Global warming: How many Americans really care?

Statements from the White House, cabinet secretaries, congressional leadership, and mainstream media declare that man-made global warming is a planetary emergency Right Now! These most senior policymakers claim aggressive carbon mandates are necessary regardless of cost. With straight faces, United Nations officials, European Union technocrats, and President Obama’s climate czar, Carol Browner, chat about appropriate global governance structures to combat a near-term global catastrophe. The President’s Science Advisor, Dr. John Holdren, recently said earth’s climate system is reaching an irreversible tipping point unless drastic measures are taken.

What part of the U.S. population believes these dire pronouncements? Apparently, not that many Americans buy this apocalyptic scenario or support “economy transforming” controls on energy.

A March 2009 Gallup survey found the highest level of skepticism about man-made global warming in more than a decade. Of those polled, 41% thought the threat of global warming was exaggerated, compared to 28% who found the threat to be underestimated.

In two other national polls, voters ranked global warming the least important issue confronting the country. In a January 2009 Pew Research Center poll, global warming was ranked 20th of 20 issues. The economy, jobs, and terrorism were the top three issues for more than 80% surveyed. In the American Climate Values survey conducted by Eco-America in January 2008, only a small minority (18%) believes climate change is harmful and caused by mankind.

A May 2008 Wilson Research poll found a huge 91% of voters don’t want to pay for even the lowest cost estimates of carbon caps. And 71% responded that they are unwilling to pay more for electricity or gasoline to fight global warming.

So if you have not concluded that the planet is at the edge of a climatological precipice caused by human activity, you are not among a minority of deluded “climate deniers.” Even the sustained and elaborate global warming campaigns have not cracked the basic common sense of the majority of Americans who vote! Please awaken, sleeping giant.

- Kathleen Hartnett White

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TPPF COMMENTARY: Carbon audacity

by Kathleen Hartnett White

The ever-widening recession apparently will not delay the Obama Administration’s plans to mandate carbon reductions.

Last week, the administration’s two most senior decision-makers on climate change stated that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will declare that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a pollutant endangering human health within the legal meaning of the Clean Air Act. White House climate czar Carol Browner and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that EPA will make this “endangerment finding” to coincide with the two-year anniversary of the 2007 Supreme Court ruling driving EPA’s decision.

Ms. Browner claimed that this decision would actually help the deteriorating economy by providing the legal clarity needed for investment in carbon mitigation. What happened to EPA’s recent economic analysis of carbon cuts, predicting annual declines in America’s Gross Domestic Product, millions of lost jobs, and 50-150 percent increases in energy prices within 10 years?

The silver lining the administration sees in exorbitant carbon mandates imposed on a recessionary economy: federal revenues from the sale of carbon allowances. Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, acknowledged that the administration’s budget includes the government’s sale of carbon allowances to generate billions in new federal revenues – potentially $300 billion a year according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

President Obama has consistently advocated auction of even the initial allowances in a carbon cap and tax/trade schemes. This means a power plant would have to purchase federal approval merely to keep operating at current levels.

Legislation creating this colossal carbon tax would be the biggest tax increase ever, surpassing in real dollars the 1942 law providing funds for World War II. If included in budget reconciliation bills – which cannot be filibustered – it would only require 50 votes in the U.S. Senate.

The EPA’s legal endangerment finding on CO2 is key to this policy. The EPA decision would unleash the onerous regulatory scope of the Clean Air Act. Although Browner said the initial regulations would not be too broad, courts are unlikely to give EPA this leeway. Throughout the 30-year history of the Act, environmental organizations have used the courts successfully to compel EPA action. Steadily expanding air quality rules have arisen far more from court rulings and out-of-court settlements than legislation.

Recall that an endangerment finding is connected to the EPA’s blueprint for economic disaster issued last July, the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Regulate Greenhouse Gases. The Bush Administration declined to make the finding whether CO2 is or is not a harmful pollutant but agreed to issue the Notice – apparently a quid pro quo with EPA. A most unusual administrative action, the White House issued and simultaneously condemned the Notice in an accompanying memo signed by five Cabinet secretaries.

An odd preface for his own action, former EPA Administrator Steve Johnson noted that using the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 “could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land.”

