Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Election 2012, Energy, Junk Science, Liberalism | Tags: Inadequate Investigation, Solyndra Bankruptcy, Squandering Taxpayer Money
And these voices are from some of the members of the media most in the tank for Obama. Experienced investors were even more dubious.
Filed under: Capitalism, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, Politics, Religion, United Nations | Tags: Conference on Sustainable Development, Hold Back Human Progress, World Wildlife Fund
Are you familiar with the World Wildlife Fund? Huge, wealthy worldwide organization, preserving wildlife, caring for the environment, doing good environmental works. If you visit their website and look at their board of directors, it’s an impressive list of the prominent and very well-to-do.
The other face of the World Wildlife Fund is as an extremist green campaigning group. In their just-issued Living Planet Report for 2012, they state that economic growth should be abandoned, that citizens of the world’s wealthy nations should prepare for poverty and that all the human race’s energy should be produced as renewable electricity within 38 years from now.
The hard greens demand that the enormous numbers of wind farms, tidal barriers and solar arrays required under their plans should be built while at the same time severely rationing supplies of concrete, steel, copper and glass. The document is endorsed by the European Space Agency (ESA) an organization which would cease to exist were the document’s recommendations to be fully carried out. They’re important. Nobody said they had to make sense.
Ben Pile, the convenor of the Oxford Salon, said simply: “The real enemy is humanity itself.”
At Rio+20 next month, the world’s elites will meet in Brazil with the aim of holding back human progress.
Forty years ago, two ideas about humanity’s relationship with the natural world caught the imagination of the richest and most influential people. The first was that the demands of a growing population were taking more from the planet than could be replaced by natural processes. The second, related idea was that there exist natural ‘limits to growth’. These two reinventions of Malthusianism became the basis of a new form of global politics, which has sought to contain human industrial and economic development ever since.
Organizations like the WWF draw their supporters for emotional reasons. Love of baby animals, love of large and noble species like African elephants, pandas, rhinoceros, giraffes; beautiful photography can be very moving.
Fears of out-of-control population growth led Malthus and then Paul Erlich, author of the 1968 prophecy The Population Bomb to fear that we would run out of food, and humanity would starve. Fortunately Norman Borlaug came along with the Green Revolution, and put that worry aside.
The Club of Rome, a talk-shop for diplomats, noted politicians and researchers fostered the development of all sorts of organizations and conferences and commissions designed to save the world. An entire ecosystem of global, national, governmental and non-governmental organizations has emerged to advocate closer integration of human productive life with environmental care and to observe “the limits to growth.” Most notable is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which seeks a global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Well, all the predictions of doom didn’t happen. Average life-expectancy has increased by 10 years, the number of infants dying before the age of five has fallen from 134 per thousand to 58 per thousand. Human population has nearly doubled, and we are healthier, wealthier (even in spite of the recent downturns) and global GDP has risen threefold. We’ve learned to grow more food on less land, cured diseases, and made amazing progress, but those who joined the church of the doomed have established “sustainable development’ as an imperative of global politics. The first ‘Earth Summit’ was held in Rio leading to Agenda 21 and ‘the blueprint for a sustainable planet.’
If you are perpetually worried about very big things, with other, um, planetary leaders, you are moving in rarefied circles.The conferences are held in the world’s finest resorts, the finest people attend, the finest food and drink is served, and you discuss the finest subjects. It seems quite proper to be discussing surrendering national autonomy, solving the problem of world poverty, solving the problems on inequality.
What if you think we do pretty well with progress, that an emphasis on sustainability is not particularly useful, and that in general the planet is in pretty good shape? Doesn’t matter. These NGOs, world leaders, celebrities, and environmentalists have moved to a higher level where no such dissent is allowed. These meetings are already far beyond democratic control. The slogan is “global problems need global solutions.”
It is simply another political drive for power, this time on running the world. The participants, drunk on the association with the most important people and the most important ideas, think big thoughts. Easy. All the real dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and the real enemy is humanity itself.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Energy, Junk Science, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear | Tags: "Clean" Energy, And Other Fantasies, Green Jobs
Obama hasn’t a lot to brag about in the way of economic recovery, so he’s trying his best to distract from the economy and turn your attention elsewhere. There is the War on Women, elevated from a matter of taxpayers not feeling that it is necessary for them to pay for women’s birth-control pills ($9. a month or less) into a vast right-wing conspiracy depriving all women of voting age of all rights to everything. The Saga of Julia was just another attempt to make the ‘war’ more believable, but that didn’t work either. How about all his ‘investments’ in clean energy?
