Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Environment, Liberalism, Politics | Tags: Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, Endangered Species Act, Gas Prices
This little three-inch long lizard, called the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, has the potential to shut down oil and gas operations in portions of Southeast New Mexico and West Texas, including the states’ two oil and gas-producing counties.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has considered the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard as a candidate species for listing under the Endangered Species Act, since 2001. It is a rare species found only in 655 square miles in the Mescalero Sands in New Mexico, where it is listed as endangered by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, and in at least five counties in adjacent parts of Texas. How many square miles that involves, I don’t know.
There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in terms—how can a 3″ species be “rare” or “endangered” in 655 square miles in one state, and five counties in another state. That has to be a lot of territory for a lizard. even for hundreds of thousands of lizards. How would you possibly count the number of lizards occupying just one square mile, or even one square quarter-of-a-mile?
They don’t seem to be basing this on lizards, but on sand dune complexes where shinnery oak grows. That is habitat where Dunes Sagebrush Lizards would be expected to be found. They don’t know whether there are lizards there in either small or large numbers, nor how much territory is needed for a family of lizards.
Species are listed by a petition process, which means that anyone can send a letter to the federal government asking that a species, either plant or animal, be put on the ESA list. The federal government must respond in 90 days. If the federal government fails to respond the petitioner can file litigation against the federal government and get its attorney’s fees paid. Between 2000 and 2009, in just 12 states and the District of Columbia, 14 environmental groups filed 180 federal court complaints to get species listed under the ESA and were paid $11,743,287 in costs and attorney’s fees.
The problem here is that the land includes a big chunk of the Permian Basin, important oil and gas country. The President is demanding that the two largest oil-producing countries increase their oil production to lower gas prices here. At the same time, he is demanding that the 3rd largest oil producing country (us) cut back on drilling everywhere.
“We are very concerned about the Fish and Wildlife Service listing,” said Ben Shepperd, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, noting the service also has proposed listing the Lesser Prairie Chicken next year. “The wolf at the door is the lizard; we’re concerned listing it would shut down drilling activity for a minimum of two years and as many as five years while the service determines what habitat is needed for the lizard. That means no drilling, no seismic surveys, no roads built, no electric lines.”
At the moment, 1,374 U.S. species are listed as endangered, with 251 classified as potentially “warranted.” The Obama administration just announced that it will clear a decades-long backlog by agreeing to decide within six years whether or not to include any of the 251. And of course in six years, six times that many may well have petitioned.
As of last year, only 47 species have been removed from the list, and of that number, only 21 because they had “recovered”. Nine species went extinct, (maybe) and the others should never have been on the list in the first place. Some species have been “saved” by making it illegal to shoot them. Some extinct species have been found not to be extinct after all.
The American taxpayer is paying for Big Environment to petition for species to be listed as “endangered,” if the government does not respond within 90 days, and with an apparent six-year backlog, the government doesn’t seem prepared for quick response. This is simply not responsible law, but perhaps typical of Big Government, and good for the funding of Big Environment.
Most organizations are happy to agree to actions to preserve species, but the government moves with a very heavy hand. BrightSource Energy had to spend $20 million to relocate 20 tortoises and to create a permanent tortoise trust fund so that it could build a solar power plant. That’s over $1 million per tortoise, and certifiably insane.
You have perhaps noticed that endangered species seem to pop up just when there coincidentally happens to be something going on that Big Environment wants to stop. Surely there can’t be a connection.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Energy, Junk Science | Tags: Gas Prices, Obama, oil, Supply and Demand
If President Barack Obama were to schedule a major speech tomorrow, and tell the assorted networks that America was returning to oil production— he was lifting the federal bans on drilling—the price of oil would start dropping the next day.
- In 2008, Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) refused to vote for any new offshore drilling. In a conversation with minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Salazar objected to allowing any drilling on America’s outer continental shelf—even if gas prices reached $10 a gallon. Obama named him Secretary of the Interior.
- In 2008, Steven Chu, head of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories at U. of California Berkeley, told the Wall Street Journal that “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” he also said “We have lots of fossil fuel; that’s really both good and bad news. We won’t run out of energy, but there’s enough carbon in the ground to really cook us.” Obama named him Secretary of Energy.
