Tesla shares fall as CEO admits job stress is getting to him

Tesla CEO Elon Musk told The New York Times the past year has been the most ‘‘difficult and painful’’ of his career.
Shares of Electric car maker Tesla Inc. tumbled about 9 percent Friday after CEO Elon Musk conceded in a newspaper interview that job stress may be getting the best of him.

Tesla shares closed at $305.50, their lowest level since Aug. 1, as analysts and business professors questioned whether the company’s board should grant Musk a leave or even replace him with a more seasoned CEO. The decline lopped $5.4 billion off Tesla’s market value.

Musk admitted to The New York Times that the past year has been the most ‘‘difficult and painful’’ of his career. The newspaper reported that during an hour-long telephone interview on Thursday, Musk alternated between laughter and tears, acknowledging that he was working up to 120 hours a week and sometimes takes Ambien to get to sleep.

‘‘It’s kind of bizarre,’’ said Charles Elson, director of the corporate governance center at the University of Delaware. ‘‘It’s a drama we shouldn’t be watching.’’

Musk told the Times that he has no plans to give up his dual role as chairman and CEO. ‘‘If you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now,’’ he said.

Tesla’s board showed no sign of taking any action Friday. In a statement to The Associated Press, the directors praised Musk’s dedication to the company.

‘‘Over the past 15 years, Elon’s leadership of the Tesla team has caused Tesla to grow from a small startup to having hundreds of thousands of cars on the road that customers love, employing tens of thousands of people around the world, and creating significant shareholder value in the process,’’ the statement said, without addressing Musk’s recent behavior.

The Times interview puts board members in a difficult position because Musk, who entered Tesla as a major investor and built the company into a force that has changed the perception of electric cars, is the company’s public identity.

SOURCE 





Trump to unveil plan for rolling back Obama-era coal plant regulations

The Trump administration next week plans to formally propose a vast overhaul of climate change regulations that would allow individual states to decide how, or even whether, to curb carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants, according to a summary of the plan and details provided by three people who have seen the full proposal.

The plan would also relax pollution rules for power plants that need upgrades. That, combined with allowing states to set their own rules, creates a serious risk that emissions, which had been falling, could start to rise again, according to environmentalists.

The proposal, which President Trump is expected to highlight Tuesday at a rally in West Virginia, amounts to the administration’s strongest and broadest effort yet to address what the president has long described as a regulatory “war on coal.” It would considerably weaken what is known as the Clean Power Plan, Barack Obama’s signature regulation for cutting planet-warming emissions at coal-fired plants.

That rule, crafted as the United States prepared to enter into the 2015 Paris Agreement on global warming, was the first federal carbon-pollution restriction for power plants. In 2016, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the regulation from taking effect while a federal court heard arguments from a coalition of coal states that sued to block the rule. It remains suspended.

Now, the Trump administration wants to defang the Obama-era rule. The move follows a separate decision this month to freeze Obama-era fuel efficiency standards that were also aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

“These are the two biggest sectors of the economy that contribute to greenhouse gases in the country and are just hugely significant in terms of emissions,” said Janet McCabe, the Environmental Protection Agency air chief under Obama. Together the transportation sector and the power sector account for more than half of the country’s emissions, according to the agency.

“The science is just getting clearer and clearer every day,” McCabe said. “I don’t know how many times people need to hear that we’re having the warmest summer on record or how many storms people need to see. This is no fooling.”

Officials at the White House and the EPA did not respond to requests for comment.

The plan is the latest move in a string of efforts — including prodding grid operators to purchase more electricity from coal plants and asserting that coal plant retirements are threatening the reliability of the national power grid — to end what Trump has called his predecessor’s war on coal and a sure sign to the industry that the Trump administration still has its back, even as coal production continues to decline.

Michelle Bloodworth, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a trade group that represents coal producers, noted that 40 percent of the nation’s coal plants had either been retired or were scheduled to retire.

She put the blame for that on a mix of market conditions and what she called “very stringent” regulations under Obama. But, she said, efforts like Trump’s push to order grid operators to purchase electricity from struggling coal plants along with the new carbon regulations represent a welcome relief for the industry.

“I certainly think we are supportive of what the administration is doing and we applaud their efforts,” she said.

SOURCE 





Taming the EPA Regulatory Hydra: An essential first step

In America’s most powerful, intrusive and costly agency, power resides in one administrator

William L. Kovacs

Since President Trump’s election, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has turned off its massive regulatory printing press. The nation is still here, there have been no man-made environmental catastrophes, and job creation is quickly growing now that the business community is not under the daily fear of another regulation that will slash its profits, force it to lay off employees or put it out of business.

So far, so good. However, if America is to continue its job creation activities, it needs to continue the Trump Administration’s balance between environmental protection and creating jobs and growing businesses. Unfortunately, in the future another anti-business president could be elected.

If the current administrative process and EPA’s organizational structure remain the same, the new, anti-business president could quickly stop economic progress by issuing many billion-dollar regulations that again freeze business activity, while imposing huge extra costs on consumers for everything they purchase from cars, to light bulbs, to housing – once again for little or no health or environmental benefit.

