The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. ENVIRONMENT
Delegates to a United Nations global warming conference defend the U.S. record on climate change.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell on last year’s climate pact with several Asian nations:
“Despite some diplomatic language about the agreement not replacing the Kyoto Protocol, this new approach to managing greenhouse gas emissions by some of the world’s largest energy-consuming nations clearly rejects Kyoto’s inflexible, economically destructive approach. Whatever the challenges future climate change may bring, a focus on new technologies and robust economic growth will always be our best strategy.”
2. HEALTH
A new report on childhood obesity finds waist sizes rising among kids in the U.S.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on the relationship between obesity and consumption of sugar-sweetened soda:
“’Americans have sipped and slurped their way to fatness by drinking far more soda and other sugary drinks over the last four decades, a new scientific review concludes,’ reported the Associated Press this week. It’s too bad that the AP didn’t report the full story as told — and yet, not told — in the review itself, rather than apparently just regurgitating the researchers’ media release.
3. BUSINESS
The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants holds a national conference this week in Washington, D.C.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Economics Policy Fellow John Berlau and Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader on the unconstitutional elements of federal accounting regulation:
“The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 created a powerful quasi-private agency to oversee the auditing of American business, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). The PCAOB is responsible for a mountain of red tape, and its broad interpretation of Sarbanes-Oxley’s rules on what constitutes a company’s “internal controls” is costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars every year.”