Obama's Eco-Lies

Editor's Note: All this week in the run-up to Earth Day, this blog will post commentaries exposing environmentalism as the totalitarian ideology it has always been.

By Alan Caruba

As the nation and the world closes in on Earth Day, April 22nd, a tsunami of Green propaganda will overwhelm us with all the usual lies about global warming—now called climate change—and calls to reduce the use of all fossil fuels in order to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions.

This Big Lie ignores the fact that there is no relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) and the climate. CO2 reacts to climate change. It does not drive it. The Big Lie ignores the fact that the Earth has been cooling for fourteen years.

The past three and a half years of the having Barack Obama as President have been filled with constant crisis, not the least of which was the nation’s financial crisis which he constantly reminds us he “inherited.” He has not, however, solved it with proven ways to put millions back to work and turn around a stagnant economy.

Instead he devoted his best efforts to a takeover of one-sixth of the nation’s economy, the healthcare industry. His administration has waged a steady war on access to energy reserves vital to the nation’s economy. The result of these policies are being felt at the gas pump as prices rise to historic highs while billions of barrels of oil in the U.S. remain underground.

His devotion to all the eco-lies was seen in the millions wasted on “green jobs” with his failed “stimulus” and loans to “green industries”, primarily wind and solar power. Other schemes included high-speed trains where none are needed or wanted. To this day Amtrak has never made a profit. And electric cars remain impractical and unaffordable.

His environmental commitment was perhaps best seen and heard when Obama attended a United Nations Conference of Parties in Copenhagen in March 2010. His speech to the delegates and world press contained all the lies associated with “climate change” and the failed policies he was pursuing two years ago and earlier.

“We come together here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. You would not be here unless you—like me—were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, this is science," said Obama.

Aside from the fact that the climate has always been in a state of change for Earth’s 4.5 billion years, the science employed to frighten people about such change does not bear any resemblance to real science which is an impartial blend of data based on replicable experiments.

Real science does not have a political agenda. The bogus science of global warming was revealed in November 2009 when the world learned that a handful of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “scientists” had systematically distorted the scientific process, conjuring up false computer models that ignored significant elements of climate history. The revelations would be dubbed “Climategate.”

Never one to not criticize America, Obama reminded the delegates that America was “the world’s second largest emitter” of greenhouse gases even though such gases do not function as a greenhouse, trapping and holding heat. If they did, how would one explain the fact that the Earth has been in a natural cooling cycle since around 1998?

What is the mark of a developing or successful economy? It is the use of energy!

Obama promised that the U.S. would work “to phase out fossil fuel subsidies” and promised “historic investments in renewable energy” and his intention to put Americans “to work increasing efficiency in our homes and buildings; and by pursuing comprehensive legislation to transform to a clean energy economy.”

Such a transformation is ludicrous. America runs on oil, on coal, on natural gas, on hydroelectric and nuclear power. The investments in wind and, in particular, solar power, have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars. Combined, wind and solar provide less than two percent of the nation’s electrical power while coal provides nearly half. It has been the use of coal that the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has been determined to reduce or end, falsely claiming CO2 is a "pollutant."

Typically, Obama said “There is no time to waste.” In reality the Obama administration has wasted every opportunity to increase access to America’s vast energy reserves. Even when bragging about oil production, Obama never admits that it is occurring on private land. His administration has virtually shut down access to exploration and extraction on federally owned and managed land.

Environmentalism is the mask of communism, concentrating ownership of all property and productivity in the hands of the government. Even when addressing the need to ensure clean air and water, it has been used as a blunt instrument of power to limit economic development.

These are well established environmental lies and they are Obama’s environmental lies.

The Copenhagen conference came to a hasty end as the world’s leaders fled the city to avoid being trapped there by a massive blizzard. The global warming they all warned against in 2010 was not occurring and is not occurring.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The EPA Wrecking Ball

By Alan Caruba

The Environmental Protection Agency is using its power to advance the objective of the environmental movement to deny Americans access to the energy that sustains the nation’s economy and is using the greatest hoax ever perpetrated, global warming—now called “climate change”—to achieve that goal.

“This standard isn’t the once-and-for-all solution to our environmental challenge,” said Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, “but it is an important commonsense step toward tackling the ongoing and very real threat of climate change and protecting the future for generations to come. It will enhance the lives of our children and our children’s children.”

This is a boldfaced lie. Its newest rule is based on the debasement of science that is characterized and embodied in the global warming hoax. It will deprive America of the energy it requires to function.

Since the 1980s the Greens have been telling everyone that carbon dioxide was causing global warming—now called climate change—and warning that CO2 emissions were going to kill everyone in the world if they weren’t dramatically reduced. The ball was put in motion with the United Nations 1997 Kyoto Protocols when many nations agreed to this absurd idea and carried forward by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ever since.

The Environmental Protection Agency was created to clean the nation’s air and water where it was deemed that a hazard existed. Like most noble ideas and most Congressional mandates, the initial language was vague enough to be interpreted to mean anything those in charge wanted it to mean. Add in the global warming hoax and you have the means to destroy the nation.

Now it means that the source of fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States is being systematically put out of business and please do not act surprised; that’s exactly what Barack Obama said he intended to do if elected President.

This is evil writ large.

Shutting down utilities that use coal, an energy source the U.S. has in such abundance that it could provide electricity for the next hundreds of years, and ensuring that no new ones are built fits in perfectly with all the Green pipedreams about "renewable" energy. Solar and wind presently provide about two percent of the nation’s electricity and, without government subsidies and mandates requiring their use, they would not exist at all.

How stupid is it to not build more nuclear power plants when this form of power doesn’t emit anything but energy?

How stupid is it not to use coal when the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal?

How stupid is it to begin to find reasons to regulate and thwart fracking, the technology to access trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that has been in use for decades?

How stupid is it to cover miles of land, far from any urban center, with hundreds of solar panels or huge, ugly wind turbines that kill thousands of birds every year?

The sun does not shine all the time, nor does the wind blow all the time. In the event of overcast skies or a day without wind, traditional plants—those using coal, gas, nuclear or generating hydroelectric power—have to be maintained as a backup. Take away the coal-fired plants and there were be huge gap in the national grid.

Darkness will descend and Americans will begin to live with blackouts and brownouts that will undermine every aspect of our lives. It’s bad enough when a town or even a city briefly loses power because of a storm, but imagine that occurring on a regular basis because there just aren’t enough utilities generating power!

What kind of people stand by idly while its own government conspires to take away the primary source of energy that everything else depends upon? The answer? You. The answer is the many elected politicians that have done little to rein in a rogue government agency intent on undermining the nation by denying it the ability to generate power with the least expensive source of electricity, coal.

The EPA, an unelected bureaucracy, has just ensured that all Americans, industries, small businesses, and individuals will begin pay far more for electrical power.

Richard J. Trzupek, the author of “Regulators Run Wild” and an environment policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, said of the new rule, “With around 50,000 megawatts of coal-fired power set to be forcibly retired in the next few years—thanks to the draconian policies of Obama’s EPA—this rule ensures that no new modern, efficient coal fired power plants will be built to fill the gap.”

In a triumph of crony capitalism, Trzupek notes that “The big winner will be Obama’s good friend, GE Chairman Jeff Immelt. Since solar and wind cannot fill a 50,000 megawatt baseload gap, the only way to ensure continued reliability of the grid is to build a lot of natural gas-fired plants quickly. And who is the biggest supplier of natural gas-fired combustion engines? GE of course.”

If you think that environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, among many others, are seeking to “protect” the Earth, you are seriously mistaken. They have been among the leading opponents of coal and they have had allies in Congress such as the Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, (D-NV) who has said “Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick.”

NO! Coal provides the engine of our nation’s electrical power and oil provides the energy that fuels our transportation and is the basis for countless products that enhance and improve our lives every day.

We are witnessing the destruction of the nation by the environmental movement and the EPA has just provided you with the most dramatic example of that plan.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

America's Green Enemies

By Alan Caruba

It was good news that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the nation’s first nuclear power plants on February 9th, clearing the way for the construction of two reactors by Southern Company at its Plant Vogtle site near Atlanta, Georgia. The bad news is that these are the first new nuclear plants since 1978!

In a nation with a growing population and increasing need for electricity to power homes and businesses, it is nothing less than insane to not include nuclear energy in the mix of providers. Environmentalists immediately attacked the announcement using the usual scare campaigns.