While President Trump ordered EPA to begin deregulatory activity, those efforts take years. To repeal a regulation, the agency must go through the same administrative process it went through to produce the initial regulation.

The Trump administration has started to revise the three most costly regulations: Waters of the United States, the Clean Power Plan and automobile mileage standards. This effort will last well into third or fourth year of the Trump administration – and then the lawsuits will begin. Equally important, while we need wholesale deregulation at EPA, it is likely that this administration will only make a dent in EPA’s historic overreach.

The almost fifty-year history of the EPA regulatory process is like the mythological “Hydra,” a monster with many heads; when one was cut-off, two more grew back. Such an aggressive regulatory process crowned EPA as the most aggressive regulator in history.

EPA alone has published over 25% of all the pages of regulations issued by all the agencies of the Federal Government, and almost twice as many as the much-derided IRS. Of the 28 most costly regulations issued in eight years by the Obama administration, EPA issued 13 of them.

This situation places those seeking a long-term, rational regulatory process at EPA in a quandary. Determining what can be done to tame this monster is a complex undertaking, because stopping new regulations in one administration does not prevent many more regulations from being issued in another.

However, considering EPA administrators of the past, the first change must be to ensure that no single person in the United States government can exercise the massive powers wielded by those past bosses. Such powers determine who gets a permit to operate, and who does not; what technologies a business must use; what lightbulbs are available for your homes; what gas we can buy; what chemicals can be used; where companies can mine; what local land use decisions will survive; and even where a pond can be built on private property.

While the President of the United States has massive powers over war and peace, and sets the operating philosophy of federal agencies, the EPA Administrator has direct power over the business operations … and thus the economy … of the entire nation.

EPA makes the environmental rules we live under. It is the fact finder who determines if we are breaking the rules, the prosecutor of all alleged violations – and the administrative judge who makes the findings of fact, interprets the law, and permits or punishes our actions.

It’s frightening when you think about it how much power one person can have over our lives. Yet, we don’t think about it until the agency wants to “get us.”

How should we restructure EPA to ensure the agency can still protect our environment – while controlling the massive amount of power exercised by one individual?

Several mechanisms would tame this hydra. Perhaps the most important and most effective would be converting EPA from an Executive Branch agency to an independent agency directed by five commissioners: three appointed by the party holding the presidency and two from the other party.

This commission-style agency would limit the power to act by requiring that any final regulation be approved by a majority of the commissioners. While an anti-business president would still appoint a majority of anti-business commissioners, the minority commissioners would have access to all evidence and decision-making documents, and could file dissenting opinions on all final decisions.

These dissents would allow discussion of the flaws in the majority’s reasoning – including facts, science, economics, costs and benefits.

Under the current regulatory process, there is only EPA’s final rule and a record that can run hundreds of thousands of pages. While the public is allowed to comment, the courts usually uphold EPA’s decision if it is “rational,” meaning the agency can point to some part of the record that supports its reasoning, and can conceal or ignore any parts that do not support its reasoning.

Dissenting opinions would ensure that the reviewing court sees the flaws in the majority decision. This would be invaluable for good policy making, since the minority commissioners could also review and present all the science and economics used by the majority. That would enable the minority to keep an out-of-control agency in balance.

Historically, EPA has not provided all the scientific studies and models to the public for review, analysis and comment. Having access to these documents would allow minority commissioners to point out not just flaws, but also deceptions, concealed facts and data, and hidden agendas.

Other actions would enable EPA to bring focus and coordination to the 13 separate statutes it administers, largely in the absence of any mission statement or meaningful congressional direction.

Via email





Australia: National Party supports coal power

The Nationals have urged the federal government to support new coal-fired power plants and lift the ban on nuclear energy.

The party's federal council in Canberra on Saturday passed a motion calling on the government to back building high-energy, low-emissions power stations to provide reliable and affordable power.

A separate proposal from the Young Nationals urging federal and state governments to abolish rules stopping nuclear power plants being built and uranium mining also succeeded.

The call for new coal-fired power station comes as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull fights internal divisions over energy policy.

Resources Minister Matt Canavan reinforced the case for coal, as conservative backbenchers agitate for its use to drive down power bills.

"I don't want to live in a nation where we just export our energy to the rest of the world to help their development, jobs and pensioners," he told the Nationals council.

"We need to use some of that here and we don't think it's a sin to do so."

SOURCE 




Energy Conferees Shut Down Fuel Economy Mandates as Costly to Consumers

NEW ORLEANS—Sterling Burnett doesn’t always want to sit next to someone he doesn’t know on a train, plane, or bus.

But he’s willing to fight for the freedom of those same strangers when it comes time for them to purchase a motor vehicle.

“What I care about is … your freedom to choose the vehicle of your choice,” Burnett, an environmental policy expert for the Heartland Institute, said during a panel discussion at the free-market think tank’s America First Energy Conference that took a critical look at fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks.

