, the state AGs' case is based upon dubious legal analysis and would not abate the "public nuisance" it purports to address. I believe the suit is more about political posturing and trying to force a negotiated settlement with utilities than it is about climate change.

Even if I thought public nuisance principles were applicable to climate change, I don't believe state AGs should be able to use nuisance law to impose burdens on other states that they are not willing to impose within their own state. (Think of this as an equitable "clean hands" principle, or as Thomas Merrill put it in a seminal law review article a "golden rule" for transboundary pollution.) Basically, if state A wants to use nuisance law to impose emission cuts on utilities in state B, state A should be willing to impose the same reductions on itself. This is easy to do where state B is upwind and is primarily responsible for polluton in downwind state B. But in the case of climate change, there is no "upwind and "downwind." Emissions in Wisconsin are as relevant as those in New York as those in Ohio, and so on, and there is no a priori reason to assume that the burden of emission reductions should fall upon one state's industry rather than another.

Of course, if the state AGs were serious about climate change as a policy matter, they would not be posturing and litigating over ecologically insignificant emission reducitons in other states. Instead they would be seeking policies that encourage technological devleopment, improved societal resilience, and the like. Several years ago, when I was still at CEI, I was lead author on this study that outlines some of the steps of this sort that could be taken. It's a sign of the state AGs sincerity (or lack thereof), that they are more interested in the political theater of these nuisance suits than in considering serious policy proposals.

The following is my letter to the editor that appeared in yesterday's Santa Barbara News Press (it's unfortunately a pay site) - a response to an editorial that ran on July 18. Like so many other endorsements of marine reserves, the SB Press just doesn't understand that marine reserves don't exist in a vacuum. And as long as marine reserves are built around an open-access commons, they're not going to work very well.

New Zealand leader in healthy fishing

It is heartening to see attention given to both the decline of our ocean fisheries and wildlife and to possible solutions. Fishermen, however, are not hellbent to "beat out good science," they're simply trying to make a living under a truly perverse regulatory system, one that encourages overfishing and habitat destruction.

Marine reserves offer great promise, but they are incomplete without changing the nature of fisheries management.

In New Zealand, the creation of harvest rights to fish so self-interest lines up with conservation and the future health of fisheries resulted in something anathema to most fisheries in the United States: fishermen agreeing to catch less than they were allotted by the government.

From communal village tenure over coral reefs in the South Pacific to the offshore fisheries of New Zealand, owners of fishing rights or territories press for and enforce their own conservation measures, including marine reserves and multi-species management.

Marine reserves can only be as effective as the respect given to their boundaries, and as long as we manage fisheries to encourage rapacious behavior, fughettaboutit.

Michael De Alessi, Director of Natural Resource Policy, Reason Foundation, Los Angeles

OK, although this arose from a political speech at a political convention, there is actually an important point that, were it no longer overlooked, should logically have serious policy consequences one way or the other. Former President Clinton premised his argument against President Bush -- it seemed more that than a pitch for Kerry -- at Monday's opening night session of the Democratic National Convention on a claim now de rigeur among Europeans: "after 9/11...[the President] and his congressional allies made a very different choice" than "bring[ing] us together...and unit[ing] the world in common cause against terror." Instead, as the saying goes, Bush squandered unprecedented goodwill toward the U.S. Despite the serious charge and the setting calling for a serious speech, Clinton specifically indicted Bush's "withdrawing American support for the Climate Change Treaty" as behind some allies impeding other U.S.-led efforts (note the capitalization drawn from Clinton's released text, in lieu of the K-word, Dems having also dropped support for Kyoto from their platform; strong letter from the French to follow, no doubt).

Now, this raises a question of basic competence and awareness. President Bush "withdrew our support from", though regrettably never went so far as to actually withdraw from, Kyoto by merely saying mean things about it. As such, it may be open to rhetorical distortion, but not to serious debate, that as a matter of fact, law and policy, President Bush has merely maintained Clinton's position of refusing (for over 3 years of the latter's presidency) to send the treaty to the Senate for a vote. We continue our involvement, however, sending 28 State and EPA officials to the June "Subsidiary Body" talks in Bonn. How, precisely, do the parties differ on this significant issue?

