Much to my surprise, the MJS ran an op-ed column by Mark Block, the state director of Americans for Prosperity, showing what a farce the Governor’s Global Warming Task Force report really is. You can read Mark’s column here.
I addressed the idiocy of the report in an earlier post, here.
BTW, the MJS, to no one’s surprise ran another editorial supporting the recommendations which you can read here.
It would be useful if the MJS editorial board knew how to estimate costs and what the efficiencies of “alternative energy sources” really are. You want clean, and abundant electricity? Simple, start building the nukes. But I digress.
Block’s post addresses the costs and the illusion perpetuated by the MJS that green energy creates jobs and will not bankrupt the state. Some excerpts. (Any emphasis mine.)
By neglecting to include any economic analysis of its sweeping proposals, the Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming has failed to accomplish its mandate. Instead, it has put forward a blueprint for dramatically curtailing our freedom and prosperity.
It simply doesn’t make sense to fight global warming at the state level — or even the national level — because atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, and, therefore, global average temperatures, are indifferent to the location of emissions. The well-intentioned efforts to address global warming in Wisconsin will send jobs and income out of the state without any environmental benefit to show for it.
The task force was supposed to consider economic consequences — the executive order that created it is quite clear on the point, saying that part of its mission is to: “Advise the Governor on ongoing opportunities to address global warming locally while growing our state’s economy, creating new jobs and utilizing an appropriate mix of fuels and technologies in Wisconsin’s energy and transportation portfolios.” Unfortunately, the report contains no cost-benefit analysis of its recommendations or any consideration of the economic impact of imposing energy mandates and regulations.
One major task force recommendation is to decouple utility rates from consumption. Unfortunately, this scheme ignores that energy demand is not driven by the profit incentive of suppliers. Consumers decide how much energy they want to consume, not the power companies.
Block also goes onto address the devastating effects of the “cap and trade” a key focus point of the report.
The task force’s central recommendation, though, which is required for most of its recommended greenhouse gas reductions, is to support federal and regional cap-and-trade mechanisms. This is a recipe for economic disaster.
An analysis of the cap-and-trade scheme recently rejected by the U.S. Senate conducted by the modeling firm SAIC for the American Council on Capital Formation found devastating impacts for Wisconsin, which would lose 22,869 to 34,401 jobs in just eight years, with disposable household income falling between $913 and $2,961 per year, electricity prices rising 31% to 38% and gasoline prices rising 20% to 68% in the same time frame.
These are net jobs numbers, which means the lost jobs are much greater than the green jobs that would be created. And green jobs are not really benefits of these policy changes but costs — they represent the diversion of resources from profitable pursuits into compliance with government regulations.
Worst of all, for all this economic pain, there is no real environmental gain with respect to global warming. Even the United States can have little effect, absent a binding international agreement, because other countries will continue to grow their emissions faster than we can cut ours. Wisconsin represents just a tiny fraction of U.S. emissions, 1.8%, according to the task force, and U.S. emissions themselves are a shrinking fraction of global emissions.
Now, usually when a “task force” is created, it is supposed to be neutral, without any bias toward the issue. Naturally, Pol Pot Doyle was afraid of that and the MJS is too gutless to report what Block points out.
The report has to be viewed as the flawed product of a flawed process, driven largely by the environmental group World Resources Institute, the consultant the state hired to run the task force process and to set its agenda. Allowing an environmental group to run the process led, unsurprisingly, to a report that is biased toward environmental concerns without respect to cost.
Imagine that.