EPA’s long-expected endangerment finding is anything but bland news. Once made, the force of federal law mandates the regulation of a mind-boggling scope of human activity. The legal debate about global warming will be over at the stroke of a federal bureaucrat’s pen. The Obama Administration will then have the leverage to design whatever carbon tax it prefers.

The Supreme Court ruling behind EPA’s actions did not dictate that CO2 be declared a pollutant. The 5-4 ruling required that EPA merely make and reasonably justify an endangerment finding, one way or the other. The Bush Administration avoided this formal decision evidently because of irresolvable disagreement between EPA career staff and the White House.

Al Gore, the world’s most celebrated global warming alarmist, repeatedly preaches that carbon cuts of the magnitude needed to “save” the planet will require a “total transformation of our economy.” If the first few weeks are any indication, let there be no doubt in the Obama administration’s willingness to use carbon policy as a major tool in such a mission.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. White is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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Spending the stimulus

In the many debates about whether the federal stimulus bill will, indeed, stimulate the economy or merely increase government spending, there is agreement on one issue. To offer any stimulative effect to the increasing economic malaise, the spending needs to be swift and economically strategic.

Consider to whom this task of rapidly spending almost a trillion dollars of taxpayers' money goes: massive, chronically inefficient, and slow-moving federal bureaucracies. The scale of the purely administrative task is unprecedented. The entire plan hinges on unwieldy bureaucracies turning on a dime to approve contracts and grants.

Consider the scale of the challenge for only one agency: Department of Energy (DOE). This agency's total annual budget is now $25 billion. The portion of the stimulus bill going to DOE is $40 billion. Among federal agencies, DOE is known for exceptional delays and cost overruns. The Government Accounting Office has DOE on its "high risk" list for waste, fraud, and mismanagement. Most of DOE's current budget goes to oversight of the nation’s nuclear stockpile and research. Now it is to be a shrewd money manager.

The new Secretary of the Department, Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu, recognizes the stakes of DOE’s new challenge. He was recently quoted as saying its new role necessitates a radical transformation of the agency. "We've got to do it. Otherwise it's just going to be a bust," he recently commented. Not comforting!

Hell, in fact, will freeze over before huge government bureaucracies act quickly, decisively, and prudently as wise investors of taxpayers' money. Giving these bureaucracies billions with the directive to spend fast is a recipe for waste at best and fraud at worst, whereas tax reduction is immediately stimulative and requires no "assistance" from bureaucracies.

- Kathleen Hartnett White

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TPPF COMMENTARY: Don’t Strangle a Patient on Life Support

By Kathleen Hartnett White

After providing more than $30 billion of taxpayer money to save U.S. automakers from bankruptcy, new federal powers have not wasted time before complicating the U.S. auto industry’s return to profitability.

Among his first moves, President Barack Obama directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider California’s request to establish state-only greenhouse gas (ghg) standards for car and truck emissions. This translates to yet more new engine standards for Detroit.

The Bush Administration denied requests from California and 13 other states because federal law makes mobile sources (e.g., tailpipe emission standards) an exclusively federal authority unless an exceptional waiver is granted. A patchwork of different state engine standards is a nightmare for U.S. automakers and interstate commerce.

Tailpipe ghg emission standards are, in effect, fuel efficiency standards. Existing federal law, indeed, requires a stricter Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standard (CAFE) of 35 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2020. Automakers comply with such CAFE standards by calculating an average mileage among different models of in their fleet. California’s standards go farther and faster than the federal standards: 35 mpg by 2016, with mileage as high as 43 mpg for cars and 27 mpg for sport utility vehicles and heavier trucks.

The fuel economy standards imposed by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) and low-emission vehicle (LEV) standards imposed by EPA are intertwined, complex, and misleading. EPA’s existing LEV standards restrict emissions of conventional pollutants like carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides (NOx). The standards address engine design in the most elaborate system of tiers, bins, and multiple categories like Inherently Low, Ultra-low, Super Ultra-low and Partial Low Emission Vehicles. Complicated indeed!

