The Environmentalists Are Not On Your Side.

The Environmentalists Are Not On Your Side. by The Elephant's Child

February 17, 2011, 9:23 pm
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Energy, Statism | Tags: Evil Environmentalism, Persia of the West, Six Times Saudi Arabia's Reserves

(click to enlarge)
Today,  Steven Hayward wrote about his basic axiom about environmentalists and energy. He called it “Hayward’s First Law of Green Thermodynamics” and this is how it goes:

There is no source of energy, no matter how clean, that left-environmentalists won’t oppose if it becomes practical to scale up.

He warned the natural gas coalition that natural gas interests are likely to find that in the fullness of time they will become the next target of environmentalist opposition once coal in interred next to nuclear power.  The “bridge” of natural gas will turn out to be a drawbridge, which environmental opposition will seek to draw up and close off, strangling or stranding many investments.

— Next day: Politico reports that the Sierra Club, already in a declared war on coal,  is considering calling for natural gas to be phased out by 2050 — about 20 years after it wants coal eliminated.  Deputy executive director Bruce Hamilton says “We want people to know that natural gas is not a clean fuel and it needs to be cleaned up before it can be an acceptable fuel.”

—You know, it just might be cheaper to eliminate the Sierra Club.   It would  spare us all sorts of trouble.

— European countries are busily exploring for shale deposits. Many have been discovered in Germany. They are eagerly adapting the American technology.

— On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the Obama administration is going to take a “fresh look” at oil shale leasing rules put forward in 2008 by President George W. Bush to develop oil-rich land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.  The Bush rules would have opened u about 2 million acres of federal land in what is knows as the Green river Formation to the possible commercial-scale development of oil shale and tar sands. Can’t have that!

—The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the region may hold more than 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, six times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia and enough to meet U.S. oil needs for the next two centuries.

—Earthjustice, a greenie litigation group, filed two federal lawsuits against the rules in January  on behalf of 13 environmental groups. They claimed that oil shale production techniques had not been perfected and not been reviewed. They also claimed that royalties paid to the government were set too low. Uh huh. Mr. Hayward was right.

— When the Soviet Union collapsed, the die hard communists joined the environmental movement as the best thing they had going to strive for social justice. Green on the outside, red on the inside. They want you dependent on wind and solar, which simply will not work.

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