By Chris Horner

On Friday, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) released the closely-held details of his bill rationing energy use in the name of global warming, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES).

The details had been kept secret for two reasons. First, Waxman had been working desperately to buy off key Democrats on his own committee—such as Virginia’s Rick Boucher and Michigan’s John Dingell—whose states would suffer hugely under the “cap and tax” scheme, plus others with energy-intensive employers in their districts.  He succeeded by, in short, giving energy use ration coupons to select employers for resale to some poor saps without Washington lobbyists.

And before those lawmakers were bought off with targeted limitations of the bill’s effects, it was impossible to assess the bill’s cost, leaving us only with the president’s guidance uttered when he let on to this agenda item: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

That was an uncharacteristic expression of modesty because cap-and-trade actually will cause the cost of gasoline to skyrocket, too, and increase the cost of everything that uses energy in its production. Which is everything. And the only difference between Obama’s plan and Waxman’s is that Waxman bought votes by giving away many of the ration coupons; either way, Obama’s budget director Peter Orszag has serially admitted, it is you the consumer and ratepayer who will pay.

Second, Waxman kept quiet those details which were meant to pay off the “rent-seekers”—industry that would gain from the inherently corrupt mandates, subsidies, and the enormous carbon dioxide tax to pay for them under the bill’s quota and rationing schemes. This also delayed organization of broader opposition outside of those few stalwarts who recognize the peril in wresting control of the nation’s energy supply from private actors, both producers and consumers, in favor of government management.

So on Friday came the details of Waxman’s “allowance allocation,” which is what he calls the ration coupons. That’s right: we’re all seven again, and the state is our Mommy, meting out our yearly energy allowance. Waxman released a two-page memo to describe the now 1,000 page bill, which is apparently how many pages it takes to hide the biggest tax increase in U.S. history and hand out favors to the Al Gore crowd.

In the Democrats’ now-commonplace Orwellian mode, the two-page memo was full of “protections” the bill offers, laid out in boldface type: “Protection from electricity price increases,” “Protection from natural gas price increases,” “Protection from home heating oil price increases,” “Protection of low- and moderate-income households.” Then comes “Transition assistance for industry,” comprised of “Protection for energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries” and “Protection for domestic energy production.”

That’s an awful lot of protection Waxman’s selling, and it begs the question: from what? His bill, of course. For nearly every sector that it targets with its taxation and “investment” provisions, the bill claims as a marketing ploy to have offered protection. These temporary, select deals were in return for allowing certain provisions of the bill to be designed according to the specifications of particular members of each of those targeted groups—as brazenly admitted by Waxman in the first draft of the bill’s “Findings” section.

Allegations of such collusion between policymakers and the Bush administration by the same Henry Waxman led him to launch investigations. Don’t expect any here. Now this protection isn’t forever, mind you—just for a few years, in order to neuter opposition or provide cover for those whom he needed to vote for the scheme. Read the definitions in the bill, and you’ll notice that you were not represented at the table. What could you possibly offer him? Besides, don’t forget it was your gluttonous electricity use that made Waxman come down on you like this in the first place.

Waxman touts his bill with claims of offering protection, if from a menace found nowhere but in the very same bill. It’s the Democrats’ latest version of what the Mafia used to call the “protection racket.” You know, “window insurance.” Hey, me and my cousin, we’re watching this here block. Sure would be a shame if something happened to your place. Anyways, he and I think you might could use our protection. Capice?

And you thought the recent exposé of how the Sicilian mafia has seized control of the lucrative windmill franchises under Europe’s similar schemes was just an aberration. Commentators have increasingly noted the thuggish tactics that Team Obama and its ancillary cheerleading groups brought to town, such that even the early Clinton-Gore days are beginning to appear like schoolyard games. Back then, it was mostly the accumulation of individual power they were after. Now we have committed radicals attempting to seize control of the biggest engines of the economy, by using every sort of fear they can. Fear of economic collapse, fear of retribution if you oppose the agenda, fear of ecological bogeymen (who oddly continue to refuse to show up as promised).

To anyone who has studied political organizing tactics as perfected in Europe and Russia in the previous century (or America in the 1960s), it should come as no surprise that the president hired on a former board member of the Socialist International to run his “global warming” policy and a self-described communist to run his domestic operation, “green jobs.” Green really is the new red, and these people remain who we thought they were.

The question is whether an advanced if shaken America will fall for the fear mongering or, for others, whether they will simply acquiesce in having their liberties—and, frankly, their country—run over with these roughshod tactics. This week’s votes in the House should offer us a few indicators, for better or worse. Read more here.

Mr. Horner is author of ”Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.”

By Governor Mitch Daniels in the Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal

This week Congress is set to release the details of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, a bill that purports to combat global warming by setting strict limits on carbon emissions. I’m not a candidate for any office—now or ever again—and I’ve approached the “climate change” debate with an open-mind. But it’s clear to me that the nation, and in particular Indiana, my home state, will be terribly disserved by this cap-and-trade policy on the verge of passage in the House.

The largest scientific and economic questions are being addressed by others, so I will confine myself to reporting about how all this looks from the receiving end of the taxes, restrictions and mandates Congress is now proposing.

Quite simply, it looks like imperialism. This bill would impose enormous taxes and restrictions on free commerce by wealthy but faltering powers—California, Massachusetts and New York—seeking to exploit politically weaker colonies in order to prop up their own decaying economies. Because proceeds from their new taxes, levied mostly on us, will be spent on their social programs while negatively impacting our economy, we Hoosiers decline to submit meekly.

