The George C. Marshall Institute has released a new study from James DeLong outlining what it refers to as “the five circles of Carbon Tax Hell.” The study is very readable and concise (only 34 pages of main text), yet at the same time offers a comprehensive survey of the main problems with a carbon [...]
Senator Whitehouse’s Duplicitous Carbon Tax Amendment
Last weekend the Senate rejected an amendment to the FY 2014 budget that would have enacted a carbon tax. For those interested in affordable energy and job creation, this was a good thing. Still, it’s worth walking through the actual wording of Senator Whitehouse’s amendment to see just how duplicitous it was. Even if someone [...]
March 26, 2013 | Bus Tour, Emissions Standards, Facts, Greenhouse Gases, News, Threats
Boxer-Sanders Carbon “Fee” Relies on Huge Bait-and-Switch
A recent story in EnergyGuardian (sub. req’d) centered on Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.) support for the carbon “fee” bill introduced by his colleagues Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Fortunately, the newly-released NERA study gives us a quantitative estimate of how much their scheme would hurt the U.S. economy. The whole episode fulfills the [...]
February 28, 2013 | Bus Tour, Emissions Standards, Facts, Greenhouse Gases, News, Threats
New NERA Study Shows Economic Dangers of a Carbon Tax
A new study by NERA Economic Consulting, prepared for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), documents the economic dangers of a federal carbon tax. The study is very conservative in its assumptions (as I’ll explain below), giving the benefit of the doubt to the proponents of a carbon tax. Even so, there study reaches two [...]
February 28, 2013 | Bus Tour, Emissions Standards, Facts, Greenhouse Gases, News, Threats
Regulating “Particulate Matter”: The EPA Doesn’t Even Believe Its Own Bogus Numbers
People who have watched environmental policy debates soon learn that the alarmist interventionists—the ones claiming that the government needs to act quickly in order to prevent catastrophe—are not afraid to throw around terrifying statistics that are absurd on their face. In a different forum, I walked through this phenomenon when it came to proposed regulations [...]
January 25, 2013 | Emissions Standards, Facts, Maximum Achievable Control Technology Standards, News
Cass Sunstein’s Garbage In, Garbage Out on Cost/Benefit Analysis
In a recent NYT op ed, Harvard Law professor and former Obama official Cass Sunstein cited Ronald Reagan, of all figures, as inspiration for more federal regulation on the transportation and energy sectors. Sunstein’s angle was to say that Reagan endorsed the cost/benefit analysis arguing for the US agreement to fight the “ozone hole,” [...]
December 4, 2012 | Bus Tour, Corporate Average Fuel Economy, Emissions Standards, Greenhouse Gases, News
Intentionally increasing gasoline prices only makes sense to New York attorneys
Earlier this week, the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI)at the New York University School of Law announced they were threatening EPA with a lawsuit to increase the price of gasoline and diesel through a cap-and-trade system. They claim they want to increase the price of transportation fuel to “address climate change,” but they omit the [...]
November 29, 2012 | Emissions Standards, Greenhouse Gases
More Scare Tactics on Climate Regulations
Bjorn Lomborg has a great article in Foreign Policy walking through the problems with a major new study warning of the need for government action on climate change in order to avoid millions (!) of deaths. Lomborg’s critique shows how the climate change debate, especially as it’s reported in the major media, is full [...]
“Stop the War on Coal” Bill and Regulatory Transparency
On Friday September 21, in its last action before the election, the House voted 233-175 to pass the provocatively titled “Stop the War on Coal Act” (H.R. 3409). Although it is given little chance of passing the Senate, the act contains several proposals to reduce federal constraints on energy production and job growth. The [...]
September 25, 2012 | Emissions Standards, Greenhouse Gases, Maximum Achievable Control Technology Standards, News, Threats
The Obama Administration Teams with Private Equity Firm to Single Out a Individual Refinery for Help
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Obama administration played “a central role” in encouraging a private equity firm to rescue a struggling refinery in Pennsylvania. This is rather ironic since part of the reason for the refinery’s financial troubles were the Obama administration’s burdensome regulations. Earlier this year, refineries on the East Coast [...]
August 22, 2012 | Emissions Standards, Facts, News, Threats