Equally insane is the failure to provide the means to safely store the radioactive materials that result. Highly contested by environmentalists, the Nevada-based Yucca Mountain deep geological repository storage facility for spent reactor fuel was cancelled in 2009. Nevada’s Senator Harry Reid, Majority Leader in the Senate, played a major role in this disgraceful decision. The Obama administration terminated funding for the development of the site in 2011, leaving the nation with no long-term storage site.

In a similar fashion, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has waged a long war on the provision of energy; most recently with the imposition of its Utility MACT rule on plant carbon dioxide (CO2) and mercury emissions, neither of which pose any threat. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, decried the rule as one “intended to undermine the viability of coal, one of our country’s most abundant and reliable energy sources.”

Despite having spent billions to meet the demand for upgrades of the technology to trap such emissions, coal-fired plants all over the nation are in the process of being closed as a result of the MACT rule. These “greenhouse gas” rules are baseless insofar as CO2 is not a pollutant and is vital to the growth of all vegetation on the planet. There is no proof that minor mercury emissions represent any threat to public health.

The EPA use of bogus “computer models” to support wild health claims argues for an end to this agency and the return of its responsibilities to state environmental agencies.

In January, the American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the leading authority, warned that “environmental regulations are shown to be the number one risk to reliability over the next one to five years.”

The Institute for Energy Research has stated that “Beyond the 38 gigawatts of electricity capacity that has already been announced to retire, NERC estimates that another 36 to 59 gigawatts of capacity will come off-line by 2018, depending on the ‘scope and timing’ of EPA regulations. Together, nearly a quarter of our coal-fired capacity could be off-line by 2018, marking the first time in energy history that installed coal-fired capacity has declined.”

This is a threat to the viability and security of a nation that sits atop the largest deposits of coal in the world! It is a nation in which coal provides 50% of its electricity.

In a similar fashion, environmentalists, after a long propaganda war against coal, have launched an equally massive campaign against natural gas, attacking the use of “fracking”, a technology that has been safely used for the last fifty years or more to access equally vast reserves of natural gas.

Likewise the cost of automobiles has been systematically driven up by the wholly false EPA assertion that their CO2 emissions represent a threat to clean air. The imposition of a mandate to mix gasoline with ethanol has resulted in greater CO2 emissions while, at the same time, reducing the mileage of cars. In addition, the use of food crops like corn for the production of ethanol, have driven up food prices.

Anyone who has lost electricity due to a blizzard or a hurricane knows how totally dependent the nation is on reliable and affordable electricity, and knows how totally dependent they are on is provision.

The simple fact is that the present and prior administration’s EPA, the Department of Transportation, and others have been lying to Congress and the American public for years regarding their claims about air pollution and energy provision. The Interior Department just put uranium-rich acres of land off-limits to mining.

Environmental organizations and special interest groups like the American lung Association are a fifth column of enemies within the nation.

The global warming hoax—now called climate change—is on its last legs. Nations around the world that have wasted billions on the claims made for “renewable” energy, solar and wind, are pulling back from further support. The “science” behind these claims has been totally and utterly refuted.

Even the United Nations, the source of the global warming hoax, is now switching its debased claims to a new hoax based on so-called endangered species.

The loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the energy and transportation sectors, as well as energy-intensive industries, is incalculable. EPA demands and mandates are deliberately undermining the nation’s economy.

The lives and safety of Americans are under attack by environmental organizations and, if they are successful, the only outcome would be the deaths of millions here and around the world from hunger and the lack of power to turn on the lights, heat and cool homes, and power industries.

The planet is not running out of oil, coal, or natural gas. It can use more nuclear power, not less.

We are witnessing an environmental attack on American energy and, ultimately, on America.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Little Green Morons

By Alan Caruba

Michael Brune, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, holds degrees in economics and finance from West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Coming Clean—Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal”, published in 2008 by the Sierra Club.

Recently, Brune bragged that he and the board had turned “away millions of dollars”, noting that “It sounds crazy” and explaining why. In 2010 Brune learned that, “beginning in 2007 the Sierra Club had received more than $26 million from individuals or subsidiaries of Chesapeake Energy, one of the country’s largest natural gas companies.”

This may come as a surprise to many, but a lot of energy companies and manufacturers who use a lot of energy give a lot of money to the Sierra Club. If this “sounds crazy”, it is because, presumably the Sierra Club is in business to put them out of business. In fact, Chesapeake Energy’s donations were for the Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign, an energy competitor to Chesapeake.

The fact that the Club’s Executive Director could brag about turning away millions in donations suggests that he wasn’t paying attention in college while studying economics and finance---or that like so many environmentalists, he is a moron. Or just a hypocrite. Time magazine revealed the actual story in its February 2nd edition. The Sierra Club was shilling for Chesapeake Energy.

And, yes, the corporations that give millions to the Sierra Club or give in to its demands are morons, too. In his previous job at the Rainforest Action Network, for seven years Brune led assaults on Home Depot, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Kinko’s Boise and Lowe’s. To put it another way, to hell with corporate jobs, dividends to investors, and profits with which to grow. Saving the rainforest came first. Cutting down a tree does not mean another one will not grow in the same place.

And now, at the Sierra Club, apparently the new battle is against natural gas. Can it get any more stupid? Like millions of Americans, my home of more than sixty years was heated by gas and the kitchen stove used gas. It was cheaper and cleaner than coal. As this is being written vast new reserves of natural gas are being found all over the nation, but as far as the Sierra Club is concerned, drilling for it poses risks “to our air, water, climate, and people in their communities.” Short of putting your head in the oven and turning on the gas, there are no significant risks and haven’t been any in the sixty years or so that “fracking” has been used to access natural gas.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is set to become a net exporter of liquefied natural gas by 2016 according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration. It expects a cumulative increase in U.S. natural gas production through 2036.

To suggest otherwise is a form of environmental dementia reflected in their fear and hatred of every form of energy, be it oil,  coal, natural gas, or nuclear. To quote Brune, if it “sounds crazy”, it probably is.

If you want to know what’s crazy, it’s the Ohio Environmental Council praising First Energy Corporation “for its plan to permanently close six coal-fired plants.” Yippee! Who needs plants that have the capacity to generate 2,700 megawatts of electricity—enough to power more than 600,000 homes? Who needs the jobs and revenue they also generate? And who needs the electricity? First Energy has read the writing on the wall that says the Environmental Protection Agency is determined to close down every coal-fired plant in America, even if they currently produce FIFTY PERCENT OF ALL THE ELECTRICITY!

Just how stupid, how moronic are environmentalists?

One way to answer is to look at the Obama administration’s track record when it comes to “green energy.”

Recently the President was seen leaving an event promoting clean energy in a motorcade of twenty-two (22) gas-guzzling vehicles. Well, do as Obama says, not as Obama does.

After three years of the most astonishingly stupid and wasteful green energy policies inflicted on Americans, it is hard keeping score of the various beneficiaries of government largess that are going bankrupt.

The most famous at this point is Solyndra that went belly up taking a half billion in loan guarantees—taxpayer funded—with it. Beacon Power, a green energy storage plant, filed for bankruptcy last fall took with it $43 million of more Department of Energy loan guarantees. Ener1, touted during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden—who inadvertently called it “Enron1”—filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The electric car battery maker had received a $118 million grant from the Obama administration.

Since then, Evergreen Energy, a manufacturer of batteries for electric cars and recipient of “stimulus” funds also filed for bankruptcy. Amonix, Inc., a manufacturer of solar panels that had received $5.9 million in “stimulus” was stimulated to cut two thirds of its workforce, some 200 employees, barely seven months after opening a factory in Nevada.

The Obama administration has been hot for electric cars and hybrids. They are costly and you would have to drive one for a decade or two to amortize the sticker price with fuel savings. They have proved to be a big money-loser for auto manufacturers. At this point, only about 3% of all the cars sold in America are electric or gas-electric hybrids.

There’s more, but I won’t bore you with the trail of bad government loan guarantees and grants, more wasted “stimulus” millions.

The lesson here is that any organization, government agency, or company claiming to be “green” is composed of morons, charlatans or a combination of both.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Killing Energy, Killing Jobs, Killing America

By Alan Caruba

America has been under attack since Barack Obama took the oath of office on January 20, 2009. The primary target has been the nation’s ability to generate energy for electricity and transportation, without which this nation will slide into Third World status and economic decline.

