Matt Yglesias

19 Responses to “Waxman-Markey Passes House Energy & Commerce Committee”

1. James Robertson Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 12:28 am

   Excellent news if you want to pay tons more for electricity. On the other hand, I can’t think of a better way to torque off your own base (unions) and regular voters (higher energy bills) than this, especially when it’s in the pursuit of nothing more than making people like Matt feel good about themselves.

   You think the Republicans are lower than dirt right now? If this passes, wait til the impact hits. You’ll get to wave at the Republicans as you pass them on your way down.

2. Ben Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 1:32 am

   What about that policy debate speedreader that Waxman brought in? That was something, huh? I thought he looked like one of the folks in a doc I once saw about debate.

   @James Robertson,
   You can take your antiscience bullshit and go suck it. We kicked your kind the fuck out of power for a reason. You can rejoin the grown-ups’ discussion when you crack open a science text that doesn’t start with genesis.

3. sab Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 2:29 am

   What’s with the voice chattering about renewable energy in the background. I don’t know if it’s you, or an advertisement, but I’m not coming back to your site until you fix this. I can’t stand unattributed chattering voices while I’m trying to read something unrelated.

4. Bottomfish Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 3:02 am

   It’s worth noting that carbon emissions are in fact falling the fastest since 1982, because of the recession. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/20/AR2009052003655.html?hpid=sec-business

   The environmentalist’s dream: a permanent recession, which is what Waxman-Markey adds up to.

5. Reality Man Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 6:17 am

   If you look at business lobbies’ so-called research that is supposed to show how horrible cap-and-trade is supposed to be, the numbers are laughable. I mean like losing 3 million jobs over 30 years laughable – and you know those numbers are inflated and don’t include the jobs that would be created from renewable energy jobs, greater efficiencies, etc.

   You also know what’s bad for the economy? A bunch of people dying. Lower crop yields worldwide. Changed animal migratory patterns fucking with farmers. Flooding of lower-lying areas. But oh now, you might pay an extra $20 a year on electricity. The horror.

6. James Robertson Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 6:18 am

   Ben – anti-science? All I pointed out above is that this policy will necessarily raise costs (something Obama himself admitted).

   If you think the public will cheer for a policy that makes life a lot more expensive – and delivers minimal benefits in the direction the climate change crowd says are so important – then you have a lot to learn

7. Reality Man Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 6:54 am

   Point blank, James Robertson, do you believe man-made global warming is real or not?

8. Tanna Nicholson Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 7:03 am

   Matthew,
   Please fix it so that we don’t hear the advertisements play while trying to read your copy.
   Tanna

9. kim Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 8:11 am

   Unreality Man, 7. The globe is cooling and will for another couple of decades unless the sun gets into the act and it’ll cool for a century. CO2’s role in climate has been exaggerated. This Cap and Trade is unnecessary and will inhibit economic recovery. If Obama were taking advice from his enemies, his energy policy is what they would give him.
   ============================================

10. Rich in PA Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 8:18 am

    Kim: Whaaaaaaaa? Words are powerful, but you can’t actually use them to reverse large-scale physical processes.

11. kim Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 8:21 am

    Rich, 10. CO2 has a greenhouse gas effect, but it is not powerful enough to reverse large-scale physical processes. We are cooling, folks; for how long even kim doesn’t know. But check the thermometer regularly.
    ======================================

12. JT Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 8:35 am

    Wipe the snot off your nose Matty.
    Your “…it provides many opportunities for special interests to block measures that serve the public interest” presupposes a great wisdom on policy that you have signally failed to demonstrate.
    As in Iraq. Iraq. Iraq.
    Did I mention your bloody fucking hands?
    And who else but snotty nose, having failed on the major issue in American policy of this generation, would go on to set himself out as a public and foreign policy brahman?

13. Jeffrey Davis Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 8:40 am

    kim, you can’t run the cooling gag unless temps are actually cooling. The last 12 months has been warmer than the previous 12 months. Which scotches that line of nonsense. You and your elk need to get your muddled heads together for another way to foul the debate because your current line is not only stupid (cherry-picking a segment from a time series), it’s wrong.

14. James Robertson Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 8:45 am

    I’m skeptical about man’s role, as I think natural cycles (that are not well understood) play a much larger role. Heck, there was reporting a week or two ago about how the deep ocean currents function differently than we thought, now that someone dropped buouys to actually study them.

    That’s not really the interesting part though. The more interesting part is that the policy being proposed will cause a fair amount of pain (in terms of rising prices), and provide minimal benefit in the direction that people who do worry about this think is important. It will provide even less, if – as I think likely – countries like India and China don’t implement similar policies.

    Lots of pain and minimal or no gain just doesn’t seem like a great plan to me. Solar and Wind are fine, but they aren’t primary sources of power, as they are intermittant. You need backing power behind every wind/solar plant, because people expect the lights to go on when they flip the switch.

    I have no problem with using less coal and more nuclear, which would reduce carbon emissions a lot (something I don’t care about, but even so, nuclear plants produce no air pollution of the sort I do care about, while coal plants produce a lot).

    We won’t be using less power in the future, because the public isn’t interested in donning a hair shirt. Given that, any policy proposals you come up with should deal with that reality.

15. SLC Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 8:47 am

    Re kim

    Hey, the birther kim is back. How goes the Keyes/Taitz/Berg lawsuits over President Osamas’ birth certificate? He’s still in the White House the last I noticed. But keep the faith, maybe the tooth fairy will show up with proof that he was born in Kenya. Or that he entered Pakistan on an Indonesian passport.

    Re Reality Man

    Mr. Robertson has made it clear in past threads that he rejects the theory of AGW.

