Will Christie take on cap and trade?

September 28, 2010 06:26


“The American people are opposed to these costly environmental regulations but they are still growing right under our feet at the state level with these regional initiatives. It’s shocking how few people realize New Jersey already has the program.”

By at American spectator

EXCERPTS:

An anti-regulatory earthquake is stirring in New Jersey that could potentially free other states and regions from economically unsound energy restrictions and renewable mandates that have further burdened America’s already beleaguered consumers with higher costs.

If successful, this one-two punch could reverberate in other parts of the country that have succumbed to higher energy prices.

“The opposition that is building up against ‘cap and trade’ in our state could have national implications since the program here was crafted as a model for what President Obama had in mind for the whole country,” Steve Lonegan, a former mayor of Bogota, who heads up AFP’s N.J. chapter, said in an interview.

A crucial player in this area has been the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS), an unheralded but politically potent outfit that has worked successfully to bypass state legislatures and formulate regulatory policy with compliant governors in both parties. Chris Horner, a senior fellow with The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), has documented the organization’s activities and methodology in a very detailed report for the Capital Research Center (CRC) that is worth reviewing in light of recent developments.

“The activists’ new state-based strategy avoids open political debate,” Horner explained in his report. “Instead, it depends on having the full range of left-wing pressure groups — feminists, abortion and animal rights activists, labor organizers and other leftist factions — make ‘global warming’ part of their message and mission. CCS is among those activist groups.

The electronic correspondence between researchers suggests that they were willing to falsify and manipulate data to the point where warming trends were either exaggerated or manufactured for political purposes. An investigation into the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has also raised questions about that organization’s methodology and practices. Meanwhile, over 31,000 American scientists have signed a petition that rejects the Kyoto Treaty and declares that there is no “convincing scientific evidence” that human activity has translated into dangerous levels of global warming.

By contrast, states that have renewable mandates and other burdensome anti-energy restrictions have electricity costs that are almost 40 percent higher than states that do not, according to the study.

New Jersey is part of the oldest, most restrictive and most entrenched regional greenhouse gas initiative nationwide. Most notably, the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states that are part of this equation have also agreed to set the only binding emissions limits in the country.

FULL STORY



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