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Cato Daily Dispatch for July 24, 2003

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(Links to outside sources were active as of the date of this dispatch; however, not all news sources maintain links to current stories indefinitely. Some links also may require registration.)

Bush Administration to Study Global Warming

"The Bush administration will announce today final details of a 10-year plan to study global climate change to determine whether greenhouse gases and other human-generated pollutants have contributed to an unnatural warming of Earth's atmosphere," reports The Washington Post.

"The new initiatives marked the latest effort by President Bush to take the high ground in the climate change debate. Environmentalists roundly criticized him less than three months after taking office in 2001, when he dismissed the Kyoto agreement on global warming, saying it exempted developing countries and would harm the U.S. economy. Bush's critics say the preponderance of scientific opinion holds that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping industrial and tailpipe gases are responsible for a trend that has the potential to alter global climate in profound and perhaps catastrophic ways."

In "Brave New Climate," Patrick Michaels, Cato Institute senior fellow in environmental studies, writes: "I sincerely doubt that a panel of the most esteemed ecologists would argue that we should bring planetary temperature down. Perhaps the most logical temperature would be the average since the last big ice age, 11,000 years ago, about a degree warmer than today. The flowering of human civilization and its co-evolution with Earth's biota are the hallmark of the post-ice age regime. Consequently, it's a pretty good argument that the mean temperature during this period is a salubrious one."

"One could hone it a bit more," he writes. "The actual dawn of civilization occurred in a period climatologists used to call the 'climatic optimum' (before the current era of 'climatic hysteria') when the mean surface temperature was 1-2ºC warmer than today."

House Closer to Free-Trade Agreements with Chile and Singapore

"House Republicans yesterday blocked a Democratic attempt to set some of the terms for pending trade deals with Canada and Latin American countries, and then cleared the way for final House approval of free-trade agreements with Chile and Singapore," according to the The Washington Post.

In "Free-Trade Agreements: Steppingstones to a More Open World," Daniel T. Griswold, associate director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies, writes: "Free-trade agreements deviate from the multilateral principle of nondiscrimination, and they can divert trade from more efficient to less efficient but favored import producers. But under the right conditions, FTAs can inject new competition into our domestic economy, lowering prices for consumers and shifting factors of production to more efficient uses, while leveling the playing field for U.S. exporters."

He goes on to say: "Despite their peculiarities and incremental nature, free-trade agreements can serve the cause of freedom and development by breaking down barriers to trade between nations. If crafted according to sound principles, free-trade agreements can serve America's economic and foreign policy interests."

Davis to Face Recall Vote

"The drive to remove Gov. Gray Davis from office qualified for the ballot Wednesday, clearing the way for a campaign unlike any other in California history," according to the Los Angeles Times.

"Barring intervention by the California Supreme Court, the certification of the gubernatorial recall, announced by Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, meant Davis would face a popular vote of confidence in late September or early October, less than a year after he was reelected."

Davis received an 'F' in the Cato Institute's "Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors: 2002." The graders, Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski, write that Davis "has become one of the biggest spending governors in California history."

During Davis's first term in office, California's budget grew by 40 percent and its $10 billion budget surplus turned into a $24 billion deficit, according to their report. Moore and Slivinski call Davis's fiscal performance "one of severe budget bungling and overspending." They say Davis "had as economically destructive a first term as any governor."

Wyatt Dubois, editor, wdubois@cato.org