“I don’t think government should be in the business of deciding the characteristics of the vehicle you drive,” Burnett said of the so-called Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. “That’s what CAFE standards do. Automobility is a form of freedom.”

Burnett, a senior fellow on environmental policy at the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit research and education organization based in Illinois, espoused the virtues of automotive freedom:

I take the train, I enjoy the train, and we all fly. And I take buses. But sometimes that’s not my alternative and quite frankly, I don’t always want to sit next to strangers. And maybe I want to listen to a particular kind of music or a news program, and I don’t want plugs in my ears.

When I used to commute to work, I enjoyed my time in the car because it was my time and it wasn’t dominated by work. Cars allow [you] to have the freedom to live outside of inner cities, and to visit distant relatives whenever you want. One hundred years ago, you couldn’t do this.

‘Victory for Consumer Choice’

Congress first enacted Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards in 1975 in response to the Arab oil embargo of 1973 that limited gasoline supplies and drove up prices. The idea was to reduce American dependence on foreign oil.

The latest version of CAFE and emissions standards for light-duty vehicles is called SAFE, an acronym for Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Rule for Model Years 2021-2026 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks.

The Trump administration has proposed a rule change that is a joint initiative of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The two agencies are seeking public comment on regulatory options, according to a press release, “including a preferred alternative that locks in [model year] 2020 standards through 2026, providing a much-needed time-out from further, costly increases.”

Nick Loris, an economist with The Heritage Foundation who focuses on energy, environmental, and regulatory issues, credits the Trump administration with moving forward with a proposal that he sees as beneficial to consumers.

“Without a doubt, the Trump administration’s recent proposal is a welcome victory for consumer choice, but also for people who are just concerned about the upfront costs of new cars and new trucks,” Loris said during the panel discussion at the Heartland Institute conference.

“It would be nice if Congress demonstrated similar fortitude and recognized that energy use mandates for vehicles, for dishwashers, and [for] clocks on microwaves are all unnecessary and repealed these standards, but I think that’s wishful thinking.”

Challenging California

The Trump administration’s preferred alternative “reflects a balance of safety, economics, technology, fuel conservation, and pollution reduction” and is expected to reduce road fatalities and injuries, the EPA and highway safety agency say in the press release.

The rule change begins a process to create a new, 50-state standard for fuel economy and tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions for cars and light trucks with the model years 2021 through 2026.

The Obama administration permitted California to set its own auto emissions standards under a federal waiver, but the Trump administration could seek to eliminate the waiver as part of the change.

Twelve states concentrated in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest follow California’s lead with stricter emissions standards, as does the District of Columbia.

The Obama administration worked with state officials in California to set fuel efficiency standards, a key component of Barack Obama’s efforts as president to address climate change.

If the Trump administration proposal is implemented, California and the 12 other states would need to observe the new federal rules on emissions.

 ‘Relics of the Past’

Loris, the Heritage economist, described energy use mandates and CAFE standards as “relics of the past” and byproducts of “politically concocted problems” that put energy consumers at a disadvantage.

Loris said he sees a “systemic problem” in how politicians, pundits, and lobbyists view energy markets.

“The inability of the federal government and regulators to predict what’s going to happen in energy markets” often leads to counterproductive regulatory policies, he said.

For instance, Loris noted, predictions about the price of oil tend to be off the mark.

For a 2008 article, The Wall Street Journal asked “a wide range of economists, energy analysts, and other experts to predict what the price of oil would be at the end of year,” Loris recalled.

Their predictions ranged from a low of $70 per barrel to a high of $167.50. The actual price: $44.60.

Sam Kazman, a panelist who is a lawyer with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, discussed a legal victory he secured on behalf of the Washington-based free-market public policy organization.

A federal appeals court ruled that federal transportation officials illegally concealed how fuel-efficiency standards jeopardized public safety on the highways.

The court found that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration illegally tried “to paper over” the safety issue through a combination of “fudged analysis,” “statistical legerdemain,” “lame claims,” and “specious arguments.”

Keeping Costs Down

Kazman expressed disappointment that avowed consumer-safety champions such as former presidential candidate Ralph Nader didn’t support the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s position against the fuel-efficiency standards.

But to improve public safety through CAFE standards requires officials to “get rid of a government program, rather than expanding it,” he said.

With the proposed rule change, Trump administration officials say they anticipate consumers will experience reduced costs and improved safety.

“The current standards have been a factor in the rising cost of new automobiles to an average of $35,000 or more—out of reach for many American families,” the EPA’s release says, adding:

Indeed, compared to the preferred alternative in the proposal, keeping in place the standards finalized in 2012 would add $2,340 to the cost of owning a new car, and impose more than $500 billion in societal costs on the U.S. economy over the next 50 years.

Officials also point to a study earlier this year by the highway safety agency that found newer vehicles are safer than older vehicles now on the road, and their wider use would result in fewer fatalities and injuries.

“What the Trump administration has done is stunning,” Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said during another panel examining the administration’s progress on energy policy.

“They have kicked California out of setting the CAFE standard,” Ebell said. “They have done everything right, and it is great for consumer choice.”

SOURCE 

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