Enacted in 2006, California’s global warming law included tailpipe standards to reduce CO2. A most ubiquitous byproduct of nature and human activity, CO2 is wholly unlike the pollutants regulated under EPA’s LEV standards. Tailpipe emissions of NOx, for example, can be reduced by developing engines that burn gasoline more efficiently. CO2 and water vapor, on the other hand, are the ultimate by-products of burning gasoline and thus proportionate to the amount of fuel used. The only way to reduce CO2 from a vehicle’s exhaust is to increase fuel efficiency.

The cleaner-burning engines flowing from EPA LEV standards are coming on line now in new cars and trucks. They have and will continue to improve air quality in Texas cities through 2012. Unrealistic deadlines and standards, however, will not only challenge the bottom line in Detroit but will hurt all consumers. If the standards become too strict, too fast, government will effectively dictate vehicle design, size and type. Consumers will pay higher prices and have fewer choices.

Boutique LEV standards and accelerated new CAFE standards may sap the last breath from frail U.S. automakers. As syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer noted, imposing new green auto standards on U.S. automakers, at this point in time, is like the government strangling a patient to whom it administers oxygen.

Texans should pay attention. Bills filed in the Texas Legislature include SB 119, The Texas Low-Emission Vehicle Act, requiring a Texas program consistent with California’s LEV program. Since 2007, when the Golden State’s new CO2 mandates took shape, California has led the nation in job loss -- its most recent unemployment rate was 9.3 percent. The prosperous “green” economy and new green jobs, promised by the advocates of California’s climate change law, have not emerged; but the exorbitant cost of low-carbon California has. Instead of a “net positive effect on California economic growth through 2020,” as concluded in a study by the California Air Resources Board, Californians are reeling from the impact of $23 billion in new taxes, fees, and higher power costs required by their state’s low-carbon law.

To date, Texas has avoided the economic woes of California by avoiding high taxes, excessive regulation, and overspending. Texans would be wise to question the California example of state-only tailpipe standards and state carbon mandates.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. White is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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Texas PolicyCast: California emissions in Texas?

Could California emissions standards be on their way to Texas? A recent decision by the Obama Administration could open the door to states being allowed to set their own vehicle emissions and fuel economy standards that are even more stringent than current federal law. What would this mean for Texas? We ask Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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Texas PolicyCast: 2008 in review

This week, we are pleased to bring you a roundtable discussion featuring the policy team at the Texas Public Policy Foundation looking back at 2008 and previewing the 81st Texas Legislature.

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TPPF COMMENTARY: EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Blueprint for Disaster

By Kathleen Hartnett White

Who knows how many rules by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) encompass our daily lives and regiment our businesses. This July, however, the EPA proposed the mother of all economy-controlling environmental rules.

Called an “Advanced Notice for Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) to Regulate Greenhouse Gases,” the proposal uses existing law to assert EPA regulatory jurisdiction far, far wider and deeper than before. They even want to permit your lawnmower!

The number of entities required to obtain one type of permit would increase from 15,000 to 550,000, by EPA’s estimate. This unprecedented reach of EPA authority disproportionately hurts Texas because we are the nation’s leading energy producer, the most productive economy, and the second largest state population.

As the chief executive of our state and an appropriate national voice on the matter, Governor Rick Perry has vigorously responded to this EPA blueprint for disaster.

As the Governor’s letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson states, “Simply put, Texas fuels the nation,” through conventional and diverse new energy sources and technologies. The Governor summarized grave concerns about this “unprecedented expansion of EPA regulation …, the massive costs that will be imposed on our economy and the certainty that the proposed regulation will fail to achieve the intended goals … given the global nature of these emissions.”

On November 25, Gov. Perry held a press conference to highlight his response to the EPA. He was accompanied by agency leaders recently named to a Governor’s Advisory Group on Federal Environmental Regulation.

The report from Gov. Perry’s Advisory Group, “Potential Impacts to Texas of the EPA’s Proposed Framework for Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” reveals what implementation of the ANPR would mean. Combining expertise from multiple agencies, the report translates the 600-plus page ANPR into plain English.

As a startling example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that EPA jurisdiction would extend to more than 3,800 farms, 28,000 beef cattle operations, and 640 dairy operations in Texas alone. The CO2 limits would extend permitting requirements over large office buildings, churches, hospitals, hotels, and large residential homes. Impact on the energy sector would cause energy shortages and soaring costs for consumers. State government would exponentially grow in size and cost merely for paperwork compliance.