- During the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama said “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” And “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.” He was elected president.
I don’t know if Obama ever took a class in economics, but he seems to be totally unfamiliar with the basic laws of supply and demand. When supply is restricted, the cost goes up. When the cost of gasoline goes up, so does the cost of everything else.
Goods are transported by truck, and when delivery costs more, the price of your groceries cost more. When the government is busily printing money, the value of the dollar goes down. Oddly enough, the price of gas and the cost of food are not included in the government’s statistics on inflation. You have to keep track of that yourself.
President Obama speaks enthusiastically about his clean, green economy of tomorrow; but he doesn’t seem to understand that windmills and solar arrays produce only small amounts of electricity, which has little to do with transportation, and does not replace gasoline. Our transportation sector is powered by petroleum, and will continue to be powered by petroleum far into the foreseeable future. There is no alternative.
Why do I say that an Obama speech turning the energy sector free would start to bring down oil prices right away? Ronald Reagan did it, and George W. Bush did it. There is evidence. And the evidence that Obama’s clean, green government subsidized energy will prove to be an effective alternative — ever? Nonexistent.
Filed under: Economy, Energy, Environment | Tags: Gas Prices, Politics, Robbing Peter to Pay Paul
If you want a serious reason to oppose ObamaCare, take a look at the “Cash for Clunkers” program. Officially it is known as the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) and it even has its own cute little logo with an automobile symbol in place of the ‘A’. It was initially part of the Waxman-Markey climate bill that was spun off as separate legislation. It was initially intended to encourage drivers to trade in older less fuel-efficient cars for new cars with better fuel economy, bringing car buyers into empty showrooms and lowering the fuel consumption of the American automotive fleet.
What it does establish is that Americans are not stupid. When they are offered $4500 of someone else’s money — which on some models can be 1/4 of the price — to buy a car, they take it. The $1 billion of taxpayer money appropriated by Congress was exhausted within a week. So Congress has appropriated another $2 billion.
One of the immediate problems is that the cars that are turned in are required to be crushed immediately. Most would be perfectly good used cars for those who cannot afford a new car. But removing them from use will starve the used-car market of inventory, thus driving up the price of used cars and probably bankrupting some small used car dealers. And then there is the parts question, for there is a big market for used car parts. It is not known if there is a market at present for the scrap metal from the crushed cars.
It is also not known if there is any environmental benefit to the program. The amount of carbon dioxide that is foregone by replacing cars with higher fuel consumption may well be insignificant compared to the energy required to crush and process the clunkers. And if the newer vehicles are driven more and farther than the old ones — is there any net reduction in CO2? And even if there is, the affect of lowered CO2 may be insignificant in the atmosphere, since most of the CO2 in the atmosphere arises from the oceans, not our tailpipes.
CO2 is not a pollutant, contrary to a misguided ruling by the Supreme Court. It is a colorless, odorless gas that is natural plant food, and essential to life. The optimum amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 1000 ppm, the current amount is around 400 ppm. CO2 is only a trace gas in the atmosphere.
If all that was not enough, it seems that Dealers are not being repaid for the $4500 they have advanced to car buyers. Congress has supposedly appropriated the money, but auto dealers haven seen any money, and it’s hurting.
Were the people who are rushing out to buy new cars with the benefit of $4500 of taxpayer dollars going to buy new cars anyway? This is crackpot economics. And it’s catching. New Jersey and Vermont are now offering subsidies for those who turn in their old refrigerators and freezers.
Meanwhile, senators are considering a permanent clunkers program. After all, it’s only money and it is so very popular. But then Paul always enjoys the gift of Peter’s money.
ADDENDUM: Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa) has said that the government has only reimbursed 2 percent of dealers , and that 4 our of 5 applications have been rejected for “minor oversight.” The government has only 225 people processing the claims at the Department of Transportation. They need 1,000 said Sestak. Gosh, they cannot handle the original billion dollars worth of claims with two more billion to go. And they are ever so sure they can handle the health insurance claims for 220 million people? Where is the evidence of any kind of success at that, ever?