Can President Obama name one clean energy success? In an ad campaign from President Obama, a man claims his job was saved by President Obama’s meddling in the auto industry. The man works for Johnson Controls, a company that received $299 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies from the stimulus and promised to build two factories in the United States. They built one in this country and will build the other one in Hungary. They will also be laying off workers in coming months.
A Congressional hearing on May 16 exposed more Obama Cronyism. BrightSource Energy received an even bigger loan guarantee from DOE than Solyndra did. They received $1.6 billion in April last year. Their CEO claimed that the Ivanpah project would create 1,400 jobs, which would amount to $1,43 million per job. The BrightSource chairman was nominated to be Commerce Secretary, and the company has become known as “politically connected.”
First Solar received $1.46 billion in loan guarantees, but announced last month that it will lay off another 2,000 employees. On May 7, they reported lst quarter losses of 8 cents a share, a 12% revenue decline. They are expected to join Solyndra in bankruptcy soon.
Willard & Kelsey Solar Group has gone bankrupt, but claimed they only received money from Ohio taxpayers, but they actually got $6 million from Obama’s green energy loan program as well.
A123 Systems, an electric car battery maker who shipped faulty batteries to Fisker Automotive, has seen its stock fall to $1 and is filing for bankruptcy. They got $279 million from taxpayers
Solar Trust for America declared bankruptcy on Monday after receiving a conditional commitment of $2.3 billion in loan guarantees from the Dept. of Energy. Secretary Chu hailed it as “the largest amount ever offered to a solar project.” But they never got the money.
Abound Solar announced on 2/29/12 that they were laying off 280 workers, a 70% reduction in their workforce. They received 400 million from DOE’s loan program.
Ener1, a lithium-ion battery maker filed for bankruptcy. Ener1 owns EnerDel which received $118.5 million from Obama’s “green” energy stimulus plan.
Amonix, a solar company touted by President Obama in 2010 has laid off 200 of its 300 employees. They got $5.9 million.
These energy companies were supported by Obama’s energy stimulus, and are failing or have already filed for bankruptcy. There are lots more stories , and more will come out over time. It will probably be buried on the back pages of compliant media, who hope you won’t notice.
- Evergreen Solar
- SpectraWatt
- Solyndra (received $535 million)
- Beacon Power (received $43 million)
- AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy
- Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million)
- SunPower (received $1.5 billion)
- First Solar (received $1.46 billion)
- Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million)
- Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million)
- Amonix (received 5.9 million)
- The National Renewable Energy Lab
- Fisker Automotive
- Abound Solar (received $400 million)
- Chevy Volt (taxpayers basically own GM)
- Solar Trust of America
- A123 Systems (received $279 million)
- Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (received $6 million)
- Johnson Controls (received $299 million)
There are also loans to foreign clean energy companies. It is estimated that 80% of these loans went to President Obama’s campaign donors. The President claims that he has created 2.7 million clean energy jobs. But it looks as if a remarkable number of those were considerably more temporary than expected.
ADDENDUM: More of Obama’s unfortunate “investments.”
- Raser Technologies ($33 million grant) bankrupt.
- ECOTotality $126.2 million for electric car chargers ($45 million in losses) insider trading investigation.
According to Peter Schweizer, 71% of Obama Energy Department grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democrat party. Collectively, they raised $457,834 for the Obama Campaign, and were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 Billion.” The Energy Department’s Inspector General has launched more than 100 criminal investigations” according to Politico, related to the department’s green energy programs.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Global Warming | Tags: Exterminating Humanity, Irrationally Green, Up With Dictators
Finnish writer Pentti Linkola is an ecological radical. He demands that the human population of the world reduce its size to around 500 million, abandon modern technology and the pursuit of economic growth. He compares the Earth today to an overflowing lifeboat.
“What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.”
He believes that the apocalyptic climactic changes that will soon effect us here in humanity land but he chooses to be brutally honest and says that we’ve already missed our chance to curb the damage to the world, so we must begin the elimination of human and technological excesses now.
