The Environmental Protection Agency today is hosting a “Public Listening Session” at the Metcalfe Federal Building in Chicago, allowing the public to weigh in on the Obama administration’s “Climate Action Plan.” The plan would grant broad powers to EPA to curb the production of fossil fuels, strictly regulate coal-fired power plants, and funnel taxpayer money toward “green energy” companies.
Heartland Institute Policy Advisors Steve Goreham and Paul Driessen testified at the hearing. Their testimony is below. To book a Heartland guest on your program, please contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at [email protected] and 312/377-4000 or (cell) 312/731-9364.
The Economist magazine dubbed The Heartland Institute “the world’s most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change.” In September, Heartland published Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). It stands as the definitive scientific rebuttal to the alarmist conclusions of the latest climate report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For more information on the NIPCC report, click here.
“December 7, 2009 is a date that will live in infamy. Not in memory of Pearl Harbor, but because on that date, the Environmental Protection Agency declared carbon dioxide to be a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.
“Ladies and gentlemen, that is bizarre. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It’s an odorless, harmless, invisible gas. It does not cause smoke or smog. The white vapor above a power plant’s cooling tower is condensing water vapor. We can’t see carbon dioxide. Each of us breathes in just a trace of CO2, but our bodies burn sugars and produce CO2, so with every breath we exhale air with 100 times the carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere.
“In fact, CO2 is green! Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies show that higher levels of atmospheric CO2 increase the growth rate and size of plants. Plants get larger vegetables, larger fruit, and thicker tree trunks; they’re more resistant to drought with higher levels of CO2. If humans could put one compound into the atmosphere that is great for the biosphere, carbon dioxide is that compound.
“The greenhouse effect is a natural effect and man-made emissions play only an insignificant part. Earth’s dominant greenhouse gas is not carbon dioxide or methane. Earth’s dominant greenhouse gas is water vapor. Between 75 and 90 percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor and clouds. Of the remaining portion of the greenhouse effect that is due to carbon dioxide and methane, 96 percent of that is due to natural emissions from oceans and the biosphere. This means that the man-made portion of the greenhouse effect is only about one part in 100.
“Because the greenhouse effect is dominated by natural, not man-made, factors, no EPA policy will have a measurable effect on Earth’s climate. No EPA policy will have an effect on icecap size, sea-level rise, the frequency or intensity of hurricanes or tornadoes, or on droughts or floods. No EPA policy, however severe, will have a measurable effect on global temperatures.
“But EPA regulations can have a severe impact on Americans. Today, 38 percent of U.S. electricity and 47 percent of Illinois electricity comes from coal. Destruction of our coal industry will raise the price of electricity for American citizens and businesses, disproportionately affecting the poor.
“As a citizen of Illinois and the United States, I urge you to abandon this costly and futile fight to control Earth’s climate and return to solving the real pollution problems that we face.”
Steve Goreham
Executive Director
Climate Science Coalition of America
Policy Advisor, Environment and Energy
The Heartland Institute
[email protected]
312-377-4000
“The EPA says carbon dioxide from America’s coal-fired power plants is causing dangerous climate change. It says computer models support these claims.
“But the models are useless. Their predictions have been totally wrong – and none of EPA’s claims about hurricanes, tornadoes, rising seas, and other alleged dangers have been accurate. Climate change has been ‘real’ since Earth began. The Dust Bowl, hurricanes, the Little Ice Age, and droughts that destroyed the Anasazi and Mayan cultures were all terrible. People adapted and coped and survived – and today’s technologies allow us to deal much better with future climate changes.
“What we cannot cope with so easily are government regulations that deliberately shut down reliable, affordable coal-based electricity – and, after that, natural gas power generation. These rules will drive up energy prices and make it very hard for companies to stay in business or avoid layoffs.
“The rules will kill jobs, shut down factories, companies, and industries – and devastate families and communities that depend on coal mining, factory jobs, and affordable energy. And yet the EPA isn’t even holding any hearings in the states and areas that are most dependent on coal mining and coal-generated power.
“The EPA’s proposed rules will also force greater dependency on wind turbines, which kill millions of threatened and endangered birds and bats every year. That is unacceptable and unsustainable.
“But the worst impacts from EPA’s rules will be on the health and welfare of Americans. When people are unemployed, or holding two lower-paying part-time jobs, the extra time, stress, and financial worries have huge impacts on their health and well-being. Their nutrition suffers.
“They battle with sleep deprivation; longer commuting times; higher incidences of depression; more prevalent alcohol, drug, spouse, and child abuse; higher suicide rates; and lower life expectancies. This means every life that EPA claims its rules will improve – by supposedly preventing climate change – will be made worse by the EPA’s own rules. Every life that the EPA says will be saved by its costly, job-killing CO2 regulations will be offset by lives shortened or lost by those rules.
“The EPA doesn’t even mention any of this – much less conduct any cost-benefit studies, or calculate how many lives will be shortened or lost because of its proposed rules. The EPA needs to do that work before it takes one more step toward implementing these rules.”
Paul Driessen
Senior Policy Advisor
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
Policy Advisor, Energy and Environment Policy
The Heartland Institute
[email protected]
312/377-4000
The Heartland Institute is a 29-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.
Steve Goreham, a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute, is a speaker, author, and researcher on environmental issues as well as an engineer and business executive.
Paul Driessen is a senior policy advisor with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.
