This weekly newsletter, focused on environmental issues, highlights relevant analysis done by the John Locke Foundation and other think tanks, as well as items in the news.

1. Obama’s Energy Policy: Working as Intended

Those who claim that President Obama doesn’t have a coherent energy policy are wrong. He does, and it is working exactly as planned. Writing at American Thinker, Jim Guirard has labeled the plan LEAHP (for "Less Energy at Higher Prices"). As Guirard concludes, "the Obama-Pelosi-Reid ‘progressives’ and militant ‘greens’ most certainly do have an aggressive, multi-layered, no-holds-barred energy policy whose overarching goal is quite clearly that of Less Energy At Higher Prices — LEAHP for short."

While, for obvious reasons, Obama would never publicly acknowledge that this is a conscious policy, the facts do add up to this conclusion. First, it is well known that Obama’s own ideology regarding environmental policy is consistent with those of the radical environmental movement. And let’s not forget his statement during the 2008 campaign, when he told the American people, "We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on …72 degrees at all times."

And here are just a few of the Administration positions noted by Guirard:

  • Either inhibiting or forbidding oil and gas exploration and production (a) from the ANWR Coastal Plain; (b) from the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve; (c) from all new "offshore" waters — and some vital existing ones, as well; (d) from many previously-leased Western Federal Lands; (e) from Rocky Mountain shale oil deposits; and even (f) from Canadian oil sands, which are vital to us for exports.
  • Restricting most coal-fired (even "clean coal") power plants — and blocking surface mining of the coal needed to power them.
  • Opposing new nuclear power plants and centralized nuclear waste storage for over thirty years — along with the total defunding of the Yucca Mountain depository in Nevada.
  • Blocking all new petroleum refineries (except one) for over thirty years — and many petrochemical plants, as well.
  • Opposing new hydropower plants — and talking about bypassing some existing ones.
  • Imposing a highly restrictive assortment of "carbon footprint" edicts, penalties, and fines in order to achieve the so-called "greening" of America — no matter the cost.
  • Proposing in the FY 2012 budget to eliminate many tax code incentives for increased domestic oil and gas production.
  • Subtly impeding rapid development of vast newly discovered natural gas resources via the new "fracking" method.

 

The facts add up to the policy reality. The Obama administration is deliberately pursuing a policy of energy scarcity to drive up prices in order to force changes in behavior that are consistent with his radical environmentalist ideology. The next time someone claims that the country needs a coherent energy policy, remember that we indeed have one. As Guirard points out, it is the "great LEAHP backwards."

 

2. Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli speaks out on the impact of greenhouse gas regulations on liberty

In a recent talk given at Hillsdale College and reprinted in the College’s magazine, Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has become one of the few politicians to criticize the green movement in general and the EPA’s decision to regulate CO2 in particular for their detrimental impact at liberty. In the section of his talk titled "Liberty As an Environmental Principle" Cuccinelli notes that "theeconomic consequences of what the EPA has in store for us will be equally damaging to our freedom and our economy." Under his direction, the state of Virginian is challenging the EPA’s findings based on the fact the it was based on what has been shown to be doctored data:

 

In December 2009, the EPA declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants dangerous to public health because they are alleged to cause global warming. This finding gave the agency the immense power to regulate CO2 emissions….

For the ruling, the EPA relied primarily on data from a United Nations global warming report. Emails leaked in 2009 in the Climategate scandal showed that some of the world’s prominent climatologists manipulated data to overstate the effects of carbon dioxide on the environment. Much of the U.N. report relied on that questionable data, and the EPA relied on that report. Since the revelations from the leaked emails became public, some scientists involved in the report have had to back off some of their positions and research. Renowned climate researcher Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, a long-time proponent of the global warming theory, admitted recently that there is no question that data in the U.N. report was misleading, and that "it is obvious that there has been deletion of adverse data" that would work against the theory of rapid global warming in the last century.

Pursuant to this, in February 2010, my office petitioned the EPA to reopen its hearings on greenhouse gases and review new evidence. Instead it ignored our request–in fact, it ignored the law. So we filed a federal lawsuit to force the hearings to be reopened, and we are still awaiting our day in court.

If the EPA is allowed to move forward with its regulation of carbon dioxide, costs to every American household are projected to increase by $3,000 a year due to higher prices for energy, food, clothing, and any other goods that require energy to manufacture or transport. Talk about taxing the poor!

In a document the EPA published on regulating greenhouse gas emissions in cars and light trucks, it admits that its new rules would add about $950 to the price of each new vehicle. And buried deep in the report, the EPA’s own models show that over the next 90 years these regulations would only reduce temperature increases by less than 0.03 degrees Fahrenheit. Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA, in testimony before Congress, called this amount of temperature difference "immeasurable." But that has not stopped the agency from trying to move the new auto regulations forward….

With the EPA’s attempts to regulate our lives by regulating the by-products of practically everything we buy and everything we do, and with the federal government’s attempt to assume the power to command us to buy its chosen health insurance, we face some of the most significant and unprecedented erosions of liberty in our lifetimes. And federalism–that tension between state sovereigns and the federal government–was designed for the very purpose of helping to preserve that liberty.

 

3. Ozone Report

Each week during the summer ozone season this newsletter will report how many, if any, high ozone days had been experienced throughout the state during the previous week, where they were experienced, and how many have been recorded during the entire season to date. The ozone season begins on April 1 and ends October 31. All reported data are from the North Carolina Division of Air Quality, which is part of the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

During the period from May 9 through May 15 there have been no reported high ozone readings on any of the state’s monitors. This is in spite of the fact that on May 11 a code orange alert was sent out for 13 counties across the state. In other words, on May 11 it was broadcast across the airways and reported in newspapers that a high ozone day could be expected. The forecast was wrong. But unlike weather forecasts where erroneous forecasts are obvious — if rain is forecasted and it doesn’t rain, everyone knows it — false ozone forecasts are not. In spite of this, the public is never notified when there was a false alarm.

 

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