“A minority can never have any other effective means to influence the course of matters but through the use of violence.”
“Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth.”
“We will have to…learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves.”
“Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed.”
“If the present amount of Earth’s population is preserved and is reduced only by the means of birth control, then:
Birthgiving must be licensed. To enhance population quality, genetically or socially unfit homes will be denied offspring, so that several birth licenses can be allowed to families of quality.
Energy production must be drastically reduced. Electricity is allowed only for the most necessary lighting and communications.
This man is clearly a lot more worried about global warming than I am, but there are those who go even further. Back to the Pleistocene! He sees America as the root of the problem:
The United States symbolizes the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom.
He has called for “some trans-national body like the U.N. ” to reduce the population via nuclear weapons or with bacteriological and chemical attacks.” Ecologists of this stripe have so glorified “nature” that they become freedom-hating authoritarians, who want control over their fellow humans. They cannot grasp that humans are a natural product of nature and a part of it. They have no interest in meeting the challenges of life on earth, but want government central planning and humans obediently to fall in line.
So he’s a nutcase, but he is not alone. I wonder how many of them inhabit the corridors of the EPA He celebrates, on his website, the Earth Liberation Front, the German Ecofascist Movement, Thomas Malthus and the Unabomber Manifesto. And he has a following.— hopefully very small. But these apocalyptic authoritarians keep popping up, you can probably name several of them.
There are, however, a number of authors who argue openly that democracy itself is the true obstacle and needs to be abandoned. We need to be aware of the nature of the opposition.
Filed under: Environment, History, News, Science/Technology | Tags: Eruption, Mount St. Helens, Natural Disasters, Volcano
[Ed. note: the following was originally posted in 2008 on this infamous day]
Chances are, if you’re not from Washington or Oregon, the date May 18th has little meaning to you. Heck, even around here many don’t think of it unless someone reminds them. But I remember — every year. It’s one of the only world events I remember from back then — I was very young after all; but the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on May 18, 1980 was just the kind of event that little boys remember forever.
We were very fortunate; the mountain exploded northwards, but the winds carried the ash-cloud away to the southeast. I remember being somewhat disappointed that the ash wasn’t turning day into night for us like it was for all the people on the television. In fact, we didn’t seem to get any ash-fall at all, much to my chagrin; while people on the other side of the mountain were measuring it in inches, like snow.
So much excitement! …and so little pay off.
About the most exciting thing I personally experienced was standing on my father’s roof to see the enormous plume looking fairly small and unimpressive so many miles away. I’m not sure if we heard the explosion or not. They say people heard it as far as 700 miles away, and we were certainly much closer than that. I think we did — but that could just be my memory playing tricks on me.
So close, and yet so far. But I still remember it every year.
Where were you?
Update: Michael Rubin at the Corner links to an excellent photo montage on the eruption and the aftermath.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Education, Global Warming, Politics | Tags: Food Stamps, Graduate Degrees, Higher Education
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, between 2007 and 2010, the percentage of people with a graduate degree who were on food stamps or were receiving another kind of federal aid more than doubled, reaching 360,000.
In 2007, 9776 people with PhDs were receiving some kind of aid. In 2010 that number had more than tripled to 33,655. For people with Master’s degrees, the number spiked from 101,683 to 293,029. Austin Nichols of the Urban Institute crunched those numbers for The Chronicle using census data.
Walter Russell Mead surveys the situation:
And we have nothing but admiration for the love of knowledge that leads young people to want to study these fields in greater depth.
But that respect and affection shouldn’t blind us to the sad reality that much of the American academy today works as a Ponzi scheme. PhD programs in many fields are churning out grads for whom no jobs will ever be found. They have to produce excess grads because if they cut back enrollment, the programs would be too small to justify the continued employment of their current staff. …
Worse, if we decided to cut the number of programs so that the number of job openings matched the number of PhD graduates each year, the number of job openings would crash. Currently, suppose that 200 professors of medieval history retire or otherwise leave the field each year; that would mean we need 200 new PhDs each year to replace them.
The jobs of the current practitioners depend on recruiting a steady stream of new hopefuls into the profession, even though many of those new hopefuls won’t get jobs themselves. This is pretty much how Ponzi schemes work, and besides being unfair to the young, it undercuts the integrity of the teacher-student relationship and it puts the whole scholarly enterprise under a dark ethical cloud.
