Joint letter to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici

Dear Chairman Domenici:

 

The undersigned organizations write to share our views on the climate title in the draft comprehensive energy legislation prepared by your committee’s staff. The draft bill in our view is better in almost every respect than Senator Daschle’s bill passed by the Senate last year. Unlike that misguided legislation, your committee’s draft contains provisions to allow greater access to domestic energy resources and to create the conditions necessary for private enterprise to rebuild and enlarge America’s inadequate energy infrastructure. Nearly as importantly, the draft does not contain the chief provisions in the Daschle bill that would limit energy supplies and raise prices; most especially, it does not contain a Renewable Portfolio Standard for electricity production.

 

Because we share your commitment to policies that will promote continuing abundant supplies of affordable energy to American consumers and producers, we were surprised to find that your committee’s draft contains a climate change title. We believe that this title is ill considered and, if enacted in anything like its present form, its effects will in the long run overwhelm the many positive elements in the bill. It would in our view create the institutional and legal framework and the political incentives necessary eventually to force Kyoto-style energy rationing on the American people.

 

Even more disturbingly to us, it would set us on this path without engaging in a full national debate over its enormous consequences. Instead, including this climate title in comprehensive energy legislation seems to assume that the debate is over, even though that debate has never occurred. It seems to us that before we settle on the main provisions of this climate title, we would first have to agree that global warming alarmism is scientifically warranted, that there are benefits as wells as costs to these policies, and that it is inevitable we are soon going to be living in a carbon-constrained world. We question each of these assumptions.

 

We specifically call your attention to three main provisions in the climate title—1) requiring a national strategy to “stabilize and over time reduce net U. S. emissions of greenhouse gases” plus annual reports; 2) reviving the Clinton-Gore Administration’s White House climate czar and bureaucracy; and 3) setting up a program to award credits for early actions to reduce emissions. 

 

1) Directing the executive to produce a national strategy concedes the global warming debate and puts the U. S. on a dead-end path to future energy rationing. As the discredited National Assessment demonstrates, annual reports will be used to promote alarmism and attack government for not doing enough. And if the strategy’s objectives were actually implemented, the costs would be colossal and the benefits nil.

 

2) Legislating a White House climate czar and office will institutionalize global warming as a problem, which it means that it will never go away, even after global warming alarmism has been discredited. Single mission agencies usually are captured by their clients, become lobbyists for their issue, and cannot objectively evaluate the costs of their policies.

 

3) Awarding credits for early actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will create a powerful big business cartel to lobby for mandatory caps on emissions. This is because early action credits will not have value until an emissions cap forces energy users to buy credits.

 

We would like to be able to tell you that we are going to be devoting our time and resources in the months ahead to educating the public on the many positive elements in your comprehensive energy legislation. Unfortunately, however, if the bill contains a climate title with these three provisions from the draft, then we fear that our time and resources will instead be diverted to exposing the shortcomings of that objectionable concoction. Thank you for your attention to our concerns.

Sincerely,

Fred Smith, President

and Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming Policy

Competitive Enterprise Institute

 

Paul M. Weyrich, National Chairman

Coalitions for America

 

Grover Norquist, President

Americans for Tax Reform

 

Malcolm Wallop, Chairman

Frontiers of Freedom

 

David A. Keene, Chairman

American Conservative Union

 

Paul Gessing, Director of Government Affairs

National Taxpayers Union

 

James L. Martin

60 Plus Association

 

 

James P. Backlin, Director of Legislative Affairs

Christian Coalition of America

 

Amy Ridenour, President

National Center for Public Policy Research

 

Darrell McKigney, President

Small Business Survival Committee

 

Richard Lessner, Executive Director

American Renewal

 

Tom DeWeese, President

American Policy Center

 

Chuck Muth, President

Citizen Outreach

 

Steven Milloy, President

Citizens for the Integrity of Science

 

Ronald Pearson, President

Council for America

 

Kevin L. Kearns, President

U. S. Business and Industry Council

 

Dennis Avery, Director

Center for Global Food Issues, Hudson Institute

 

Jim Boulet, Jr., Executive Director

English First

 

Joan L. Hueter, President

American Council for Immigration Reform

 

C. Preston Noell, III, President

Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.

 

Benjamin C. Works, Executive Director

SIRIUS (Strategic Issues Research Institute of the U. S.)

 

 

 

CC: Members of the Committee