This appears to be the goal of this administration from the President to his Secretaries of Energy and Interior, to his Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. There is no other rational explanation for what they are doing.

We are days away from the latest Environmental Protection Agency assault in the form of the “MACT” rule allegedly to reduce mercury and other emissions that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says will reduce electricity generation in America by about 81 gigawatts in the years ahead. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial said “this could compromise the reliability of the electric system if as much as 8% of generating capacity is subtracted from the grid.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that eleven Governors have written the EPA to ask that it delay the final rule in November. Twenty-five state Attorneys Generals have filed suit “to lift a legal document known as a consent decree that the EPA is using as a fig leaf for its political goals.”

As but one example, in Illinois, Ameron announced the planned shutdown of its Meredosia and Hutsonville energy centers, The Meredosia center generates 369 megawatts. The Hutsonville center has a generating capacity of 151 megawatts.

The EPA, even before the Obama administration, has been using the 1970 Clean Air Act to bludgeon the nation’s ability to access the energy resources required to generate electricity, primarily coal that provides 50% of such generation, and oil that fuels our transportation capability.

In late October, James J. Mulva, the CEO of Conoco-Phillips, addressed the subject of the growing discoveries of natural gas being found throughout the nation. “More than 600,000 Americans already explore, produce, store and produce natural gas, according to consultancy IHS Global Insight.”

At least 15 states now produce shale gas and others may join them,” noting that the largest shale area, the Marcellus which covers much of the Northeast” “already supports 140,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone.”

The Obama administration, beginning with the president’s admitted goal of shutting down as much of the coal industry as possible, has demonstrated his intention of deterring the provision of energy. When the BP Oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, the administration imposed a moratorium on all drilling. The decreased production cost 360,000 barrels a day in addition to lost jobs related to oil drilling in the Gulf. Rigs that are needed to drill have since been moved to other sites around the world.

The U.S. is home to more than 150 billion barrels of conventional oil that has the capability of generating thousands of new jobs if access to it was permitted. The most immediate result has been the rise in the cost of gasoline at the pump. Two courts ordered that the moratorium be lifted.

Oil companies currently pay more than $30 billion a year in federal, state, and local taxes. Meanwhile the Obama administration has been wasting billions in loan guarantees to essentially useless solar and wind power companies, the latest of which, Solyandra, will cost taxpayers millions when the solar panel producer went belly-up. Others will follow.

Meanwhile, the President crisscrosses the nations demanding higher taxes on companies engaged in coal, oil and natural gas. When Jimmy Carter imposed a windfall tax on oil companies many ceased to explore for new sources here, moving their efforts to other nations. Today, by withholding the necessary permits to produce energy in Alaska, the Trans Alaska Pipeline System is operating at one third of its capacity.

A proposed pipeline from Canada still awaits approval and, on November 6th, led by the Sierra Club, the largest protest against its tar sands is expected to draw thousands to Washington, D.C. to join hands and circle the White House to ensure the Keystone XL pipeline is kept from providing the U.S. with the oil extracted. The proposed pipeline would reduce the U.S. dependence on Middle East oil. The U.S. already has more than 50,000 safely operating oil pipelines to support our transportation and other needs.

In January 2010, Thomas J. Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, warned that the Obama administration “continues to embrace Washington-dominated, command-and-control energy policies focused on mandates, subsidies, and political favors—not market forces.” He criticized “subsidizing one form of energy,” wind and solar, “while restricting the exploration of another,” warning that it “will lead to several measurable outcomes, increasing energy prices across the board, fewer jobs, and a weaker footing in the global economy..”

Nearly two years later, that warning has come true with a vengeance.

Oil, coal, or natural gas, it doesn’t matter to an administration and a president determined to restrict the amount of energy Americans need for their present and future needs. The result, in part, has been a stalled energy sector and a contributing factor in an economy with an estimated 20 million unemployed or under-employed.

The losses in income taxes and the taxes paid by this industry sector, in addition to the hideous borrowing and spending by the Obama administration is doing enormous harm to America and yet Barack Obama wants a second term in office.

Little wonder that Americans fear for the future of the nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli

By Alan Caruba

One of the most famous lines from The Godfather was, “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli” Permit me to update that to the Middle East. Forget the wars, buy the oil, and develop our own oil as fast as possible.

Middle Eastern and other oil produced worldwide is for sale to anyone who wants to purchase it. Putting our troops in harm’s way and spending trillions to do so is idiotic.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan has been marked as always with all manner of killing. The latest have been bombings in Baghdad that killed more than sixty people, the continued slaughter of Syrians sick of the two-generation despotism of the Assad family, the lingering fighting in Libya, and our continuing losses in Afghanistan.

The U.S. stepped in when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 to grab its oil reserves. It went back in 2003 to get rid of Saddam and never left. After 9/11 in 2001 it carpet bombed Tora Bora in Afghanistan to kill al Qaeda members and then never left. What’s wrong with this policy? There is no oil in Afghanistan. Iraq’s oil will be subject to its internal conflict and Iran’s meddling for the foreseeable future.

The Middle Eastern and African oil cartel, OPEC controls 44% of the world’s crude oil production and 79% of the world’s crude oil reserves. Thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Energy, the U.S. is unable to access billions of barrels of oil in Alaska and the continental shelf on both coasts.

This policy applies as well to our coal and natural gas reserves despite the fact that the U.S. has century’s worth of coal and is discovering new reserves of natural gas every day.

We have been losing the capacity to refine oil. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2009 there are 148 operable refineries, down from 150 and only 137 refineries were actually operating, down from 141. Regulations have ensured that not one new refinery has been built in the U.S. for over three decades.

Whose oil do we buy? Canada provides the U.S. with two million barrels of the eleven million we use every day. If the Obama administration and environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth would get out of the way and let the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project be built, it would move oil from Canada’s Alberta province to existing pipelines and refineries for an additional 1.1 million barrels. We also purchase oil that originates in Mexico and even Venezuela.

There are about 40 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico offshore of U.S. States, to which you can add an estimated 14 billion barrels off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The Obama administration’s response to this has been to restrict access to it. After the BP Oil accident in the Gulf, the Obama administration’s moratorium destroyed an estimated 13,000 jobs as oil rigs left for other sites and the local economy took a huge hit.

The Obama administration keeps telling everyone that it is the big, evil oil companies that determine the cost of oil and the price of gasoline, but oil is a global commodity and big oil companies can only get the daily price of various grades of crude. The top three U.S. oil companies paid $42.8 billion in income taxes in 2010 and, it should be noted, provided 9.2 million jobs for Americans who also paid taxes.

While vilifying U.S. oil companies, the Obama administration neglects to mention that ExxonMobil’s pretax income in 2010 was $52 billion, from which it paid $21.6 billion in income taxes worldwide, leaving a net income of $30.5 billion. That’s a tax rate of 45%, fully 10% above the statutory corporate rate of 35%. The same tax costs apply to ConocoPhilips and Chevron.

The United States has vast oil, gas, coal, uranium, rare earth and other natural resources. The federal government has for decades placed every obstacle it can in the way of accessing them

Instead, the Obama administration keeps saying that “green jobs” would replace those in the energy sector, along with increased subsidizing of wind and solar energy, the source of barely 3% of all the energy we use daily.

Today, when one in ten Americans are out of work, just tapping the oil in the outer continental shelf between 3 and 200 miles off our coast, developing our domestic oil and natural gas reserves, has the potential to create 1.2 million jobs representing $70 billion in annual wages. And that does not include development of our massive coal reserves!

Worldwide, the U.S. is already in competition with China and India to purchase the oil needed to sustain our industries and transportation. This is the real world, not the fantasy conjured up by the federal government and environmental organizations doing everything possible to turn off the lights and leave our cars parked in the garages of America.

In September, after having driven the economy into the ditch, the President says that a new plan to get the economy going again will be unveiled. It’s a good guess that energy development, other than wind and solar, will not be part of that plan.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Next "Enemy of the State" is Energy

By Alan Caruba

Despite a significant majority of Americans who opposed the healthcare bill, despite protests heard by members of Congress starting in the summer of 2009, despite a huge protest rally in Washington, D.C. in September, despite having the phones and faxes of Congress jammed with protests, the bill passed the House on March 21 by a margin of five votes.

