(Editor’s note: This Op-Ed originally
appeared in
The Detroit News on May 14, 2008.)
The Michigan Climate Action Council, created
by a Gov. Jennifer Granholm executive order, is crafting a state policy on
global warming, but identical processes in other states suggest that the
"deliberation" is a sham hiding a predetermined outcome.
Michigan’s council is guided by a
Harrisburg, Pa.-based consultant called the Center for Climate Strategies. The
center’s Executive Director Thomas Peterson says his organization is not an
advocacy group, but the center is funded by wealthy global warming alarmist
foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Energy Foundation,
whose millions of dollars worth of contributions produce state policies that
increase energy costs and diminish property rights.
The state of Michigan is not paying anything
for the Center for Climate Strategies to direct its global warming policy
process because these special eco-interests foot the bill.
The center runs the meetings of state
climate groups, keeps the minutes, determines the voting procedures, selects
which greenhouse gas reduction options will be considered, prepares
presentations and writes the reports.
The center gives the impression that all of
the Michigan council’s decisions are objective by claiming they "invite
everybody to the table." But the carefully controlled process allows the center
and Michigan’s council to ignore serious analyses of the effects of proposed
policies on global temperatures or Michigan’s economy.
My organization, Climate Strategies Watch,
asked the Beacon Hill Institute—a think tank run by the economics department of
Suffolk University in Massachusetts—to evaluate the findings the Center for
Climate Strategies has produced for other client-states. The conclusion was
uglier than the Detroit Tigers’ record.
"It does not quantify both benefits and
costs in dollar terms so that they can be compared," Beacon Hill reported. "CCS
asks us to believe that there really is a free lunch in its recommendations, and
that implementing its policies would actually not have any net cost, despite the
fact that private, self-interested individuals are not grasping these
opportunities on their own."
Beacon Hill found that the center
overestimates job creation by considering any job a benefit whether it actually
adds value to a particular enterprise’s operations or simply another expense.
The center also inconsistently calculates
which economic activities do or do not produce jobs. Consider when the group
evaluates a policy option to "reduce need for electric generation facilities."
"Presumably this would cost jobs," Beacon
Hill wrote, "yet CCS does not acknowledge this or attempt to weigh it against
jobs created in clean energy."
In other words, the center stacks its
analyses in favor of minimal costs that lead to larger job gains. The center
operates in the bureaucratic shadows until recommendations for higher energy
taxes and property rights infringements suddenly appear—shocking consumers.
What will such proposals do to Michigan’s
already-groaning economy? How much more will low-income families here have to
pay for heat and electricity? And even if the whole world adopted its preferred
policies, would global temperatures be lowered significantly? The Center for
Climate Strategies won’t tell you—but Michigan residents may find out the hard
way.
#####
Paul Chesser is an adjunct scholar with the
Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute
headquartered in Midland, Mich., and is director of Climate Strategies Watch, a
free-market project that assesses state global warming commissions. Permission
to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and
the Center are properly cited.
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