The Baby Boom started all this. Colleges and Universities expanded like crazy to cope with the army of new students. The first 18 year-olds started college in 1963, and the numbers increased exponentially until the peak year of 1977, and dropped off precipitously in the baby bust. These same years saw students avoiding the Vietnam War by staying in school for advanced degrees. We have had a temporary boom in the need for PhDs as anyone who could think up a grant proposal linking their specialty to global warming became deeply involved in some kind of (profitable) climate research. There is a higher education bubble, and it is collapsing. Mead adds:
This is beginning to break down. Governments — federal, state and local — have less money for higher ed, and the student loan burden is becoming insupportable.
The current system will change. It imposes unsustainable costs of society at large even as it leads tens of thousands of aspiring professors down the primrose path to the food stamp line.
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Filed under: Election 2012, Global Warming, Islam, Middle East, Military, Politics, The United States | Tags: Afghanistan, Electoral Politics, The American Military
Uncle Jimbo, from Blackfive, takes exception to President Obama’s ‘strategy’ in Afghanistan. He wouldn’t have gone for the idea that the troops were fighting on Obama’s behalf either. The administration’s plans to ‘dialogue’ with the Taliban seem to be some vague part of the ‘strategy,’ whatever that is. It seems to be about— getting out before the election. There’s certainly a lot of rather large problems that must succumb to electoral politics.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Energy, Junk Science, National Security, Progressivism | Tags: "Beyond Gas", Radical Environmental Organizations, The Sierra Club
You are familiar with the Sierra Club, aren’t you? They have those lovely books and calendars with famed photographer Ansel Adams pictures of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. All the bookstores have them. The Sierra Club was founded as an environmental organization devoted to protecting Yosemite, the Sierras and the Redwoods. Did you know that it has become one of the most radical environmental organizations in the world?
They have just declared war on the natural-gas industry. The Sierra Club already has their “Beyond Coal” campaign, and “Beyond Oil,” and they are renaming their efforts against natural gas as “Beyond Gas”. Clever.
Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said “As we push to retire coal plants, we’re going to work to make sure we’re not simultaneously switching to natural-gas infrastructure. And we’re going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can.
Perhaps you have read about the new discoveries of massive supplies of energy found in shale deposits, and thought gratefully about the possibility that your energy bills would go down. Not so fast. The environmental organizations and the Left want the country to depend on “clean energy,” which is, so far, embodied entirely in wind farms and solar arrays. It is hard to understand their motivation: they are zealots, they are dimwits, they are useful idiots?
•In 2011, the United States produced 23.0 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it the world’s largest natural gas producer.• In 2011 the U.S. produced 5.67 million barrels of oil, making it the world’s third largest oil producer. •The U.S. has 261 billion tons of coal in its proved coal reserves. •These are the world’s largest coal reserves and over 27 percent of the world’s proved coal reserves. •Proved conventional oil reserves worldwide more than doubled from 642 billion barrels in 1980 to more than 1.3 trillion barrels in 2009. •The U.S. has 486 billion tons of coal in its demonstrated reserve base, enough domestic coal to use for the next 485 years at current rates of consumption. •This doesn’t include Alaska’s coal resources, which according to government estimates, are larger than those in the lower 48 states. • The world could hold more than 700 quadrillion (700,000 trillion ) cubic feet of methane hydrates — more energy than all other fossil fuels.
♦In 2011, wind power produced 1.2 percent of the energy used in the United States. ♦ In 2011, solar power produced 0.1 percent of the energy used in the United States. ♦ In 2011, hydroelectric power contributed 3.3 percent of the energy used in the United States and 7.9 percent of the electricity. ♦ There are 104 nuclear reactors in the U.S. and construction for all began prior to 1974.
Since 1970, the six “criteria pollutants” have declined by 63 percent, even though the generation of electricity from coal-fired plants has increased by over 180 percent.
The subsidies for wind energy are running out as they were part of Obama’s stimulus plan. If they are not renewed, the wind industry probably cannot survive on its own without governmental force. Aside from all the scandal and crony capitalism in the “renewables” field, wind and solar combined cannot produce the energy we need to keep warm in the winter and cool in the summer. People die from the cold. Germany now has 15% fuel poverty — people cannot pay for the energy they need. Britain has had huge problems with fuel poverty— it wasn’t long ago that British seniors were buying up used books at jumble sales to burn for fuel. And the earth is cooling instead of warming.
