Romney Will Likely Continue Many of Obama's Job Killing Environmental Policies

Patrick Michaels of Cato takes a look at Romney's environmental advisers and doesn't like what he sees.  Romney's head of EPA is likely to be someone who wants "stringent" cap and trade targets and his Secretary of Energy will be the guy behind Solyndra.  This isn't too surprising as apparently he and Obama had the same Science Advisor. Anyway, take a gander at the list:

• Jim Connaughton, Executive Vice President for Baltimore-based Constellation Energy, a very nice and pleasant fellow who ran the Bush climate show as chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). He was flat-out for cap-and-trade legislation (or regulation) of carbon dioxide, advocating a "stringent" target. No one can be for such a plan unless they believe that global warming is a problem so severe that it requires such a major intervention.  He's the number one candidate to be Romney's EPA administrator.

• Brian Hannegan, Vice President for Environment and Renewables at the Electric Power Research Institute.  This actually means "Vice President in support of subsidies and handouts" to power generation technologies that can't compete with natural gas and coal. EPRI has always been the grand master of this Washington game, and a position high in the Romney Administration will only guarantee more of the same.  Hannegan was Chief of Staff at CEQ and would likely work for Connaughton at EPA.

• Andy Karsner, who was Assistant Energy Secretary.  He developed the Department of Energy loan guarantee program that funded Solyndra.  It's a fact that the Bush Administration tried to ram through the Solyndra loan in its final two weeks, but the Department's credit committee held it up subject to further scrutiny, as the Administration's clock expired. When the government pays off your loan for your product that cannot do so, this is known as a subsidy.  Karsner could be Secretary of Energy.

•Jeff Holmstead, head or the Office of Air and Radiation in the G.W. Bush EPA and Associate Counsel for G.HW. Bush, where he was instrumental in getting the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 passed. No doubt  he knew where the words "carbon dioxide" were inserted and what grief they would eventually cause, culminating in EPA's stringent car fuel economy standards and power plant regulations.  While his heart may be in the right place, he's a serial meddler which can only come to no good in Washington.

We can't expect Romney to have particular expertise on climate change, but we can expect that his advisers will help shape his policies and programs, which, given this group, is very scary.

Romney made a tremendous mistake on climate change when he was Governor of Massachusetts, when he tapped John Holdren, a radical population-control advocate, to advise him on his cap-and-trade proposal (!).  Holdren is now President Obama's Science Advisor and is the eminence behind all of the Administration's green shenanigans.