Free Republic

The latest auction in California's cap-and-trade market for greenhouse gases fell sharply below expectations, as buyers purchased just 2% of the carbon credits whose sale funds a variety of state programs -- notably, the proposed high-speed rail project. The quarterly auction, conducted May 18 and announced Wednesday, will provide just $10 million for state programs, including $2.5 million for the bullet train. The rail authority had been expecting about $150 million. Whatever prompted the lack of buyers, the auction is a stark example of the uncertainty and risk of relying on actively-traded carbon credits to build the bullet train. The...

Donald Trump will have a climate plan and it will be ugly. For now, the Republican frontrunner is pedaling the kind of denialism his party loves, having called global warming everything from a "hoax" to a "con job" to a Chinese plot. But an interview with his energy adviser hinted that Trump might endeavor to Make Atmospheric Carbon Levels Great Again. "My advice would be, while I'm a skeptic as well", Trump energy honcho Kevin Cramer [said], "he is a product of political populism, and political populism believes that there needs [to be] some addressing of climate change". Cramer has...

Climate change is a “global crisis,” and addressing it will bring “economic dislocation,” including job losses, Sen. Bernie Sanders said at Thursday’s CNN-hosted Democrat debate in Brooklyn. “Pope Francis reminded us that we are on a suicide course,” Sanders said. “Our legislation understands, …that there will be economic dislocation. It is absolutely true. There will be some people who lose their job. And we build into our legislation an enormous amount of money to protect those workers. It is not their fault that fossil fuels are destroying our climate. But we have got to stand up and say right now,...

The California Legislature's nonpartisan analyst estimates the state's pollution tax has raised gasoline prices by 11 cents per gallon and diesel prices by 13 cents, according to a month-old letter released on Thursday... Consumers may not have noticed much impact at the pump because the pollution tax came at a time when gas prices were plummeting... A large portion of the money is dedicated to California's high-speed rail line...

A Supreme Court ruling that delays a key element of President Barack Obama’s strategy to fight climate change will likely push a final decision on the issue to the next president, the Senate’s Republican leader said Monday as he urged the nation’s 50 governors to continue a “wait-and-see” approach on Obama’s plan. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky advised the governors to defy Obama’s effort to limit carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants by refusing to submit compliance plans to the Environmental Protection Agency. In a follow-up letter to the governors Monday, McConnell said the Supreme Court’s Feb. 9...

So-called "greenhouse gas effect" of CO2 does not exist at all! When will the governments (and their all too numerous “useful idiots” of the media) state the unadulterated truth to the people? Carbon (like in wood, coal, oil, natural gas) is an energy source—not a “pollutant” Presumably, any government has the right to levy a tax on anything they want. In that sense, a tax on “carbon” or any energy source would be no different than a tax on food or clothing; it’s all coming out of your pocket. However, the right to levy taxes does not give government a...

Renewable energy advocates like to point out that the cost of renewable fuels, like solar power, have dropped substantially in the last few years. The cost of solar power for instance has fallen by more than two-thirds since 2009. Yet for all the excitement about renewable power, the reality is that the entire energy sector has essentially been in a state of deflation for the last decade. The notable drop in oil prices over the last two years aside, costs of producing oil both in the U.S. and in many parts of the world have fallen dramatically. The phase out...

Washington could become the first state in the nation to impose a direct tax on carbon emissions from fossil fuels such as coal, gasoline and natural gas. A ballot measure before the state Legislature would create a carbon tax of $25 per metric ton of fossil fuel emissions burned in Washington, while reducing taxes. ...

(CNSNews.com) - At news conference in Paris on Tuesday, President Obama said "the most elegant way" to reduce carbon emissions is "to put a price on it." He was responding to a reporter who asked Obama, "I wonder if you see any political path back home toward putting a price on carbon?" "I have long believed that the most elegant way to drive innovation and to reduce carbon emissions is to put a price on it. This is a classic market failure," Obama replied. "If you open up an Econ 101 textbook, it will say the market's very good about...

"On why the free market won’t develop new forms of energy fast enough: ...Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch."

United Nations and its member regimes must sidestep the U.S. Constitution and the American people’s elected representatives to save the world from global warming, declared French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius (shown). Speaking to representatives of African governments and dictators during UN “climate” talks in Germany on Monday, the Socialist Party foreign policy chief explained that the U.S. Congress would refuse to approve the proposed planetary climate regime. As such, the emerging agreement, set to be finalized in Paris later this year, must be imposed on the United States by the Obama administration and the UN — without the consent of...

