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Arena Profile: Peter Goldmark Peter Goldmark currently directs the Climate and Air program for Environmental Defense Fund. Prior to joining Environmental Defense, he was Chairman and CEO of the International Herald Tribune. Peter has had exceptional careers in both the public and private sectors. His public service was highlighted by his tenure as Budget Director for the State of New York during the 1970s city- and state-wide fiscal crisis where he was an architect of its rescue; and as Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey through to 1983. He served as president of the...

The agencies said their needs are too different and manufacturers are not yet ready to build trains that can run on both Amtrak's 100-year-old rail lines and the high-speed corridors planned for California's system. ... Several unfavorable court rulings have also delayed work. In the most high-profile case, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge halted the sale of $8.6 billion in state rail bonds and ordered the state to write a new funding plan, delaying work on the first 28-mile segment from Madera to Fresno. The state has appealed. But the $108 billion budget that Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed...

This is how stupid we've become: Does Obama do one stupid thing to cover for the other stupid thing? Does he do the stupid prisoner exchange to make up for the stupid carbon plan? Or is all the stupidity organic? Getting past the fact that none of this makes anybody in United States look very good, I think these are legitimate questions. Because it seems to me that Obama has waved the red meat, and the conservative lions have attacked. The red meat in this case being the exchange of prisoner Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban terrorists. CNN...

The U.S. power sector must cut carbon dioxide emissions 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels, according to federal regulations unveiled on Monday that form the centerpiece of the Obama administration's climate change strategy. The Environmental Protection Agency's proposal is one of the most significant environmental rules proposed by the United States, and could transform the power sector, which relies on coal for nearly 38 percent of electricity. Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Monday that between 2020 and 2030, the U.S. amount of carbon dioxide the proposal would reduce under the plan would be more...

Having failed to get the Democrats’ cap-and-trade scheme through Congress, President Obama intends to create it through fiat, with the Environmental Protection Agency scheduled to issue today what amounts to a bill of attainder against coal-fired electricity generators. The regulation will set a national limit on greenhouse-gas emissions from coal plants and then offer states a phony menu of choices for meeting that standard, stacking the policy deck in such a way as to force them into cap-and-trade programs administered by multistate cartels. It is far from obvious that the Obama administration has anything like the legal authority for this;...

Despite being soundly rejected a few years ago, cap-and-trade will soon get its U.S. encore — but not in Congress. The Obama administration will likely use its executive power to unilaterally impose carbon dioxide emissions trading systems. The plan is being sold as a “flexible” one. By allowing states a menu of policy options to meet federal mandates, the standards will ostensibly meet the unique needs of each individual state. But the stark reality behind the proposal is that it will be a boon for states that have already imposed cap-and-trade systems — which are overwhelmingly Democratic states. “While President...

Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee is not waiting for the state legislature to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, but instead has issued an executive order to implement a cap-and-trade program, eliminate coal power and fund green energy projects. “This is the right time to act, the right place to act and we are the right people to act,” Inslee said. “We will engage the right people, consider the right options, ask the right questions and come to the right answers — answers that work for Washington.” Inlsee argues that more action is needed if the state is to meet climate goals passed by...

Once upon a time, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration was blithely professing confidence that they wouldn’t need to hit up taxpaying Californians to continue financing his pet high-speed rail project beyond the initial $10 billion in bonds he asked for (not to mention a casual few billion in stimulus funds from the Obama administration), because private investors would almost assuredly come a’clamoring to drop major dollars in what he felt — and apparently still feels — is an amazingly practical and affordable transit project.How’s that working out? Via the WSJ: As envisioned, California’s $68 billion bullet-train system, the nation’s first, would...

California’s greenhouse gas reduction law already has shaken up the state’s industrial sector, costing it more than $1.5 billion in pollution permit fees. It’s now poised to hit the pocketbooks of everyday Californians. Starting next year, the law will force fuel distributors into the same cap-and-trade marketplace as utilities and major manufacturers. The oil industry says it will lead to price increases of at least 12 cents a gallon immediately, while state regulators say any price spikes could vary widely, from barely noticeable to double-digits. …

It is a basic principle of psychological warfare that the side that controls the language of the argument controls the argument. Barack Obama's own website is using this PsyWar technique by calling opponents of his cap and trade agenda "climate change deniers." He has also used the financial resources of the federal government, such as whitehouse.gov, to marginalize everybody who doesn't agree with him as a climate change denier. Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse, Harry Reid, and Peter DeFazio also have followed Joseph Goebbels's advice to the effect that if you tell a big lie vigorously and often enough, people will believe...