Five votes! The final count was 220 for it and 215 against it. The story of how those votes were secured is a sordid and ugly chapter in the governance of this republic. Americans are still reeling from the catalog of bribes and backroom deals involved. Healthcare represents an assault on the Constitution, on the nation’s economic future, and on the belief that the will of the people should be the guiding factor regarding legislation.

The vote portends, however, legislation that is intended to completely and utterly destroy the economic foundations of the nation.

Waiting in the Senate is a Cap-and-Trade bill that would impose the largest tax on the use of energy the nation has ever seen. It lacks any scientific justification, based as it is on the fraud known as “global warming.”

The nation will not survive Cap-and-Trade and James M. Taylor, a Senior Fellow specializing in environmental policy at The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based, non-profit, free market think tank has authored “The Cap & Trade Handbook” that explains why. It is a slim six pages. (On May 16-18, the Institute will sponsor the Fourth International Conference on Climate change.)

Cap-and-Trade seeks to impose restrictions on greenhouse gases in general and carbon dioxide (CO2) in particular. Taylor notes that “The portion of the Earth’s greenhouse gas envelope contributed by mankind is negligible, barely one-tenth of one percent of the total. Carbon dioxide is no more than four percent of the total greenhouse gas envelope. (Water is more than 90 percent, followed by methane and nitrous and sulfur oxides.) Of that four percent, mankind contributes a little more than three percent. Three percent of four percent is 0.12 percent.”

There is no proof whatever that CO2 or human activity plays any role in “global warming” and there is no proof whatever that “global warming” exists except a natural cycle based on the actions of the sun, the oceans, cloud cover, and other factors over which humans have no control, nor influence.

Moreover, the Earth has entered a new, natural cycle of cooling and its average temperatures have been declining since around 1995. Weather satellites all confirm this and it began to cause consternation among a small group of scientists who, under the aegis of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, deliberately perverted climate data in order to foist the “global warming” fraud on the world.

Since “global warming” is a fraud, Cap-and-Trade is a fraud.

The Obama administration, however, took power vowing to make war on the sources of energy on which the nation depends for its electrical power and transportation needs. Coal, which provides just over fifty percent of all electrical power, is high on their list. Huge national reserves of oil which provide gasoline and diesel for our transportation needs continue to be restricted despite talk of “energy independence.” Even natural gas is being subjected to efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency efforts to thwart extraction.

The Obama administration is five votes or less away from destroying the nation. As President Obama has said, “Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

This is tantamount to treason.

As Taylor points out, “a 70% cut in carbon dioxide emissions would cause gasoline prices to rise 145%, electricity prices would rise 129%, and more than four million jobs would disappear. Average household income would fall by nearly $7,000 each and every year” if Cap-and-Trade is enacted. The bill calls for an 83% cut in emissions!

These projections are based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and from the Congressional Budget office.

A mere five votes or less could plunge the nation into poverty beyond even the estimates of costs attributed to the unconstitutional Healthcare bill. Our worst external enemies could not bring about such a collapse.

Cap-and-Trade is a nation killer.

Editor’s Note: You can secure more information by visiting the following websites:
www.heartland.org, www.climatedepot.com, www.sepp.org, www.globalwarming.org, www.climatechangefraud.com, www.icecap.us, www.iceagenow.com, and www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com to name just a few science-based sources.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Energy ABCs: Playing Americans for Fools

By Alan Caruba

I have long harbored strong doubts about the knowledge that most Americans possess regarding the sources of energy they largely take for granted. We flip a switch and the lights go on. We pull up to the gas pump and drive away. We use machines that are totally dependent on having enough electricity to power entire cities as well as rural communities.

Since all successful economies depend on abundant, affordable energy, why is the Congress preparing to pass a cap-and-trade bill, renamed to suggest “clean energy” and “national security” has anything to do with a huge tax on the use of energy by all Americans?

There are some fundamental facts about energy in America you need to know. The Congressional Research Service recently released a report on U.S. energy reserves. To begin:

The U.S. has 1,321 billion barrels of oil (or barrels of oil equivalent for other sources of energy) when combining its recoverable natural gas, oil and coal reserves. This is oil known to exist and oil estimates in fields as yet untapped. Between Alaska and the continental offshore potential, we could literally be self-sufficient.

Keep in mind, however, oil represents less than 40% of our energy use, nor do we import most of that from the Middle East. Two-thirds of our oil consumption comes from North America with Canada and Mexico being major providers. By expanding domestic production, we could reduce dependency on the Middle East even further.

That said, since the days of Jimmy Carter, the White House and Congress has gone out of its way to make it difficult, if not impossible, to tap domestic reserves. When a windfall profits tax was imposed on November 9, 1978, it sent a message to U.S. oil companies they were not welcome here.

While ExxonMobil is the favorite target of environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth or the Sierra Club, the fact is that it is no longer in the seven top oil producers in the United States. The “big” domestic oil companies are now Aera Energy, Anadarko, and Occidental. ExxonMobil looks for oil in overseas locations.

Astonishingly, other oil producing nations whose reserves are ranked behind the U.S. are Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, and Canada. The only oil “shortage” in the U.S. is one created by Congress and the energy policies of a succession of past presidents. An estimated 87% of our oil reserves remain untouched.

When it comes to coal, the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal with 28% of all the world’s coal reserves. Russian comes in second with 19%. Coal represents more than 50% of all the electricity produced in America and the Obama administration has declared war on it.

The cap-and-trade bill before Congress puts all of its emphasis on the two worst, most expensive, and job-killing forms of energy, wind and solar. Combined they represent a pathetic 1% of electricity. They are unreliable sources, dependent on whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Moreover, though never mentioned, they require backup sources of traditional energy production. You cannot have wind or solar energy without also having a coal-fired, hydroelectric, or nuclear plant to ensure a steady source.

As reported in Newsweek, “Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies to encourage wind, solar, and other renewable energy markets.”

The result, in the U.S. is a virtually army, “1,150 lobbying groups that spent more than $20 million to lobby the U.S. Congress as it was writing the Clean Energy bill (which would create a $60 billion annual market for emissions permits by 2012.)”

The Newsweek article said, “It’s a genetic defect that not only guarantees great waste, but opens the door to manipulation and often demonstrably contravenes the objectives that climate policy is supposed to achieve.”

We do not have a climate policy in the United States. We have a huge scheme to enrich a small group of people who will control the exchanges for utterly bogus “carbon credits”, nothing more than the right to emit carbon dioxide as the natural result of burning fuel for energy. It is not, however, such industrial and other uses that represents the largest emitter of carbon dioxide. The Earth itself is responsible for 95% of the CO2 in the atmosphere and that CO2 represents 3.618%.

By comparison, nuclear energy does not produce CO2 emissions and yet there hasn’t been a new nuclear reactor built in the United States for some thirty years.

The same is true for the building of a single new oil refinery in America. Since it takes about a decade from start to finish on these huge engineering projects and a billion dollar investment, it would be 2020 before one was in full production if begun next year. The real question is, if you were an oil company CEO, would you invest that kind of money when the U.S. won’t let you explore or extract oil on or offshore?

What no one is telling you is that CO2 does not “cause” global warming and there is no global warming. The Earth is actually in a natural cycle of cooling that began in 1998 and is anticipated to last at least two to three decades.

Europe’s experience with “renewable” energy has been a disaster. Great Britain is facing blackouts that will make economic growth impossible and wreak havoc on the daily lives of the English. As with other European nations, it has driven up the cost of electricity.

The American energy consumer is being lied to and stolen from in the form of the cap-and-trade bill under consideration and other obstacles.

The nation as a whole is being put at risk for lack of access to our own vast energy reserves, coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as nuclear power that will be needed to reverse the present recession, unemployment, and the ability to grow our way back to prosperity.

Editor's Note: To read the report, click on
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=f7bd7b77-ba50-48c2-a635-220d7cf8c519

Cap-and-Switch: Hello Sucker!

By Alan Caruba

Here’s a look at the introduction of a draft bill co-sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), co-sponsored by John Kerry (D-MA). It is the Senate alternative to the horrid “Cap-and-Trade” bill authored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA). Call it “Cap-and-Switch.”

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
A BILL
To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence,
reduce global warming pollution, and transition to a
clean energy economy.