The zealots apparently believe that if they just give enough money to their well-connected friends who are involved with “renewable energy” that the industry will somehow take off. If they just ban enough of our cheap, abundant resources, then people will be forced to use “renewable energy,” and if they switch us all to electric cars — oh wait, the electricity for our electric cars is produced by coal-fired or gas-fired plants. Well, they’ll force us all onto light rail and high-speed trains — oh wait… You will notice if you are paying close attention that the term “renewable energy” has dropped from favor, and been replaced by “clean energy”— the “renewable” bit only worked when we were running out of fossil fuels. Now that they are truly plentiful, they have to come up with another tactic. Just imagine if we eliminated coal and eliminated natural gas! Basic, elementary common sense and logic fail. Besides that, remember than wind and solar require 24/7 backup from regular coal or gas-fired power plants. How is this possibly supposed to work? Are they zealots, dimwits or useful idiots?
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Environment, Junk Science | Tags: Big Brother, Eco-Totalitarianism, Moving Ahead for Progress
You can always tell when the Democrats have come up with a bill by the name. I thought the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” was a pretty pretentious name as ObamaCare neither protects patients nor makes anything affordable. Now comes the prospective Senate Bill 1813 the “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act.” I reject anything named the 21st Century anything, but “Moving Ahead for Progress”— oh, puhleeze.
It gives the IRS the power to revoke passports belonging to those who are delinquent with tax debt in excess of $50,000. (That keeps a lot of Obama administration people safely at home). The potential law may also be used to measure your carbon footprint each time you get in your car.
The legislation makes it mandatory for all new cars in the U.S. to be fitted with black box-like recorders beginning in 2015. Called “Mandatory Event Data Recorders,” the devices would be capable of monitoring your speed, driving habits, braking habits, miles driven, location and distance of travel. Removal of the device would be a civil offense. The measurements would remain the property of the vehicle owner, but the government would have the authority to retrieve the data.
This is most probably another innovation of the Greens. They are very anxious to control your use of energy, and shutting down most sources of energy in favor of what they conceive of as clean energy continues unabated. Just wait till you get your Smart Meter and are connected to the Home Area Network.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Environment, Freedom, History, Junk Science, Politics | Tags: Environmentalism, Private Property, Property Rights
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Filed under: Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, Science/Technology | Tags: A Cold Climate is Bad, Carbon Emissions are Good, The Medieval Warm Period
I was going to ignore Earth Day because I think it is profoundly silly, and I don’t want to encourage the perpetually discontented doom-mongers.
Carbon Dioxide is a natural product that is one of the building blocks of life. Increased CO2 levels are constructive and highly beneficial to both mankind and the natural world. I don’t know the location of the picture above, though it looks like a nuclear plant. Pictures like this are always used to subtly say ‘look, evil industry is polluting the planet,” but what is coming out of the smokestacks is most likely steam— water vapor.
Back in the 1970s, the earth experienced a short-term cooling trend, and many of the perpetually discontented doom-mongers were alarmed and predicted a coming catastrophe. If it had continued, it would have been a problem, for cold is much harder to deal with than warm.
A little more warming would be nice. It’s barely 50° here, and though it may be spring, our temperatures are way below normal. Yes, this is not climate. But the Medieval Warm Period from about 900 till 1300, when it was much warmer than today, was the finest weather known to man. Wine grapes grew in England, the Vikings farmed in Greenland, and the climate was maybe 2° to 4° warmer than now. Castles and cathedrals were built throughout Europe, which is an indication of good food supplies and greater wealth. In June, 1253, Westminster Abbey alone had 428 construction workers, nearly half of them skilled stone workers and glass blowers.
CO2 is plant food, what all humans and animals breathe out, and plants breathe in CO2 and exhale oxygen. We are at a low point of CO2 in the atmosphere, around .038 ppm. Greenhouses boost CO2 to 1000 ppm, and nurserymen continue to survive, as will we.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Energy, Junk Science | Tags: Brownouts and Blackouts, No Green Energy, No Green Jobs
Another day and another solar company disaster. First Solar, a solar energy company that received a $1.46 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy announced Monday that it will lay off 2.000 workers worldwide. In December, they laid off 100 employees at a Santa Clara, California plant. The DOE has committed the loan to a project in Riverside County in California that is expected to create 15 permanent jobs and 550 temporary construction jobs.
