From The Examiner, taken aback (as were we) by the President’s recent remarks holding up California as a model of energy conservation and economic leadership. From today’s editorial, “California here we come“:

While promoting his new cap-and-trade energy tax bill, which passed the U.S. House last week, President Obama revealed in a White House address on Monday his model for the nation’s economy - California. “In the late 1970s, the state of California enacted tougher energy-efficiency policies,” Obama said, noting that the state and its residents use less energy today per capita than the national average. “Think about that,” he said, “California producing jobs, their economy keeping pace with the rest of the country and yet they’ve been able to maintain their energy usage in a much lower level than the rest of the country.”

Obama might want to rethink his choice of a model state because it is easy to understand how California has curbed its energy use. Between 2000 and 2007, before the current recession, the state shed nearly 21 percent of its manufacturing jobs, driving down its industrial electrical consumption by 21 percent. California’s industrial users pay electric rates twice as high as their Midwestern counterparts - which helps explain why so much heavy industry has fled the state. In addition to alienating its industry, California has also curbed energy use through exorbitant residential electric rates (50 percent higher than the national average) and massive net out-migration. Between 2005 and 2007, 2.14 million Californians moved to other states, while only 1.44 million people from elsewhere moved to the Golden State, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

California’s state leaders failed to get a budget in place for the start of the new fiscal year, and state employees may soon be paid in IOUs.

There’s a news peg for the White House press corps to ask a question of Mr. Gibbs today: “Earlier this week President Obama held California up as a model of energy and economic leadership. California is some $20 billion in the red, failed to get a budget in place for the new fiscal year, and is going to issue IOUs instead of paychecks. In what way does the President regard California as leader?”

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made a desert splash yesterday with an announcement made in tandem with Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid. From “Secretary Salazar, Senator Reid Announce ‘Fast-Track’ Initiatives for Solar Energy Development on Western Lands“:

LAS VEGAS, Nevada – Under initiatives announced today by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), federal agencies will work with western leaders to designate tracts of U.S. public lands in the West as prime zones for utility-scale solar energy development, fund environmental studies, open new solar energy permitting offices and speed reviews of industry proposals.

“President Obama’s comprehensive energy strategy calls for rapid development of renewable energy, especially on America’s public lands,” said Secretary Salazar.  “This environmentally-sensitive plan will identify appropriate Interior-managed lands that have excellent solar energy potential and limited conflicts with wildlife, other natural resources or land users.  The two dozen areas we are evaluating could generate nearly 100,000 megawatts of solar electricity.  With coordinated environmental studies, good land-use planning and zoning and priority processing, we can accelerate responsible solar energy production that will help build a clean-energy economy for the 21st century.”

Excellent idea. Let’s do it! And can we do the same for new nuclear power plants? After all, with coordinated environmental studies, good land-use planning and zoning and priority processing, we can accelerate responsible nuclear energy production that will help build a clean-energy economy for the 21st century.

(100,000 megawatts? That seems like a quite a goal. A nuclear power plant on average can produce about 1,000 megawatts. Should we really believe that solar technology, investment and transmission capacity can be ramped up so quickly as to produce the equivalent of 100 nuclear power plants?)

Paul Krugman, writing in his New York Times column, “Betraying the Planet“:

A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

So that’s how Mr. Krugman hopes to win a public policy debate — comparing his opponents to Holocaust “deniers” and accusing them of treason. And you know what we do with traitors…

We make them lie on the beach, reading the 1,428-page bill until the rising oceans pull them to their briny deaths.

As far as we know, this is the full text of H.R. 2454, as passed by the House. It is now 1,428 pages.

Beach reading, as the oceans slowly rise to submerge you.

Or not.

From President Obama’s remarks today on energy and cap-and-trade legislation, holding up California as a model for the rest of the country:

Think about that. California — producing jobs, their economy keeping pace with the rest of the country, and yet they have been able to maintain their energy usage at a much lower level than the rest of the country.

Their economy keeping pace with the rest of the country? That’s just not the case.

From Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Regional and State Employment and Unemployment: May 2009“:

• The largest over-the-month decrease in the level of employment occurred in California (-68,900), followed by Florida (-61,000), Texas (-24,700), and Michigan (-23,900).
• Michigan again reported the highest jobless rate, 14.1 percent in May. The states with the next highest rates were Oregon, 12.4 percent; Rhode Island and South Carolina, 12.1 percent each; California, 11.5
  percent; Nevada, 11.3 percent; and North Carolina, 11.1 percent.
• The California, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, and South Carolina rates were the highest on record for those states.

