MacIver News Service | November 17, 2010
[Milwaukee, Wisc…] Students at Marqutte University will have the opportunity to hear a skeptic’s take on the issue of global warming tonight.
Christopher Horner, senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., will give a presentation sponsored by the Marquette University College Republicans.
“The College Republicans wanted to bring a differing voice to campus,” said Marquette University student Ethan Hollenberger, who noted that last month the MU Student Government speaker series hosted “the No Impact Man” Colin Beaven, a radical environmentalist. “Mr. Horner will bring another side to this issue, and that is the purpose of college—the discussion of issues.”
Horner’s presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. One topic that is sure to come up: how the recent elections will impact controversial ‘Cap and Trade’ legislation in Washington.
Horner shared some thoughts on the election fallout and other current efforts in Washington and the states with the MacIver News Service in advance of his speech.
“ ‘Cap and Trade’ is of course dead but there remains a push for a national windmill mandate as the newest vehicle to raise everyone’s electricity costs, and enormous wealth transfers being pushed by investors in the global warming industry apparently feeling stranded, like T. Boone Pickens,” said Horner. “Cap and Trade is declared dead even by Obama until at least 2013.”
Horner
Horner warns however, that anti-business environmental advocates, as he sees them, will continue to pursue their agenda in a whole host of manners.
“We’ve largely reached the likely saturation point in the ‘crazy quilt’ approach of certain usual-suspect states like California and New Jersey making a hash of things and complaining to Washington that it’s just not fair everyone isn’t forced to do the same things to themselves,” said Horner. “Meanwhile, several key federal avenues have been closed off to them. So now it’s off to windmill mandates and the like, federally, and other smaller ball ways of skinning the energy-scarcity cat.”
Horner blames what he calls environmental ‘gesture politics’ for many of the economic problems facing the states.
“California’s looming bankruptcy, which will be revolutionary if allowed to occur, can be attributed to these gesture politics of binge debt spending on payoffs to special interests who run campaigns like the global warming industry, and other such feelgoodery,” said Horner. “We’ll see if the other 48 states (New York, too, will sink) will pay, and how their taxpayers react, before we know just how much this has enlightened us.”
Recently, Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI 05) suggested the new House Republican Majority in Washington maintain the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming created by Democrats but change its mission to one of a watchdog over the Environmental Protection Agency.
Horner is skeptical of such an approach.
“I would prefer aggressive oversight of ongoing spending, existing regulation and proposed regulation under existing, ‘standing’ committees because, after all, the money that requires scrutiny as to how it is being spent was authorized by existing committees whose authority includes oversight of the relevant statutory authority,” said Horner. “But there are no such things in DC as temporary committees.”
Horner notes the battles continue but will become less straightforward as the proponents of global warming legislation change their tactics, as a result of widespread public rejection of their more heavy-handed approach.
“They have to even further obscure what they are doing: going from the direct tax (on BTUs) to a backdoor tax with rationing and ration coupons (Cap and Trade), to indirect ‘standards” that are upon scrutiny mandates, styled as ‘requiring utilities to produce..,’ which means requiring you to buy more expensive less reliable uneconomic energy, paying back the utilities on a cost-plus basis,” said Horner. “It is toward those ends that the anti-energy industry is already scrambling on various Plans C-D-E etc., some styled as ‘things we all agree on’ though, as with most things sold that way, they are no such thing.”
Horner, who holds a Juris Doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis, is the author of the recently-released book, Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, which was published in 2007, and spent several months on the New York Times Best Selling List.
Horner has testified before the United States Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Environment and Public Works, and works on a legal and policy level with numerous think tanks and policy organizations throughout the world. He has given numerous addresses to audiences in the European Parliament in Strasbourg and Brussels, and before policymakers in European capitals including London, Rome, Prague, Copenhagen, Madrid and Warsaw, on topics ranging from rail deregulation and unfunded pension liability to all manner of energy and environment issues.
This is Horner’s second trip to Wisconsin this year. In May, the author Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed spoke to a group of students and members of the general public in Oshkosh.
Tonight’s event, co-sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation, is free, open to the public, and will take place at 6:15 at Marquette University’s Weasler Auditorium on15th and Wells. Parking is available in the visitor parking structure on 16th Street. Doors open to the public at 5:30 pm.