The ANPR is a legally unnecessary response to a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that CO2 could be considered a pollutant. The Court ruled that the EPA must legally justify its discretionary answer to the following question: is CO2 a pollutant endangering human health within the legal meaning of the Clean Air Act? The EPA has yet to make this ”endangerment finding” and instead turned to policy opposed by the White House and denounced by five other Cabinet secretaries.

A justifiable response to the Supreme Court is simple. CO2 is wholly unlike pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act. In ambient concentrations, CO2 is a harmless and beneficial gas, uniformly distributed across the world. EPA’s adoption of a numeric National Ambient Air Quality Standard for any greenhouse gas is preposterous. If, as emerging empirical science is disproving, CO2 accumulations increase global temperature, this occurs in the troposphere, not at ground level. Man-made CO2 from fossil fuel use contributes only 5 percent of global CO2.

Federal policymakers have allowed scientifically questionable environmental policy to supplant energy policy. With an ever-widening economic downturn, carbon regulation without sufficient energy alternatives right now means disaster.

A realistic, environmentally sound national energy policy would, as Gov. Perry recommends: assure reliable, affordable energy from all viable sources, including coal; promote modernization of the nation’s transmission grid; remove barriers to nuclear generation; accelerate development of carbon capture and sequestration technologies; and provide long-term regulatory and tax certainty for energy development and technologies.

The President-elect says he likely will direct EPA to proceed with this wild rule. Federal policymakers need a strong Texas voice on energy and environment. Gov. Perry capably expressed this voice and I so hope he continues to do so.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.

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Texas PolicyCast: A change in climate for climate change policy

With a new president taking office in January, could 2009 be the year that the environmental movement gets its climate change legislation? Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Foundation's Center for Natural Resources and former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, has written a new commentary in which she lists six reasons why that might not be the case. She goes through them with us on this week's PolicyCast.

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TPPF COMMENTARY: A Change in Climate for Climate Change Policy

With President-elect Barack Obama and larger Democratic majorities in the U.S. Congress, the conventional wisdom has been that next year will be "all systems go" for the type of major climate change legislation that President George W. Bush had been blocking. However, in this week's commentary, Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Foundation's Center for Natural Resources and former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, lists six reasons why she believe that won't necessarily be the case.

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A Change in Climate for Climate Change Policy

By Kathleen Hartnett White

Come what dramatic political and economic changes may occur, a refrain persists within the media, industry, and the U.S. Congress that onerous federal mandates to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) are inevitable. I don’t think so.

In less than a year, many unanticipated developments have complicated the political dynamics of “ending the era of fossil fuels” through the enactment of carbon reduction mandates. Consider six such developments that may give pause to policymakers otherwise inclined to support these measures:

* When the price of oil topped $4.00 a gallon and food inflation reached almost 8 percent, most voters got it: price and security first! At least a dozen recent polls show that three-fourths of likely voters put far more importance on the U.S. oil supply than global warming. This prevalent public opinion dissolved the U.S. Congress’ long and intransigent opposition to increased domestic oil production. In late September, the 30-year bans on offshore oil production expired. The rapid decline in the price of oil, as a result of economic slowdown, has not yet squelched broad support for more domestic oil production.

* Energy independence has become a battle cry across the political spectrum. The painfully high price of oil increased the public’s recognition that there are no near-term, realistic alternatives to the dominance of fossil fuels in the U.S. energy supply. American dependence on unreliable, if not inimical, sources of foreign oil worries Main Street far more than it used to.

* The European Union’s (EU) Emission Trading System (ETS), once the model for a U.S. program, continues to fail. Europe’s program is not reducing CO2 and has lead to higher energy costs. The U.S. has reduced more CO2 by market efficiencies and without any complicated cap-and-trade programs. Growing numbers of EU member countries, including Italy, now want to delay (read: scratch) the ETS because of economic woes approaching crisis proportions.

