In the Pipeline: 7/1/13

We offer this without comment. The Telegraph (6/27/13) reports: “There has not been a sighting of the species in Britain since 1991 when a single bird was seen four times – in Kent, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and finally Shetland. Now 22 years later another White-throated Needletail turned up in the UK, but after more than 80 twitchers flocked to Harris – with scores more on their way – the bird flew into a wind turbine at Tarbert, witnessed by around 40 people. Josh Jones of Bird Guides said: ‘It was seen by birders fly straight into the turbine. It is ironic that after waiting so long for this bird to turn up in the UK, it was killed by a wind turbine and not a natural predator.’”

See, pretty much everyone wants a market-based approach to climate change. So do we. Except our preferred “market-based approach” is economic growth. The Wall Street Journal (6/27/13) reports: “President Obama unveiled his vast new anticarbon-energy agenda this week, which he plans to impose by executive fiat. Crucial to pulling off this exercise is a decision the federal bureaucracy made last month to change the way it accounts for carbon emissions—a decision that received almost no media attention. In late May the Administration slipped this mickey into a new rule about efficiency standards for microwaves, significantly raising what it calls the “social cost of carbon.” Team Obama made no public notice and invited no comment on this change that will further tilt rule-making against products and industries that use carbon energy.”

You knew this already, but everything is not as the President would say it seems. The Institute for Energy Research (6/27/13) reports: “The newly released ‘President’s Climate Action Plan’ is aptly named, for ‘planning’ is the traditional term that socialists used when trying to centrally run the economy. Indeed, the president’s plan dabbles in: emissions of hydrofluorocarbons and methane; forest growth; promotion of so-called clean energy; task forces at the state, local and tribal levels; building integrity; resilience in health care; conserving land and water resources; insurance leadership; launching a ‘climate data initiative’; mobilizing ‘climate finance’; and a host of other items. Beyond the audacity and hubris of such a plan, is the fact that it relies on dubious economics. Even taking the peer-reviewed mainstream literature at face value, much of the action plan document is unjustifiable.”

It turns out the President supports a market-based approach to climate change. Still not quite sure what that means. National Public Radio(6/28/13) reports: “Climate change seems like this complicated problem with a million pieces. But Henry Jacoby, an economist at MIT’s business school, says there’s really just one thing you need to do to solve the problem: Tax carbon emissions. ‘If you let the economists write the legislation,’ Jacoby says, ‘it could be quite simple.’ He says he could fit the whole bill on one page. Basically, Jacoby would tax fossil fuels in proportion to the amount of carbon they release. That would make coal, oil and natural gas more expensive. That’s it; that’s the whole plan.”

Love boat, soon we”ll be making another run (just not from Baltimore, thanks to the EPA)… The Baltimore Sun (6/27/13) reports: “Carnival Cruise Lines announced plans Thursday to leave the port of Baltimore, a move that could cost the region scores of jobs and millions in economic activity generated by big-spending passengers and businesses servicing the ships. The Miami-based company said that without federal approval of its plan for curbing air pollution, it would cut back on the number of cruises and move the Pride to a dock in Tampa, Fla., in November 2014. The Pride, a 2,124-passenger ship, sails weekly from Baltimore to the Bahamas and Caribbean. The move would leave the city with one other large cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas, still sailing regularly from the South Locust Point terminal. It also left state officials, who had been lobbying the Environmental Protection Agency on Carnival’s behalf, scrambling to prevent such a blow to the cruise industry here. ”