In The News
The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Democratic Party
Monday March 31, 2003
FACT: NRDC once again has shown its partisan colors. As Inside EPA reported on January 25, 2002: “In 2000, [NRDC’s David] Hawkins and other environmentalists were unwilling to level serious criticism against the Clinton administration for the reforms it was considering. Although activists registered their concerns with EPA, there was little in the way of the public attacks that have marked environmentalists' approach to the Bush administration's possible reforms.”
Senator Kerry and Renewable Energy
Friday March 28, 2003
FACT: Renewables do have a role in reducing energy independence, but a very limited one. As the Energy Information Administration warned, “Projections of large increases in renewable energy use should be viewed with caution.” According to an EIA forecast, non-hydro renewables will make up just 3 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2020. Even under scenarios that assume rapid improvements in renewable technologies with correspondingly lower costs to consumers, EIA reports that renewables will comprise a whopping 4.6 percent of the electricity mix.
McCain-Lieberman
Wednesday March 26, 2003
FACT: The McCain-Lieberman bill, which requires four major sectors of the economy to reduce their CO2 emissions to 2000 levels by 2010 and 1990 levels by 2016, would effectively implement the Kyoto Protocol. So the question is: what would Kyoto do to remedy the supposed problem of global warming? According to Tom Wigley, a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, not much at all. The Kyoto Protocol would reduce global temperatures by a mere 0.07°C by the year 2050. That figure is so small that it cannot be measured reliably by ground-based thermometers. Thus McCain-Lieberman would have virtually no effect on global temperatures. Instead, like Kyoto, it would wreak havoc on the nation’s economy.
Clean Power Act and Natural Gas
Tuesday March 25, 2003
FACT: The Energy Information Administration found that the Clean Power Act, a leading Democratic proposal to reduce power plant emissions, would cause rapid fuel switching from coal to natural gas, increasing natural gas-based electricity generation by 60 percent. EIA warned that under the Clean Power Act “it is far from certain that the power sector would be able to move from dependence mostly on coal to dependence on natural gas and renewables in a relatively short time period without encountering supply problems.”
Democrats give with one hand, and take with the other.
Wednesday March 19, 2003
FACT: Democrats give with one hand, and take with the other. According to the Energy Information Administration, the Clean Power Act, which has 21 Democratic cosponsors, would increase consumer electricity prices by 32 percent by 2010. The bill’s cap and trade program for CO2 emissions is, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a regressive tax—“that is, it would impose a greater relative burden on low-income households than on higher income households.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), in referring to President Clinton’s proposed energy tax increase, said it best on the Senate floor in 1993: “I do not believe that we are treating [the poor and the elderly] fairly...."
Polar Bears and ANWR
Monday March 17, 2003
“We often see pictures of polar bears in appeals for funds to save the Arctic Refuge. One organization begins its plea with a statement that development ‘could force polar bears to abandon their maternity dens, which they dig in the snowdrifts, and leave their cubs to die.’ This comes from a 1985 report of one polar bear leaving its den as a result of older seismic activity.”
FACT: “North Slope development, which is far more intense than any potential Coastal Plain development, has had no devastating effect on polar bears. Polar bears have thrived since 1967. The [National Academy of Sciences] report found there have been no known cases where polar bears have been affected by oil spilled as a result of North Slope industrial activities. NAS sums up its polar bear discussion by stating there is evidence to support a finding that there have been no serious effects or accumulation of effects on polar bears.”
Kyoto Protocol
Friday March 14, 2003
FACT: President Bush believes science should dictate climate policy, not the other way around. Science has not determined what a “safe” level of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere would be. Dr. Robert Watson, former chairman the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, went even further, saying the notion of “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate was at heart “a political issue,” not a scientific one.
Millitary Encroachment
Thursday March 6, 2003
FACT: Where to begin? How about with the Navy, which under a court settlement must get a waiver from the Natural Resources Defense Council every time it tests low-frequency sonar in the Pacific (sonar is critical to detecting enemy submarines). Maybe Mr. Clapp is unaware of California’s Mojave Desert, where Marine commanders say soldiers are forced to train in the daytime because desert tortoises might be trampled at night (most of the fighting in Iraq, military planners say, will be done at night). He apparently is oblivious too of the 17-mile beach at Camp Pendleton, where Marines, because of environmental restrictions, can practice amphibious landings on just 200 yards of space.
Senator Kerry's "common sense" on global warming.
Wednesday March 5, 2003
FACT: Here’s Sen. Kerry’s earlier observation—made during the debate over the Kyoto Protocol in 1997—about how best to combat “global warming”: It’s just “common sense,” he said, “that if you are really going to do something to effect global climate change and you are going to do it in a fair-minded way…we need to have an agreement that does not leave enormous components of the world's contributors and future contributors of this problem out of the solution.”
Compassionate SUV Drivers
Wednesday March 5, 2003
FACT: We quote from a Feb. 19 editorial in The Capital, a newspaper based in Annapolis, on SUVs and the recent DC-area snowstorm: “This thesis didn’t hold up in the last few days. Owners of SUVs mobilized to help countless people stranded in their homes. Many of these people—nurses, doctors, emergency workers—depended on volunteers behind the wheel of SUVs. Perhaps these drivers smugly enjoyed their superior mobility, but if it weren’t for them, we wonder how many SUV critics would still be stuck in their homes.”