EPA gets into Climate Change -- in a big way
 

The masters of pseudo-science (The Sups and the EPA) want to regulate the amount of CO2 we can expend -- no more jogging for you!
Also here comes Cap and Trade in the back door

From the Washington Post:
EPA Proposes Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 17, 2009 12:10 PM


The Environmental Protection Agency today proposed regulating greenhouse gas emissions on the grounds that these pollutants pose a danger to the public's health and welfare.
In a statement issued at noon, EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson said, "This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations."
She added, "This pollution problem has a solution -- one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country's dependence on foreign oil."
The move, coming almost exactly two years after the Supreme Court ordered the agency to examine whether emissions linked to climate change should be curbed under the Clean Air Act, marks a major shift in the federal government's approach to global warming.
Former President George W. Bush and his deputies opposed putting mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases for years on the grounds that it would harm the economy; Congress is considering legislation that would do so but it remains unclear whether it can pass the proposal and enact it into law in the near future.
Late last month EPA sent the White House a formal finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare; the Office of Management and Budget signed off on the determination Monday.
President Obama pledged to limit greenhouse gases as a candidate, but has urged Congress to send him a bill that would cap them and allow emitters to trade pollution allowances nationwide. Jackson, in a speech at the Aspen Environment Forum last month, emphasized that the administration still hopes the country will develop a legislative answer to the question of how best to limit greenhouse gases.
"The best solution, and I believe this in my heart, is to work with Congress to form and pass comprehensive legislation to deal with climate change," Jackson said. " We hope to avert a regulatory thicket where governments and businesses spend an inordinate amount of time fighting. We are not looking for a doomsday solution."
The proposed endangerment finding states, "In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem."
The agency also includes a "cause or contribute" finding for cars, which implies that not only are greenhouse gases dangerous in general, but that such emissions from cars and trucks are reasonably likely to contribute to climate change.
Some business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have warned that if the federal government regulates carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act it will end up imposing an enormous regulatory burden on small operations such as individual stores and even some office buildings.
EPA must hold a 60-day public comment period before finalizing its finding, and it would then have to look at regulating individual sectors of the economy, such as motor vehicles and power plants. Those two sectors account for roughly half of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions.
In a teleconference with reporters this week David Doniger, policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate center, said he did not think the agency would target small emitters of greenhouse gases if it began regulating emissions under the nearly 40-year old Clean Air Act.
"That is just not true," said Doniger. "EPA is able to focus on the big stuff, the big sources of global warming pollution."
Even before the formal announcement, experts predicted the decision would transform the federal government's role in regulating commercial operations across the country. Roger Martella, who served as EPA's general counsel under Bush and is now a partner at the firm Sidley Austin in Washington, issued a statement saying, "The proposed endangerment finding marks the official beginning of an era of controlling carbon in the United States."
"This means that EPA's mission of environmental protection will burst outside those bounds and place it on the stage as one of the most influential regulators of both energy use and the greater economy in the upcoming year," Martella added. "The proposal, once finalized, will give EPA far more responsibility than addressing climate change. It effectively will assign EPA broad authority over the use and control of energy, in turn authorizing it to regulate virtually every sector of the economy."
Many opponents of regulating carbon dioxide will now turn their attention to Congress, hoping to achieve a more modest cap on greenhouse gases through the legislative process than one that could be imposed by the federal government.
Fred Singer, who heads the Arlington, Va.-based Science and Environmental Policy Project and has repeatedly questioned the idea that humans contribute to climate change, said in a statement that the EPA proposal "is based on shoddy science and would impose a huge economic burden on American households . . . Congress must stop this unwarranted action by means of legislation, but without committing the same errors as EPA."

Used Car Salesman Alert. "Here you have a problem. We have a solution. Buy this car and it has all the good things and lets not talk of any problems that can come along as a result of this purchase."

Sorry, when someone comes touting all the good and none of the bad, I run.

It's about freaking time...

I somewhat agree with aklim's last post though. That statement does make it sound like the solution will be easy. It won't be, I pretty much guarantee you that. In fact I think we're already screwed and climate change will get really nasty pretty soon. We should have acted on greenhouse gas emissions like 30 years ago.

I wonder if they'll be an exclusion for all the hot air coming out o the politicians mouths?

Definitely won't be easy, but this announcement from the EPA puts Congress on notice. If they want to avoid having the EPA dictate emission standards under the Clean Air Act, a crude method at best, then they have to act. I'd like to see a straight carbon tax, none of this cap and trade crap, too much room for money and politics to alter the field.