Now the Department of Energy is preparing to issue another bunch of loans,”subject to a robust monitoring effort to ensure that taxpayers investments are protected” loan program chief David Frantz said. He also said that the Energy Department loan program has “helped the United States keep pace in the fierce global race for clean energy technologies.” Race? What race? Everybody else if getting out. Franz added that those loans support American clean energy projects expected to provide power to nearly 3 million households and are creating tens of thousands of jobs. Construction jobs? Any permanent jobs? Or just till the outfit goes bankrupt?
The money, it seems, has already been appropriated, and you certainly can’t put it back once it has been appropriated. After all there is “intense global competition” and the nation “cannot afford to stop moving forward.” Why ever not?
For whatever reason, Obama has put a lot of faith in clean green energy. He spoke early on about halting the rise of the seas, and he really believed that there would be lots of ‘green’ jobs. He has worked very hard at shutting down fossil fuels: stalling permits in the Gulf using the excuse of safety of offshore rigs; putting the coasts out of reach for drilling; refusing to sign on to the Keystone XL pipeline; pushing electric cars and solar arrays, wind farms and high speed rail; and demanding that in just 8 more years that 30% of our energy come from renewable energy.
The evidence has been very clear that these were pipe dreams — that there was a vast gap between ‘capacity’ as the promoters described it and real power. Wind is intermittent. It doesn’t blow steadily— ever. A wind turbine needs backup 24/7 from a conventional power plant because the wind doesn’t blow steadily. The sun goes down at night, and there is no solar energy on cloudy days nor in the winter when days are short and storms are frequent and people need power more. They require backup power from a conventional power plant as well. And electric cars get their charge from a conventional power plant.
Even now, Spain has dumped their renewable energy. They can’t afford it. Germany has cut way back on subsidies and their world’s leading solar manufacturer has gone bankrupt (as did their subsidiary in this country). Germany is a northern country that gets very little sun in the winter, and solar energy isn’t practical— but the Germans do love the sun. The Chinese, who put everyone else in trouble with their cheap solar panels, have lost interest in solar energy and are going to rely on nuclear energy instead.
It’s hard to know what Mr. Obama believes about green energy? Did he see himself as the hero of the world’s move to a 21st Century clean green world? Betsy’s Page quotes a passage from the new book The Escape Artists; How Obama’s Team Fumbled the Recovery:
Energy was a particular obsession of the president-elect’s, and therefore a particular source of frustration. Week after week, [White House economic adviser Christina] Romer would march in with an estimate of the jobs all the investments in clean energy would produce; week after week, Obama would send her back to check the numbers. “I don’t get it,” he’d say. “We make these large-scale investments in infrastructure. What do you mean, there are no jobs?” But the numbers rarely budged.
There never were those green jobs promised. There were in some cases a number of jobs constructing the facilities, but running them took very few; not hundreds but ten or fifteen.Where does this notion of a world competition to power our world with solar energy come from? Don’t they read the papers? What do all those intelligence agencies do? Spain is a very sunny country, as is Portugal, as is Italy. If they can’t make it work, and they can’t, doesn’t anybody notice?
Polls from Gallup, Pew and Rasmussen show that radical environmentalism has been seriously losing influence in America for a couple of decades. Last August, a Rasmussen poll showed that 69% ;of Americans believe that scientists have falsified global warming research. Forty years ago Americans were concerned about smog and air quality, but the country has made changes to factories, and developed catalytic converters for cars.
Real life and living in the real world requires common sense and an understanding of market forces. America is a world powerhouse of cheap abundant energy from coal, natural gas and oil. One man is demanding that we shut down those sources and spend our precious wealth on trying to make the sun light our homes at night, dependably power our hospitals, keep our people warm in the winter— all things that it cannot do. Maybe if we just come up with some new and better panel, or figure out some way to store the energy from the sun, or make the clouds go away, If we just invest enough money we can make that little turquoise wedge grow to 30% in just 8 more years, can’t we?
If we just shut down all the nasty, dirty coal plants that the big environmental outfits hate so much, then everybody will have to depend on ….?