All those who believe Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Jolly Green Giant are real should stop reading now.

Let’s look at the objectives of the Senate version of a huge tax on all energy use by every American. As I will note later, the bulk of the cost will fall on low-and-middle income households.

“To create clean energy jobs.” This is pure bunk. Such jobs would be primarily in the production of solar and wind energy. Other such jobs involve biofuels such as ethanol. Combined, solar and wind represent barely one percent of all the electricity generated daily in the nation. If solar and wind were profitable, you can be sure that American entrepreneurs would have long ago become more active, but if it were not for taxpayer dollars subsidizing solar and wind, neither would likely exist.

The only thing ethanol has done has been to raise the cost of the corn from which it is made and reduce the mileage of every gallon of gasoline to which it is added.

Testifying, Sept. 30 before the House Committee on Small Business, Manning Feraci, vice president of federal affairs for the National Biodiesel Board was seeking a continuation of the industry tax incentive. He said “the industry is in the midst of an economic crisis. Plants are having difficulty accessing operating capital. Volatility in commodity markets and reduced demand for biodiesel in both domestic and global markets are making it difficult for producer to sell fuel.” Nobody wants it!

There will be few “clean energy jobs” as compared to the employment that coal, oil and natural gas industries currently provide and could expand upon if the government wasn’t trying to put them out of business.

“Achieve energy independence.” Are you stupid? Boxer, Kerry, Waxman and Markey think you are. So does the President and many members of Congress.

How does America achieve “energy independence” when it will not allow the oil in Alaska’s ANWR to be extracted? When 85% of the nation’s offshore continental shelf, home to estimated billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, is off-limits to any exploration and drilling? When the President wants to eliminate the current subsidies that encourage oil companies to invest billions to find new reserves? When there is a full-scale attack on America’s coal industry even though coal provides half of all the electricity we use?

Just how does America “achieve energy independence” under such circumstances? How, indeed, do we heat or cool our homes, run our businesses, or even turn on the lights if Congress is opposed to the acquisition and use of our known and estimate energy reserves? Pretty soon, for reasons that defy understanding, Americans will not even be able to purchase an incandescent light bulb in the nation where it was invented!

“Reduce global warming pollution.” First of all, there is NO global warming. Why would Congress pass a law intended to deal with something that is a complete hoax? And what is global warming pollution? Is it the second most essential gas to all life on Earth, carbon dioxide (CO2)? If so, this law is scientifically absurd and baseless. CO2 never had anything to do with the warming that occurred after the end of the last little ice age, around 1850.

No matter what the Supreme Court and others have ruled, if CO2 is a "pollutant", than we should all be in jail because that’s what we and other mammals exhale. It also occurs when energy sources such as coal and oil are used to keep factories producing, along with hospitals, schools, airports, seaports, and the Capitol of the United States functioning.

“Transition to a clean energy economy.” Oh sure, just as soon as we cover hundreds of thousands of acres of America with solar mirrors and wind turbines, we can make that transition. We have an economy that is dependent on coal, oil and natural gas. We have abundant natural reserves. What we don’t have is a President and Congress with the intelligence to understand that China is building a new coal-fired plant every week to meet its energy needs, that India has an aggressive nuclear energy program going for its economy, and this single piece of legislation will destroy any hope that the American economy can recover and grow strong again.

According to a study of the Waxman-Markey bill by Andrew Chamberlain, it will be the shareholders, not ratepayers, that will be the primary beneficiaries of cap-and-trade’s absurd creation of a market for the purchase and sale of “carbon credits.” It will be based on how much CO2 a utility, industrial, or any other entity is producing. The credits will literally permit them to keep on “polluting” even though that means “global warming” would, in theory, just get worse. Even though there is NO global warming. Make sense to you?

Chamberlain succinctly says, “These new findings should send a clear message to the American people (that) cap-and-trade helps the powerful and hurts the rest of us. And as Congress’ corporate allies receive the bulk of the benefits Waxman-Markey has to offer, our environment, along with our struggling economy, will suffer for years to come.”

“Congress needs to get out of the business of picking winners and losers and allow the market to determine which energy and electricity sources should power our economy.”

I leave you with a short list of just some of the U.S. corporations seeking to benefit from this hideous piece of legislation. Twelve of them sent an open letter to the U.S. Senate urging swift action on the climate change bill. They are Bumble Bee Foods, Dell, DuPont, FPL Group, Google, HP, Johnson & Johnson, Johnson Diversity, Levi Strauss & Company, Nike, PG&E Corporation, and Xanterra Parks and Resorts.

Time to let your Congressman and Senators know you think this is a very bad idea.

Congress Says NO to Energy

By Alan Caruba

Americans are seriously worried over the rising number of their fellow citizens without jobs.

Americans watch the daily cost of a gallon of gasoline as closely as sports scores.

America has so much untapped oil that it boggles the imagination. Much of it is located offshore of the nation’s coastline.

Some states benefit greatly from the oil and natural gas extracted from the Gulf of Mexico. Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas receive revenues collected by the federal government for offshore production and of course there are lots of jobs involved.

July marked a year since the lifting of an 18-year-old presidential moratorium (ban) on offshore exploration and drilling for oil and natural gas, but a de facto ban continues for states from Maine to Florida, Washington to California. In Alaska, a federal ban on extracting oil in ANWR makes a joke out of politicians who call for “energy independence.”

Nine out of ten wells in America’s interior are produced by small, independent producers, not the so-called Big Oil companies. They increase the nation’s energy security and expand domestic energy production. They reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil.

The Southeast Energy Alliance recently noted that just one state, North Carolina, could receive up to $577 million annually in revenue sharing payments from offshore energy development if Congress extended its royalty revenue sharing program in the same way it does for Gulf States.

Now multiply that revenue by all the other coastal states that will not permit exploration and extraction. Those same states mercilessly raise taxes on their citizens to meet their budget shortfalls.

In North Carolina alone, offshore continental shelf exploration and extraction would generate more than 6,700 jobs, increase the state’s gross domestic product by $659 million annually by 2030, and generate approximately $148 billion in federal, state, and local revenues.

A Monmouth University poll in June revealed that a clear majority of Americans in five coastal states support offshore domestic energy exploration and production. The states polled were that New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.

Now, while all that oil and natural gas goes untapped and essentially banned from use, Congress is considering a “Cap-and-Trade” act that would increase the cost of all energy, raising the cost to all Americans in the name of limiting “greenhouse gas emissions” said to be causing “global warming.” This especially hits the coal industry, responsible for 50% of all the electricity generated nationwide.

Only there is NO global warming. Thousands of previous records regarding cooler weather are being broken throughout the United States (and worldwide) because the Earth has been cooling for a decade and is predicted to continue cooling for decades.

The “Stimulus” bill passed by Congress allocates billions to “green energy” in the form of wind and solar production which represents just over 1% of the electricity Americans require daily. It is more expensive and less reliable than any other form of energy.

The total disconnect between what Congress says and what it does marks its failure to support the generation of more jobs, more revenue, and greater energy security for the nation.

The answer to America’s energy needs, however, is obvious. Rid Congress of those members who will not permit thousands of energy-related jobs, nor allow Americans access to the energy they require to run their businesses, heat or cool their homes, or operate cars, trucks, trains and planes.

Find out if your Representative in the House voted for “Cap-and-Trade” and vote them out! Tell your Senators today that they are next to go if they vote for it.

Then demand that exploration and drilling in America’s offshore continental shelf and in ANWR must be permitted. Tell the lying Greens wailing about “dirty” coal to take a hike.

It’s not complicated. It’s common sense and it’s about the survival of the nation.

The US is Committing National Suicide

By Alan Caruba

Growing up as a teenager in the 1950s, I could not wait to get my license to drive and I liked the sporty look of the British MG. These days I drive a Volkswagen. In that short tale can be found the seeds of the end of the American auto industry.

Here’s some history. In 1952, the merger of several British auto companies resulted in the British Motor Corporation. It was the largest of its day with 39% of British output. Despite established dealerships for the various models, a series of poor management decisions resulted in the loss of market share.

By 1968, British Leyland was formed out of British Motor Corporation and became British Leyland Motor Corporation Ltd. In 1975, it was partially nationalized and the government became a holding company. UK market share barely changed and despite brands such as Jaguar, Rover and Land Rover, the government motor company continued its decline.