16. Jeffrey Davis Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 8:54 am

    I’m skeptical about man’s role, as I think natural cycles (that are not well understood) play a much larger role

    James, I hate to break it to you, but you’re stating the farking stupid white-on-black, taser-to-the-teeth obvious. Of course natural processes are more important. We’re talking between 2C-5C over the course of 150 years. Sheesh. And, finally, the actual energy due to changes in CO2 can be calculated from quantum principles so while everything isn’t completely understood the elemental big stuff is covered.

17. hostreviewgeeks Says:
    May 23rd, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    Couldn’t agree more.

    That’s really a good move.

18. Gary Says:
    May 23rd, 2009 at 2:15 pm

    WAXMAN’S CAP AND TRADE BILL WILL DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD.
    Rep. Waxman’s cap and trade bill will cause great harm to the people and the environment. The core question is the replacement of electricity production using coal and oil by wind power, solar power and nuclear power. Since nuclear power is currently anathema in the USA and solar power is currently not a viable technology for large scale electricity production, wind is being proposed as an alternative to coal by corporations like GE, a big contributor of President Obama.
    The tiny bit of electricity currently produced in the USA by wind power is heavily subsidized, both by tax breaks and by consumption mandates (government mandates on utilities to have a certain amount of electricity produced by “renewable” means). The dollar value of such subsidies is currently 23 DOLLARS per kilowatt for wind power and 44 CENTS per kilowatt for coal. That is, wind power is subsidized at a rate 52 times larger than that for coal power. But the main difference is that even if one takes the subsidies away coal power would still be profitable for the operators and cheap for consumers. If one takes away the subsidies from wind power, for it to be similarly profitable to the operators the consumers would have to pay outrageously high prices for the electricity thus produced. But those subsidies for wind power have to come from somewhere. Currently they come from taxes imposed on all electricity produced by coal, oil and natural gas, which means that those subsidies come from the consumers. This is the price of replacing an efficient and economical way of producing electricity by an uneconomical way.
    In addition, wind power also has an horrific footprint in terms of the acreage necessary to produce one megawatt of electric power. It is about the same as that of hydro-electrical power plants (including the water reservoirs!). By comparison coal power plants and nuclear power plants have footprints about 20 times smaller (about 10 times smaller if we include acreage for mining coal or uranium).
    The schemes for electricity production by wind power being bandied about in the press would lead to a drastic reduction of open spaces in the Great Plains and the southwest deserts. If one takes into account the new power lines that will have to be build the impact will be even greater. THE IMPLICATIONS OF WIND PRODUCED POWER FOR WILD LIFE WILL BE CATASTROPHIC.Not to mention that the giant blades of those wind power plants transform them into true grim reapers for all flying creatures.
    Then we have the wonders of “Cap and Trade”. as proposed by Waxman and Obama because it allows them to say with a straight face that they are not taxing carbon and beloved by Wall Street because it creates a new class of security which can be traded, speculated, swapped, derivativized, just like in the good old days of sub-prime mortgage abuses. Can you see another “bubble” coming?
    So the argument posed by some here that the US is leading the way to “save the world” by subsidizing “wind power” and by increasing the cost of coal and oil via “cap and trade” is false. In fact “wind power” will lead to massive increases in energy costs for millions, do little to decrease co2 and wreck the environment. So much for “saving the world”.
    What people like President Obama , Rep Waxman and Krugman are asking us is to destroy the US economy and wreck the environment based upon a long-range climate forecast which has not been scientifically proven. Probably not the behavior of rational people.
    As Mises said, “Tu ne cede malis.” Do not give in to evil.
    The environmentalist irrational thinking is simply evil. If you look at the drastic harm wind power will have on the environment and calculate the end to end energy budgets, (it takes a lot of energy and political capital to harvest fuels from the middle east) that are required to meet the energy needs of the US. Using US based coal, oil and natural gas (the US has a lot of it) the US could reduce the end to end energy budget by an order of magnitude, save environment from the harm that wind power would create plus create tangible wealth for all US citizens. Just look at Alaska.
    This is a plus because a) this allows far more time to develop viable alternative energy sources (unlike wind) and b) this keeps the energy dollars within the US.
    What’s *truly* short sighted and evil is arguing for wholesale decommissioning of oil and coal industries without viable alternatives at the ready.

19. jacob Says:
    May 23rd, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    The real issue is that there is no viable alternative to coal and oil available right now that will meet the energy needs of the US. The only one being proposed is “wind” which is very expensive compared to coal and oil and thus has to be subsidized by the tax payers. Not only that, wind energy is very bad for the environment as every living creature in its path will be annihilated.

    Large corporations like GE, who are big supporters of President Obama, will be the biggest winners if cap and trade is passed. Everyone else will be the losers. As President Obama stated, if his cap and trade bill goes through energy costs will go “sky high”. Not only that, there is little chance that cap and trade will actually reduce co2.

    The argument that the US has to “lead the way” in order to “save the world” is just plain stupid. Lead the way where?

    — To “sky high” energy costs as President Obama has stated?

    — To killing a lots of birds and small animals in the path of millions of very costly “wind power” turbines?

    — To benefiting large Corporations like GE, who will siphon off billions of dollars in tax payer funding?

    — To the loss of millions of private US jobs in the coal industry?

    — To pay for more and more government union tax payer subsidized “green jobs” paid for by the money drained from the smaller and smaller private sector?

    Sounds like President Obama is really telling us that in order to “save the world” he has to destroy the US economy and do great harm to the environment even though it will do little or nothing to reduce co2.

    In reading these posts I just do not understand why anyone in their right mind would propose cap and trade without a viable alternative energy source to coal and oil that is economically sound and environmentally friendly? Wind power is none of these. Sounds like President Obama is asking the US to commit suicide to me.