* By the time the Lieberman-Warner bill (S.2191) made it to the U.S. Senate floor last summer, the veil on its staggering cost had been lifted. The world’s most ambitious, enforceable carbon regime to date, S.2191 would impose exorbitant costs and require unprecedented expansion of the federal control, but would yield no measureable effect on global climate unless China and India undertook similarly draconian programs.

* Far more substantial climate science emerges and is a game-changer for the reigning science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Observational evidence from NASA satellites indicates little to no heat-forcing effect from manmade CO2. This NASA data is empirical science, far superior to the uncertain IPCC computer models.

* And the clincher: the specter of global recession. Worldwide financial turmoil presents the most hard-hitting obstacle to mandatory CO2 reduction. While figures may differ, no one doubts that CO2 reduction mandates would lead to far higher prices for fuel, power, food, and other basic consumer goods. Until the U.S. and global economies stabilize, the least prudent among us might delay CO2 regulations that would overturn our energy economy.

Amidst the current economic maelstrom, some congressional leaders perversely cling to carbon regulation as a new federal revenue source to compensate for a reduced tax base. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal government’s auction of carbon allocations, e.g., power companies forced to buy permission to keep generating electricity, could generate trillions in revenue. Inconvenient facts, however, may have changed the political climate necessary for major CO2 reduction programs absent available control technology.

In the last year, many policy makers and voters have learned some hard facts about energy and the economy. If an ounce of reason might prevail, climate change policymakers would acknowledge that mandates are premature and impracticable. Immediate steps should be toward extending the new empirical climate science and market-based development of energy efficient technologies.

Natural variability – or change, simply speaking – is the hallmark of climate and politics; not easy to predict and never inevitable.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. She is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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Renowned climate scientist addresses Houston business leaders

Spencer: Major climate models overestimate human role in global warming

HOUSTON – Speaking today to Houston business leaders, renowned climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer said that new data collected from NASA satellites show that there are significant errors in the climate models used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Dr. Spencer – published author, principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite – presented his latest climate research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Global Warming Policy Breakfast this morning at the Houston City Club.

The IPCC science is the driver behind national and international programs to mandate reduction of carbon dioxide. “The major climate models used by global warming advocates all assume a far greater sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide changes than what we observe in the empirical satellite data,” Dr. Spencer said. “That’s why all of these scenarios produce such outlandishly high forecasts about future global temperatures.”

Spencer said that manmade global warming proponents had confused cause and effect. “Al Gore’s apocalyptic temperature scenario assumes that carbon dioxide causes temperature changes,” Spencer continued. “Except there is one problem – global temperatures precede carbon dioxide levels by approximately 800 years. Ice core data reveals the opposite of what Gore claims.”

“When politicians and activists claim that the manmade global warming debate is ‘settled,’ they point to these IPCC climate models as their proof,” said Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Dr. Spencer’s empirical research contradicts the assumptions in those models.”

White urged policymakers to reassess onerous carbon reduction schemes because they are no longer supported by this far more substantial science based on the actual measurement of climate dynamics in the upper atmosphere. “Genuine science is never settled but always evolving, as Dr. Spencer’s work powerfully demonstrates,” White concluded.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.

Dr. Roy Spencer is the author of "Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor." He is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite, and the former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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TPPF COMMENTARY: Economic Damage From Ethanol Mandate Will Continue

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson’s denial of Gov. Rick Perry’s request for a 50 percent waiver of the federal ethanol mandate came and went without much fanfare. But the economic damage from this market distorting policy will continue to increase.

Far worse is yet to come, as this year’s ethanol mandate of 9 billion gallons expands to 12 billion in 2010 and to a whopping 36 billion in 2022 – an amount that would consume more than today’s entire U.S. corn crop.

Those who deny ethanol’s role in today’s food inflation need a reality check. This year’s dramatic 9.8 percent rise in the Producer’s Price Index and the 6.7 percent six-month increase in the Consumer Price Index for food is undeniably tied to a tripling of the price of a bushel of corn in less than four years. Food inflation not seen in 20 years, these CPI rates coincide with the first year of implementation of the ethanol mandates enacted in late 2007.

Economists at the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the United Nations recently concluded that 70 to 75 percent of the unprecedented increase in global food prices results from international bio-fuel policies, among which the United States is the dominant player.

