White House Hot Air
Bailey, Ronald
White House Hot Air by Ronald Bailey President Clinton's plan to deal with global warming, unveiled last week, was everything that both friends and adversaries have come to expect from...
...The bottom line, according to NASA climate scientist Roy Spencer, is that the earth may warm up by about a degree and a half Fahrenheit over the next century...
...not burdens, but benefits...
...Environmentalist Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was clear on this point at the White House's conference on climate change in early October, blithely asserting that "energy is just too cheap...
...48 percent more for electricity...
...But not until 2007...
...This last figure translates to an additional 44 cents per gallon at the pump...
...In his speech, the president called on key developing countries to "participate meaningfully in this effort...
...It's unlikely the U.S...
...Such numbers are actually music to the ears of environmentalists, because higher costs would drive down consumption, an explicit goal of greenhouse activists...
...Much later...
...The Clinton/Gore administration has learned a lot from the budget battle," says Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute...
...The satellite and balloon data show that catastrophic warming is not now occurring," says Dr...
...In other words, if you rich people clobber your economies, you owe us for any negative trade effects we may experience as a result...
...emissions of greenhouse gases while exempting 130 developing countries...
...What's more, as the science of climate change has grown more sophisticated in recent years, the case for greenhouse alarmism has been steadily dissipating...
...agreement, some 130 developing countries, including China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, are exempt from having to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions, even though developing countries already account for 40 percent of these emissions worldwide...
...The target is not realistic, though...
...Let me be very blunt: If [the industrialized countries] sign a treaty in Kyoto which exempts the developing world from binding reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions—it will not see the light of day in the United States," said Sen...
...Captains of industry agree...
...Big labor is similarly adamant...
...climate-change meeting at Kyoto, Japan, in December...
...Environmental crises come and go...
...At the White House conference, AFLCIO president John Sweeney warned that attempts to cut carbon-dioxide emissions "could have catastrophic economic effects...
...negotiating position at the big U.N...
...This adds up to a cost of $2,061 per household for just one year...
...Wonderful...
...In July, the Senate passed a resolution 95 to 0 declaring that it will not ratify any treaty that would put restrictions on U.S...
...John Christy, a professor in the department of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama...
...factories fleeing to exempted developing countries in search of cheaper fuel...
...The pain will be quite real...
...White House Hot Air by Ronald Bailey President Clinton's plan to deal with global warming, unveiled last week, was everything that both friends and adversaries have come to expect from him—ambitious-sounding but indecisive, urgent-sounding but dilatory, bad in its details but presented as the greatest thing since sliced bread...
...Claim the credit now for any supposed benefits, and defer the real pain until you're out of office...
...We] commit to the binding and realistic target of returning to emissions of 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012," promised the president...
...the pork barrel endures...
...Here is where some of that money would be going: By 2010, consumers would be paying 55 percent more for heating oil...
...I don't think that the typical American would agree that energy is too cheap," says James Dushaw, an official in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who also attended the White House conference...
...A green Synfuels," said one oil executive dismissively, recalling the tens of billion of dollars wasted on Jimmy Carter's infamous Synfuels Corporation boondoggle in the late 1970s...
...Chuck Hagel of Nebraska...
...Ronald Bailey is a freelance writer and television producer in Washington, D.C...
...and 36 percent more for gasoline...
...And if there do turn out to be costs and burdens and a lower standard of living...
...Yet under the envisioned U.N...
...Conveniently near the end of a second Gore administration, to be exact...
...A rationing system of emissions caps will be put into place to lower the output of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas and an unavoidable byproduct of modern industry...
...But the constituency for economic pain is small...
...They don't just want rich countries to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions below the 1990 level...
...Well, those will come later...
...With friends like these, the environmentalists would hardly seem to hold a winning hand going to Kyoto...
...This will be the U.S...
...And the constituency for pain inflicted selectively on the United States, and not globally, is smaller still...
...50 percent more for natural gas...
...That's where the binding part of the Clinton plan will come into play...
...Meanwhile, the developing nations have announced that they expect the industrialized countries to go far beyond the president's proposal...
...Says Paul Wilhelm, president of USX: "All it's going to do is transfer huge amounts of the wealth in this country to somewhere else...
...not sacrifice, but a higher standard of living...
...in a truly stunning example of chutzpah, they demand to be compensated for any economic losses that occur because much higher energy prices slow down the economies of the rich countries...
...economy will spontaneously shrink back to 1990 levels...
...His plan, the president insisted, "will yield not costs, but profits...
...In September, the economic modeling group WEFA concluded that reducing carbon-dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 would result in a loss to the economy of $227 billion in real dollars that year...
...The unions foresee U.S...
...The most significant announcement by Clinton, then, may turn out to be not the hypothetical crackdown on carbon dioxide a decade from now, but the immediate $5 billion in tax cuts and "incentives" he announced to encourage energy efficiency...
Vol. 3 • November 1997 • No. 8
