PoliticalAction.com Blog

WASHINGTON, DC – President Barack Obama today announced that the Federal Government will reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution by 28 percent by 2020. Reducing and reporting GHG pollution, as called for in Executive Order 13514 on Federal Sustainability, will ensure that the Federal Government leads by example in building the clean energy economy. Actions taken under this Executive Order will spur clean energy investments that create new private-sector jobs, drive long-term savings, build local market capacity, and foster innovation and entrepreneurship in clean energy industries.

As the single largest energy consumer in the U.S. economy, the Federal
Government spent more than $24.5 billion on electricity and fuel in 2008
alone. Achieving the Federal GHG pollution reduction target will reduce
Federal energy use by the equivalent of 646 trillion BTUs, equal to 205
million barrels of oil, and taking 17 million cars off the road for one
year. This is also equivalent to a cumulative total of $8 to $11 billion
in avoided energy costs through 2020.

“As the largest energy consumer in the United States, we have a
responsibility to American citizens to reduce our energy use and become more efficient,” said President Obama. “Our goal is to lower costs, reduce pollution, and shift Federal energy expenses away from oil and towards local, clean energy.”

Federal Departments and Agencies will achieve greenhouse gas pollution
reductions by measuring their current energy and fuel use, becoming more energy efficient and shifting to clean energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal. Examples of agency actions that are underway are available on the White House Council on Environmental Quality website and can be found at www.whitehouse.gov/ceq.

On October 5, 2009, President Obama signed Executive Order 13514 on Federal Sustainability, setting measureable environmental performance goals for Federal Agencies. Each Federal Agency was required to submit a 2020 GHG pollution reduction target from its estimated 2008 baseline to the White House Council on Environmental Quality and to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget by January 4, 2010. The Federal target announced today is the aggregate of 35 Federal Agency self-reported targets.

Greenhouse gas emissions serve as a useful metric to measure the
effectiveness of agency energy and fuel efficiency efforts as well as
renewable energy investments. Agencies are already taking actions that will contribute towards achieving their targets, such as installing solar arrays at military installations, tapping landfills for renewable energy, putting energy management systems in Federal buildings, and replacing older vehicles with more fuel efficient hybrid models.

As a next step, the Office of Management and Budget will validate and score each agency’s sustainability plan, assuring a long-term return on
investment to the American taxpayer. To ensure accountability, annual
progress will be measured and reported online to the public.

June 24, 2009

Dear Friend of Liberty,

Congress is trying to skyrocket your cost of living while putting another 1 million-plus Americans out of work. And they want to do it before the week is out.

You see, the bill (HR2454) currently in the House is really nothing more than a thinly disguised energy tax that will hit every single American.

And now Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats are pushing this tax hike toward a vote that could come as soon as Friday.

That’s why we need to act now.

I have included the office number for your Representative, Allyson Y. Schwartz, but first I want you to understand the disastrous consequences of this Cap-and-Tax Scheme.

By invasively manipulating an already over-regulated energy industry, this legislation seeks to fix an alleged problem that has recently been discredited by over 31,478 scientists — including over 3,803 with specific expertise in atmospheric, earth, and environmental sciences.

All 31,478 of these scientists are trained to understand and evaluate the scientific data relevant to the human-caused global warming hypothesis — and are speaking out against government remedies.

With this bill, Congress is once again just doing what it does best — fleecing taxpayers to further an alarmist agenda.

You see, energy companies just pass the costs of these draconian regulations through to the consumer in the form of huge price increases.

As a result, you will pay higher gas prices, higher electric prices, and higher costs for goods.

Barack Obama has estimated the costs of this legislation to American taxpayers to be over 650 BILLION dollars over the next eight years, and that figure is no doubt just a fraction of the real cost.

But even that modest estimate amounts to hundreds of dollars a year in increased living expenses for every family — and will more likely cost thousands a year.

And according to the Heritage Foundation, between 1.2 and 2.3 million jobs could be lost over the next ten-years due to the bill’s stifling regulations.

This current economic crisis is no time for Congress to consider both raising prices on hard-working Americans AND costing them jobs.

That’s why we must act now to send a message to Congress to reject this disastrous Cap-and-Tax Scheme.

Call now and ask for the staff member that deals with Energy policy. Politely but firmly tell them that you are opposed to this costly government power grab.

Supporters of the legislation are of course trying to downplay the cost of this scheme to the American people.

But if the bill does not directly and massively increase energy costs to consumers, how would it possibly achieve its stated aims?

It is only through these massive cost increases — mandated and enforced by the federal government — that the dubious goal of reducing carbon emissions could possibly be reached. The only alternative to huge energy price increases would be massive, government-ordered power outages, leaving Americans literally in-the-dark like some war-torn Third World Country.

So please call your representative at and speak out in opposition to this hidden tax.

You’ve shown what an impact grassroots action can make toward Auditing the Fed.

Let’s unleash that same R3volution in opposition to this Big Government Cap-and-Tax Scheme.

In Liberty,

John Tate
President

P.S. Congress is trying to skyrocket your cost of living with hidden taxes from the Cap-and-Trade Bill. Call your Representative and speak out in opposition of this hidden tax hike and expansion of Big Government.

Dear Congressperson, (Viewers please feel free to customize for your own purposes)

Please Vote NO on H.R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill because I can’t afford the increased expenses it would lead to for businesses in general and me in particular. It would serve as a new hidden tax on all Americans. As President Obama said in 2008,

“[U]nder my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

An expensive new “tax” bill will be considered on the floor of the House as early as this Friday, June 26. This bill is known as the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” H.R. 2454, also known as the Waxman-Markey climate change bill.