As for Singer, the guy is a complete whore. His science is based on who has the deepest pockets.

I partially agree. If people think that it will be an overnight, made-for-tv-movie easy adjustment then they're dead wrong.
We can "go green" and all that stuff, but it's not going to happen overnight, and it's probably not going to create 5 million jobs tomorrow.

And it probably won't pay for itself. We will end up paying for it.

I think I'd prefer a straight carbon tax too. But the thinking is that voters would not approve of another "tax". "Cap & trade" sounds more gentle, more market-like. To me that's retarded, but either method is better than nothing, assuming human-produced CO2 is a problem, and I believe it is based on the evidence that I've come across.

Petroleum products aren't going away in a significant way anytime soon.


The Biofuel Bubble

A horde of startups have smart ideas. But the challenges are many, and the winners likely will be Shell, BP, DuPont, and other majors
By John Carey

BW Magazine
The Biofuel Bubble
April 27, 2009


It's a bold vision: Replace billions of gallons of gasoline not with ethanol from corn or other food crops but with biofuels made from plants, such as prairie grass in Tennessee pastures or algae percolating in Florida. Such a move would slash dependence on oil, create thousands of jobs, and reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. In the U.S., the idea has powerful political support. Congress has decreed that the country must be using 21 billion gallons of "advanced" biofuels a year by 2022. Washington is backing that goal with tax breaks, loan guarantees, and scores of millions of dollars in grants, with more support expected in upcoming energy bills. These inducements and the vast potential market have stimulated investments of more than $3 billion and spawned a new industry.

More than 200 companies, from 12-person startups to oil giants, are developing next-generation biofuels using a bewildering array of technologies. Pilot and demonstration plants are operating or are under construction from Florida to California. "We can have it all: more fuel, more food, and fewer carbon emissions," says John B. Howe, vice-president of Verenium (VRNM), a Cambridge (Mass.) company that makes ethanol from sugarcane waste at a demonstration plant in Jennings, La.

Yet behind the very real innovations and investments, the brash claims and the breathless headlines, lies an inconvenient truth. Replacing petroleum with biofuels is a tough business. Even as the industry develops, many of the companies—probably most—will not survive. "We've seen a venture capital-led bubble," says Alan Shaw, CEO of Codexis, a Redwood City (Calif.) manufacturer of enzymes used to make drugs, chemicals, and biofuels. "I cannot see how the small companies can build a business and still get a return to their original investors. The numbers just don't add up."

Nor will many Americans soon be filling their gas tanks with these next-generation fuels. Industry executives concede they'll fall far short of the mandated 2010 level of 100 million gallons of biofuels made from cellulosic materials such as prairie grass or cornstalks. Meeting the 2022 goal is also unlikely. It would require not only building hundreds of fuel factories—at a cost of $500 million or more each—but also surrounding each one with thousands of acres of land planted with energy crops such as prairie grass. "We're talking about a fairly substantial transformation of the rural economic landscape," says Jack Huttner, vice-president of DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol, a joint venture of Danisco and DuPont (DD) that is building a demonstration plant in Tennessee.
These difficulties don't mean advanced biofuels aren't coming, or that they won't play a crucial role in fighting climate change. But everything will happen more slowly than many venture capitalists say. And the probable winners will be those with deep pockets and patience, such as Royal Dutch Shell (RDS), BP (BP), DuPont, agriculture giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), or the rare startup with revenues from another business, such as making drugs. For the rest, the demonstration biorefineries now being built are more like high-stakes auditions than a step in the process of becoming commercial biofuels producers. "The business model that makes sense for most of us is demonstrating the technology and getting it into the hands of those who have balance sheets," says Bill Roe, CEO of biofuel producer Coskata in Warrenville, Ill. .........

More important, the laws of supply and demand mean that replacing a significant amount of gasoline with biofuels would drastically lower the demand for gas. That, in turn, would cause the price of gas to plunge, making biofuels less competitive. The 5% drop in gasoline use in the second half of 2008 (compared with the previous year) helped push down the average price at the pump from $4.14 per gallon to $1.74, dampening enthusiasm for biofuels. "Low oil prices have a numbing effect on consumers and their interest in this area," says David C. Aldous, CEO of Colorado's Range Fuels, which is building a plant in Soperton, Ga. Imagine what would happen if tens of billions of gallons of biofuel were to become available. The world could be awash in cheap oil and gas.