Filed under: Economy, Energy, Science/Technology | Tags: Democrat Demagogues, Energy Independence, Gas Prices
All is not, after all, lost! Government mandates spur innovation. “Incandescent Bulbs Return to the Cutting Edge” says the headline in the New York Times. When Congress passed a (silly) law setting tough efficiency standards that no traditional incandescent bulb could meet, it looked like our standard light bulbs were doomed.
It seemed that our light bulbs were to be imported from China, as another two American industries were destroyed — the incandescent bulb industry and their suppliers, and the lighting fixture industry and their suppliers.
Researchers across the country have been racing to breathe new life into Thomas Edison’s light bulb, a pursuit that accelerated with the new legislation. Amid that footrace, one company is already marketing limited quantities of incandescent bulbs that meet the 2012 standard, and researchers are promising a wave of innovative products in the next few years.
Indeed, the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation.
“There’s a massive misperception that incandescents are going away quickly,” said Chris Calwell, a researcher with Ecos Consulting who studies the bulb market. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”
The first of the new bulbs are 30 percent more efficient than older incandescents, but they are also more expensive at $5 each and more. Phillips says that a 70 watt bulb gives off the same amount of light as a 100 watt bulb and lasts about three times as long.
We have ranted extensively about this government mandate, which we resent. We don’t think the government has any business messing about with our light bulbs, and have searched for the line in the Constitution that says they do. See here, here, and here.
The whole bit about “saving energy” is misplaced. We are energy independent when it comes to electricity, and could easily be more so. The usual rationale is “getting off of foreign oil.” But at present, and for the foreseeable future, oil powers our transportation, not our lights. But that kind of good sense seldom engenders government mandates.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Energy, Freedom, Science/Technology | Tags: Economy, Gas Prices, Politics
Did you wonder where our oil comes from? Here are the sources of all that “foreign oil” that is so often declaimed. [ Click on the image to enlarge]
Aside from the (erroneous) belief that “global warming” is a threat to the life of the planet, there is a widely held belief that we have reached and passed “peak oil,” and it’s all downhill from here on out. So we have no choice but to move to smaller, more efficient cars, hybrids, electric cars, alternate fuels and clean renewable energy. “Sustainable” is the euphemism of choice. And the Obama administration doesn’t like coal.
So-called “clean renewable energy” has nothing to do with transportation. Wind and solar produce some electricity, but do not power automobiles. Peak oil advocates point to declining oil production in Mexico as a sign of an imminent global peak, but ignore indications that the Mexican government has been starving the national oil company of capital. Many academics assume that once prices retreat that they will continue to decline, or conversely, ignore the effects of price controls, tax changes or other economic changes.
A new study by the energy consultancy IHS-CERA (formerly Cambridge Energy Associates) notes that in 2000, Canada’s oil sands produced just 600,000 barrels of oil a day, while today they produce 1.3 million barrels. By 2030 they could be producing as much as 6 million barrels. If we have not antagonized our neighbors too much, perhaps we can buy some of it.
Only a very minor role for alternative energy over the next three decades is predicted by any reputable major forecaster. Fossil fuels will continue to be the source of our transportation energy. The United States government has removed more than 31 billion barrels of oil, 154 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 11 billion tons of coal from the market by laws that make it difficult if not impossible to prospect or produce energy on federal lands. To keep our economy healthy and growing, we must have more oil.
But lawmakers in Congress have gone after our most important supplier with “buy American” provisions in the stimulus plan. Officials have suggested perhaps Canada’s oil is too “dirty”, and would increase our “carbon footprint.” And Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, is suggesting that we need a wall and fences on our Northern border so that our Southern neighbors will not feel discriminated against.
I hope our friends to the North will forgive our foolishness when we are freezing to death in the dark.
Filed under: Developing Nations, Heartwarming, Science/Technology | Tags: Endangered Species, Environment, Gas Prices
Good News! A new orangutan population has been found in Indonesia. A team surveying forests snuggled between jagged, limestone cliffs on the eastern rim of Borneo island counted 219 orangutan nests, indicating a “substantial” number of the animals said Erik Melijard, a senior ecologist for the U.S. based The Nature Conservancy.