If the price of the main raw material in a product triples within a few years, the price of the retail product necessarily will increase. Roughly 80 percent of the production cost of eggs is the price of feed grain made from corn. The retail price of eggs has increased more than 30 percent in the last year. Similarly, dairy products have double-digit price increases driven by a 50 percent production cost in feed grain.

The price of flour has soared 33.8 percent during the first half of this year. The price of pasta and cornmeal rose 40.6 percent. Higher and higher corn prices lead farmers to plant more acres to corn and less to essential food grains like wheat. In 2008, 234.8 million acres were planted to the four major U.S. crops (corn, wheat, soybeans and cotton). To meet the expanding bio-fuel mandates, five million additional acres of corn will be needed in 2009.

The EPA evidently was convinced by ethanol proponents who claim that the price of corn is a minor player among multiple inflationary forces. Of course, fuel prices, a weak dollar, and rising foreign demand influence domestic and international food prices.

Ethanol proponents, however, misleadingly claim that oil price is the main culprit. Crude oil prices influence food prices because corn is now valued more as a fuel source than as food. The omission in this claim: the federal ethanol mandate largely created the fuel value of corn, a generous tax credit buttressed that value, and an import tariff protected the domestic price.

Since all taxpayers eventually must make up for the federal revenue lost through ethanol tax credits, taxpayers are indirectly financing their own food inflation! In 2008, the tax credit will amount to approximately $4.6 billion. In 2015, the amount approaches $7.6 billion under a 15-billion gallon mandate. The aggregate loss to the U.S. Treasury under the current law is $1.6 trillion of ethanol tax credit in 2022.

Gov. Perry’s wise request for EPA to waive 50 percent of the annual ethanol mandate was widely supported. Twenty-five U.S. senators, including both Texas senators and presidential candidate John McCain, have called for a waiver or repeal of the mandate. The EPA received 15,000 comments on the waiver. Many organizations devoted to world hunger support the repeal of America’s current ethanol policy.

U.S. energy policy has been supplanted by counterproductive environmental policy. Built on mandates, subsidies, trade restrictions, and bans on production, federal energy policy operates like slipshod energy central planning. Let ethanol compete in the market without government preference.

Food inflation is just one of the reasons why our federal ethanol policy must be repealed.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. She is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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Statement by Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Center for Natural Resources

Statement by Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Center for Natural Resources

On the refusal of congressional leadership to allow an energy debate

“The American public knows that the congressional bans on drilling are artificially inflating their gasoline prices and shipping tanker-loads of American wealth to unsavory regimes around the world. Yet the congressional leadership continues to defy the clearly expressed will of the majority of the American public and its own membership.

“The United States’ energy system has been built over more than 100 years and cannot be replaced overnight. No matter how much some Washington politicians want to wish away petroleum-based fossil fuels, the reality is that there is no feasible near-term alternative.

“Expanded domestic exploration and drilling are essential to lowering gasoline prices. America has plentiful oil resources now off-limits, and tapping those will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and strengthen our national security.

“Repealing the congressional drilling bans can quickly reduce gasoline prices, as the market anticipates greater American supply in the near future. Hopefully the public will drill, drill, drill that point home to their congressmen during the five weeks that they’re back in their districts while this crisis festers.”

About the Texas Public Policy Foundation: TPPF is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.

About Kathleen Hartnett White: Ms. White is the Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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COMMENTARY: Environmental Policy Constrains U.S. Oil Supply

Is there no end to the soaring fuel prices? Crude oil may reach as high as $150 or $200 per barrel by the end of this year according to many analysts.

The world’s oil supply is perilously tight. American dependence on unreliable foreign sources for more than 60 percent of domestic oil demand, indeed, drives the price at the pump. With new policy, the United States certainly could increase domestic production of oil.

Such is the impetus behind The American Energy Production Act of 2008, introduced in the U.S. Senate on May 1 and supported by our Texas Senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn. The legislation would stimulate domestic oil production by removing federal bans on oil development in Alaska and off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, expediting EPA permits for refineries, encouraging leases for oil shale development, and mandating production of coal-derived fuels.

