Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Does Henry Waxman Understand Offsets?

Are Waxman, Boucher and Gabriel correct? Is there some magical property of cap and trade regimes that allow coal burning to continue or even to increase while emissions are reduced? If so, what luck we have!

Of course not. Offsets allow the perpetuation of the business as usual energy system while enabling a convenient fiction that offsets are decreasing in a counterfactual manner future emissions that would have occurred absent the offset. Rep. Waxman is only correct if by "environmental result" he means "the environmental result as defined by my 1,500 page climate bill which includes a complex array of accounting mechanisms that conflate avoiding hypothetical future emissions with actual emissions reductions based on the provision of many, many billions of extra allowances that are created and awarded for taking a range of actions to re-distribute wealth in many places thereby gaining an emissions allowance credit that did not otherwise exist as part of the actual cap." If by "environmental result" Rep. Waxman, means an actual reduction in then emissions generated by economic activity in the United States, then his statement is simply wrong and misleading.

I wonder how long this charade will go on.

Steve Milloy on Glenn Beck « Green Hell Blog

Watch Steve Milloy’s June 29 appearance on Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck.

[Should the US follow California's "green" lead to alleged prosperity?] California’s IOU Fever Is Likely To Spread To Other States – 24/7 Wall Street

California has begun to issue IOUs to many state vendors as it grows low on cash. The largest state in America as measured by GDP is up against a $24 billion deficit.

According to the FT, “Once the US’s richest state, California now has the dubious distinction of having the worst credit rating in the country.” The state could be joined by Michigan, Florida, and New York as those states face similar problems balancing state budgets.