It has happened before. In the early 1980s, higher-mileage cars and an economic downturn sent petroleum prices swooning, killing off many renewable-energy efforts, including those supported by Big Oil. Avoiding that scenario today requires an additional policy step: raising the cost of using fossil fuels through taxes or limits on carbon dioxide emissions. "The major thing holding us back is the lack of a price on carbon," says Jim McMillan, a biofuels expert at the National Renewal Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo.

The crucial need for putting a price on carbon emissions is also a reminder that the industry is still pretty much a government creation. "The reason why renewable fuels exist at all is because politicians have decided they meet policy objectives. The whole market is 100% political," says Jeff Passmore, executive vice-president of Ottawa-based Iogen, the first company to make ethanol from a cellulosic feedstock—in this case, wheat straw. Those policy objectives: reducing energy dependence, fighting climate change, helping farmers, and creating jobs. But government policy can be fickle. Philip New, head of biofuels for BP, isn't so much worried that advanced biofuel technology won't pan out as he is that "the world might lose its enthusiasm for supporting these technologies through the difficult interim years," he says. ...............


Producing 30 billion gallons of fuel takes 300 million or more tons of plant material. That's more than the total weight of cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. over the past 10 years. Growing this much cellulose would take at least 30 million acres of land. "I think the biggest problem for everybody is how are we going to grow, gather, store, and treat the biomass," says Brent Erickson, lobbyist for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

Full article
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_17/b4128038014860.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories

Just because it's going to be hard doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue it.

I'd like to see a focus on producing biodiesel. Diesel is a much easier fuel to produce relative to gasoline, and has a more widespread usage. Wouldn't it be nice to see farming reassert itself as a profitable venture in this country? I would pay a small surcharge to buy bio over dino diesel, if it was available, at least until the cost of manufacturing was recouped. And I would definitely vote for tax money to be used toward biodiesel production. (flame suit on)

Consider the source. What other wool is this source going to try to pull over my eyes? If I can't trust this source, why should I believe a word it says?

I agree with what you have said. We should be putting money into biofuels especially bio-D. .However, to put a crushing burden on mostly the middle of the country in the form of Cap and Trade or a high carbon tax, at a time when companies are struggling to stay in business is ludicrous. It will only make goods produced in places like China even cheaper when compared to American made goods and will cause electrical rates and fuel prices to go way up. Once the economy is strong again, we can revisit some of these ideas. Can't we promote biofuels without crushing taxes on dino fuels?

Unlikely. Higher prices is the only thing that will make most people try to conserve. Now the taxes don't have to be "crushing". They should be reasonable, but there will always be some whining regardless of how small the tax is. An economic downturn is a poor excuse to do nothing. With that kind of thinking we'll always follow the tried-and-failed reactionary/short-sighted approach - panic, get outraged and call for more drilling when oil prices are high, then when they drop we just get comfortable and move on to other things until oil prices rise up again. We really need to put a real price on carbon, not just based on economic supply and demand but also based on environmental damage & national security concerns. That will create a more stable market for alternatives which is exactly what's been lacking.

This is our best bet to replace the lost manufacting jobs in the midwest.


Sounds quite doable to me. The fall in the the price of oil can be offest by taxes like Europe does.

While this industry is government driven now, if fuel went up and stayed at $4+ a gallon private industry would quickly move in.

Combine this with solar, water, wind, nuclear, and coal and we could be on to something.

Oh great. Enlarge the govt waste. If they really cared abut conservation, why not have the tax system based on consumption? Spend more, pay more.

I don't think that manufacturing is coming back. Why not just let it die in dignity and move on to something. We can never compete with manufacturing any more than a Mom&Pop store can compete with Wal*Mart.

Thats what I said, it is dead. But you need something else to create jobs, we can't all work at Walmart and cut eachothers grass.

This is a real industry that will drive and create wealth, "services" are not.

It certainly has some potential.

That's a somewhat different topic, but I'm guessing a straight consumption tax that's big enough to fund the government would never pass. Otherwise it's a worthy idea.

I was thinking about this a lot this weekend since I was in upstate CT which used to have a lot of small industry, and now has nothing. If it wasn't for people having second homes up their no one would have jobs.

This is not sustainable, but their is potential. The labor base is still their.

I don't think it will since it removes a lot of hidden taxes and the ability to manipulate taxes. It would make getting more taxes even harder.