U.S. oil production has steadily declined since the 1970s. Over these 35 years, oil exploration, pumping, pipeline infrastructure, and refining have been consistently opposed by the powerful environmentalist establishment … and with great success. It is time to reconsider these constraints on domestic production.

Consider the volumes of U.S. oil resources. The most conservative measure is “proven reserves.” To be proven, it must be reasonably certain that the crude oil can be produced using current technology at current prices, current commercial terms, and with government consent. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates the U.S. has 21.8 billion barrels of oil (bbo) in “proven reserves.”

At today’s consumption rates, proven reserves would last 50 years. Yet the amount of proven reserves might jump to more than 50 billion barrels if the government “consented” to development of areas now off-limits.

And “recoverable reserves” — known oil resources capable of recovery, but with more cost and technical difficulty than proven reserves — hold several thousand times more. These resources include: light oil in place (293 bbo); heavy oil (81 bbo); oil sands (80 bbo); and the mother lode, oil shale (2,118 bbo). Add the 21.8 bbo proven reserves and 30 bbo off-limits, and the total 2.6 trillion barrel endowment of American oil resources would support U.S. demand for thousands of years.

Unlike Britain, Canada, or Norway, federal decision has barred offshore oil exploration in half the Gulf of Mexico, and off the East and West coasts. The U.S. Department of Interior estimates that these offshore bans cover more than 16 billion barrels.

The environmental establishment still preaches that producing oil and preserving the environment are mutually exclusive propositions. But the original environmental risks have been almost eliminated by creative technology and safeguards. None of the offshore platforms hit by the gales of Hurricane Katrina spilled a drop of oil. In the Gulf of Mexico, where offshore production is allowed, innovative means of enhancing aquatic habitat have been highly successful.

Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is considered the largest untapped oil field in North America. Even with elaborate means to preserve wildlife habitats, former President Bill Clinton vetoed legislation to allow its development. Estimates of practically recoverable crude oil there are between 10 and 12 billion barrels.

The 92 million acres of federal lands in the lower 48 states also contain oil resources. Shortly after 9/11, Congress reviewed all energy resources on federal lands. Their study found that only 25 percent of the lands were accessible for oil development. Restrictions precluded access to all but 18 percent of the estimated 4.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

With ever increasing global demand for fuel, all cost-efficient and environmentally responsible energy sources are needed. For the next several decades, however, there are no realistic alternatives to the petroleum dominance in transportation fuels. Renewable fuels, batteries, and hydrogen fuel cells can, in the near future, provide only a sliver of the volume needed.

What percentage of voters would still support environmental policies that constrain U.S. production of oil? In a March 2008 nationwide survey of registered voters by the Institute for Energy Research, 72 percent prioritized U.S. energy independence ahead of global warming concerns.

The American Energy Production Act of 2008 offers a critical step forward. After 9/11 and again after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, comparable legislation was introduced. As the urgency waned, so did enthusiasm for the new policy. Perhaps gasoline at $5 or $6 per gallon could break the inertia that perpetuates American dependence on foreign oil.

Environmental protection and affordable energy are compatible. Like no other, this country can still achieve ever greater levels of environmental quality, reliable energy, and national security.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. She is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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TPPF COMMENTARY: The folly of food as fuel

“Bravo!” to Governor Rick Perry and U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison for recognizing the damage caused to Texas consumers and businesses by the mandatory federal renewable fuel standard for grain-based ethanol.

A growing mountain of evidence reveals the economic and environmental folly of federal ethanol policy. Gov. Perry’s requested 50% waiver and Sen. Hutchison’s proposed freeze on the renewable fuel standard (RFS) would alleviate the pressure on corn for fuel.

Texas is only beginning to see the rising food prices that federal ethanol policy could generate. Last year’s more than 4% rise in food prices stems from the 2005 Energy Policy Act. New energy law enacted in 2007 significantly enlarged the RFS. Food prices may increase as much as 8% this year. And consider where the largest price increases occurred.

The retail price of eggs increased 29% last year; cereal products, 6.5%; sweetened beverages, 4.5%; beef, 4.4%. All depend on corn-based ingredients or corn feed grains. One-fourth of the 2007 U.S. corn crop was converted to ethanol; the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) projects that 30-35% of this year’s crop will become ethanol.