The Waxman-Markey legislation would more than double electricity bills in Indiana. Years of reform in taxation, regulation and infrastructure-building would be largely erased at a stroke. In recent years, Indiana has led the nation in capturing international investment, repatriating dollars spent on foreign goods or oil and employing Americans with them. Waxman-Markey seems designed to reverse that flow. “Closed: Gone to China” signs would cover Indiana’s stores and factories.

Our state’s share of national income has been slipping for decades, but it is offset in part by living costs some 8% lower than the national average. Doubled utility bills for low-income Hoosiers would be an especially cruel consequence of the Waxman bill. Forgive us for not being impressed at danglings of welfare-like repayments to some of those still employed, with some fraction of the dollars extracted from our state.

And for what? No honest estimate pretends to suggest that a U.S. cap-and-trade regime will move the world’s thermometer by so much as a tenth of a degree a half century from now. My fellow citizens are being ordered to accept impoverishment for a policy that won’t save a single polar bear.

We are told that although China, India and others show no signs of joining in this dismal process, we will eventually induce their participation by “setting an example.” Watching the impending indigence of the Midwest, and the flow of jobs from our shores to theirs, our friends in Asia and the Third World are far more likely to choose any other path but ours.

Politicians in Washington speak of a reawakened appreciation for manufacturing and American competitiveness. But under their policy, those who make real products will suffer. Already we observe the piranha swarm of green lobbyists wangling special exemptions, subsidies and side deals. The ordinary Hoosier was not invited to this party, and can expect at most only table scraps at the service entrance.

No one in Indiana is arguing for the status quo: Hoosiers have been eager to pursue a new energy future. We rocketed from nowhere to national leadership in biofuels production in the last four years. We were the No. 1 state in the growth of wind power in 2008. And we have embarked on an aggressive energy-conservation program, indubitably the most cost-effective means of limiting CO2.

Most importantly, we are out to be the world leader in making clean coal—including the potential for carbon capture and sequestration. The world’s first commercial-scale clean coal power plant is under construction in our state, and the first modern coal-to-natural gas plant is coming right behind it. We eagerly accept the responsibility to develop alternatives to the punitive, inequitable taxation of cap and trade.

Our president has commendably committed himself to “government that works.” But his imperial climate-change policy is government that cannot work, and we humble colonials out here in the provinces have no choice but to petition for relief from the Crown’s impositions. See story here.

By Scientific Alliance

Black carbon, or soot, has been recognised as a pollutant for many generations. When coal was the main fuel for domestic heating and cooking, urban landscapes were shaded black, and it is only the last few generations which have been able to see the natural colour of famous buildings, previously often covered in a layer of soot. Readers of a certain age may also remember the inside of King’s college chapel, Cambridge, as black from the smoke of candles used to light it since the sixteenth century.  But for European city-dwellers, this is now history. Coal has long been replaced by gas, electricity or coke in the home. And with coal gone, so has the soot.

Not so for hundreds of millions of poor people in developing countries. For them, wood or dung are the primary fuels for cooking stoves, often used indoors. It has long been recognised that this is a major contributor to respiratory disease, particularly among women and young children, who spend most time near the fires. But, ironically, it may take concerns about global warming for serious progress to be made.

A recent New York Times article makes the point in its headline: “Third-world stove soot is target in climate fight”. Although it mentions in passing the health benefit of replacing traditional stoves by cleaner, more efficient ones, the article is the first in a series (By Degrees) about “stopgap measures which could limit global warming”, so the main focus is clear.

Apart from the direct localised pollution caused by smoky fires, black carbon has a direct warming effect on the air when suspended in the atmosphere, and also contributes to melting of glaciers and polar ice by settling on the surface and changing its albedo. According to the article, recent research suggests that soot may be responsible for 18% of global warming, compared to 40% for carbon dioxide. And the effect on Arctic ice may be even more marked: black carbon could account for 40% of the loss.

Given the certainty of so many scientists that they understand the drivers of climate change, and that carbon dioxide dominates, it is sobering to note that the last IPCC Assessment Report, published just two years ago, makes no mention of the significant effect of soot. Moving from certainty that all drivers were accounted for to suddenly finding a basic 18% error is not calculated to build confidence in the state of knowledge. But the effect of black carbon now seems to be generally acknowledged, as witnessed by the recent unprecedented agreement of both climate activists and sceptics in the US Senate to instruct the Environmental Protection Agency to make a study of options to reduce levels of soot entering the atmosphere.

The problem is that, if climate modellers have completely left out a factor which appears to account for nearly one fifth of climate change, what else might they have overlooked or underestimated? The obvious answer is the role of the Sun, where most mainstream scientists dismiss the changes in total radiance as trivial in climate terms, while many sceptics insist that its effect is far more complex and significant than that. They also point to the well-established historical correlation between sun-spot numbers and weather patterns. Periods of low activity correlate with poor harvests and high food prices due to cooler weather in mid-latitudes. Since the Sun is now entering a period of extremely low activity, we can expect to see its influence on the weather over the next decade or so if a causative correlation is valid.

For policymakers, the attraction of targeting black carbon reductions to influence climate is that it does not build up in the atmosphere: once soot production is reduced, the amount in the air goes down quite quickly. So something can be done which can be expected to have an almost immediate impact. The pity is that this is the motivator for change, but if the end result is better health for subsistence farmers, then the policy is guaranteed to do some good.