What is not sustainable? BTW, it's "there" not "their". ;)

Another problem with a straight consumption tax is that it's rather regressive, i.e. it would burden the poor more than the rich. Yet another problem is that it would probably put a damper on consumption, which would be good as far as conservation goes, but since 2/3 of the current economy is consumer spending, it would make the downturn even worse. I still like the idea, but I'm just saying it has its own issues.

Put a rebate it. Voila.

But it would be fair and nobody could whine about how someone pays less taxes than they do, etc, etc.

Can't they lower the percentage to get spending up and raise it to get spending down?

Take those AIG bonuses and put them toward Bio-D infrastructure?:D

I think once we get the infrastructure in place, then bio fuels will be much more competitive. If we levy a(nother) gasoline tax to help pay for the bio refineries, is that much different than the price of gas going up to rebuild the refineries damaged by Katrina?

A straight consumption tax would only widen the gap between haves and have-nots, while placing a huge burden on the people who spend a much larger percentage of their income on basic needs. Also, it would not generate enough $ to feed our ginormous government.

(yes, ginormous is an actual word, had to look up the etymology after it didn't trigger spell check)

A service economy. We can't create wealth by mowing eachothers lawns.

Wealth is created by making stuff and creating things. As we all know their is a **** load of money in fuels, look at the Arabs.

Wouldn't be worth more than a spit in an ocean. :D

Goes to the general purse to be spent in ways unimaginable. Just like all other money. Best not let them have any more.

Good. Then they have to explain why they are raising the taxes. Currently, they can move too much money around and raise taxes insidiously so you won't notice.

Yes.

The gov takes about 60% overhead (IIRC) from taxes to run itself, never mind achieving what the legislation requires.

I'm an investor. I like it when my investments make a profit. Given a choice between artificially inflating prices with a huge overhead accruing to an expanded bureaucracy or allowing the price to be dictated by supply and demand and profits accruing to private investors, ...

I'll take the investor for 10 Trillion, Alex.

Consumption tax, sales tax, they are both very insidious. How much did you pay last year in sales tax? I have no idea, but I know exactly how much I paid in income tax.

I agree that any additional revenue raised for a specific purpose, any purpose, is going to get pilfered and raided by every congressman who can get his/her greedy little paws on it.

Until you get government borrowing under control, it doesn't matter how much tax revenue they get from us. They will spend whatever they deem appropriate. So "starving the beast" is a myth as long as the borrowing has no reasonable limits.

It's easier to just not tax the things you want a rebate on, maybe things like food. But the biggest problem is that to fund the needs of the govt as is the sales tax would have to be enormous and there's no way people would approve of it and it would hurt the consumer economy that we have today.

Sure we can. Securitize the lawn mowing with AAA-rated credit default swaps and encourage investors to pour money into it by giving them huge tax cuts. Works like a charm. :D

There is sales tax, tax on the interest you earned, capitals gains tax, etc, etc. There are way too many to keep track of. You know how much you paid in income tax but with all the state tax, county tax, etc, etc, how do you know the totals? Way too many to keep track of. When you see the total come up and the tax on the receipt, you will know how much is being taxed and since that is the only form, it is easy to keep track of. Here is another way. Assuming the tax is 10% and I know that last year I wrote out $1100 in checks. I know I bought $1000 of stuff and paid $100 in taxes. The math is pretty simple.

I would disagree with that. Sure we need to stop the borrowing, period. However it is a 2 pronged approach. You need to stop borrowing an control the revenue. Control the tax alone won't cut it but adding the borrowing control will. But until we get borrowing under control, why do we want to feed the beast AND have borrowing out of control? IOW, why have 2 things out of whack as opposed to 1?

And maybe instead of having the various taxes we pay nickle and dime us to death and having one huge tax where the govt has to be more cautious when it tries to raise it might just work out better. Now instead of cutting here and pushing that into a different set of books so you don't notice it, they have to increase the tax from say 35% to 38% and they will have people breathing down their necks.

Yesterday, when we were making money, that was not the time. Today when we are losing money, it isn't the time. When is it the time?

It's easier to let people take responsibility for their own lives. But we live in a culture that doesn't allow that.

The cumulative total of taxes is exactly as you describe it: HUGE. I prefer an honest tax policy in which the taxpayers know exactly how much they are taxed nd on whom to place the blame. Put a tax on every bleeding transaction in America, no deductions. Listen to the swine in DC squeal.

Balanced, no doubt, by the silence from Warren Buffet claiming he pays a lower percentage than his workers.