New energy law will force more corn to become fuel. Meeting the 36-billion-gallon RFS mandate in 2022 will require 115% of last year’s U.S. corn crop.

Texas is the appropriate state to call for a change in federal ethanol mandates. The indirect costs of ethanol hurt Texans in the grocery store as well as key agricultural sectors of the state economy. All animal agriculture – beef cattle, dairy, swine, and poultry – uses corn-based feed grains.

Four years ago – before the RFS – corn cost $2 per bushel; last year, it was $4. As Gov. Perry’s letter to the U.S. Environment Protection Agency highlights, these higher corn prices cost the Texas economy at least $1.17 billion.

A hefty 51-cent-per-gallon tax credit and a 54-cent-per-gallon import tariff also artificially drive the ethanol boom. The tax credit cost the U.S. Treasury $5 billion in 2006; that will rise to $10 billion in 2012.

The U.S. fuel supply may not be able to absorb the mandated volumes of ethanol. Most of the approximately 240 million US vehicles cannot use gasoline with more than a 10% ethanol blend. Perhaps only 6 million are Flexible Fuel Vehicles capable of using 85% ethanol (E85). Only around 1,000 of the 172,000 U.S. gas stations – mostly in the Midwest close to ethanol production – can dispense E85. The Big Three U.S. automakers recently pledged that half of their 2012 vehicles will be flexible-fuel. Yet this amounts to only 2% of total vehicles on the road. It takes decades for a complete fleet turn-over.

Ethanol is an ineffective means of reducing reliance on imported oil. While domestic production of ethanol doubled between 2003 and 2007, imports of oil and refined gasoline increased. A deficit in refining capacity and an approaching surfeit of ethanol production capacity will not increase the security of our gasoline supply or stability of gasoline prices. But what happens to a grain-based fuel supply during the next major drought?

Ethanol has two-thirds the energy value of petroleum-based fuels. A vehicle requires three gallons of ethanol for the mileage of two gallons of gasoline. Would today’s consumers choose fuel 30% more expensive than gasoline?

Producing one gallon of ethanol may well take more energy than the end product contains. With fertilizer, water, an energy-intense fermentation process, and transportation necessarily by rail or truck instead of existing pipeline, ethanol production utilizes much more energy than crude oil to reach the pump.

While combustion of ethanol involves less CO₂ and particulate emissions than petroleum-based fuels, ethanol causes more NO_x emissions – the main ingredient in ozone formation.

And ethanol may increase net CO₂ emissions. A February 2008 article in Science magazine concludes that the CO2 released from converting forest and grasslands to corn crops could amount to a doubling of CO₂ emissions from these lands. Millions of acres long enrolled in the USDA Conservation Reserve Program have now been tilled for corn. Intensive fertilization and irrigation impact water quality and supply.

Perry and Hutchison deserve praise for recommending solutions to the folly of our current federal policy to transform a major foodstuff into a fuel.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas. She served six years as Chairman and Commissioner of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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Statement by Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of TPPF's Center for Natural Resources

Statement by Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Center for Natural Resources

On the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new ozone standard

“The new 75-part-per-billion ozone standard announced tonight by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency relies on flawed science to stymie the Texas economy. Many leading scientists and medical doctors have testified and submitted formal comments that this new standard will not provide any health benefits beyond today’s 85-part-per-billion standard.

“With today’s decision, the Austin, San Antonio, Tyler/Longview, and El Paso regions will join Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston/Galveston in non-attainment status. The new standard could quadruple the number of counties across the country in non-attainment status, including all Texas counties east of IH-35.

“Ozone is only produced in the presence of sunlight and heat. Some rural counties, particularly behind the ‘Pine Curtain’, have naturally occurring ozone levels above the new standard. Eliminating all the industrial activity associated with the Houston/Galveston Ship Channel would not even get that region’s ozone levels to the current standard.

“Last year, the state of Texas adopted rules to meet the current ozone standard. Those controls will continue to improve Texas ozone levels for years. But there is no action the state can take – not even draconian measures – that can overcome Texas’ climate and topography, as today’s EPA action requires.”

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NOTE: Kathleen Hartnett White is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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