I suppose it doesn’t matter, but he’s right about the cap and trade bill, and he appears to be attacking it from the left, for its ineffectiveness (as if he wanted to attack global warming effectively). To me, cap and trade looks like one of those innovative ‘pay to play’ deals politicians like to set up, assuring donations from polluting industries to political candidates for decades to come in exchange for exemptions and other favors.

Since George Bush Senior’s Acid Rain Program of the early 1990s, advocates have aggressively promoted the idea that the most efficient pollution reductions come from the government setting a cap, and then allowing companies to freely trade pollution permits in order to nominally encourage development of the most cost-effective technologies. The Acid Rain Program succeeded modestly, but mainly because still-regulated electric utilities (this was the pre-Enron era) were mandated by state officials to hold true to their obligations and actually reduce their output of acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide. Trading contributed only marginally to the 50 percent pollution reductions from that program. An effort to reduce air pollution in southern California by a similar scheme appears to have mainly delayed the installation of emission controls, and the region still has the dirtiest air in the country. In Europe just three years ago, the value of tradable carbon dioxide allowances plummeted and the carbon trading system almost collapsed under the weight of excess permits that were freely granted to favored industries.

Rather than promoting innovative measures to reduce energy use in poor countries, as they are usually advertised, carbon offsets are subsidizing the already routine destruction of byproducts from China’s rising production of ozone-destroying hydrofluorocarbons, minor retooling of highly polluting pig iron smelters in India, and methane capture from a notoriously toxic landfill in South Africa. One of the most notorious cases is that of the French chemical company, Rhodia, which is anticipating a billion dollars in offset credits in exchange for a $15 million investment in 1970s-vintage technology to destroy the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide in its facility in South Korea. A German study of UN-approved carbon offset projects in 2007 reported that as many as 86 percent of offset-funded projects would likely have been carried out anyway. . . .

Allowing companies to postpone their own greenhouse gas reductions by buying offsets is one Trojan Horse provision in the climate bill that could forestall future progress against the continued disruption of the climate. Another such measure largely prohibits the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to impose future regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. Recall that it was a 2007 Supreme Court decision allowing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant that forced the Bush administration to finally start talking about global warming. Removing this authority represents a massive concession to polluting industries, one that would essentially remove the teeth of enforcement from future measures to forestall climate chaos. . . .

Agribusiness, which is responsible for as much as a quarter of US greenhouse gas emissions, is exempt from the bill’s provisions, but large scale farmers who, for example, reduce tillage by growing crops genetically engineered to withstand megadoses of herbicides, may be eligible for offset credits. Assessments of ethanol’s eligibility as a “renewable fuel” are to exclude its effects on land use, a factor that researchers from Princeton and the University of Minnesota proved decisive in a pair of landmark studies last year, which showed that industrial biofuels are actually net contributors to global warming. Finally, the nuclear industry promises to be a leading beneficiary of the bill’s free allocation of emission allowances; a memo leaked to the Huffington Post reports that Exelon, currently the largest US nuclear power company, expects a $1-1.5 billion annual windfall from the bill.

http://www.counterpunch.org/tokar07022009.html

I’m sorry, I appreciate everyone’s extraordinary knowledge and attention to specificity, but have you seen this guy? He is a dunce. He is everything you would expect of a Sarah Palin devotee. Thankfully, he is from a district where his election won’t matter much. Just saying, thanks for the info but Doug Hoffman is so far over his head that he can’t grasp any of this discourse and may end his term curled up in the fetal position in the House chamber.

james hansen says, “There is no hope that cap and trade can get us back to 350 ppm CO2.”

looks to me like the dems are continuing the republican’s war on science.

i don’t know hoffman. but i do know what james hansen says about the dems’ climate policy. and since hoffman isn’t in charge of climate policy, i don’t think he’s the problem. no matter how dense he may be.

OK. While it is good that his factual lies are brought out to those of us who are already against him, how about the people in the actual district that he wants to represent? Were they informed about these lies? Did this analysis appear in any mainstream publication in NY 23?

