The Climate Industrial Complex (CIC) to play dirty. They obviously do not like Scott Pruitt and apparently decided that since they cannot win on the doubtful merits of their arguments or their standard media scare tactics, the best way to proceed was to attack any and all perceived ethical and excessive cost problems they could pin on him. So they sent out their hounds and brought home very little.
Pruitt’s apartment rental comes down to a judgment as to whether $50 per night is a fair market price for a Capitol Hill apartment with specified amenities. It was approved by the EPA career ethics officials. And whether his use of enhanced personal security and first class air travel is required to protect him from bodily harm after a number of personal threats against his life is also a matter of judgment. Personally, I believe it is better to err on the side of safety.
So why is the CIC so concerned about Pruitt? Because he is trying to make major reforms at EPA to bring back science as the basis for policy and to concentrate on real pollution problems, not manufactured ones based on the CIC’s “consensus” science and overwhelming control of the mainstream media. He has shown great personal courage by attempting to repeal some of the most egregious actions of the Obama EPA.
The Outdated CAFE Standards Are One of Pruitt’s Well Deserved Targets
His new attempt to revise the Obama CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards for cars is an example of why the CIC does not like him. This regulation was dubious from the start. CAFE was based on fears that the US would have an oil shortage if not run out of it and be at the mercy of the Arab oil sheikhs. So the idea was that cars would have to be put on a fuel diet. This idea was hijacked by the CIC in the early Obama years with the help of the weakness of the auto industry during the recent extended recession to turn this effort into another climate regulation.
The Obama version of the CAFE standards would force Americans to either use very small cars or expensive electric vehicles despite their obvious preference for larger, more powerful, more cost-effective, and safer cars. There was no need for CAFE from the start and it has long since lost whatever justification it might have had. And as discussed many times on this blog, reducing human-caused CO2 emissions will have no significant effect on global warming, which is a benefit in modest amounts anyway.
Technical Progress Is More than Making Up for Oil Depletion
It should now be obvious that there is no danger of running out of oil in the US for many years. We have even started to export some. Technical progress is more than making up for the diminishing availability of large oil reservoirs of easy-to-extract oil. The CIC has long held the view that critical resources for modern society, particularly energy resources, would inevitably run out and we must conserve them at the expense of human welfare and convenience. Their current goal is the absurd just “leave it in the ground” phrase. Obama even claimed that it was impossible for the US to drill our way out of this energy shortage problem. But he and the rest of the CIC could not have been more wrong. In recent years the price of energy has even fallen substantially. The reason is that technological progress is more than keeping up with resource depletion despite the Reverend Malthus’s views.
What is needed is not more counter-productive, economy-distorting government regulations like CAFE, but fewer and better infrastructure to get our abundant energy resources to market and fewer attempts to prevent use of the new technology, especially fracking, by states. Pruitt is definitely on the right track, but the CIC is fighting back in the worst traditions of Washington swamp dwellers. I may have a few disagreements with Mr. Pruitt about how soon to get rid of the unscientific EPA CO2 Endangerment Finding, but Pruitt is definitely on the right track. The time has come to decrease the influence of the CIC swamp dwellers, not Scott Pruitt.
via Carlin Economics and Science
April 6, 2018 at 03:40PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 