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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (34368)	7/26/2010 9:46:04 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced locally on March 15, namely a plan for the L.A. Dept. of Water and Power (DWP) to be required to get 20% of its power from renewable sources by the end of the year and 40% by 2020. Almost immediately, stuff began hitting the electric fan. After DWP said it needed to raise electricity rates 37% just for starters to meet the standards, within two weeks the Los Angeles City Council had voted 13-0 to veto the proposed rate hike and send it back to DWP to reconsider. Cap-And-Trade On Ice Posted 07:11 PM ET Energy Policy: Senate Democrats have shelved job-killing cap-and-trade legislation, at least for now. Neither the political nor the Earth's climate suggests it's a good time to try to fool Mother Nature or the American people. After a Thursday meeting with Senate Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has apparently dropped plans to pursue cap-and-trade before the August recess. He doesn't have the votes to overcome a GOP filibuster, and saving the earth from a phantom threat stands way below jobs on Americans' wish list. But watch out after November. "What he suggested is that we move forward on several bills to address energy and the oil spill and then continue to work on the climate piece when we get back," Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said after the meeting in the Capitol. The bill will not include a renewable-electricity production mandate that's been floating around the Senate in various forms and would boost power sources such as solar and geothermal that currently consume huge subsidies while contributing relatively little in terms of our energy mix. The inconvenient truth is that the proposed Renewable Energy Standard (RES) is an economic catastrophe waiting to happen. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis has crunched the numbers and found that at an RES would ( 1) raise electricity prices by 36% for households and 60% for industry; (2) cut GDP by $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035; (3) cut national income by $2,400 a year for a family of four; (4) reduce employment by more than 1 million jobs, and (5) add more than $10,000 to a family of four's share of the national debt by 2035. Nearly half of America's electricity is generated from coal. Natural gas and nuclear energy add about 20% each. Most of the rest is provided by renewable sources, primarily hydroelectric energy at 6%. Non-hydro renewables such as wind, solar energy and biomass total only 3%. They require fossil-fuel backup for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun don't shine. Renewable energy must be practical, competitive and necessary. It cannot be mandated without prohibitively raising costs and killing jobs. Spain's experience is that for each "green" job created, 2.2 jobs are lost due to the siphoning off of resources that private industry needed to grow and prosper, replaced by an added cost burden. In the wake of ClimateGate and other scandals, a March Gallup poll showed 48% of Americans believe the seriousness of climate change is usually exaggerated, up from 41% in 2009. Their skepticism is justified. Reid's gambit is only temporary and part of a plan to pass a stripped-down energy bill capitalizing on oil spill angst, then adding in the onerous cap-and-trade provisions in conference in the upcoming lame duck session of Congress, Senate cap-and-trade point man John Kerry has said that his proposal, the American Power Act, will be considered in a lame duck session. Waxman-Markey sponsor Rep. Henry Waxman has told reporters that in conference, he will reinsert the full-blown cap-and-trade program during that session. The only way to finally defeat cap-and-trade may be to ensure that any energy bill, stripped-down or otherwise, is a dead duck before the lame ducks can act.