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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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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Financial crisis: Failure of markets or of government?

It seems as if everyone is heading to Washington, D.C. these days looking for a bailout – investment banks, mortgage banks, automakers and autoworkers, insurance companies, universities, and even the state of California.

Yet at least some people are questioning the wisdom of providing bailouts to every Tom, Dick, and corporate CEO that shows up. As Congressman Jeb Hensarling put it, "People believe we are now engaged in whack-a-mole at the bailout carnival."

People are looking to the wrong place for the solutions to this problem because they are looking at the wrong place as the source of this problem. Yes, there are a lot of companies out there that have caused their own problems, but this isn't a market failure. Instead, this is a failure built on the foundation of government monetary and regulatory policy.

Robert Murphy and Mark Thornton show that a large part of the problem today can be traced to easy money flowing from the Federal Reserve. Other reasons are the federal housing policies that pushed lenders to make these risky loans, labor policies that have the Big Three in trouble, and market regulations that have hamstrung the ability of the markets to handle this mess.

Today's financial situation is a failure of government, not markets. More on this tomorrow.

- Bill Peacock

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How "inconvenient"

Last year, our friends at the Tennessee Center for Policy Research obtained the energy bills from Academy Award-winning documentarian Al Gore’s Nashville mansion. They found, among other things, that Gore’s electricity usage in August 2006 was more than twice what the average American household uses in an entire year.

Gore family spokesman Kalee Kreider responded that, “the bottom line is that every family has a different carbon footprint. And what Vice President Gore has asked is for families to calculate that footprint and take steps to reduce and offset it.”

So TCPR just took another look at Nobel laureate Al Gore’s energy bills to see how their “reducing and offsetting” was going. What they found: Even after a “green” retrofit in June 2007 that included new solar panels, a geothermal heating system, lighting upgrades, and an overhaul of the windows and ductwork, Gore’s home energy usage in the 12 months following the renovations was more than 10% higher than the 12 months before.

The average American household consumes 11,040 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year. Gore’s Nashville mansion uses an average of 17,768 kWh per month.

And that doesn’t include the carbon footprint from Al Gore’s private jet and Lincoln Town Car transport, his Live Earth concerts, or his 2007 book and arena tours.

“Actions speak louder than words, and Al Gore’s actions prove that he views climate change not as a serious problem, but as a money-making opportunity,” Johnson said. Al Gore is exploiting the public’s concern about the environment to line his pockets and enhance his profile.”

Even after all of his mansion renovations, Al Gore has quite a bit of work to do to get his proverbial carbon house in order.

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The real significance of the Texas/Ohio primary

Today, voters in Texas and Ohio will cast ballots in one of the most consequential presidential primaries in recent memory. While both are large states, an article last week on Politico.com and yesterday’s editorial in The Wall Street Journal reveal that their governing philosophies and future outlooks could not be further apart.

As the Journal put it, “the eyes of America will be on these two states moving in different directions. Ohio has an economy burdened by high taxes and work rules that impose heavy costs on employers. Texas embraces free trade, keeps taxes low, doesn’t impose unions on business and has tooled itself for 21st century global competition.”

What have those differences meant? While Texas has added 1.6 million jobs over the last decade, Ohio has lost jobs. Texas is the nation’s #1 export state – exporting four times as much as Ohio. Our income growth over the last decade is much higher, while our unemployment rate is much lower.

Regardless who wins today’s balloting, I’m going to be interested in hearing from the presidential candidates on their model for the national economy. Will they move America toward Texas, or back to Ohio?

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Two new blog stars at TPPF

As much as it damages my ego to admit publicly...OK, here it goes...I am no longer the only blog star at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Drew Thornley, policy analyst in our Center for Economic Freedom and Center for Natural Resources, is a new regular contributor to "Planet Gore" on National Review Online. His first post is on the new global cooling data.

We have also added (almost) daily news commentary to the "Speaking Freely" feature on our site. Today's post is by our new events manager, Angie Choueifati, who some of you may remember from her time working with Americans for Fair Taxation. (And if you do know her, you won't be surprised that she is talking about coffee.)

We hope that you will frequent both of those sites in addition to The Houston Conservative.

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