Real Clear Energy (12/14/20) column: "Boris Johnson looked awful: slumped on the frontbench, he was about to suffer the worst parliamentary revolt of his premiership. It was December 1 – less than a year on from his historic election triumph – and Parliament was debating the reimposition of regional Covid tiers just as England had emerged from a month-long lockdown. The prime minister had been forced into conceding the debate in return for Parliament agreeing to the lockdown, which had been strongly recommended by the government’s scientific advisers, a move that now appears to have been based on erroneous information. If the prime minister had adjusted the tier system, he might have avoided the parliamentary debate that left his authority in tatters, with more than 50 of his Tories voting against the new restrictions. But being “led by the science,” as Johnson insists that he is, means handing control of policy to the scientists who nominally advise ministers. At least, that’s what’s suggested by the A in SAGE, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies. The reality is different. SAGE takes the big Covid policy decisions, and the prime minister rubber stamps them. The result? Humiliation at the hands of his own MPs. Having been fried in the pan of Covid policy, the prime minister is jumping into the fire of climate policy. Only two days later after the parliamentary Covid vote, Johnson announced that he was accelerating the sharpest cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of any G20 nation – upping the current target of a 57% reduction of 1990 levels to 68% by 2030...UK climate policy has its own version of SAGE in the form of the Climate Change Committee, which was given statutory powers by the Climate Change Act. Passed in 2008, its purpose is to hold to account the British government for meeting progressively stringent, five-year, legally binding targets on the pathway to net-zero emissions in 2050. Changes can be made to the net-zero target only after consulting the Committee – an organ of the administrative state beyond the purview of democratic accountability."
Reality bites.
E&E News (12/14/20) reports: "Environmental justice was a campaign theme for President-elect Joe Biden, who promised to spend billions of dollars to help communities in the shadow of industrial smokestacks and at the edge of toxic landfills. Biden pledged to spend 40% of his $2 trillion energy plan — about $800 billion — on front-line communities suffering from the largest pollution burdens. And he vowed to reverse President Trump's rollbacks of environmental and public health protections. But his promises are about to slam into hard reality...Advocates also say that progress made during the Obama years has stalled in the Trump administration, which has repeatedly proposed slashing EPA's EJ budget. They're calling for bold reforms beyond simply addressing Trump's deregulatory moves, including a push to green the incoming Cabinet, forgo fossil fuel funding, beef up data and funding to boost EPA's ability to tackle disparity, and rethink some bedrock environmental laws."
Paris isn't the only boondoggle American consumers need to be wary of.
Washington Examiner (12/15/20) reports: "The Paris pact isn’t the only global climate agreement President-elect Joe Biden plans to join during his first days in office. Biden can, and likely will, also begin implementing a lesser-known global climate deal to restrict potent greenhouse gas refrigerants known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. The Obama administration also helped negotiate that deal, known as the Kigali Amendment, which would set the United States and the world on a path to phase down HFCs over the next several decades. The chemicals, used in refrigerators and air conditioners, are greenhouse gases thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide, though they remain in the atmosphere for a shorter time. If governments meet the goals of the Kigali agreement, it could avoid up to half a degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century, scientists have projected...Free market conservative groups, however, oppose the Kigali deal and restrictions on HFCs, and they will be pressing their case with Republicans should Biden attempt to send the agreement to the Senate for ratification. Those groups — including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Energy Alliance, and Heritage Action — dispute that HFC limits would create new jobs in the U.S. and instead say the measure would only benefit a handful of big companies, such as chemical giants Honeywell and Chemours. They also argue restricting HFCs could harm individual consumers and small businesses, who would have to pay more for refrigeration products."