But, here's the kicker. This so-called withdrawal of support came on March 17, 2001. Six months before we were attacked, announced by Vice President Cheney on MSNBC and to our allies by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. By 9/11 the Sturm und Drang had subsided, only to be revived, post-facto, to justify French and German shenanigans at the UN. Either Kyoto is or is not a desirable policy option. The parties do, or do not, differ on this. As with the science, however, we never seem quite able to actually have that debate.

I have an article today in TechCentralStation concerning European attitudes towards climate control (Commission Emissions). While the first national plans for trading emissions for energy-intensive industrial plants have been approved by the European Commission, it becomes more and more clear that most European countries will not be able to afford emissions cuts. Economic growth in 2003 was only 0.4 percent in the Euro area. How much would that figure be reduced, if the cost of energy had to increase because of climate policies?

Rail transit will be on the ballot this November in Denver, Austin, and possibly other cities. While local proponents ballyhoo the benefits, rail projects in other cities have recently experienced serious problems that should help opponents convince voters to turn down new taxes for rails.

Minneapolis opened its Hiawatha light-rail line last month. Traffic on Hiawatha Avenue paralleling the line immediately became far more congested. The reason? Traffic engineers gave the light rail priority at all traffic signals. People who once could drive from one end of Hiawatha to another without stoppng now at synchronized traffic lights must now stop several times along the route, adding 10 to 15 minutes to typical journeys.

Houston opened a 7.5-mile light-rail line in its downtown on January 1. It has so far caused more than 50 collisions with autos or pedestrians (including a few during testing before January 1). While the transit agency blames bad auto drivers, the accident rate is twenty times the national average for light-rail lines.

Last fall, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) opened a new line to the San Francisco Airport. Ridership is only half of projected levels, and San Mateo Transit, which agreed to fund the operating costs, is now in dire financial straights. It will probably have to cut service on popular bus routes to pay for a poorly utilized rail line.

A few years ago, San Jose voters agreed to raise sales taxes to build light-rail lines and a BART line. The transit agency sold bonds and started construction. When the recent recession hit, sales tax revenues plummeted, and to avoid defaulting on the bonds the agency cut transit service. It has lost more than a third of its passengers in the last three years and a grand jury report has accused the transit agency of financial mismanagement. This and the BART airport experience have convinced even the Sierra Club to oppose extending BART to San Jose.

The push for rail transit comes from construction companies that seek to soak the taxpayers building it, downtown property owners who hope to enhance the value of their properties, anti-auto environmentalists who view congestion with schadenfreude, and collectivists who think we would be better off in collective transit than private autos. None of these reasons are very appealing so they cloak their goals behind specious claims that rails will reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, something that rail transit has never done.

A couple members of the Gang of Four, which came up with the Northwest Forest Plan, comment on the Bush decision to change the Clinton roadless plan. PERC Executive Director Terry Anderson comments in the piece as well.

In addition, three of the Gang of Four argue that parts of species protection in the Northwest Forest Plan may be getting taken too far.

I certainly have my differences with the Bush Administration over environmental policy, but former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall's claim that the administration has "not put forward a single positive new conservation concept" is simply false. See, for example, this speech by Assistant Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett on "Private Stewardship and Conservation Incentives." More broadly, the administration has sought to reintroduce notions of greater local control and the use of incentives in the place of coercive regulations to advance conservation. These approaches are promising, if underutilized and often ignored by some of the Administration's less inspiring environmental appointees. Of course, these approaches are also anathema to the D.C.-based environmental establishment, so it's no surprise that Udall ignores them.

The picture in the top left corner of you newly redesigned site Natural Bridge of Virginia. Natural Bridge is one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Since the nation's founding it has also been protected and conserved through private ownership, not government regulation or public control. At one point, it was even owned by Thomas Jefferson. For more on the history and conservation of Natural Bridge, see this case study by noted conservation scholar R.J. Smith.