By 2005, the MG Rover Group went bankrupt, bringing to an end the production by British owned companies. The MG became part of Chinese Nanjing Automobile.

The 1970s were difficult economic times for the United Kingdom and its Labor government (1974-1979), as noted above, created a holding company with the government as the major shareholder. At that point British Leyland employed 159,000 people in its many divisions that included a bus and truck operation.

In 1984, Jaguar Cars became independent once more through a public sale of its shares, but the Leyland truck and bus operation was sold to Volvo in 1988. The Rover Group was sold by the government to British Aerospace that in turn sold it to BMW. Suffice it to say, the British auto industry is now largely owned by companies in other nations or operating as a mere shadow of its former self.

Anyone who thinks that General Motors will revive is wrong. As Larry Kudlow, the radio-TV business maven, recently wrote, “Taxpayers won’t get their money back” and that figure now stands at $50 billion.

Both GM and Chrysler should have been allowed to choose bankruptcy months ago, but the U.S. government in its infinite wisdom has thrown our money down a rat hole created by bad management and excessive labor union demands over the past four decades. Meanwhile, as was the case in the UK, Chrysler is now owned by an Italian auto manufacturer.

The U.S. government now owns GM, AIG an insurance company, and billions in housing mortgages through the government entities of Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae. Kudlow said, “We’re talking about hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars that will never be repaid.”

That news is bad enough, but consider now that the U.S. government has just increased the standards of how much mileage must be achieved from a gallon of gasoline at the very same time it demands that more of that gasoline be mixed with ethanol. Ethanol reduces mileage. President Obama has already made clear that he wants GM to manufacture “green” automobiles. No one will buy them.

The Telegraph, a British newspaper, recently did the math on the price of “green” cars, noting that the present UK models cost the equivalent of more than about $5,000 US than a comparable non-green model. “To benefit from the difference in fuel efficiency, you would have to drive 198,000 miles, the equivalent of driving around the world eight times.” The same will apply to comparable American-made “green” cars.

Here in America, the biofuels industry receives a 45 cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol or biodiesel it produces or about $3 billion a year. The US government requires that 10% of all gasoline be blended with these biofuels whether consumers want it or not. This mandate is scheduled to double by 2015.

Not only will the automobiles cost more and get less mileage per gallon, but the Congressional Budget Office last month reported that “the increased use of ethanol accounted for about 10% to 15% of the rise in food prices.” That’s because the main ingredient of ethanol is corn. That is insane.

At the same time, the government refuses to permit exploration and extraction of known oil reserves in the nation’s interior and off its continental coastal shelf despite estimates of literally billions of barrels of untapped oil.

In the Bakken Formation under North Dakota and Montana, there are an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil. And we’re not even talking about the billions of barrels off the coast of California, Florida and other coastal states. The U.S. by some estimates has eight times as much oil as Saudi Arabia, eighteen times as much as Iraq and twenty-two times as much oil as Iran.

There is one, single reason why we can’t get at those oil and natural gas reserves, as well as being denied access to the massive amounts of U.S. coal reserves. It is the environmental organizations that maintain a campaign against energy use in the nation.

The government is to blame, of course, but you can thank Greenpeace USA, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the United Nations Environmental Program, among countless others that have fought against any and all development, any and all economic expansion and growth.

This campaign is coming to a head with a “Cap-and-Trade” bill making its way through Congress that would impose a huge tax on “greenhouse gas emissions” by every industry and business that produces or uses energy. It has no scientific justification. Even the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality has released a study demonstrating that the reduction of CO2 emissions would be minimal at best, but such reductions are absurd because there is no global warming.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the midst of a historic economic crisis, at a time when such emissions will continue in other nations around the world, and when such emissions are known to have no effect whatever on a totally bogus “global warming” or “climate change” is a program for national suicide.

Government control of the auto industry is now merely a prelude to its eventual end. Jobs will disappear forever. “Green jobs” are a myth. The economy will suffer a grievous loss. And, if you draw the lessons from the British experiment, you can accurately predict the future of our auto industry.

Only if control of Congress by the Democrats is ended can measures be taken that will permit the nation to turn away from the destruction being inflicted upon it. Vote in October 2010 as if your life, your children’s lives, and your grandchildren’s lives depend upon it, because it does.

A Formula for Failure

By Alan Caruba

Oil producing nations such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, along with Venezuela, will grow rich while Americans will be faced with high costs for gasoline, motor and heating oil, and everything else that depends on oil such as asphalt or even Vaseline.

Meanwhile, oil producers in America, large and small, will take a financial beating. If you don’t like living in a modern, advanced and industrialized society, you will favor this. If you think Americans consume too much, drive too much, and deserve to be punished for it, you will favor this.

Recently, Barry Russell, the president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, released a statement in which he said, “President Obama delivered a devastating blow to the American oil and natural gas industry by proposing an astonishing $30 billion tax increase (as part of his FY 2010 budget) on American energy producers, most of whom are small businesses.”

“Ninety percent of the oil and natural gas wells developed in the United States are done by small, independent businesses—not so called ‘Big Oil’—so tax increases hurt these companies most.” It also, of course, hurts any prospect for the discovery and production of new sources of oil and natural gas in America.

In a world where more oil and natural gas is required by developing nations such as India and China, the Obama administration proposes:

(1) A repeal of expensing of intangible drilling costs; a repeal of percentage depletion that allows for the depreciation of existing small, barely economic wells;

(2) A repeal of marginal well tax credit, a safety net for wells that produce small amounts of oil and gas that, collectively, supply almost 20% of the nation’s oil and 12% of its gas;

(3) A repeal of the enhanced oil recovery credit that allows industry to get more energy from wells that are depleted instead of drilling new wells;

(4) Increases the costs of geological and geophysical amortization costs involving the high cost of doing seismic and other high-tech surveys;

(5) An excise tax on Gulf of Mexico production;

(6) And a repeal of the manufacturing tax deduction, a provision given to every other American manufacturer and which allows independent oil and natural gas producers to put more money into new energy projects.

It is a plan to destroy the American oil and natural gas industry, and with it the nation’s economy.

Right now, however, the Obama administration has installed an “energy team” that is completely opposed to the development of any energy resources in America, from offshore and ANWR oil to coal mining or the construction of coal-fired plants to generate electricity. Coal currently produces 50% of the nation’s electricity.

Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy, is on record saying, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” It is $8 a gallon there.

Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, the agency that administers energy leasing on federal lands and most offshore areas, has a long record of opposition to such leasing of oil, natural gas, and coal exploration and extraction. He has already nullified recently awarded leases for natural gas drilling in federal land in Utah. Salazar is responsible for legislation blocking the development of shale oil.

Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren, out-does Al Gore with predictions of global warming calamities. Back in the 1970s he was worrying whether mankind would survive the “threat of making the planet too cold.”

Meanwhile, Wall Street is watching investment drop like a stone as Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, testifies that U.S. oil and natural gas producing companies should not receive federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks because their businesses contribute to global warming!

This attack on energy companies and access to energy resources in America is a formula for failure.

Heartland Institute on the Democrat Energy Bill Scam

The U.S. House of Representatives approved a package of proposals yesterday [September 16] designed to convince voters it is addressing energy production shortfalls and high recent energy prices.

The proposals, which face an uphill battle in the U.S. Senate, would continue a ban on oil exploration and development within 100 miles of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, with the exception that exploration and development can occur outside of 50 miles from the coast if both the governor and legislature of the affected state approve.

Federal studies have shown more than 85 percent of known offshore oil reserves reside within the 50-mile zone that would remain under a moratorium. The House plan would not allow any sharing of royalties with the states, which would discourage states from approving oil exploration and production 50 to 100 miles from their coasts.

Also, rather than returning royalty money to energy consumers, the House plan would give the money to the renewable power industry to subsidize research.

Experts contacted by The Heartland Institute were unimpressed by the plan. Their comments below may be quoted;

"Telling energy producers that they cannot produce oil where federal experts know the vast majority of our oil reserves reside is like telling a person who lost his keys at the movie theater that he can look for them only at the bank across town.

"We need less politicking and more sincere action to increase domestic energy production. An offshore energy bill that continues to ban energy production where more than 85 percent of our energy reserves reside is not an energy bill at all, but merely a poorly executed head fake.

