Proposals clash on ways to [cash in on global warming fraud] | Business | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

An analysis by the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland, Calif.-based think tank, found that if polluters purchase the “relatively cheap carbon offsets . . . emissions in supposedly capped U.S. sectors (could) rise by up to 9 percent between 2005 and 2030.”
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But offsets sometimes have been criticized as providing illusory benefits.

If foresters are able to sell carbon offsets for trees they would have planted on their own or farmers are paid for practices they would have employed anyway, there’s no new benefit to the environment, said Patrick McCully, executive director of Berkeley, Calif.-based International Rivers. He questions the efficacy of existing international offsets in developing countries.

“It is very likely that most (of those) offsets are from business-as-usual projects,” McCully said. “Because they do not represent emission reductions, most carbon offsets are junk ‘subprime’ carbon that allow big polluters to avoid cutting their emissions while tricking the public into believing action is being taken.”

American Thinker: Pimp My Ride DC Style

In a Freudian slip, "Cash for Clunkers" is the latest Washington brainstorm to goose car sales while striking a fashion pose of being green. "Pimp my ride" would be more accurate. The legislation, which is passed and awaiting President Obama's signature this next week, offers up to $4,500 in vouchers to purchase a new car if it gets between 2 and 10 mpg more than the old car it replaces.

The industry, led by Undead Motors (formerly GM) and Zombie Motors (formerly Chrysler), is more than willing to grab a free lunch at our expense. Along for the ride are the Japanese car makers, the UAW, and everyone else dining off the US taxpayers' carcass. With apologies to the Eagles' Lyin Eyes, has Congress ever wondered how it got this crazy?
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Once upon a time, when we still had some shame, like a year ago, this law would not have passed. Subsidizing the auto industry in the name of fuel efficiency by paying to scrap old cars is bribing people to drive lighter weight, more dangerous cars to mitigate the relative damage done to companies like Ford by resurrecting GM and Chrysler, who should not have been resurrected in the first place. While the bribe may temporarily offset the relative damage done to Ford and the other survivors, it's bad for America. This law will kill innocent Americans, do nothing about the price of gasoline, resurrect companies that deserved to die, substitute our mandarins' needs for our own, endanger our families, cost billions, add to our national debt, and further corrupt our car companies. Is this what Congress was hired to do?

[Washington Monthly foreshadows failure of Waxman-Markey climate swindle bill] - Marathon Man - Charles Homans

Henry Waxman’s climate change bill won’t make it into law this year. That’s why he’s the right guy for the job.
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If we are lucky—and it’s a frighteningly large "if"—Waxman’s fight on climate change is nearing its endgame, requiring not a decade of low-boil persistence but, rather, a couple of years of tenacious negotiating. Passing his energy bill into law will be harder than getting pollution legislation on the books twenty years ago, but it will also be similar—and a chance for Waxman to prove that, even after fifteen years in the wilderness, he still knows not only how to make a deal, but how to make the right one. "Waxman is a very skilled legislator," a former Dingell committee staffer says. "Ultimately, I don’t think he would sacrifice his fundamental principles just for the sake of getting a bill. I think he would prefer no bill to a bad bill."

"Most members are more interested in getting to ‘yes’ than in what that ‘yes’ is actually about," says Daniel Weiss, the director of climate strategy for the Center for American Progress, who worked closely with Waxman’s staff as a lobbyist for the Sierra Club in the ’80s. "Henry, to paraphrase Kenny Rogers, knows when to hold them and when to fold them. He knows when to retreat and fight another day." And as Steve Buyer could tell you, Henry Waxman’s defeats are rarely actually defeats—they’re just battles he hasn’t finished fighting yet.