I have an article in National Review Online today looking at the extraordinary lengths the British scientific establishment is going to in order to stifle dissent in global warming science. Sir David King's Queenie Fit details some Stalinesque tactics used by Sir David, Chief Scientific Adviser to Her Majesty's Government, at a recent conference in Moscow. The scientists he attempted to have silenced are not cranks; Paul Reiter, for instance, is one of the world's most respected malariologists and represents the scientific consensus that climate has played a minor role in the resurgence of malaria and other 'vector-borne' diseases.

The French newspaper Le Figaro covered the fracas on July 16, saying,

The clash was more than a minor diplomatic incident because it revealed a form of intellectual bullying that is beginning to dominate the scientific community on the question of climate change.

Not only will the poor of the world suffer from misguided attempts to relieve malaria by changing the weather, but science itself will suffer if this disdain for the spirit of free inquiry is allowed to continue.

My op/ed commentary on the Bush forests plan follows.

Roadless Plan Wrong, Shortsighted Reform
By John Baden

The Bush administration has authored a proposal that will, for the first time, give Western governors authority to formally propose development in our wildest public lands. This overturns President Clinton's decision to set aside 40 million acres of National Forest as roadless areas.

Although the initiative was criticized as part of the Clinton administration's "War on the West," fiscal conservatives and the vast majority of Westerners applauded the decision, even those who abhorred both Clinton and his process.

Read More »

Eight state attorneys general and the city of New York will have a press conference at noon Eastern Wednesday to announce that, despite not being scientists, they are wise enough to set a good portion of our national global warming policy.

Attorneys general are elected to enforce laws, not to create them.

The Separation of Powers concept was enshrined in our governmental bodies by our Founding Fathers for a reason: When too much power is congregated in one source, dictatorship is inevitable. If these state politicians wish to set national environmental policies they should lobby Congress or run for Congress themselves.

In this case, the politicians are expected to announce they will file a lawsuit to change policies regulating power plants in states other than their own, and supervise the federal Tennesse Valley Authority as well.

It must be quite something to believe oneself smarter than entire legislatures -- from long distance, no less.

I write more about all this in "Now They Want to Be Caesar: Eight State Attorneys General Decide to End-Run Legislatures, Set National Global Warming Policies Themselves."

The revival of the River Wandle in London from open sewer to trout run is a piece of marvelous environmental news:

The Wandle has been reborn in one of the most remarkable environmental transformations seen in Britain. In 25 years, what was a lifeless drain through industrial estates and dense Victorian housing, entering the Thames just down from Clap-ham Junction, has come alive with substantial fish such as dace, roach, chub and barbel. Most astonishing is the population of brown trout, fish which need clear, well-oxygenated water. They are the surest sign of river health.

Last year, a fly-fisherman caught a 21/2lb trout in a section of the river next to Wandsworth council's bin lorry depot. This is believed to have been the first trout caught in London for 70 years, and the first caught on the fly for more than a century.

But try as you might, you can't quite work out from the Independent's coverage just who is responsible for the miracle. It's pretty clear, however, in the National Geographic coverage:

... there has been a remarkable turnaround in the Wandle's fortunes. This can be traced back to the privatization of Britain's water industry ten years ago. Since then Thames Water has ploughed billions of dollars into improving water quality.

The old nationalized water industry and the induistries around it treated the river as a public receptacle of waste. It took private ownership of the river to realize its environmental value.

Jerry Taylor and Peter van Doren have a piece up over at National Review Online regarding the Bush decision to replace the Clinton roadless rule with a forest management plan based on input from the different state governors. As Jonathan Adler notes in his post to the Corner, the two are correct that public lands are kept out of the private marketplace and thus we can't really know the best management strategy for those lands; but they are off mark to say that devolution is not a step in the right direction.

I've written a piece on the Bush plan that I hope will be up soon at A Better Earth. I'll keep you all posted.

UPDATE: My piece on the Bush alternative to Clinton's roadless plan is now up.