From The Wall Street Journal, Review and Outlook, June 26, “The Albany-Trenton-Sacramento Disease”:

• California’s deficit for 2010 is projected at $33.9 billion.
• California’s debt burden has multiplied so fast that it now has the worst bond rating of any state.
• New York ranks first, California second and New Jersey third in moving vans leaving the state.

Pass Waxman-Markey and your state too can have California’s economy.

And the President regards that as an argument in favor?

White House advisor David Axelrod and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) appeared on ABC’s This Week this morning to discuss health care and the carbon cap-control-command-and-trade legislation.  Sen. Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, was very good on the Waxman-Markey bill. Host George Stephanopolous cited a CBO analysis and supporters’ talking point to argue that the bill did not represent that big of an economic hit. Grassley:

I’ll tell you, earlier this year, we had economists telling us that when you filter all of these increases in energy through every step of the economy, manufacturing a product or whatever services might come, we have come out with about $3,000 for a family of four.

Now I won’t argue $175 versus $3,000 because that’s not the most important issue. You’ve got to look at what is happening to our economy if we put this very strong tax on energy. The people that have been complaining for 10 years about the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to China are the very same ones pushing cap and trade.

And you’re going to find signs on manufacturing doors, if this bill passes, that says moved — gone to China. So what we have to do is make sure China, the number one emitter of CO2, not the United States, China is. And India right along with them.

We’ve got to have an international agreement so that we have a level playing field for American manufacturing so we don’t outsource any more jobs. This should be done in a way that affects China the same way it affects the United States.

Because if the United States moves ahead by itself, we’re not only going to lose those jobs, but the point is, after 30 or 40 years, we’re going to reduce CO2 by less than 1 percent.

Speaking of the CBO, its economic projects stop at 2020, just as the tougher anti-energy provisions really kick in. Seems like an inadequate effort.

Heritage  had other analyses challenging the CBO’s study:

24 June 2009
CBO Grossly Underestimates Cost of Cap and Trade
By David Kreutzer, Ph.D., Karen Campbell, Ph.D., and Nicolas D. Loris
WebMemo #2503
The CBO analysis of Waxman-Markey fails to take into account all the adverse effects that will ripple through the U.S. economy if cap and trade becomes law.

24 June 2009
The High Cost of Cap and Trade: Why the EPA and CBO Are Wrong

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA):

This bill has the ambition of the Moon landing, the moral imperative of the Civil Rights Act, and the scope of the Clean Air Act all wrapped up in one.

If the sponsor does say so himself.

Page H7675 of The Congressional Record, June 26, 2009.

Pretty thin margin on which to base a restructuring of the entire U.S. economy.

Roll Call vote tally here.

UPDATE (6:40 p.m.): Boehner stops after an hour. Speaker Pelosi now closes the debate. Votes to follow.

______________________

Allowing us time to get home, that is, if the commute has improved since yesterday.

From House Republicans’ American Energy Solutions Group:

Cap-and-Tax

Friends - Last night, at 3:00 a.m., the House Democrats released a 300-page amendment to their 1,200-page national energy tax legislation. No one - not one single Member of Congress - has read the bill that the Democratic Leadership is bringing up for a vote today. Remember, Speaker Pelosi promised the American people at least 24 hours to read a bill before a vote in her “New Direction for America” document distributed in 2006 that remains on her website today. Another broken promise from Washington Democrats.

So at the conclusion of his floor statement this afternoon, Republican Leader John Boehner will read the 300-page amendment on the House floor to America and the assembled Members of the House. By House tradition, three Members have the right to deliver unlimited floor remarks - the Speaker, the Majority Leader, and the Minority Leader. This is the House equivalent of the filibuster in the Senate. We expect it may take a while, but Members of Congress, and - more importantly - the American people have a right know what the House is voting on.

You can view the floor proceedings on CSPAN or at http://www.c-span.org/.

Yesterday on the way home we caught a glimpse of Reese Witherspoon out the bus window. No doubt hard at work at a green job.

Supporters of H.R. 2454 have been insisting, INSISTING, they are arguing on the basis of science.

If that’s so, then why did the EPA suppress an internal debate on climate change?

And why are policymakers and scientists around the globe turning against the supposed “consensus?”

From Kimberly Strassel, Wall Street Journal, “The Climate Change Climate Change”

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling.

And on the floor, as the House debate nears its close, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) just attacked the “Flat-Earth Society” and “climate deniers,” using anathema instead of argument.