It’s time to apply endangered species, wildlife and economic laws fairly and equitably
“… gleaming white wind turbines generating carbon-free electricity carpet chaparral-covered ridges and march down into valleys of Joshua trees.” This is “the future” of American energy – not “the oil rigs planted helter-skelter in [nearby] citrus groves,” nor the “smoggy San Joaquin Valley” a few miles away.
The Forbes article’s poetic paean to Aeolian energy nevertheless voiced consternation that a 300-megawatt “green” turbine project might kill some of the magnificent California condors that are just coming back from the edge of extinction – and the project might be cancelled as a result.
A vital part of the solution to our economic and employment crisis is right under our feet
A frequent refrain during budget and debt ceiling debates is that we need revenue enhancement: higher tax rates, reduced deductions, eliminated credits. But doing this, especially amid today’s massively expanding regulations, will kill more jobs and further reduce government revenues.
There is a better way. Huge revenue sources are literally under our noses, or more precisely our feet.
New rules use doctored evidence to cause economic pain and impair human health
The Environmental Protection Agency recently issued 946 pages of new rules, requiring that U.S. power plants sharply reduce (already low) emissions of mercury and 83 other air pollutants. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims that, while the regulations will cost electricity producers $10.9 billion annually, they will save 17,000 lives and generate up to $140 billion in health benefits.
There is no factual basis for these assertions. To build its case, EPA systematically ignored evidence and ignored clinical studies that contradict its regulatory agenda, which is to punish hydrocarbon use.
Think repealing oil industry tax incentives will increase federal revenues? Think again.
President Obama frequently says Americans “need to end our $4 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies to oil companies.” The latest Democrat bill would have repealed some $2 billion of what Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and others call “subsidies” and “special tax breaks” for Big Oil.
That’s baloney – shameless demagoguery that will inflict further damage on our struggling economy.
How our government subsidizes job, wealth, revenue and people-killing energy policies
President Obama’s views on oil, natural gas and energy prices require just 44 words from his speeches.
“We have less than 2% of the world’s oil reserves. We’re running out of places to drill. We’re running out of oil. We need to end our $4 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies to oil companies. We need to invest in clean, renewable energy.”
As Congressman Joe Wilson would say, That’s a lie! Or at least a deliberate distortion of facts.
Proposed EPA rules will do more harm than good for human health, especially for minorities.
Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that his policies would cause electricity rates to “skyrocket” and “bankrupt” any company trying to build a coal-fired generating plant. This is one promise he and his über-regulators are keeping.
Develop American energy – or say good-bye to jobs, revenue and modern living standards.
As Britain suffered through its coldest December in a century, families were forced to choose between keeping homes warm and feeding their children nourishing meals – thanks to climate policies that have forced extensive reliance on wind power and deliberately driven energy prices skyward.
EPA trumpets dubious shale gas risks – but ignores environmental impacts of wind turbines
America is running out of natural gas. Prices will soar, making imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) and T Boone Pickens’ wind farm plan practical, affordable and inevitable. That was then.
Barely two years later, America (and the world) are tapping vast, previously undreamed-of energy riches – as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. They do it by pumping a water, sand and proprietary chemical mixture into rocks under very high pressure, fracturing or “fracking” the formations, and keeping the cracks open, to yield trapped methane.
In the name of banning DDT, GEF bureaucrats are consigning millions to death from malaria
Many chemotherapy drugs for treating cancer have highly unpleasant side effects – hair loss, vomiting, intense joint pain, liver damage and fetal defects, to name just a few. But anyone trying to ban the drugs would be tarred, feathered and run out of town. And rightly so.
Should temperatures pulled out of a hat be the basis for energy and economic policies?
Average annual global temperatures have risen a degree or two since the Little Ice Age ended some 150 years ago. Thank goodness. The LIA was not a particularly pleasant time.
Prolonged winters, advancing glaciers, colder summers, more frequent storms and extended cloudiness reduced arable land, shortened growing seasons, rotted grain in wet fields, and brought famine, disease and death.
The lame duck session is underway – and various members of Congress have made it clear that they will try to cut a deal that would extend existing ethanol subsidies and protective tariffs. Congressional inaction would save taxpayers $6 billion, and bring other benefits too.