“We can’t say for sure how many,” he said, but even a cautious estimate would indicate “several hundred at least, maybe 1,000 or 2.000 even.”
The team also encountered an adult male— which threw branches at the crew as they tried to take photographs— a mother and a child. There are an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 90% of them in Indonesia, and the remainder in neighboring Malaysia.
These countries produce palm oil, used not only in food and cosmetics, but it is in great demand for making “clean burning” fuels in Europe and the United States. Some rain forests where the animals spend most of their lives, have been clear cut. Palm oil plantations, a lucrative source of employment and palm oil production, have led workers to kill orangutans as marauding pests, in spite of efforts to save the animals.
The inaccessibility of the area where the new population was found, as well as its poor soil and steep topography have shielded the area from development. A Canadian scientist, Birute Mary Galdikas, who has spent nearly 40 years studying orangutans in the wild, says that most of the remaining populations are small and scattered, which makes them vulnerable.
The orangutan is called the “man of the forest.” The story inadvertently shows how very difficult it is to get good estimates of the numbers of a species in the wild.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Economy, Energy, Environment, Humor, Politics | Tags: Democrat Demagogues, Democrat lies, Gas Prices, Obama
President Obama’s new science adviser told the Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed.
Geoengineering is, for example, shooting particles into the air — essentially making an artificial volcano; or using artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and store it.
Cooling the atmosphere at a time when the planet is rapidly cooling might not seem like the best of ideas. Turning a temporary cooling into an ice age? Absolutely brilliant, but then that is what they are doing to the economy, isn’t it — turning a temporary downturn into a lengthy depression?
But to follow the logic, Mark Roth, over at American Thinker, points out that if it is desirable to shoot pollutants into the earth’s upper atmosphere in order to reduce the supposed effects of the sun’s rays on global temperatures, then:
“I can’t believe” Mr. Roth said, “that these genius scientists have so completely missed the obvious solution — remove pollution controls from automobiles. This will accomplish a few things all at once:
- put sulfur in the atmosphere;
- reduce the cost of manufacture of cars;
- reduce the sales price of cars;
- increase the gas mileage and improve efficiency; thereby
- reducing operating costs; not to mention
- reducing national oil and gas consumption; which in turn,
- reduces the costs of production and delivery of goods and services; which among other things,
- reduces the cost of food and electricity; which
- allows for increased spending for travel and dining out, which…”
“We would save the costs of fueling and replacement of the ICBMs slated to launch debris into the atmosphere, thereby avoiding an increase in the defense budget for necessary replacements, although it could be argued that Obama, seeing no need for missile defense, would not regard replacement as necessary, so that saving would have to be deferred to a future administration.”
This is such a superb insight, and so fitting, that I could not resist reprinting the whole thing. The original is here. Save the planet (from non-existent warming), save the auto industry, save the economy all in one grand fell-swoop, as well as thoroughly embarrass the Obama administration for not thinking of it before they spent all that money.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Energy, Progressivism | Tags: Democrat Demagogues, Economy, Environment, Gas Prices
The Transportation Department has released its requirements for the first increase in passenger car fuel efficiency in 25 years — the first step in what will be extensive reform for the nations truck and car fleets. The standards for model year 2011 passenger cars will have to average 30.2 mpg, and light trucks 24.1 mpg for cars that will hit the showrooms in September of 2010. Look for more increases to come.
The new fuel efficiency standards are estimated to cost the auto industry $1.5 billion. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that price increases as a result will average $64 for passenger cars and $126 for light trucks. Passenger car buyers will be repaid in fuel savings in an average of 4.4 years, or in 7.7 years for pickups, SUVs or minivans.
Do you get the feeling that the right hand knows not what the left hand is doing? This is, I believe, the same auto industry that is receiving bailouts and needs more?
Representative John Dingell, D-Dearborn, said that Obama and his aides “recognize the auto industry is in a period of transition.” I guess you could call it a “transition.”
Representative Ed Markey,D-MA, chairman of the House Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence, praised the regulation.