Not knowing how much tax we are paying isn't the problem. Anyone who files their taxes knows exactly how much taxes they're paying. My main objection is the number of different taxes and the huge complexity of the tax code and its numerous loopholes. A simple federal sales tax with no tax filing would indeed be nice.

It's not that simple. The problem with borrowing is the interest the taxpayers pay, frequently accompanied by currency devaluation. So giving the govt the money it wants to spend is not necessarily worse than forcing it to borrow. In fact I'd argue it's better. But then again, it might make the spending get even more out of control. The key is to control spending, but not through tax revenue starvation. It should be done through proper legislation.

In the short term, yes, you are right. It is better to let the govt have the money than to borrow. OTOH, I look at it like Y2K. Tons of time to fix it but nobody wanted to take the steps necessary at that time. When they are finally forced, they do it.

But if they won't do it, all you are doing is letting it go on longer. Much like Y2K. Nobody wanted to do it in 91 because it would go against their budget and they could push it off later. After all, they might not be there when it needed to be done. However, once say 98 came along, they were forced to fix it. Revenue starvation would be like the clock ticking with Y2K coming around the corner. In 91 they could ignore it. In 98, fix it or else. If not, what would induce them to fix it? Getting spending under control means cuts. You don't buy votes by cutting goodies. They follow the law of inertia. As long as the least resistive path is to borrow and spend, why would they change it? Because it is good for us all? How does that help their career? Politicians on both sides of the aisle are bidding on your vote by offering more than the other guy.

Anybody who thinks that their income tax filing is all the taxes they pay should broaden their scope.

Do you know how much you paid in taxes? Sure you know what you paid the IRS. What did you pay in state, county, city, street, dog catcher tax, etc, etc tax? What about your sales tax? You earn money and get taxed. Buy something and also get taxed. With all that complexity, how many know how much they paid in taxes altogether? Then we get the loopholes you talked about. All this is great for obfuscation. $100 here, $20, there, $5, here and pretty soon you have a huge chunk of money but because it is so confusing and small, you fail to notice it. OTOH, if we had one tax and we bumped it up even 1%, you will hear of it and see it. Like I said, total up all your purchases and use the simple formulas and you figure out what your total taxes are. Also when you give me a tax cut, I can see it. There is no adding of this tax and subtracting from that.

I meant strictly income taxes when I said we all know how much tax we pay. Sorry for the lack of clarity. What we don't know is how much sales tax we pay. Sure we may know the percentage, but who keeps track of each dollar spent? I sure don't. Replacing income taxes with a federal sales tax would be nice as I already said, but we would know even less how much we paid in taxes, not that it's necessarily a problem.

I guess it will take more intelligence from the populace to see a balanced budget as a good thing. Perhaps the politicians could also do a better job of selling such an idea as being good for the country.

Let the total spent this year be $X
Tax percentage is 20%
Let the Price of the products bought be $Y
120% of $Y = X
Therefore Y= X/120 * 100
Therefore tax amount= X-Y

The less you know, the more they can fool you. Like I said, even if you wanted to know today, it is very difficult at the least and govt uses it to their advantage every day. As far as the game goes, they not only have home field advantage. They have the referees in their pocket. They use accounting tricks that Arthur Anderson would have wet dreams about using. I mean, why do you think that they have their accounts balanced on a cash basis when most of us have to do it on an accrual basis? As you are fond of telling me, Clinton (actually congress) balanced the budget. Are you really sure that it was balanced when they don't have to conform to the same accounting practices that we have?

I'm sure that they do. However here is the kicker. NIMBY. What you want is people who will sacrifice for the common good. Again, if that could work, we'd be studying Marx and Engels's masterpieces. People have their sacred cows but others can be sacrificed. IOW, NIMBY.

And perhaps, this afternoon, over a few beers, if I can graft wings onto pigs, they can fly. If your reward for telling the bad news is that you lose your job to the other guy who spins all kinds of fiction to the voters, would you? Most won't. Anyone who tries that probably won't even get to the point where he can do anything.

Yes, we would know the %, but do you know how much you spend every year? If so, you have more free time than I do.

I'm not intimately familiar with the govt's accounting tactics, but I do know that Clinton balanced the budget, even if there were some tricks involved, but the truth is the same tricks were available to Bush and even with those he couldn't or wouldn't balance the budget. Now Obama is supposedly using cleaner accounting methods, which make the deficit appear even bigger, or so I've read.