The Brayton Point Power Station, the largest coal-fired power plant in New England, is shutting down amid a prolonged slump in energy prices that is forcing power operators nationally to rejigger their budgets and seek out more affordable production strategies. The closure will result in 240 job losses at the Somerset, Mass.-based facility. Its owner, an affiliate of New Jersey-based private equity firm Energy Capital Partners, said in a statement that steps would be taken to mitigate the effects of the job cuts for Brayton Point’s former workers....

On Tuesday, four Democrats in Congress unveiled a brand-new proposal for a carbon tax. The set-up is simple: The U.S. government would slap a fee on fossil-fuel emissions and refund the revenue back to the public. But there’s a twist: The precise details of the carbon tax have yet to be thrashed out. The four lawmakers are soliciting public comments for how big the tax should be and how best to rebate the money. The proposal is being put forward by Reps. Henry Waxman and Earl Blumenauer, as well as Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Brian Schatz. Here are the key...

Taxes: The president may try to satisfy both environmentalists and pro-growth blocs by tying the shovel-ready project curiously left out of the State of the Union to just-introduced carbon-tax legislation. Having failed to lower the sea levels in his first term, President Obama, in the first SOTU of his second term, highlighted the need for fighting climate change and proposed an Energy Security Trust Fund to siphon off money from those who actually produce abundant and useable energy to fund alternative energy sources which constitute a rounding error in the percent of energy produced by various sources. Two days later,...

Energy: The president's proposed Energy Security Fund will stifle the private energy sector boom and provide permanent funding for future Solyndras and electric cars that nobody wants. And what about that pipeline, sir? A nonexistent crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and in justifying his proposal for a cap-and-tax scheme, President Obama claimed in his State Of The Union that "the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15." He was lying. The fact is, according to new data released quietly last October by Britain's Met Office, the world's natural post-Ice Age warming trend stopped...

NEW: Edison bailed out CA Cap & Trade auction The facts slowing coming out about the state’s first Cap and Trade auction seriously question whether the system is already being gamed by government, together with electric utilities. Edison International made an announcement on Dec. 20, 2012: At California’s first Cap and Trade auction held back on Nov. 14, 2012, it offered to buy 21 times more pollution permits than allowed. Edison’s overbidding error ended up amounting to 72 percent of all the bid offers and bailed out the Cap and Trade auction from failure. About a month later, Edison’s unregulated...

Ever since the Senate rejected President Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme in 2009, his administration has been hard at work to find other ways to implement a radical, environmentalist agenda. Obama made these intentions clear at a press conference in 2010 when he explained, “Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat. … It was a means, not an end, and I am going to be looking for other means to address this problem.” And this is a promise he’s doing his best to keep. With the help of the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments, this administration has...

BENICIA -- Rumors are swirling that Valero is putting its two California oil refineries on the market, including one in Benicia that is the city's largest employer. The speculation follows a Wall Street Journal report last week that said the San Antonio-based company has enlisted Citigroup Inc. to help find a buyer for the facilities. The article cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter. Valero operates a 78,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Wilmington outside Los Angeles and a 132,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Benicia. Together, the plants represent about 10 percent of the company's U.S. refining capacity. Valero, which has been critical of California's...

President Obama is among the slickest practitioners ever of the Washington Wink-Wink -- what professional politicians in both parties do when they say one thing while planning to do something else entirely. There was, for example, Obama's 2008 campaign promise to "cut the federal deficit in half." And that "net federal spending cut" he would achieve by the end of his first term? Anybody think he didn't know then that his first term would explode the deficit and spending to historic highs? Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sees more...

California's top air pollution regulator issued a spirited defense today of the state's new cap-and-trade greenhouse gas market, rejecting pleas from businesses to make significant changes to the program. Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, said the carbon market is designed to minimize the impact on businesses. Big business groups, like the California Chamber of Commerce, were scheduled to testify later today about their objections to the cap and trade market, the centerpiece of the state's global warming law, AB 32. Businesses say the market amounts to a $1 billion-plus annual tax that will destroy jobs and...

Come November, California will open North America's first full-scale carbon market, in which companies buy and sell the right to emit greenhouse gases from their factories, power plants and oil refineries. It's a major undertaking involving hundreds of companies and - potentially - billions of dollars. Success or failure could have big implications for California's fight against climate change, not to mention the state's fragile economy. So on Thursday, California officials plan to stage a dress rehearsal. The California Air Resources Board will hold a practice auction, giving future players in the carbon market a chance to see how the...