Most Americans know this bill as a “cap-and-trade” bill for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming by creating a system of pollution permits that energy companies must buy before releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

There are several very important reasons for Americans to oppose this bill:

(1) At exactly the time when more and more Americans are realizing that our federal government is out of control, this bill would establish a whole new unconstitutional activity of the federal government and give it yet another regulatory tool for increasing the cost of doing business, which would necessarily translate into higher costs for consumers.

(2) This bill would lead to increased expenses for American households of thousands of dollars per year. A recent Congressional Budget Office report estimated that the cost per household would be as little as $175 per year. However, the Heritage Foundation has responded with “CBO Grossly Underestimates Costs of Cap and Trade,” in which they point out that the CBO study assumes nearly 100% of the increased costs for businesses will be rebated to consumers by the federal government (when has this ever happened?) and omits consideration of negative impacts on the economy of thousands of dollars per household. Bottom line, don’t rely on the CBO report to be an accurate forecast of the additional costs you’ll be paying each year due to this cap and trade bill. For additional analysis of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, see “The Waxman-Markey Global Warming Bill: Is the Economic Pain Justified by the Environmental Gain?”

(3) The whole reason for existence of the expensive cap and trade scheme in H.R. 2454 is based on the global warming myth that man’s activities are producing significant temperature increases. Take a cold bath in reality by reading “A Cooling Trend Toward Global Warming.”

We must not provide the federal government with new powers to regulate businesses that would lead to at least hundreds of dollars of new expenses per household each year and more likely to thousands of dollars of new expenses per year.

Take action now and help preserve your freedom and prosperity by telling your representative in the U.S. House that you are strongly opposed to the cap and trade bill, H.R. 2454!

Sincerely,
Your Constituents

Greener Cows: Farmers change their cows’ diets to reduce burps, major source of greenhouse gas

* By Lisa Rathke, Associated Press Writer
* On Sunday June 21, 2009, 11:22 am EDT

COVENTRY, Vt. (AP) — Vermont dairy farmers Tim Maikshilo and Kristen Dellert, mindful of shrinking their carbon footprint, have changed their cows’ diet to reduce the amount of gas the animals burp — dairy cows’ contribution to global warming.

Coventry Valley Farm is one of 15 Vermont farms working with Stonyfield Farm Inc., whose yogurt is made with their organic milk, to reduce the cows’ intestinal methane by feeding them flaxseed, alfalfa, and grasses high in Omega 3 fatty acids. The gas cows belch is the dairy industry’s biggest greenhouse gas contributor, research shows, most of it emitted from the front and not the back end of the cow.

“I just figured a cow was a cow and they were going to do whatever they were going to do in terms of cow things for gas,” said Dellert. “It was pretty shocking to me that just being organic wasn’t enough, actually. I really thought that here we’re organic, we’re doing what we need to do for the planet, we’re doing the stuff for the soil and I really thought that was enough.”

She learned it wasn’t. The dairy industry contributes about 2 percent to the country’s total greenhouse gas production, said Rick Naczi, a vice president at Dairy Management Inc., which funds research and promotes dairy products. Most of it comes from the cow, the rest from growing feed crops for the cattle to processing and transporting the milk.

To satisfy consumers’ demands for sustainable production, the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy in Rosemont, Ill., is looking at everything from growing feed crops to trucking milk to reduce the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. That would be the equivalent of removing about 1.25 million cars from U.S. roads every year, said Naczi, who manages the program.

One way is by feeding cows alfalfa, flax and grasses, all high in Omega 3s, instead of corn or soy, said Nancy Hirschberg, head of Stonyfield’s Greener Cow Project. The feed rebalances the cows’ rumen, the first stomach of ruminants, and cuts down on gas, she said. Another way is to change the bacteria in a cow’s rumen, Naczi said.

When Stonyfield first analyzed its contribution to global warming in the late 1990s, the company thought its factory in Londonderry, N.H., produced the most greenhouse gases.

“And when we got the report and our number one impact on climate change was the milk production, we were completely stunned,” she said.

A study showed that the single biggest source was the cow’s enteric emissions: gas.

The company funded energy audits on farms and research on small manure digesters so farmers could produce energy from methane gas.

But Hirschberg said she had no idea what to do about enteric emissions. Then she learned what Group Danone of France, majority owner of Stonyfield and best known in the U.S. for its Dannon products, was doing about its methane.

By feeding their cows alfalfa, flax and grasses, they were cutting down on the gas passed.

The milk is tested at a lab at the University of Vermont to determine its fat content, a process patented by French nutrition company Valorex SAS, through which the enteric emissions are calculated.

Since January, Coventry Valley Farm has reduced its cows’ belches by 13 percent. At another farm, they’ve gone down 18 percent.

Maikshilo and Dellert have also noticed a difference in Hester, Rosebud, Pristine and their other cows. The coats of the black and white Holsteins and brown Jerseys are shinier and they’ve had fewer foot problems and no stomach ailments, they say.

So far, it hasn’t cost them any more for their custom-made grain, which the cows only get in the winter. Now they’re out grazing on grass in the pasture, getting as many Omega 3s. And the farm’s vet bills have gone down.

It’s a win-win for farmers, said Naczi.

“It’s just the right thing to do,” he said.

Stonyfield Farm Inc.’s Greener Cow progam: http://www.stonyfield.com/GreenerCow/