CEI Daily Update

Issues in the News

1. Environment

Rolling Stone magazine switches to “carbon neutral” paper, but still receives attacks from environmental activists.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on the allegedly carbon neutral lifestyles of people like Al Gore:

A Gore spokesman tried to deflect the charges of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ by stating that the Gores “purchase offsets for their carbon emissions to bring their carbon footprint down to zero.” Gore himself has been very public about this approach to carbon neutrality, but not only is this claim not exactly true, it’s quite meaningless in terms of global warming.

2. Education

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) proposes $10 billion of new government funding for universal preschool.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Editorial Director Ivan Osorio on the union interests behind the universal preschool push:

This summer, Congress will consider reauthorization of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, the Bush Administration’s centerpiece education legislation. This time around, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D-California) are in the driver’s seat. What kind of spoils will they give their teachers union allies—perhaps funding for “universal preschool”?

3. Energy

Foreign companies exploit a U.S. subsidy for “bio-diesel” fuel, at a taxpayer cost of $30 million a year.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Former Warren Brookes Fellow Timothy Carney on the dirty secrets behind alternative fuels:

It turns out that, despite all the claims that ethanol is good for the environment, ethanol may be a net polluter in many ways. Ethanol does reduce carbon monoxide emissions because it is an ‘oxygenate,’ which means it adds oxygen to the fuel, converting the CO into CO2, carbon dioxide. (Seeing how CO is not greenhouse gas, our ethanol policies result in making more CO2; what would Al Gore say?) But on the question of hydrocarbons, ethanol appears to make things worse.

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