Climate Change

On June 11, King County Executive Dow Constantine dropped the 735-page 2025 King County Strategic Climate Action Plan (SCAP) onto the desks of the King County Council members. SCAP shows that wasting taxpayer dollars on useless plans filled with what our neighbors to the north call “bafflegab” is alive and well. SCAP proposes myriad actions for the County to “reduce GHG emissions, center frontline communities, and prepare for climate change impacts” based on nonsensical claims about rising sea levels and rising temperatures, neither of which is supported by actual data. It is heavy on buzz phrases like “climate equity,” but short on actual analysis. Most importantly, SCAP doesn’t include any estimates of what the County intends to spend, nor any Read More ›

Long viewed as a playground for environmentalists, Vermont has jumped the climate change shark with its new Climate Superfund law. If not halted by judges who reject its dubious legal basis, this shark promises to deliver a severe blow to the state’s economy that will harm the “ordinary Vermonters” proponents claim the law will help. The new law is modeled after the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, which created a “Superfund” to clean up hazardous waste sites. Under the original Superfund law, companies and any predecessors that dumped hazardous wastes are required to pay the actual cleanup costs for those sites.  In contrast, under the Vermont law, U.S. fossil fuel producers and their successors — companies Read More ›

Forty-two was the mystical number that explained “life, the universe, and everything” in Douglas Adams’ comic novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Today, another mystical number, the so-called social cost of carbon (SSC), is providing the excuse for the Environmental Protection Agency and green-energy-enamored state regulators to enact crippling energy policies. The SCC is the thumb on the scale that can justify virtually any policy aimed at eliminating fossil fuels. When the EPA first proposed its rule to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, the agency’s cost-benefit analysis determined the benefits would be minuscule. Any putative benefits, it turns out, would come instead from reductions in carbon emissions and, here’s the key, based on a calculated value for the SCC. The Read More ›