The world is filled with frauds; for instance, there’s NPR’s “Dr.” Science who, it turns out, is not a doctor and doesn’t know very much about science either: Ask Dr. Science is a daily broadcast on many public radio stations, using a format that mixes elements of a commercial bumper and a public service announcement. A concerned citizen asks a question, which is answered by an expert, "Dr. Science." Not surprisingly, the questions are never answered correctly, and are often little more than a launching point for a non sequitur monologue from Dr. Science. The show's motto is "He knows...

Transparently Predictable Political “Tripwires”.. August 10, 2015 First the good news ! Many people are beginning to have the awakening, the fundamental paradigm shift needed to understand the rather complex construct of the GOPe machine. At the request of many people who are only recently accepting the scope of the ruse, that is the 2016 GOP primary, we are going to begin identifying the “tripwires” before they are crossed, and then highlighting the tripwire WHEN it is crossed. Yesterday we told you of a specific “tripwire” to look for. Today, we share what it looks like moments before it is...

Obama is petty and vengeful. At this point, anything with the words "Green Energy" might as well be read as "Screw the Middle Class". After being shot down by the court, Obama's Green Energy plan has risen from the grave meaner and nastier than ever. First of all it's been retooled to hit Republican states hardest. ... Behind the euphemisms, the Thug-in-Chief is doing his usual petty bit by lashing out at opponents while seeking to punish them. And backed in is a Carbon Tax plan, which will save the planet by enriching a handful of billionaires and rip you...

The EPA may be making some major changes to its carbon dioxide emissions regulatory scheme, the details of which have been leaked to the media just days ahead of its expected release date. The EPA will be getting rid of its energy efficiency building block of its Clean Power Plan over legal concerns the agency was overstepping its bounds by controlling how efficiently people used their electricity, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Journal also reported the Clean Power Plan will encourage nuclear power production. An EPA spokeswoman would not confirm the reported changes to the rule as it has...

The debate is finally over. After more than a year of national consultations, draft bills and parliamentary discussions, French MPs finally adopted the bill for an Energy Transition for Green Growth on Wednesday 22 July. The substance of this far-reaching bill was subject to significant re-shaping by both houses of the French parliament, as well as the government. […] The adopted bill contains several last minute additions, including a Senate amendment to increase the carbon tax on fossil fuel use to €56 per ton in 2020, a four-fold increase, and €100 in 2030. “The trajectory of the carbon tax increase...

Sen. Chuck Schumer outlined a path Tuesday for Hillary Clinton to enact a carbon tax if the Democrats prevail in the 2016 elections. Schumer said that a Clinton presidency and the return of his party to the Senate majority in 2017 could pave the way for lawmakers to enact a carbon tax to help fund the government. The mere suggestion of a new fee on the emissions blamed for climate change, however, could become a political headache for Clinton and other Democrats, and it’s routinely dismissed by Republicans. Schumer also vowed that Democrats would successfully defend President Barack Obama’s landmark...

Whitehouse: "I extend an open hand, or an olive limb, to conservatives everywhere."Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) have proposed a bill that would establish an economy-wide tax on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. “My bill sets the fee for a ton of carbon at $45 in 2016, the central range of the social cost of carbon as estimated by OMB, and would increase it each year at a real 2 percent. When emissions fall 80 percent below 2005 levels, the annual adjustment would fall to inflation,” Whitehouse said at the American Enterprise Institute when presenting...

In April 2009, as the political right was finding its voice in the tea party, South Carolina Republican Rep. Bob Inglis was making the case for a carbon tax. “I’m a conservative. I believe in accountability,” he said. “Global warming is not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of facts.” He added, “We don’t want to be a party of deniers.” Most of his party disagreed. A year later, Inglis was trounced in a Republican primary, his staunchly conservative record proving insufficient to overcome this heretical deviation. On the surface, it may appear that little has changed in the...

After years of opposing efforts to fight climate change, Europe’s biggest oil and gas corporations have made a stunning about-face. Noticeably absent from the corporate push for a carbon price were U.S. oil behemoths Chevron and Exxon Mobil.