A rare bit of reassuring news came my way from the Washington, D.C. news front regarding climate/energy policy yesterday. It came from the title of an article in Greenwire by Robin Bravender, “EPA critics throw down gauntlet in legal fight.”
Hurray. A real fight. Principal over pragmatism.
Not that the author is very sympathetic to the cause of free-market energy and carbon dioxide fertilization from non-priced CO2, but just straight reporting of what is likely to be exposed as administrative overreach.
The article (subscription required) begins:
…The many foes of U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan are preparing to attack the Obama administration on a host of legal fronts as the court battle over the embattled rule gets underway. States, industries and other groups challenging the rule to clamp down on power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions laid out their legal strategies in documents sent to a federal appeals court last week.
[Editor Note: This post originally appeared at MasterResource during Holiday Week 2009. Perhaps the update to this six years later is ‘only more so’ with the statistics of improvement and the case for energy optimism given the increasing sustainability of fossil fuels.]
Environmentalists critical of electrified America must have mixed emotions this time of the year. It may be the season of good cheer and goodwill toward all, but it is also the time of the most conspicuous of energy consumption. America the Beautiful is at her best in December when billions of tiny stringed light bulbs turn the mundane or darkness itself into magnificent beauty and celebration. Holiday lighting is a great social offering—a positive externality in the jargon of economics—given by many to all.
While energy doomsayers such as Paul Ehrlich have railed against “garish commercial Christmas displays,” today’s headline grabbers (Grist, Climate Progress, where are you?)…
“If implemented, this agreement will do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States. The potential to add incremental gas sales, and additional demand for renewable technology is enormous. In addition, a carbon emissions trading system will be developed.”
– John Palmisano, from Kyoto, Japan (1997)
A Hall of Shame crony memo just turned 18 years old. Dated December 12, 1997, it was written from Kyoto, Japan, in the afterglow of the Kyoto Protocol agreement by Enron lobbyist John Palmisano.
Global green planners such as Palmisano were euphoric that, somehow, someway, the world had embarked on an irreversible course of climate control (and thus industrial and land-use control). His memo reflects the train-just-left-the-station mentality, as well as the specific benefits for first-mover ‘green’ Enron.…