What am I missing? There must be some aspect of our insane energy policies that I fail to appreciate.
The climate and renewable energy con is losing its luster – prompting anguish and desperation
It’s been a rough few weeks for the “eco-progressive” fringe.
Static jet streams induced near-record high temperatures in parts of the United States and Russia, but extreme cold pummeled Seattle, England and much of the Southern Hemisphere. Perhaps Al Gore, Michael Mann and Rajendra Pachauri can turn this hodgepodge into “catastrophic climate change,” but most folks understand it as Mother Nature and weather.
New study documents harmful effects of “cap-and-trade” and “endangerment” schemes
Environmental justice demands that the United States address global warming, the gravest threat facing minority Americans, insist the EPA, Congressional Black Caucus and White House. Are they serious?
The alleged threat pales next to unwed teen motherhood, school dropouts, murder and other crime. But even assuming human carbon dioxide emissions will cause average global temperatures to rise a few degrees more than they have already since the Little Ice Age ended, it is absurd to suggest that any such warming would harm minorities more than policies imposed in the name of preventing climate change.
How exactly does the President plan to create his new Green Jobs Economy?
America needs decisive leaders who understand what government can (and cannot) do to stop the Gulf gusher, clean up the mess, and get business, jobs and prosperity back on track. Instead, President Obama sounds like an anti-business Community Organizer in Chief – pointing fingers, making baseless claims about ending our “addiction to oil,” and leaving no crisis unexploited to promote job-killing cap-tax-and-trade and renewable energy agendas. His June 15 “vision” raised more questions than it answered.
Congress and the White House are using to Gulf oil spill to advance dubious energy agendas
Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., Niger Innis and Reverend Samuel Rodriquez
Business and capitalism are dirty words in many White House and progressive circles, except in two ways.
Business is good when it can be co-opted and manipulated by government to advance “progressive” energy, social or economic agendas, and capitalism is a virtue in the sense of capitalizing on every crisis to promote those agendas – through the guiding principle enshrined by leftists like Saul Alinsky and Rahm Emanuel: “Never let a crisis go to waste.”
Kerry, Lieberman and other congressional climate alarmists have some ‘splaining to do!!!
The new Kerry-Lieberman climate bill mandates a 17% reduction in US carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. It first targets power plants that provide reliable, affordable electricity for American homes, schools, hospitals, offices and factories. Six years later, it further hobbles the manufacturing sector itself.
There was a time, not too long ago (relatively speaking), that governments and the groups of elites that controlled them did not find it necessary to conscript themselves into wars of disinformation. Propaganda was relatively straightforward. The lies were much simpler. The control of information flow was easily directed. In fact, during the early Middle-Ages in most European countries commoners were not even allowed to own a Bible, nor was the Bible allowed to be interpreted from Latin to another language, let alone any other tome that might breed “dangerous ideas”.
SEC says companies must disclose risks due to climate change. Seize the opportunity.
We are not weighing in on the climate debate. We are not opining on whether the world’s climate is changing, at what pace or due to what causes, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Shapiro insisted on announcing the SEC’s new “interpretive guidance” on climate change.
The Commission’s two Republican members objected that the Obama Administration was using the Commission to promote its global warming and renewable energy agenda (along with the EPA, NASA, Defense and Interior Departments and others). It’s true, but irrelevant.
Unethical Greenpeace actions threaten the livelihoods and lives of millions.
Should corporate ethics principles apply only to profit-making companies? Or should they also cover nonprofit corporations, especially those that badger for-profits to be more “socially responsible”?
Should corporations be judged partly on creating jobs, supporting communities, or improving and saving lives? And should nonprofit corporations be penalized for impeding the enhancement of human life?
The answers should be self-evident. But they’re not, as US nonprofits and politicians have repeatedly demonstrated.
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." ~ Ronald Reagan
“… gleaming white wind turbines generating carbon-free electricity carpet chaparral-covered ridges and march down into valleys of Joshua trees.” This is “the future” of American energy – not “the oil rigs planted helter-skelter in [nearby] citrus groves,” nor the “smoggy San Joaquin Valley” a few miles away.
New rules use doctored evidence to cause economic pain and impair human health