I was in Silver Gate, Montana over the weekend --- the tiny town on the northeastern edge of Yellowstone National Park. Generally, I stay at this old lodge called the Range Riders, which has live music on Fridays and Saturdays and a great little bar. All of the rooms have the names of different women on them, in an arrangement like an old-style brothel. Often when the bar closes, the band will do a little picking and grinning upstairs.

This time, however, I was forced to go across the street to the Grizzly Lodge. Yellowstone National Park has the Range Riders leased the entire summer for its summer research teams. According to a gentleman at the Grizzly, it is the Park's slow attempt to buy up Silver Gate and Cooke City and extend the park all the way to Red Lodge, Montana, which is 65 miles away over the scenic Beartooth Pass. He claims the Range Riders will lose their liquor license if the bar isn't open so many days out of the year and then will have little reason not to sell.

While I am not aware of any vast conspiracy by the Park Service to purchase up Silver Gate and Cooke City, locals' claims that it is happening show just how little the federal government is trusted in much of the Rocky Mountain West.

The Bush Administration has decided to bring some applied federalism to the roadless rule and will let state governors decide what to do about whether national forest lands will remain roadless or not. Outside Magazine has the story. You have to register, but it's free.

Outside is also carrying a really cool day-by-day journal of the Tour de France by Lance Armstrong's coach. No registration needed for the Tour journal for some reason.

Not only that, but they also have ideas on outdoor gear to purchase for "sex in the great outdoors." I'm not kidding. Who'd have thought that there even was such a thing as outdoor performance lingerie?

Tom Bray has an excellent piece in the Detroit News today about how more attuned fees could help depoliticize federal lands. The only place where I have to correct him is that I haven't graduated from law school yet, as he claims. Thanks for the nice thought, Tom, but give me two more years.

For those who missed it, the Wall Street Journal had a nice piece on the Mercatus Center on Friday.

Dr. Madsen Pirie has a nicely to-the-point post about recycling on the Adam Smith Institute blog. An excerpt:

Some people seem to suppose that by recycling paper they are saving trees, but the opposite is often true. Paper is mostly made from trees planted for the purpose, and it is young trees that soak up most of the carbon dioxide. If those trees are not planted, that carbon is not soaked up. Nor is it if they are not harvested and replaced. Recycling paper may make people feel good, but gesture politics can be environmentally unfriendly...

Given recent events, why isn't there more of a media buzz over Ken Lay's ties to Teresa Heinz Kerry? Enron thought that energy-restricting laws would give them a chance to profit from the trading schemes proposed (you may remember that it was Enron's trading activities that brought about their downfall). The global warming crowd, including Teresa's Heinz Foundation, have long espoused such policies. It was a match made in heaven:

Last July, the Washington Times obtained samples of personal correspondence from the Heinz Center to Mr. Lay, praising him for his management style.

"Ken," wrote one of Teresa's representatives, "Simply stated, your background, expertise and experience make you uniquely qualified [to run our] global-warming [initiative]."

When big business sees a chance for rent-seeking, free marketeers should oppose big business. All too often, big business is the enemy, rather than the beneficiary, of the free market. When that happens, they can have some surprising allies.

Do ice cream sales cause rape? Of course not. Yet, as Eugene Volokh points out, ice cream production strongly correlates with the incidence of rape. The statistically signficiant incidence is 0.84 (perfect correlation would be 1.0). An astute reader might surmise that rates of rape and ice cream production appear to correlate because they are each correlated with something else: warm weather. The incidence of each climbs dramatically in the summer -- and that is where the connection ends. Correlation does not equal causation.

This is equally true when talking about chemicals and the environment. Many of the correlations between industrial activities and various health or environmental problems that purportedly "demonstrate" causation are equally bogus. It takes more than a pattern to demonstrate that a given substance is responsible for a given harm.

This blog has come under sustained comment spam attack of a particularly vile nature. As a result, all comments debates are now closed until further notice. Constructive feedback is still welcomed, however. Email your comments to imurray [at] cei [dot] org and I'll forward them to the relevant author.

Those outside the relatively small world of international conservation organizations may not realize that “market-based” approaches are already the predominant approach to protecting biodiversity in the tropics. The idea of “saving habitat by using it” (and “parks are for people”) emerged as early as 1981 (for background see the 1991 book excerpt here). This idea led to the promotion of ecotourism, “sustainable” use of forest products, the search for potential pharmaceutical plants, and so forth.

