jackassery

Somebody hide Tom Friedman’s ball

“Where is my ball?” Editor’s note: See David’s follow-up post to this piece. … Tom Friedman has done stellar work on green issues lately. He’s certainly given them a higher profile than any dirty blogger could. So I guess he’s owed some latitude. But his recent column is a disaster: wrong on the merits, politically […]

Beware utilities seeking free pollution permits

America’s electric utilities (PDF) are waging a no-holds-barred campaign to get 40% of carbon emission permits allocated free to local distribution companies and merchant coal generators. They argue that free allocation will protect consumers better than auctions and cash back. Just give us free permits, they say, and we’ll pass through the savings to our […]

Republican enviros challenge Boehner’s misinformation

Republicans for Environmental Protection is calling on House GOP leaders to stop spreading misinformation about the climate and energy legislation Democrats released last week. In a pointed press release issued last week, the group challenged allegations made by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) that a plan to reduce climate-warming emissions amounts to a “light […]

House Republican leader continues to distort costs of cap-and-trade

As David noted yesterday, the figures Republicans are using to malign the cap-and-trade plan that Democrats put out this week are utterly, certifiably false. But that didn’t stop Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) from repeating them in yet another press release on Thursday. “Families and small businesses are struggling to get by, but the Democrats’ […]

The latest deceptive ad from the ‘clean’ coal front

The latest ad from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Note that they don’t even bother mentioning the “clean” part until the logo at the very end.

Glenn Beck attacks smart grid as socialist plot to steal our thermostats

This post originally appeared at the Wonk Room. Glenn Beck, the conservative ideologue whose show is mocked by fellow Fox News anchors, recently attacked plans to modernize our electric grid. After Carol Browner, President Obama’s climate and energy adviser, said that a smart grid means “we can get to a system where an electric company […]

It is conservatives, not environmentalists, who want to redistribute costs and burdens — to future

In a boilerplate 'winger column on cap-and-trade, the Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel says that Obama's carbon policy, despite all the rhetoric about reducing emissions and preventing climate change, is secretly just an effort to REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH [bwa ha ha, etc.].

In a similarly boilerplate 'winger column on climate change, Dan Gainor (The Boone Pickens Fellow at the Business & Media Institute -- wonder what T. Boone thinks about this) says that no matter what environmentalists say about "science" and "public health" and so forth, their secret agenda is to CONTROL PEOPLE [evil laugh].

These are very, very common conservative charges against environmentalists. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find 'wingers saying anything else on the subject. So it's worth addressing briefly.

Now, as Jason Grument said in response to Strassel's column at the Eco:nomics conference, any government policy redistributes resources: cancer research, invading Iraq, loosening regulations on banks, food stamps, carbon policy, anything. That is the nature of government. The relevant question is whether it's a wise or just redistribution of resources.

But it's important to go beyond that. Lurking behind these attacks is a bedrock conservative faith: that absent government intervention, the market allocates resources with perfect efficiency and those within it are free. Anything government does effectively disturbs a state of grace. Conservatives wouldn't put it so bluntly, but it's the only thing that makes sense of their rhetoric.

So it's worth occasionally reiterating: right now, with respect to climate, we are allocating resources inefficiently and imposing enormous costs and constraints on future generations. We are making them less free -- controlling them, you might say. Environmentalists do not want to control people for the sake of controlling them. They want people to bear the costs and burdens of their own behavior instead of sloughing them off to their kids and grandkids.

Conservatives think running up this enormous ecological and economic debt is "freedom." They think its proper distribution of resources. That's twisted and irresponsible.

Wall Street Journal editors make bone-headed mistake; get called on it; fail to correct

The Wall Street Journal editorial page has been an organ for intellectually dishonest, fanatically ideological douchebaggery for years and years. That they publish something stupid is scarcely worth noting. But recently WSJ editors made a mistake so egregious it crossed the line into malpractice -- and to boot, refused to correct the mistake, or even publish a letter that pointed it out.

In this column, on how cap-and-trade is going to kill ponies impoverish people in energy-intensive states, the WSJ ran this chart:

Wow, people in Wyoming emit 154 tons of CO2 a year! Around seven times the national average! They must fly in private jets and live in castles! They must gargle oil and fart methane! They must drive Hummers to get the mail! That's ... f*cking crazy.

Or, you know, just horribly wrong. You see, the WSJ is showing per-capita numbers based on states' energy production, not energy consumption. They produce lots of coal in Wyoming. That doesn't mean Wyomingans (Wyomingites?) are frantically burning it as fast as they can. They export it for chrissakes. It tells us nothing at all about what the citizens of Wyoming are going to pay in energy costs if cap-and-trade passes.

If you did a similar chart with per-capita energy consumption numbers (very tricky numbers to get, by the way), you'd see that the differences among states are not nearly so stark, and the alleged wealth redistribution from cap-and-trade not nearly so extreme. You'd be more accurate, but you'd lose your pretense for Real America vs. The Coasts faux-populism.

Anyway, Rich Sweeney pointed out this mistake on his blog. Then he talked to some folks at the WSJ. Then he and a colleague sent them a letter, gently pointing out the error.

The WSJ refused to run it.

I guess WSJ editors can live with a little deception in service of the fiction that liberal elitism -- rather than the corporate elitism to which they've devoted their newspaper for decades -- is the real threat to the nation's middle class.

Lieberman-Warner supporter Gregg says Obama climate proposal spends too much on 'special interests'

In 2007, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) supported the Lieberman-Warner climate bill. Widely regarded as something of a Frankenstein bill, it directed revenue at every conceivable constituency, based on sometimes tenuous connections to the climate issue. He said his "one reservation" was that more revenue wasn't returned to taxpayers.

Well! Obama just released a budget proposal that would return vastly more of the revenue -- around 82 percent -- to taxpayers. Gregg, who prides himself on being Mr. Moderate Bipartisan, would surely celebrate this development, right?

Nope:

"It's a stalking horse for raising taxes and spending it on special interests." Gregg said of the Obama plan in a telephone interview. "It's a non-starter."

Again, Obama's plan spends far less on "special interests" (Republican code for public investments) than a bill Gregg already supported. The only difference is that Obama's plan is Obama's.

Gregg has talked his way inside the carbon policy tent and now he's trying to burn it down. He's got lots of company.