By Steven Milloy, Junk Science on FOXNEWS.com

Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced this week their “Low Carbon Economy Act” (LCEA) intended to combat global warming. The bill ought to be called the “The Trillion Dollar Giveaway and Wealth Redistribution Act.”

The LCEA’s ostensible goals are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 2006 levels by 2020; to 1990 levels by 2030; and by more than 60 percent from today’s levels by 2050. These goals are to be accomplished not by directly mandating reduced greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Rather, the LCEA would compel larger GHG emitters – e.g., petroleum refineries, natural gas processing plants, liquid natural gas (LNG) facilities, oil and gas importers, and large coal-burning facilities – to pay for the right to emit GHGs.

The lack of a mandate to reduce GHGs emissions means that they could actually increase under the LCEA, as long as emitters are willing to pay to do so. The LCEA is 130 pages in length and quite complex. So while it will take considerably more time to do a thorough analysis, the bill does have one notable feature that screams for immediate attention – its giveaway of more than one trillion dollars to special interests in its first 10 years.

And incredible as it sounds, the bulk of these allowances – 76 percent for the first five years, declining to 47 percent by 2030 – will be given away at no charge to special interests including private industry, farmers and states. This global warming giveaway works out to a total of $1.34 trillion of free money – not adjusted for inflation – that would be handed out to global warming special interests from 2012-2030. After 2030, the annual amount of free money handed out is about $65 billion, increasing by 5 percent per year, exclusive of inflation.

But the great global warming giveaway is only part of the story.Allowances that aren’t given away – for example, 24 percent of allowances issued from 2012 to 2017 – will be auctioned by the government to GHG emitters ineligible for the giveaway. There can be no doubt that the purchasers of the auctioned allowances will simply pass along their higher costs to consumers in the form of higher prices for all goods and services that involve the energy use – in other words, just about everything.

Read more here. 

By Kofi Benti, Accra

Few people in Africa got to see Al Gore and his troupe of rock-star ecologists strutting their stuff two weekends ago, because most have neither television nor electricity. That’s just as well, because they would have been aghast at Live Earth’s bizarre message. In Africa, we have much more serious things to worry about than climate change. Indeed, if they achieve their objective the concerts will have done harm to the people of Africa.

Even if we accept that global warming may have a significant effect on our climate, limiting the use of fossil fuels in Africa would be counterproductive.  Respiratory infections are the leading cause of childhood deaths on my continent, mainly from inhaling the smoke produced by burning wood and dung in our quaint mud huts. Why do we burn these “renewable” but very dirty fuels? Not because we have some desire to save the Earth. No sir! It is because we don’t have access to natural gas or electricity.  The second leading cause of childhood deaths is not malaria or Aids, it is diarrhoea, caused by drinking dirty water. Why is our water dirty? Mainly because we lack cheap, efficient means of pumping and cleaning it. That requires fossil fuels--either directly or to produce electricity.

An underlying cause of many health problems in Africa is malnutrition. This is a consequence both of inefficient farming and poor food distribution. To rectify this situation will mean using cheap and relatively clean fuels, such as gasoline and diesel. (Of course we also need better roads--which can only be built using machines that burn. fossil fuels.)

Our already poor and struggling countries are being sucked into a giant movement to save the Earth--with aid money as the carrot and the stick. If we are cajoled into using more expensive “renewable” forms of energy, we will remain uncompetitive and our rates of economic growth will remain low or shrinking. That would be a tragedy because economic growth has been shown to be the best way to reduce poverty and improve health.  Read more of this chilling story here.

Note: Kofi Bentil is a lecturer at Ashesi University, a business strategy consultant in Accra and winner of the World Bank “Ghana Development Marketplace” award for entrepreneurship.