Along with the THOUSANDS, THOUSANDS we say!, of anti-coal, anti-affordable-heating-for-Aunt-Luella protesters at the Capitol Power Plant Monday, some pro-prospersity advocates may also show up. From the doughty folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Celebrate Coal! Rally Announced for Monday
Demonstration Will Counter Negative Propaganda of Capitol Power Plant Protesters

A rally to Celebrate Coal! and Keep Energy Affordable will be held in front of the Capitol Power Plant on Monday, March 2nd, from 1 to 3 PM, the Competitive Enterprise Institute announced today.  Celebrate Coal! and Keep Energy Affordable is designed to counter the negative propaganda of Capitol Climate Protection’s protest scheduled for the same time in a park near the Longworth and Rayburn House Office Buildings.

CEI has applied to the U. S. Capitol Police for a permit to hold the rally in front of the Capitol Power Plant on the south side of E Street, S. E., between South Capitol Street and New Jersey Avenue, S. E.  The District of Columbia Metropolitan Police have also been notified that the rally will be held on the north side of E Street if the Capitol Police deny the permit.  The anti-coal protest group, Capitol Climate Protection, has apparently not applied for a permit to protest around the Capitol Power Plant.

“The goal of Celebrate Coal! is to publicize the colossal benefits of coal-fired power and the need for access to affordable energy.  If the anti-coal zealots are allowed to prevail politically, electric rates will skyrocket for most Americans and many jobs will be lost in energy-intensive industries as a result of higher power prices,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy at CEI and one of the event’s organizers.

Which is exactly right.

Iain Murray of the free-market advocacy group, Competitive Enterprise Institute, reviews 2008 and finds it awash with economic foolishness, energy idiocy and global warming folderol, and the Conservative Party in Britain didn’t do so well, either. With respect to energy, he observes:

For one brief, shining moment, it looked like even this Congress would be forced to relax idiotic restrictions on oil exploration, but “Drill, baby, drill” was retired as the oil price collapsed and so we will have to go through the whole thing again on the next oil price spike, when we will be told it is too late to explore and drill (again).

“Drill, baby, drill” has been retired? Huh. We missed the retirement party.

The federal moratoria (executive order and Congressionally enacted statute) that prevented natural gas and oil development remain dead (i.e., lifted, not in place) for now. Yes, anti-energy candidates, including anti-oil company populists, gained in the November elections, but trying to reinstate the moratoria will still cause one heck of a fight (especially with respect to natural gas, we’d bet). With many coastal states like California facing budgetary disasters, surely some legislators and executive branch officials will recognize the benefits of OCS-energy revenue sharing.

Maybe Iain’s right on this and history will repeat itself again and again and again. (You know, all those arguments from the ’80s and ’90s: Don’t drill in ANWR. That oil wouldn’t flow until 2004 at least. There’s no point!). But, envisioning that optimistic, allegorical infant of 2009 taking the stage, we still say, drill, Baby, drill.

This afternoon the Environmental Protection Agency will release the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking information with which to develop (or not) regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA media advisory is here. The EPA’s action comes in response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (opinion here), which held that the federal government had the authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, or at least had to explain why it chose not to.

Here’s a good reason not to: Regulation of carbon dioxide will radically expand the power of the federal government over the economy and, in fact, over all human activity that involves the atmosphere. (It’s a lot.) That kind of fundamental decision about the nature of the American economy and polity is a political one that demands a balancing of interests and the approval of the public as expressed in elections.

But, as we’ve seen from the spectacular failure of Lieberman-Warner climate change legislation, there is no political will or public agreement about what to do about global warming (which appears to be taking a vacation this decade).

You can see what the elite opinionmakers want by reading today’s front page story in the Washington Post, “EPA Won’t Act on Emissions This Year.” The implicit thesis is that the Bush Administration is on the wrong side by disagreeing with the enlightened views of mid-level, non-elected civil servants in the EPA (some of them are scientists!), or at least the ones who are talking to Post reporters off the record. Regulatory activity is by definition good; political oversight is by definition bad.

Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute provided a good analysis of what happens when you put that world view into effect. In “EPA Must Be Licking Its Chops,” Lewis looks at the consequences of the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), the 2007 legislation that included fuel-efficiency requirements for vehicles; the draft Advance Notice cites the law for the purposes of discussing the possible federal regulation of tailpipe emissions.

If EISA is just a baby step towards the auto emission reductions EPA will require, then Detroit is in for a rough ride. Even the fuel-economy zealots at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration caution [see p. III-3 of this report] that, as fuel economy standards increase, “the incremental benefits [in fuel savings at the pump] are approximately constant while the incremental costs [to the manufacturer] increase rapidly.” Consequently, “as stringency is increased, costs rise out of proportion to the benefits or the fuel savings. Increasingly higher costs have a negative impact on sales and employment.”

But be not afraid, because EPA’s regs will increase the number of “green jobs” — at EPA. Even if the eventual rule is limited just to the transport sector (very unlikely, given the Clean Air Act’s multiple interconnections), EPA will be Technology-Forcing Central for decades to come. College grads looking for job security should send their resumes to Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Air & Radiation, Climate and Transportation Division. Unfortunately, there won’t be enough jobs to go around for all the autoworkers displaced by far more stringent standards on a less profitable class of automobiles.

Advocates who demand federal regulation of carbon dioxide are proposing just this kind of new society, one where the EPA runs much of our economy. But that’s not a decision that should be made by career civil servants, no matter how well-meaning or enlightened or useful as sources to Washington Post reporters. That’s a decision the people must make through their representative democracy.

Very good analysis from Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, as cited in Planet Gore.

On Wednesday just before 1 PM, Reid introduced on behalf of Boxer an amendment in the nature of a substitute. Whereas the Lieberman-Warner bill as passed out of committee in December was 150-some pages and the substitute that Boxer released on May 16 was about the same length, the surprise substitute was 491 pages. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) immediately objected to the motion that the amendment be considered as read, so the Clerk then spent from 1 to 9:30 PM reading all 491 pages aloud. It gave Senators a chance to catch up on their fundraising.  

The reason McConnell objected was to call attention to Reid’s failure to keep his agreement to hold votes on at least three nominations for appeals court judges before the end of May. But taking all day to read it made another point relevant to the bill. Springing a new version on the Senate floor that is more than three times longer than the bill passed out of committee is outrageous. Reading it aloud gave citizens listening on C-SPAN some vague idea of the trillions of dollars of payoffs to special interests contained in the bill. But it will take weeks of study to find and analyze all the changes.  

Ebell also notes an important element of the cloture vote, which many in the mainstream media are missing. Passage of cloture would have prevented any amendments to the legislation, any action to improve S. 3036. Supporters were calling on the Senate and the American public to buy a giant hot-air pig in a poke. Defeat of cloture kept that pig safely deflated and on the shelf…for now.

Do read Ebell’s entire commentary. It’s very good.