With gas prices once again on the rise, I am pleased to see the Obama administration taking this historic first step towards reducing our dependence on foreign oil and helping revitalize the domestic auto industry. I look forward to working with the president to ensure that future standards are based on realistic assumptions and sound science.
I do not pretend to understand this. I guess it all makes sense if you believe that global warming is a vast danger to the earth, that extracting petroleum from American earth is something akin to rape, and that charging the auto industry another billion and a half will fill their empty coffers. But then I have no idea how to build a car.
Filed under: Economy, Energy, Environment, Science/Technology | Tags: Environmental Demagogues, Gas Prices, Global Warming
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats will allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week.
Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey is telling reporters that language continuing the moratorium will be omitted this year from a spending bill to keep the government in operating funds after Congress recesses for the election.
Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign issue after gasoline prices soared beyond $4 a gallon this summer and public opinion turned in favor of more drilling. President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in July.
The Interior Department estimates there are 18 billion barrels of recoverable oil beneath coastal waters now off-limits.
This is good news, but there is still a long rocky road on the way to actually drilling for oil.
The real problem is that environmental groups seem to believe that “alternative energy” can replace fossil fuels if they just shut off access to oil and gas. Wind and solar may never make a significant contribution to our energy needs. Biofuels have already significantly raised the price of food, and caused food riots in the developing world.
There are many promising technologies on the horizon, but they are far, far from ready for the market. The idea seems to be — and I am just guessing here — that if they just force us to develop alternative energy by bringing us close to freezing and starving, then we will pay attention and do what they want. That’s why they talk about “Marshall Plans” and “Apollo Projects” without any understanding of the difference between those programs and our present situation.
Call it the “Energy Gap”. Environmental organizations see “Global Warming” as their best chance to bring about the Utopian vision that is their goal which has much more to do with “social justice” and who is in control than with clean air and water.
England is now facing the Energy Gap. Their power structure is supposed to be shut down and replaced within the next 12 years, but the Greens are fighting any attempt to replace it, except with wind and solar. The climate stopped warming about 10 years ago, and has actually been cooling for the past 7 years. The sun has gone quiet, without sunspots for over a month. Many scientists believe that we are in for 20 to 30 years of cooling, at least.
Colder weather means greater energy needs. Colder weather means poorer agricultural yields. Far more people die from cold weather than from heat. Prudence says that you do what you can to prepare for the worst.
But true believers are not about to let prudence interfere with the possibility of permanently getting rid of evil, dirty oil and gas. It’s a strange mindset.
And if the whole basis of their argument is phony? If CO2 is not responsible for climate change? If all the fuss is for nothing because climate change is a natural process that has been going on for centuries? What if there is nothing that we can do that will actually affect climate? What if it was all a lie? What then?
According to Rasmussen Reports, 69% of voters support offshore oil drilling. Clearly that means the Democrats have decided that they must be responsive to voters, right? Well, never mind.
Nancy Pelosi is not going to miss a chance to mess things up some more. She is trying to attach her “Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act” (a euphemism if there ever was one) to the massive end-of-the-fiscal-year “continuing resolution to sneak it into law.
In spite of the charming name, there is no consumer protection in it. Instead it actually bans drilling in any places where we know there is oil or gas. It prohibits drilling within 50 miles of the coast, and prohibits drilling off her own precious California coast. Under the bill, legislatures would have to approve drilling off the state coast in legislation separate from acts of Congress. No encouragement for nuclear. And it will raise oil prices by taxing oil companies to the hilt. More subsidies, of course, for “alternative energy”. Sneaky doesn’t even begin to describe it.
If you want to get something done, you’re going to have to elect a different Congress.
Filed under: Economy, Energy, Environment, Liberalism, News, Politics | Tags: Democrat Demagogues, Drilling for Oil, Economy, Gas Prices, Harry Reid, Liberal lies, Media, Nancy Pelosi
Exxon-Mobil has received huge attention since it was announced that they posted a record profit of $11.68 billion in the second quarter. Media spokesmen have huffed and puffed, announced the P-R-O-F-I-T-S in sneering language as if oil company CEOs had personally lifted our wallets, emptied our bank accounts, and put us all in the poorhouse. Democrats were gleefully beside themselves in finding someone else to blame, and demanded a new windfall profits tax. That would fix them.
