Report from an Editorial Board Meeting on Cap-and-Trade

Editor’s note: What’s it like in an editorial board meeting of a newspaper? Norm Rogers, a Heartland advisor on environmental policy, recently was invited to the Rockford (Ill.) Register-Star (daily circulation: 56,000) to discuss cap-and-trade legislation pending in Congress. Norm, a serial entrepreneur with advanced degrees in physics and engineering, was one of eight invited to the editorial board, four opposed to cap-and-trade and four in favor. Here is Norm’s report.

The meeting started promptly at 11 a.m. in an upstairs conference in the impressive building of the Register-Star on the Rock River. There were four liberal supports, and three guys on my side.

Two allies. Left Eric Anderberg, owner Dial Machine Co., Rockford, and right Earl Williams, president, Illinois Farm Bureau. Both these guys also do farming.

Rockford, located in northwest Illinois, has a population of 150,000, and the metro area more than double that. According to one of the editors, the Register-Star is doing okay financially, not making as much money as before, but not in any serious danger. Big city daily papers – including the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune – are the ones going bankrupt, not medium sized papers like the Register-Star.

The business editor, Annette LaCross, started with a general summary of the issues involved with cap and trade. Linda Grist-Cunningham, editor in chief, gave us a good talking to about sticking to the facts, and not attacking the other side.

I got to speak next for five minutes, and I made my usual points:

• Global warming alarmism is not well supported by science. The Chinese burn so much coal that even if we stop burning coal and turn off the lights in the Midwest, the Chinese would make up any carbon savings in four years.

• The point of cap and trade is to reduce fossil fuel use by raising the price of fuel, and the price must be raised a lot to make a significant difference – probably three times current prices to reduce consumption of gasoline by one-half. I noted that gasoline costs $7 a gallon in France, where per capita consumption is one-half U.S. consumption.

• The Waxman-Markley bill that squeaked out of the House last summer promotes blue sky technology – wind, solar, carbon sequestration – and does nothing to encourage development of nuclear power, which omits no carbon dioxide.

• Cap-and-trade is a big revenue raiser, a big tax that can be throttled up or down by adjusting the scarcity of emission allowances to finance whatever political scheme Congress chooses to enact.

Annette LaCross the Business Editor of the Rockford Register Star and other editors.

Ron Burke from the Union of Concerned Scientists was very smooth, and his most telling points centered on the argument that a scientific consensus exists on the threat posed by global warming. In particular he rattled off a names of several organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences that supported the assertion that global warming posed an imminent threat to the planet.

I tried to rebut this when I got a chance by saying that there were plenty of scientists on the other side, and most of the global warming alarmist arguments were so weak as to be meaningless. However, I wish I had anticipated Burke’s argument, and been better prepared.

He did, however, lose his cool at times, and kept talking so much he had to be shut down by the meeting leader.

Ron Burke of the Union of Concerned Scientists - The smoothest talker.

Burke tried to compare scientists who are skeptical of global-warming crisis with scientists who claimed smoking wasn't bad for your health. This bought a skeptical response from one editors who identified herself as a smoker, and said that everyone knew that smoking was bad for one’s health since at least the 1970s, and thus she didn't think much of his point.

Several times during the session, the liberal environmentalists tried to equate carbon dioxide with air pollution, and they confused the editors. I made the point that CO2 is not a pollutant, dirty or toxic. It’s a greenhouse gas.

I think the editors still didn't quite get it. Annette, the business editor, tried to get us to all agree that the air had to be made cleaner. We didn't, and I made the point that air pollution is regional and a trade off between pristine-ness and realism. I said I thought that Pasadena air quality needed improvement, but that Chicago’s was pretty good.

Left to right: Brian Granahan, staff attorney, Environment Illinois; Max Muller, director, Clean Water and Toxics Program, Environment Illinois; and Angela Jones, Green Tone Environmental Design, Rockford.

Eric Anderberg, a local manufacturer and climate realist, made very good points relative to manufacturing costs increasing if the cost of energy increases. He suggested that big companies would simply outsource production to China or other places where emission limits don’t apply, and smaller companies like his would suffer. They would have to raise prices to cover the higher cost of emission permits or capital expenditures to switch to non-fossil-based fuels.

Eric also said that he does work on wind turbines but still does not believe in them as a solution. He also expressed doubts that human activity affects climate change, suggesting that solar effects may be responsible – a point of view shared by some of the world’s elite climatologists. I gave the editors a copy of teh 2009 report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change Reconsidered,” in case they want to review the peer-reviewed literature on the subject.

Earl Williams is a farmer, and represented the Illinois Farm Bureau. He made the point that farming is energy intensive, and that some studies have suggested the cap-and-trade bill would add $35 and acre in crop costs, more than offsetting promised revenue farmers supposedly would receive from carbon sequestration and new tilling methods.

The two guys from Environment Illinois were, I thought, not convincing. They tried to claim that the cap and trade bill would be practically cost free. One of them asserted the cost would amount to a postage stamp a day, which I thought was comical. However, on the way home I heard on the radio that President Obama said the same thing, so they were reading from the same talking points. It’s still comical no matter who says it.

Some of the other editors.

The owner of a local green-design firm didn't say much, and tried to give her time to the others on her side, but that was not allowed.

After the meeting the photographer took each of our pictures. I hope there will be some sort of article.