Only if they read FDL. In which case, they probably were not going to vote for him anyway.

fairleft I gotta say, I’m becoming quite impressed with your concern troll skills. Well done.

In fairness to Hoffman, before 2004 the GAO was called the General Accounting Office. An interesting conflation of terminology however.

If he wins, move over Michele, Virginia, Joe, Jim, there’s a new looney in town.

glen beck is this guys mentor.

Lies, confusion and paranoia must all be present in order to be real 912er.

By the way, did you realize that the burning of trees in power plants is considered “sustainable” since the trees can just grow back unlike oil or gas.

The only reason politicians make laws is to provide businessmen with a set of rules to sidestep.

Say whatever you want to in this guy’s defense, but the GOPPERs who know him declared that “Doug Hoffman lacked the integrity and qualities needed to be elected to anything — let alone Congress.”

In fact, at least one of the publications in the district has called him out on his lack of substanative knowledge about…well, anything…the people that will elect Hoffman are not going to be persuaded by that. That is not what the election is about. But, the day is not over. And maybe some of those more inclusive folks considered to be less motivated to get out in this election will leave their computers long enough to change the anticipated outcome. Stranger things have happened. Which reminds me, I need to go vote.

You noticed that too, eh? Gonna hafta keep our Cookin’ with Ethel skills honed.

They can all form the wacko caucus in the rethug party.

All I know about him is what I saw on TDS, he appeared stiff and his voice was a drone. He actually appears to not really want the job-his responses to interview about local issues. Are there any voters out there who would believe that he could do constituant services competently? (aside and off topic, but I have a problem with the VA and my local advocate from DAV suggested that I contact a, note the “a”, not “your” representative. So I went along with that and named off all the reps in my area plus my 2 senators. He said that only one rep in the DAV experience in our area had a very good reputation with constituant services, with emphasis on military and VA assistance. Lucky for me that ir turned out he was talking about my representative, who is a dem in a very mostly RED district. The longer he is in office, the more even the reddest of the red rethugs likes him. His name? Ciro D. Rodriguez, dist 23. D Texas.) Once a rep has won an election, it is how he responds to his constituants that decides whether or not he gets reelected.

or you might try what I have done for the last 30 or so years. Vote absentee.
Does your state have early voting? Texas is quite progressive in this area, 2 weeks of early voting so you don’t have the loooong lines on election day.

I did that once a couple years ago. My polling place is about 10 blocks from my home. How lazy can I get that I can’t go 10 blocks? Only speaking for myself. Plus, if there is a line, which is rare, I might make a new friend, or enemy, who knows.

Good thing Hoffman’s not an accountant or something like that. Oh wait, he is…

Hoffman has had a lot of airplay in Montreal because of WPTZ-22. The moment this guy opens his mouth, you understand that the talking points will be botched and repeated ad infinitum. Even Beck should be insulted this guy sees him as a mentor. No offense meant to mentors…

dakine01 and southerndragon, what am i missing? hoffman may be a lying idiot, but the cap and trade bill going through congress is a massive corporate giveaway that will not do what the climate scientists say is necessary to avoid disaster.

It seems like there are some people who don’t understand carbon mitigation policy as well as they do health care policy, if they don’t get that ACES is the same as Obama/Snowe/Lieberman health “reform”:

1. It won’t accomplish reform;

2. While strewing windfalls to entrenched interests.

(In the case of ACES, it would also gut existing EPA authority under the Clean Air Act, affirmed by the SCOTUS itself, which is what the government could be using right this minute to regulate carbon, if Obama had the desire/guts to do it. So the ACES bill would destroy existing real authority and replace it with a fake market-oriented self-regulatory measure which we know won’t work.

Supposedly Boxer-Kerry will “fix” this, and the combined bill won’t contain that measure. Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Then there’s the carbon bubble they’ll try to blow. They’re already licking their chops over at the Goldman carbon-offset desk. That’s just what we need, more asset bubbles. That wouldn’t run counter to the mitigatory goal at all….)

thanks. that’s my impression as well (although i would add that i don’t think the house health insurance reform bill is much better than the obama/snow version – both don’t fix the problem while promoting massive corporate bailouts)