Trouble is, this market-based approach has been drowning in difficulties. Students of conservation concede that it doesn’t work – it’s “misguided and doomed to failure,” says one. In part, that’s because conservationists were captured by World Bank and other development organizations who proffered money for “integrated conservation and development programs.” Also, the programs were just not very effective, and conservationists fooled themselves into thinking that the costs of saving habitat aren’t really that high.

Now, R. David Simpson, a long-time economist with Resources for the Future, argues for a better approach: a straightforward market approach. Conservationists should simply buy, from willing sellers, what they want, whether it is habitat or conservation activities. This policy sounds simple, and Simpson argues that the economic argument underlying it is impeccable. He also contends it is practical.

“Rather than subsidizing existing markets, conservation planners and practitioners should be working to establish new markets in the thing the care about: the conservation of natural habitats,” Simpson writes in his new paper, “Conserving Biodiversity through Markets: A Better Approach” (here).

Two interesting articles in The Times of London earlier in the week. In the first (link requires paid subsciption outside UK, I'm afraid), the costs of the UK government's climate change policies are spelled out:

BRITISH industry is facing crippling rises in electricity and gas prices with bills having jumped 30 per cent in the past two months and further increases on the way. Large energy users, including the steel, chemical and paper and packing industries, have all reported significant increases in fuel costs after the traditional April round of contract negotiations.

Small firms are also feeling the heat and Energywatch, the consumer watchdog, has given warning that some small firms could go to the wall as a result of the increases. Power bills in Britain are surging on the back of escalating oil, gas and coal prices, even before the introduction of a Europe-wide emissions trading scheme next January.

That scheme, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gases, is expected to push electricity prices up by a further 40 per cent by 2010, according to analysts.

British firms including Corus, the steel company that last month reported a fragile recovery in its UK operations, believe they could lose contracts and jobs to European competitors because French and German electricity power bills are not expected to climb as high. They are also angry that British politicians have struck aggressive targets for reducing emissions which are not being reflected across Europe, even in those countries that have submitted plans for the scheme.

One source at a large British industrial employer said: “We are very concerned about wholesale electricity and gas prices going forward. They put us at a considerable disadvantage and that is even before the Climate Change Levy, the Renewables Obligation, and the Emissions Trading Scheme.”

Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, which represents large energy users, said that his members were alarmed by the expected price rises.

“The April rises were very harsh and it is likely that any large organisation which has some contracts up for negotiation in October will see additional price rises then too,” Mr Nicholson said.

Powergen, which supplies 13,000 industrial and commercial customers in the UK, said that customers were seeking longer contracts in the hope of avoiding further increases after the introduction of the emissions trading scheme.

“Electricity prices are clearly rising as world commodities such as coal, gas and oil have increased in recent months. That said, we are committed to retaining our position as a leading retailer to industrial and commercial customers and to keeping prices competitive,” Paul Golby, chief executive of Powergen, said.

The Energy Intensive Users Group fears that the Government’s determination to force through swingeing cuts in CO2 emissions will force energy-intensive industries offshore without reducing global emissions.

“We cannot be expected to go it alone without irreparable damage to our competitiveness,” Mr Nicholson said.

In the second, economics editor Patience Wheatcroft points out that the increasing costs of the sector have now wiped out the benefits of electricity privatization:

Wholesale prices initially fell by up to 40 per cent when the new electricity trading system was set up. These benefits have already gradually withered away. Generators have closed or mothballed power stations to cut surplus supply. Users have been forced to subsidise uneconomic renewable energy by paying price premiums. World prices of coal and gas, to which the power generating industry has now become vulnerable, have been pushed up by rising demand from China and America. Many companies ’ latest energy bills have risen back up by a third.

She goes on to the inescapable conclusion:

In Britain, ministers plan to cut emission by far more than they are obliged to, making British plants uneconomic in the EU, let alone the rest of the polluting world. This might make sense for green campaigners who see output and consumption as enemies of the planet. They are like the medieval monks who favoured self-flagellation as the road to virtue. For a Government to enshrine such thinking in policy is truly perverse.

