The Spectacle Blog
More Attacks on Jobs in Michigan
If anybody got the idea that Climategate and the Copenhagen failure, and the increasing disbeliefamong the public that global warming catastrophe is around the corner, would accumulate to drive alarmists to repent from their promotion of phony climate data and fraudulent analysis (both economic and scientific), then they don’t know them well enough.
If anybody got the idea that Climategate and the Copenhagen failure, and the growing disbelief among the public that global warming catastrophe is around the corner, would accumulate to drive alarmists to repent from their promotion of phony climate data and fraudulent analysis (both economic and scientific), then they don’t know them well enough.
Take for example the Center for Climate Strategies, whose deceptive practices in the states I’ve documented ad nauseum for Spectator and for other publications. CCS is a global warming advocacy group that gets paid millions of dollars by environoiac foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to get states’ governors to hire them so they can create their climate change policies. CCS pretends to be an objective, unbiased consultant; they are anything but. CCS produces the same cookie-cutter menu of ideas that increase energy costs and government control for each state, under the guise of a governor-appointed “blue ribbon panel,” which is simply a rubber stamp for the alarmists’ proposals.
Accompanying most recommendations that these panels produce are bogus claims of economic benefit for the given state — if they would only implement all of CCS’s ideas. Green jobs! Cost savings! Economic growth!
Except, as with Climategate, every economic study is crafted by CCS’s chosen researchers and experts, with no independent analysis sought. For example, in North Carolina CCS enlisted the Energy Center at Appalachian State University to promote their rosy scenario, saying their blue-ribbon ideas in the Tar Heel state would generate 32,000 new jobs by 2020 and boost gross state product by $2.2 billion. You know — just like higher taxes, more costs, and increased regulations always do. A peer-review study commissioned by the conservative John Locke Foundation, conducted by the PhD economists at the Beacon Hill Institute, found the following:
Rigorous testing using standard economic analysis yielded far more pessimistic results than those used to support the policies, (BHI President David) Tuerck said in an interview. “There’s an attempt to put a happy face on this…,” he said. “And the attempt is made by trying to show that implementing this legislation would create jobs and would expand economic activity in the state, rather than contract it. And the trouble with that particular representation is that it doesn’t make any sense.”
BHI has done similar truth-telling analyses for other states victimized by CCS’s disinformation. That brings us to today, where Michigan — the state hit the hardest by the current recession (plus union excesses and government mismanagement, but that’s another story) — is CCS’s latest target for fantasy economic research. The Associated Press reports:
The report by the Center for Climate Strategies said a plan devised last year for battling global warming in Michigan would help limit the state’s heat-trapping gas emissions over the next 15 years.
But more than the environment would benefit, the nonprofit group said. It projected gains of 129,000 jobs, a $25 billion uptick in the gross state product and lower prices for home energy sources such as electricity, oil and natural gas.
The [Michigan Climate Action Council] recommended an outside analysis of the potential effect on Michigan’s economy. The [Department of Environmental Quality] secured a $75,000 grant from the Troy-based Kresge Foundation for the study.
Economists with Michigan State University and the University of Southern California teamed with the Center for Climate Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that has helped more than 20 states develop programs to fight global warming.
The problem is, the economic analysis secured by Michigan’s DEQ was not “outside,” independent, or competent. Instead it was a carefully orchestrated effort to buttress the blue ribbon panel’s recommendations — using CCS’s own people! Two of the three authors are USC’s Dan Wei and Adam Rose, who also happen to be CCS staffers. Rose was part of a similar sham effort to legitimize glowing economic projections in North Carolina. And like CCS/Rose/Wei, Michigan State’s Steven Miller also has a reputation for overlooking costs when conducting economic analyses.
It’s not surprising that the Kresge Foundation would fund the study either, considering that the goal of their climate program is to “cultivate solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, accelerate renewable energy technologies, and support efforts to help society adapt to the impacts of climate change.” Kresge, as well as several other global warming activist foundations, also funded the work of the Climate Action Council in Michigan.
The Center for Climate Strategies has perpetrated their fraudulent work — clothed as a “consultant” and hiding their true origins — in more than half the states now. Like the Climategaters, they forbid discussion and debate about climate science in their proceedings. They are now at work building regional agreements among the states, in case federal action fails.
For CCS to burden Michigan, which has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, with more schemes to kill jobs is especially egregious. These global warming fearmongers have no shame. For that, they get the orchestral version of this relevant rock song.
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philfl63| 1.4.10 @ 10:46PM
Man, the only people benefitting from this greenie nonsense are Al Gore and his fellow corruptocrats.