No one saw fit to mention that in the same quarter, Exxon Mobil paid almost 3 times that much in taxes — more than $32 billion. (A tax bill greater than the GDP of many countries). That doesn’t count the taxes you pay on every gallon that goes into your gas tank: 12% to the federal government and differing amounts to the states. Mine is one of the highest.
When we start talking in billions, most of us are not comfortable with the figures. (How many zeros is that?). Many more people than ever before are becoming millionaires, but the billionaires live in a rarefied atmosphere that most of us don’t understand very well. It’s easy to assume that there must be something wrong with a profit of $11 billion.
Politicians, especially in an election year, prey on voter’s ignorance of matters economic. When gas prices are over $4.00 a gallon and grocery prices are climbing, people are being hit in the pocketbook. $11 billion in profit seems unimaginable, obscene.
The government is taking a far larger amount, demanding more and refusing to open known oil fields that could be producing in about 3 years. The Democrats want “windfall profits”, they want to outlaw “price gouging”, they want to “stop the speculators”, they want to distract you from the idea of drilling for oil.
In the last 10 years the top 20 U.S. and Canadian oil companies invested 50% more than they earned in efforts to produce more oil. Production in existing oil fields in the U.S. is slowing and they are having to go far afield to drill.
American corporations are among the most heavily regulated entities on earth. A corporation is a legal fiction that allows a group of people to band together to do business in the hope of making a profit. Corporations can survive a year or so of losses, but in general, if they don’t make a profit, they go out of business.
It is fashionable to think of corporations as “evil”, but the reasons for that illusion aren’t attractive. Our intelligentsia, proud of their advanced degrees, are incensed at the salaries and bonuses of corporate CEOs whom they regard as a lesser species. They do not understand business or economics, and in general, want to stamp it out.
Gas prices are dropping, but Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid soldier on. Speaker Pelosi has suggested that maybe they could allow a little offshore drilling — but only on the East coast! Have a little sympathy for the oil companies. They are trying very hard to produce the petroleum you need, and they are investing (without orders from Pelosi and Reid) heavily in alternative energy. Their business is to produce the energy you need at a price you can afford. That’s how they stay in business. (No, unfortunately I’m not a stockholder).
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Liberalism, Politics, Science/Technology, Socialism | Tags: Democrat Demagogues, Energy Policy, Gas Prices, Harry Reid, Liberal lies, Nancy Pelosi, Oil Drilling, Politics
Nancy Pelosi called plans to drill for more oil “a hoax.” She called for President Bush to release oil from the Strategic Reserve. She claimed that drilling wouldn’t help since it would take too long. She blamed high prices on speculators. She blamed oil companies. She said that the oil companies had 68 million acres that they weren’t drilling on. She demanded to sue OPEC. I’m sure I’ve missed several of her little stories. She now says she’ll allow a vote on drilling for more crude to come to the floor of the House. And I really believe her, don’t you?
To understand Nancy Pelosi and Harry “oil is dirty” Reid’s stubborn resistance to oil drilling, building new refineries, building nuclear energy plants, and their enthusiasm for ethanol, solar and wind, you have to understand from whence comes “progressive” money.
One thing that “Progressives” do especially well is to organize into groups. They have meetings and write grant proposals, organize more, do financial studies, negotiate, do focus groups, poll testing, and write more grant proposals. And they get huge amounts of money from liberal foundations.
“Progressives” come in many varieties, there are Environmental Progressives, Labor Progressives, Social Justice Progressives, Anti-Globalization Progressives, Anti-Corporate Progressives, Anti-Capitalist Progressives, Post-National Progressives, and Anti-War Progressives, and I’m sure there are other groupings.
Very high on the list for Environmental Progressives is ending our reliance on (they say addiction to ) fossil fuels. They believe that most of the pollution in the world comes from “dirty” oil and gas. They believe that “dirty” oil and gas is causing runaway global warming which may end life on earth. They want to stop all development, curb consumerism. reject modernism, and end industrialism and capitalism to start with. Does this sound loony? The more extreme want to reduce human population, and return to a “simpler” time.
The Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund took out full-page ads in the Washington Post and other newspapers to blast Offshore drilling for oil as “George W. Bush’s Gasoline Price Elixir” that is “100% Snake Oil”. It urges visitors to their website to send a letter to their members of Congress that says “I am not buying the lie…that sacrificing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and America’s coastal waters to oil dilling would make a real difference in gas prices — either today or twenty years from today!” It adds “With just three percent of the world’s oil reserves, our nation doesn’t have enough oil to impact the global market or drill our way to lower prices at the pump.” Here you have the ideas that are reproduced in Harry and Nancy’s playbook.
The Natural Resources Defense Council has a long history of exaggeration, misrepresentation and lies. Remember the Alar scare, when all apples were removed from grocery stores? The scare made a bundle for NRDC, and cost the apple growers over $250 million for no reason at all as Alar proved to be perfectly safe. Then there was their swordfish scare.
This was too much for even the Washington Post. The United States has only 3% of the world’s oil reserves only when one is speaking of Known oil reserves, which were last measured before Congress imposed a moratorium on drilling in 1981. Technology and techniques have changed, and estimates have ballooned, but they have to be able to measure to compute today’s known reserves.
Only when pumping finally begins, is a lease classified as “producing”, which with a little twisting turns into the statement that “Oil companies aren’t using the leases they already have”. Environmental impact statements, sensitive resource development plans, oil spill recovery plans, reports filed, exploration begun, environmental lawsuits argued, infrastructure built simply don’t count.
Drilling is environmentally dangerous, they said. Between 1993 and 2007 there were 651 spills of all sizes at OCS sites, the equivalent of 1 barrel of oil spilled per 156,900 barrels produced. More oil is released from the ocean floor naturally.
The environmental progressives believe that they can just shut off the oil and gas, and the high prices will force the government to invest billions in “renewable” energy, for that fits their vision of “clean” energy. They want us to have another Apollo Project. If we can go to the moon, we can certainly shift to renewable energy.
Currently, renewable energy contributes just 6% of U.S. energy consumption. Hydropower contributes 44% of the minuscule renewable energy sector, and biomass/waste contributes 46.5%. This latter contribution is from factories that generate their own power from burning the waste from their processes. Both are not really approved by the environmental crowd. Wind contributes 2.3% (of the 6% renewable category), solar contributes 1%, and geothermal contributes 5.6%. This teeny-weeny bit is what they believe will power the American economy if we just fork over enough money.
Problem is, the Apollo Project was a straight engineering feat. Wind only blows part of the time and at the right speed, even in the windiest locations, and must be backed by electric power whenever it doesn’t blow. A solar array requires vast acreage. Biofuels produce less energy than must be used to produce them. And biofuels have already caused severe disruption in the world food supply by putting farmers’ crops in our gas tanks. We must stop trying to grow our fuel. The world population is expected to double by 2050, and we are not producing enough food now to feed them without cutting down forests and putting more land into farming. The most promising technology seems to be fuels produced from algae, which requires far less land, and re-grows quickly.
So what we have here is an Energy Gap. It’s the gap between reality and dreams, between fact and fiction, between the hard lessons of the marketplace and Utopian hope. Progressives are good at “hope”, but not too successful at math, economics and science.
What has been forgotten in most of the debate is that oil is a matter of national security, as the War in Georgia should remind us. Nations all over the world are drilling for oil and natural gas, building nuclear reactors and new refineries, acknowledging the realities of supply and demand. We are stuck with so-called “progressives” who put their political party ahead of their country.
Barack Obama’s “Oil SENSE Act,” introduced in January 2007, is kind of a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that forbids exploration with modern seismic methods that are about as intrusive as photography on land. Deroy Murdock describes this as engineering a Space Shuttle mission with slide rules. The maps of 20-40 years ago led to 17 percent of offshore wells striking oil. With contemporary surveying, 70% of wells hit oil.
Not much sense here, in spite of clever names. But there’s always hope.
American Elephants 