The comparison with medieval religion could be pushed further. One could argue that the new European emissions trading scheme is a modern version of the sale of indulgences. The Green religion badly needs a reformation.

Writes Chris Horner: Also, and so far as only reported by the left-wing "DemocracyNow.org" , "In a shift from the party's 2000 platform, the Democrats have dropped a reference to endorsing the Kyoto treaty on global warming."

President Kibaki announced a greenhouse for genetically-modified (GM) maize is opened at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari). He also said that that his "government is committed to the development of GM, or any other technology, that will increase agricultural output." [Read more about this]
As poor countries realize that GM crops may be a wonderful opportunity to feed starving population, opponents' points get ever weaker. How can you campaign against bioengineered foods, when those with real problems believe they will help?

European "Commission added, though, that it was sending written warnings to Greece and Italy for having failed to submit their national allocation plans." "The decision," said Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom, "shows that we are serious about our climate change policy and that we can start the emission trading the first of January next year, as planned."
Read more about this.

There will be a conference in Italy on 15-16 July dedicated to exploring the climate change issue. As you can see from the draft program, the agenda is heavily biased in favor of the alarmists, and not just on the issue of science, where there is at least a hint of balance in the form of Richard Lindzen, Alfred P Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT.

But we've seen enough of these conferences to guess how it will go. Here's my prediction for each of the conference panels:

Changes that have occurred: Climate change is directly responsible for 150,000 deaths a year now! The heatwave last year was a direct result!! The ice caps are melting!!! The Earth WILL warm 6C if we don't do anything about it now!!!! WE ARE ALL GUILTY!!!!!

The Climate is Changing - Why?: Thank you, Prof Lindzen, but now for the truth, here's Bob Watson...

Climate Change - The Real Threat to Global Peace: Global warming is worse than terrorism, George Bush is worse than Osama bin Laden, the EU is the only morally legitimate authority in the world... Audience falls asleep as Al Gore delivers speech with a complicated proof that black is, in fact, white.

Effects and Countermeasures - Food: Climate change will lead to mass starvation around the world (for text, see "The Population Bomb," but delete overpopulation and replace with climate change). They might, just possibly, condemn the EU's disastrous Common Agricultural Policy, in which case some good will come out of this whole farrago.

Effects and Countermeasures - Education: We must indoctrinate the young of the West with the simple truth, 'WE ARE ALL GUILTY!' If people insist on clinging to the outmoded idea of liberty, we should use sleep deprivation techniques. Scourges might also come in handy.

Effects and Countermeasures - Energy: Solar and wind energy can supply the world with all the power it needs now. Anyone who doubts our word is a tool of the oil industry and responsible for the invasion of Iraq.

The Principle of Responsibility: In the west, WE ARE ALL GUILTY. So we must pay reparations to the rest of the world until we are as poor as they are now. Oh, and they can continue to emit as much CO2 as they like, but we know they won't, because they're so much better than we are.

Policies for Right Action: "I think we all agree that massive taxation is a good thing as long as it doesn't look like a tax. Okay? Right, pass the vino."

Coexistence Between Man and Nature: Rousseau redux. Islam is a religion of peace, you know. We can all live together in peace and harmony if we eat meager bowls of windfall fruit like the Buddha. Ommmmmmmm...

I also predict that only one or two European countries will meet their Kyoto obligations for greenhouse gas reductions by 2012, even if Kyoto is ratified.

Of the 39 species removed from the Endangered Species Act since its inception, at most three could attribute their removal to an ESA success story --- even that may be too generous. Nine of the 39 escaped the list by going extinct and twenty never warranted listing in the first place. I've updated the scorecard on the ESA's failings over at A Better Earth.

UPDATE: As Mr. Meyer mentions in his comment, it is indeed true that the prairie dogs regularly carry the plague. This is, in fact, one of the justifications used for listing the dog, as it is worried by some that the prairie dog's communal nature could lead to the plague wiping it out.