"Making matters worse, a proposal to give the royalties to the renewable power industry rather than returning them to citizens of the affected states is egregious corporate welfare that accomplishes little more than robbing Peter to pay Paul."

James M. Taylor Senior Fellow, Environment Policy The Heartland Institute

"Americans deserve better from Congress than this. The public wants Congress to allow drilling here and now--a clean drilling bill that would simply rescind the present moratorium. In response, the Pelosi plan to offer bills with all sorts of preconditions--such as limiting the areas where drilling can take place to areas off selected states and forcing states to use renewable energy even where it doesn't make sense--would raise prices to consumers and make present oil leases offshore more costly to develop.

"In the end, the bills being proposed are not meant to actually allow new domestic production (which is one of the few ways to increase supplies and reduce prices at the pump), but rather are brazen political showpieces, all flash with no substance. The idea is to appear to be doing something while in reality doing nothing that would raise the hackles of big green environmental lobbyists who have co-opted the majority party's leadership on energy issues.

"While Congress claims they want to help consumers by lowering prices at the pump and securing our energy independence, this bill will not help much in either regard."

Sterling Burnett Senior Fellow National Center for Policy Analysis

"Not allowing the states to share royalties from offshore drilling near their shorelines could very well constitute an infringement of their authority and rights as described under the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"Local and state economies are struggling under the high costs of transportation and electricity. Speaker Pelosi is yet again restricting economic growth and financial freedom through her energy policies at a time when the United States is facing its worst financial crisis in decades. Is she so blinded by the environmental interest groups inside the beltway that she cannot see the millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet?"

Alexandra Bourne Vice President, Policy and Strategic Development The Heartland Institute

Who Are You Calling Stupid?

By Alan Caruba

The September 14, Sunday edition of The New York Times is a study in what might be called journalistic cognitive dissonance.

On the front page the lead story was “Storm Damage is Extensive and Millions Lose Power.” On the editorial page, Pulitzer Prize winning bloviator, Thomas Friedman, was explaining why we have to stop using oil as an energy source for transportation and replace coal and nuclear with wind turbines and solar panels to produce electricity.

The title of Friedman’s column was, “Making America Stupid”, and it is a pretty good description of the entire environmental movement whose main objective often seems to be the thwarting of any new energy, i.e., power, sources in America.

“Almost the entire metropolitan area (of Houston, Texas) lost power, and authorities said more than three million people were trying to manage in the dark. Utility officials say it could be weeks before power is restored throughout the region.”

Bad news for Texans, but worse news for the rest of us. “The magnitude of the power loss and the flooding raised the possibility that several major oil refineries would take more than a week to reopen.”

It helps, if you are a New York Times editor, to be unable to make the connection between your page one story and the babbling of Thomas Friedman who is inside the same issue calling for “innovating a whole new industry of clean power” for America after the grudging admission that “Of course, we’re going to need oil for many years.” You think????

Friedman’s column lambastes the bad old Republicans for wanting to “focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology—fossil fuels—rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology—renewable energy.”

That fabulous renewable energy, wind and solar power, would surely have been embraced by now if it could deliver the power that, for example, is not available in Houston and a huge swath of Texas. Could it be because a lot of power lines have been blown down?

In Texas, there are lots of wind turbines, but they like all the rest in the nation provide barely one percent of our electricity needs. And they exist only because they are heavily subsidized with federal and state funding. To put it another way, they are so inefficient and impractical, that without the government mandating them, they would not exist! The same goes for solar power.

This is what happens when government intrudes itself into areas left to intelligent people. During the Carter administration, the Department of Energy was established in 1977 for the purpose—we were told—of reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Thirty-one years later the budget for DOE is $24.2 billion a year. It has 16,000 employees and some 100,000 contract employees. Are we energy independent yet? This is the same Jimmy Carter who had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House. They’re gone now.

Friedman pauses in his criticism of Sen. McCain and the Republican solutions to our energy needs (“Drill, baby, drill!”) to make fun of their proposal for more nuclear plants. Rumor has it that France gets most of its electricity from them. India is building some for its growing energy needs, but Freidman wants to carpet America with solar panels and ruin the landscape will thousands of wind turbines. No thank you!

There’s a reason why we don’t have more coal-fired and nuclear plants generating the electricity we need.

There’s a reason our electric power grid is not being upgraded to meet our future needs.

There’s a reason oil companies won’t spend billions to build new refineries.

There’s a reason food costs more when corn is converted into fuel instead of food.

The reason is thirty-one years of government regulations and general interference with the power and energy industries that must answer to their investors while coping with “environmental” laws that slow or render impossible the provision of our energy needs.

Enthralled as all liberals are with Sen. Obama, Friedman assures us that, when elected, he will improve education and health care, deal with the deficit, and forge “a real energy policy based on building a whole new energy infrastructure.”

No, he won’t. The government just makes a botch of it when it intrudes into the marketplace to control education and health care.

The government has given us the deficit, not reduced it.

And real energy policy is based on access to our nation’s vast deposits of affordable coal and the ability of the oil and gas industry to extract the vast reserves of oil and natural gas that exist.

Friedman thinks it’s stupid to drill for oil and natural gas, and mine our coal. He thinks it’s smart to throw money at windmills and solar panels. He thinks you’re stupid enough to agree with him.

Let's Ban Al Gore

By Alan Caruba

[Warning! This is satire. If there is any resemblance to reality in the text below, it is purely intentional.]

Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and winner of a Hollywood Oscar for his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”, was at it again, giving another of those “The End is Near” speeches in which he advises the rest of us to stop driving, get rid of our air conditioners, and do everything else to avoid global warming.

He says we only have ten years in which to do this. After that, says Al Gore, there will be so much carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere we will all be fried like ants on the sidewalk. Considering that there’s only 0.038% of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, listening to his idiotic bloviating can and has impaired the mental health of countless people.

His latest Gore-a-tion is that we need to stop using fossil fuels to generate electricity because, as he put it in his usual understated way, “The future of human civilization is at stake.”

Briefly, it’s worth noting that coal accounts for just over 50% of all the electricity we use, nuclear for another 20%, natural gas for just under 20%, and the rest from minor sources like hydroelectric. Solar and wind power, combined, accounts for less than 4% because it remains a really stupid way to generate electricity.

Instead of banning everything Al Gore and his Little Green Friends want eliminated from modern life, why can’t we just get Al Gore banned?

Frankly, I think a case can be made that Al Gore represents a compelling reason to set aside the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and free press. (But only for him!)

Single-handedly, Al Gore has frightened more pre-school and school-age children in the history of the nation. These tots are all convinced that the end of the Earth is coming in their lifetimes. The reason for this is that they’ve all been forced to sit through “An Inconvenient Truth” several times, often to the point where they weep uncontrollably and beg to be allowed to leave the room.

I know that Constitutional purists will say that Al Gore cannot and should not be banned, but I maintain that anyone who wrote, as he did in his book, “Earth in the Balance”, that the internal combustion engine should be eliminated has no right to speak in public or be published for any reason.

This is such bizarre and demented nonsense that the real question is why Al Gore has not been institutionalized?

It can be argued, I maintain, that anyone who crammed as many lies into his award-winning documentary as Al Gore did should not be allowed to roam freely. Here again, I know that some will say that if we locked up every liar in public life, the nation’s Capitol Building would be empty along with many of Washington, DC’s various bureaucracies whose job it is to steal private property and fleece taxpayers.

I repeat, I only want Al Gore banned.

I maintain that it would be a public service to put Al Gore under house arrest where he could continue to burn through more energy than twenty average homes in Nashville, Tennessee. This single act would render the entire world a Gore-Free Zone where polar bears would not be exploited for being cute to everyone except seals and some citizens of Alaska for whom the word “cute” does not come instantly to mind when one of them is in the backyard.

A Gore-Free Zone would be one in which the rest of us could devote more time to figuring out what to do as the Earth enters its second decade of atmospheric cooling and, unless the Sun warms up soon, slides into the next Ice Age.

Why Can't McCain Say "Oil"?

By Alan Caruba

While grabbing a bite to eat for lunch, I turned on the television and MSNBC was broadcasting live a presentation John McCain was making somewhere. He does well in these relatively unscripted events, but when he got to the topic of the price of gasoline and how to reduce current and future pain at the pump, he could not bring himself to say “oil.”