Roger Limbak| 1.31.10 @ 5:34PM
I agree. Drill, Baby, Drill is all we need. Plus Burn, Baby, Burn to cover our fossil friends digging coal. And maybe also Split, Baby, Split for our nucular friends. We got plenty of jobs to go around with that, who needs that commie nonsense. No one can own the wind or the sun.
Tom Tanton| 1.4.10 @ 10:50PM
The econ study showing thousands of jobs created is just a re-do of the 'analysis' done by CARB in CA regarding AB32--which was thouroughly discredited by all, including CARB's own peer reviewers. Have they NO shame, sir?
Steven Douglas| 1.5.10 @ 3:37AM
Can't wait until summer, when I can finally smash a watermelon in effigy.
In a way I kind of feel for the Greenies on this one, because the real backlash (that has yet to come) is going to have them so publicly vilified (at least in the US and Canada) that they'll be ashamed to admit their own status for fear of ridicule or reprisal. Just as well, they'll die by the sword they lived by, which is far from the truth.
Eric Cartman| 1.5.10 @ 4:45AM
Really, who cares? Detroit is reverting back to farmland, Lansing can't love taxes enough and that ahole Michael Moore still lives there. Let Michigan die its inevitable death. The state has long been destine for failure - let it fail. It could then be bought for a song, deloused of scumbag Liberals and the beauty of Mackinac Island can be enjoyed without these aholes pestering people.
Richard Baker| 1.5.10 @ 6:18AM
Eric Cartman:
Recluctantly agree with you. Michigan is an economic sewer. The factors you mentioned are true enough but what is really a tragedy is that the citizens of the state continue to drink the Kool-Aid that's killing them, including my Detroit area family.
Eric Cartman| 1.5.10 @ 7:56AM
I'm sorry to hear about your family. Unfortunately, they will meet the same fate as the Jonestown people did - they will die . . . financially. But that usually ends up causing the real thing sooner or later. Hope you can rescue them before its too late.
Eric Cartman| 1.5.10 @ 8:13AM
PS: The same can be said for California, New York, Massachusetts - anywhere Liberalism has its fetid roots and where Republicans have been too brain dead or stupid to put a steak through its heart. Like D.C. and soon the whole country. People like the George Bush (I and II) and the Liberal Lite Republicans who have enabled scummy Democrats to practice their trade or allowed them to breath. I agree, Richard - it's sad.
Eric Cartmen| 1.5.10 @ 8:38AM
And by steak, I mean stake! Put a stake through its heart then cook its heart like a steak. That's what I mean. ;-)
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Jack McHugh| 1.5.10 @ 9:19PM
Meanwhile, Gov. Jennifer Granholm's DEQ director, a man who has contributed more than almost any other to Michigan's death spiral by making the state an environmental regulation hellhole where the rule of law is bent in the service of enviro extremism, announced last week that he's he's taking a new job doing similar work targeted at New York state - for the Center for Climate Strategies!
The incestuous circle is closed.
Michael Smith| 1.6.10 @ 8:02AM
All of these state plans are flawed in the same manner as Obama's "green revolution" that is supposed to create millions of jobs -- they are all simply the "broken window fallacy" -- the same old poppycock of conflating "need" with "demand".
Obama thinks we need to convert to “green energy sources” and that this “need” will create jobs. But “need” and “demand” are two very different things. “Demand” means that one has both the desire and the ABILITY to purchase something, where as the mere “need” for something does not give one the ability to pay for it.
And therein lies the problem. Americans don't have billions of dollars just sitting around waiting to be spent on millions of wind mills, solar panels and electric cars. Any large-scale government program that forces Americans to spend their money on such things will inevitably mean that Americans will be forced to spend correspondingly less on other things. Any gains in employment in the "green energy" sector will thus be cancelled by losses in employment from the decreased spending in other sectors.
And it won’t make any difference if the money comes out of people’s savings or investments -- it will merely mean that one type of investment will suffer a decrease in funding while another enjoys an increase. There is no reason to believe that such a shift is going to increase employment.
In fact, we can be certain that any such shift in spending or investment will cause a net reduction in productive jobs. Government always adds staff to administer such programs, so thousands of additional government bureaucrats will be hired, which will eat into the funds that are supposed to go toward purchasing the “green goodies”. The amount of money supporting productive private sector jobs will decrease because more will go to government. It’s a job killer, not creator.
The whole thing is a pipe dream and an economic disaster waiting to happen. God help us if the American people do not wake up and put a stop to this insanity soon.