Search Results for: regulation

Here’s Todd Royal of Law & Liberty on the forest fires in California:

What we are witnessing is a “man-made power outage problem” caused by Democratic Party-aligned environmentalists, activist judges, and the California Air Resources Board. Obama-era environmental regulations rewrote decades-old solutions to forest management by eliminating controlled fires to clear away dead foliage, and allowed plaintiffs attorneys and judges free reign to impose crushing judicial and regulatory costs for basic land management. If these regulations continue unabated then PG&E’s grid will continuously be shut off when hot winds affect their customer base.

Replacing the Obama administration/California standards for vehicle CO2 emissions with the Trump administration’s Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles rule would have insignificant impacts on climate change. This is Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

As explained in my congressional testimony this week, according to the Obama administration’s own climate modeling, replacing the current CO2 standards with the SAFE rule would add only 0.003°C to global average temperatures 81 years from now—an undetectably small and climatically inconsequential change.

However . . .
 

Ken Artz of the Heartland Institute reports that U. S. wind energy faces hard times:

• The federal tax credit for wind energy ends Dec. 31, 2019.
• Countries are dumping wind turbines on the U. S., hurting U.S. producers.
• The Internatiinal Trade Commission is considering tariffs on turbines and parts.

Writes Artz:

The wind industry is entirely dependent on government favoritism, says Rob Bradley Jr., Ph.D., CEO of the Institute for Energy Research.

“Cronies live and die by the government sword,” Bradley said. “Each and every wind project depends on large tax subsidies as well as preferential federal regulations to be built.

“It is ironic—and rare—the wind industry finds itself on the losing end of government policy, but tariffs on imported parts are just that,” Bradley said.

“How about eliminating all the subsidies, along with the tariffs, and let the market, not government, decide what electrical generation is best?” Bradley said.