He ran off a string of “alternative” energy ideas such as solar, wind, nuclear, and “a battery that will let your car go a hundred miles” on a single charge, but there was no mention of America’s vast oil reserves in Alaska or the billions of barrels geologists believe exist in our continental shelf, 85% of which Congress has put off-limits to exploration or drilling. There was also no mention of the coal that accounts for more than 50% of the electricity in the U.S. and which would be required by his magical future automobiles.

(Revised text) Bill Clinton did not favor drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge where an estimated 7 to 15 billion barrels of oil exists and Congress resisted efforts of the Bush administration to permit drilling. That's a total of 16 wasted years when we could have been extracting it.

That is precisely why America has become dependent on foreign oil, the price of which is currently being bid up by speculators worried about more war in the Middle East, i.e., an imminent attack on Iran. First we had to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and then we decided to remove him entirely. Was this about tyranny or oil? Read my lips: O-I-L.

As for Iran's nuclear ambitions, the same action Israel took first with Iraq and more recently with Syria would end that. Or we could, in cooperation with the European Union and other nations, cut off foreign investment and markets to the ayatollahs until they cry "Uncle Sam!"

As the Saudis keep telling us, there is plenty of global oil to meet our needs, but it is the mercantile exchanges around the world where the price is set. Lacking an adequate domestic supply, Americans depend daily on the importation of 10.1 million barrels of foreign oil. We use 5.1 million barrels of domestic oil, and are required to add 0.4 million barrels of ethanol.

You can thank OPEC and Jimmy Carter for the pathetic state of domestic oil production. It has been in decline since the OPEC oil embargo that saw the first real jump in prices at the pump. You would have thought we would have taken a look at our capacity for domestic oil production, but what Carter did and some politicians (Obama!)are advocating today was to impose a “windfall profits” tax on American investor-owned oil companies.

All of a sudden the incentive to spend the millions required to find oil and produce it for domestic consumption disappeared, a condition that dates back to at least 1985. Thereafter, since most of the places in America where oil can be found were put off-limits, U.S. oil companies decided to look and drill for oil elsewhere in the world. (The exception is the Gulf of Mexico.)

With either McCain or Obama in the White House, new domestic exploration and drilling is not likely to happen, particularly since McCain cannot bring himself to even say the word “oil” and Obama wants to seize oil company profits in precisely the same way Jimmy Carter sabotaged the industry.

The recent charade of hauling oil company executives before a congressional committee demonstrates what idiots we have elected to high office.

While McCain is reeling off his list of alternative energy sources, he neglects to mention you can’t pour solar, wind or nuclear energy into the tank of an automobile, truck or tractor! McCain has drunk deeply of the global warming Kool-Aid and favors the kind of carbon credit program that was just defeated in the Senate. Both he and Obama were conveniently out of town when the vote on Al Gore’s cap-and-trade scheme was taken. Otherwise we would have discovered that both candidates cannot wait to destroy what is left of our economy.

How to turn things around is almost too simple.

First, get rid of the congressional mandate for ethanol. Ethanol effluent pollutes more than gasoline and ethanol ensures less mileage per gallon. It has significantly distorted the worldwide agricultural marketplace.

Second, get rid of the EPA mandate for the formulation of some 45 different blends of gasoline that drive up the cost in various areas of the nation. Consumers end up paying for all this essentially useless additional refining process. Unless you live in some place where the natural geography contributes to smog, the air in most of the nation is just fine.

Third, open up ANWR to drilling. NOW!

Fourth, let oil companies explore and drill for oil and natural gas offshore of our coasts. Environmentalists want to build miles of ugly wind farms there, but a couple of drill platforms are apparently too awful to endure for the literally billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that exist.

Then wait patiently as the price of oil and natural gas drops like a stone.

Frankly both the presidential candidates scare the hell out of me, but I will settle for McCain if he just begins to say that magic word, OIL.

Earth Day 2008. Get Over It!

By Alan Caruba

Of the many things most people do not know about Earth Day is that it is also the anniversary of the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. Coincidence? I doubt it.

These days most people know little of history. We are witnessing a new generation who know little or nothing about the Soviet Union and the Cold War it waged against America and the world for the supremacy of Communism in the latter half of the last century. These are kids who don't even known when we fought our Civil War and for whom Korea and Vietnam are just names of places where there were wars, the latter of which we lost.

When we finally left Vietnam, we lost something else too. We lost the willingness to wage war the only way it can be waged, by killing as many of the enemy as possible to make them lose the will to continue. That includes destroying as much of the enemy’s homeland too. It involves overwhelming force and that involves a massive military presence. You can't do that with just volunteers.

The actual financial cost of the war in Iraq has been small compared to the size of our gross domestic product that is measured in trillions of dollars. It’s small, too, in terms of the casualties of the war. In World War Two, we lost more than 4,000 men taking a single Pacific island. Truman dropped two atom bombs on Japan because it was estimated we’d lose a million men to take the main island. He was right to do it.

Americans have grown soft. That’s one of the reasons Osama bin Laden thought he could destroy the Twin Towers, drain a trillion dollars out of our economy, and disappear into the hills of the border country between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He expected the U.S. to respond, but he also knew he had time on his side. We would grow tired of chasing Taliban around. Our allies would grow tired, too.

So we come to Earth Day 2008 and, despite the many good things to be said of America, we have let ourselves be trapped by the many lies of the Greens, incrementally allowing them to decide everything from how much water we can have in our toilet tanks to whether we can buy an incandescent light bulb. Like bin Laden, they knew they could wait us out.

They also know how pliable our politicians are. All three of the candidates for president believe global warming is happening even though a kid in Meteorology 101 can cite the data since 1998 that documents a cooling trend. It’s going to get a lot colder because we are all on the forward edge of a new Ice Age. We’re due one. Any climatologist will tell you that.

So Americans will blindly go along, not understanding why the food costs more and the cost of gasoline and other energy like natural gas keep climbing even though common sense says that if the government does not permit access to our own reserves—for all the blather about energy independence—the price will go up in ways beyond our control.

Americans will blame Big Oil whose combined ownership of worldwide oil reserves represents a scant 4% of the world’s known reserves. That’s right, ExxonMobil, Shell, Conoco Phillips, BP and the rest own very little of the world’s oil.

One of the many nations who does own oil is Russia, our former adversary in the Cold War. Now they have so many oil billions they want to buy American businesses with the surplus. There's something very wrong with that! Under Putin, they have returned to a dictatorship. The Russians seem to prefer that.

Americans will blame our farmers—the 2% of the population that feeds the rest of us and whose exports represent a significant part of economy—but why blame people who the government literally pays to not plant crops? Why blame people whose own costs of planting, fertilizing, harvesting, and transporting their crops to the market cost more thanks to a crazed government mandate to turn 40% to 60% of the corn crop into moonshine and then requires oil refineries to add that moonshine to every gallon of gasoline you buy? And then taxes us for every gallon of that inefficient blend!

Earth Day. What an absolutely idiotic notion.

Anyone who has ever traveled around the planet will tell you that it’s filled with forests, jungles, deserts, mountains,and mostly oceans. We have pretty much used every bit of arable land we can to feed the population. Only the Green Revolution of genetically modified seeds has made it possible to get greater yields per acre of farmland. Otherwise people would have died off in the millions in recent times.

They are likely to do so now if this artificial food shortage created by an idiotic “biofuels” program isn’t junked as fast as possible.

The Greens will just have to be content with killing millions of Africans by denying them DDT to protect against malaria or millions more around the world from dengue fever. Add to that the third of the world’s food supplies that are lost every year to insect and rodent predation because the Greens cannot ban pesticides fast enough.

Then there's that problem of refrigeration to preserve foodstuffs since the Greens got Freon, the cheapest and best refrigerant every invented, banned.

Earth Day makes me want to puke.

Everyone who runs around complaining about plastic supermarket bags makes me want to puke.

Everyone who thinks we should all crowd onto trains and buses and not drive when we want and where we want makes me want to puke.

Everyone who cries about endangered species when 95% of all the species that ever existed on Earth are extinct make me want to puke.

People who don’t care that a billion people on Earth live on about $1 a day or that a billion people do not have electricity make me want to puke.

People that won’t let Americans build more coal-fired or nuclear plants to generate the electricity we need make me want to puke.

A government that throws billions at studies of climate change makes me want to puke.

The climate is changing. The climate has always changed. The climate will continue to change. Get over it!