Not a great article on public lands, but at least it imagines one good-looking fellow.

UPDATE: In his article, Mr. Reynolds argues that if we simply fine litterers more, we could deal with trash problems at places like the Angeles National Forest. If this was done, according to Reynolds, we might not need to bill those strolling on public lands for access. But it is extremely difficult to monitor and enforce littering in such places. Putting a ranger behind every tree is hardly cost-effective. And who does Reynolds think is doing the littering? It is the people strolling those lands. True, not everyone litters - some do quite the opposite. My family and I are regular trash collectors on public lands, as we don't appreciate the actions of those who leave their soda cans and plastic wrappers behind.

Moreover, while littering may have increased at the Angeles National Forest since Fee Demonstration, most fee-for-access sites report declines in littering. (And I have my doubts that littering is actually worse at the Angeles. A friend who regularly uses that forest reports that its fee-based program is very successful.) Fees for access don't simply provide more resources for dealing with trash, they also lead to less trash in the first place as those visitors just looking for a place to cause trouble move on to less expensive locales.

Finally, contrary to Mr. Reynolds' opinion, I rarely crouch amongst the trash: I prefer to kneel.

Sierra Club President Carl Pope and Idaho Republican Larry Craig both oppose Fee Demonstration, but for largely different reasons. Pope wants a free ride for his backpacking constituency; Craig is worried the program's success may hurt his grazing and logging constituencies. The following story of mine was in The News Tribune.

DeCamping Politics
From Public Lands
By J. Bishop Grewell

When a Western Republican senator and the head of the Sierra Club share sound bites, alarms should ring. Currently, just such a duo is undermining one of the most successful initiatives we have seen on our public lands.

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State Farm Insurance is telling those in the wildland-urban interface to engage in some preemptive protection for wildfires or risk losing their insurance.

BushGreenwatch (BGW) is taking a break from bashing the President to recommend a book for his reading list: Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. The original Limits to Growth predicted near-iminent exhaustion of resources and a pending ecological collapse. Yet, BGW reports, “the authors are far more pessimistic than they were in 1972.” According to BGW, the book explains that “It's too late for sustainable development.” Rather “The world must now choose between uncontrolled collapse or a carefully planned reduction of energy and materials consumption, back down to supportable levels.” According to BGW, the new Limits to Growth is the “only book” (!) to provide the “understanding [of] the entire complex system which governs the world's physical economy, population, materials and energy flows” necessary to save human civilization. But don’t rush out and buy a copy of the book just yet. We’ve been down this road before.
BGW claims that the original Limits to Growth was a prophetic tome:

The 1972 text was the object of intense criticism by economists of the time, who dismissed it as Malthusian hyperbole. But events over the past three decades have turned out to be remarkably consistent with the 1972 book's scenarios.

Really? Let’s review the tape.
Ronald Bailey dissected the original predictions made in The Limits to Growth in his book EcoScam. He reminds that the original limits predicted “the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992 and copper, lead, and natural gas by 1993.” Contrary to BGW’s suggestion, the events of the past three decades have thoroughly repudiated the Malthusian paradigm underpinning The Limits to Growth. Since the book was first published, world reserves of most metals and minerals have grown and prices have fallen. In the case of petroleum, environmental activists regularly acknowledge that fears of depletion were unwarranted. (Indeed, Scientific American blasted Bjorn Lomborg for daring to suggest any environmentalists still predicted that the world would run out of oil.) At the same time, global agricultural production has proven more than able to keep up with a growing global population – even if people in some parts of the world do not have access to reliable food supplies.
The world has made substantial progress over the past thirty years, economic and ecological. Not every trend is positive, to be sure, but most are. More importantly, the central Malthusian premise upon which works like The Limits to Growth are based -- that there are material limits upon economic growth and development -- has been disproven time and again. If I may offer a prediction of my own, this time around it will be no different.

Yesterday, John Browne had a piece in the Financial Times advocating a program of "small steps" to stabilize global climate. Since the FT has expressed no interest in running my letter to the editor, I will post it on this site. Cheers.

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