Day: February 23, 2009

Canadian PM says energy realities trump greens on tar sands!

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the following to Larry Kudlow on CNBC’s Kudlow Report tonight:

First of all, let me be clear about the importation [by the U.S.] of oil sands oil. Regardless of what any legislature does, the United States will be importing this oil because there is absolutely no doubt that if you look at the supply-and-demand pattern into the future, the United States is going to need Canadian oil. It is the one secure, growing market-based source of energy that the United States has. There will be no choice but to import this oil…

… any policy [to stop the importation of oil sands oil] is completely unrealistic if you look at American needs for energy and where Americans can get the supply at a reasonable price… we will do what we can to reduce the carbon footprint. But there should be no illusion that economic reality will hit those environmental policies pretty hard when one goes to implement them…

BTW, Larry Kudlow is an endorser of Steve Milloy’s upcoming book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.

Among many topics, Green Hell discusses how tar sands oil is a key means of providing affordable and secure energy and avoiding an environmentalist-induced oil/gasoline crunch.

Canadian PM Stephen Harper on tar sands oil (CNBC, Kudlow Report, at about 5:51 into clip)

Pickens says no one opposes his ‘Plan’

T. Boone Pickens said in an interview this morning on CNBC that,

… but know this… we’ve never had a person that stands up and says your plan is not good. Nobody has said that… I don’t know… there’s not many op-ed pieces or any thing…

But Steve Milloy has written six FoxNews.com columns critical of the Pickens Plan — one of which Pickens’ team responded to on FoxNews.com.

The Cato Institute’s Jerry Taylor has been critical of the Pickens Plan here and here.

Reece Epstein and David Ridenour of the National Center for Public Policy Research have a lengthy critique here.

Here’s a Wall Street Journal article about Pickens’ critics, who include FedEX CEO Fred Smith and former Kansas governor Bill Graves, who now heads the American Trucking Association.

There are plenty more who have stood up against the Pickens Plan. Yet Pickens denies their existence in his effort to “swiftboat” America into his make-Boone-richer-scheme.

And you thought global warming drove you crazy…

The Washington Post reported this morning of a Montgomery County, MD man who packed up his wife and twin 6-year-old girls and moved them to New Zealand — because of global warming.

The man told the Post,

I am not going to predict how the climate might change and how it might affect New Zealand… But quite honestly, I feel in 100 years, one of my daughters is still going to be alive and this planet is going to be a mess. If I didn’t have two daughters, I would not be doing this.

The Post further reported,

But he argued that people who do nothing in the face of risk are the ones who are being irrational: If even a fraction of the consequences of global climate change that scientists are forecasting come true, disasters such as Hurricane Katrina might become the norm, not the exception. In a world afflicted by overpopulation and environmental degradation, he asked, is the irrational person the one who acts or the one who says the future will look after itself?

The Post calls this “ecomigration.” Is that because “eco-insanity” is already taken?

Why doesn’t Al Gore get this question?

In its Feb. 22 interview of Dambisa Moyo, an African activist (the Anti-Bono) who condemns Western aid to Africa as perpetuating poverty, New York Times Magazine reporter Deborah Solomon asked Moyo whether she had a financial interest in a microfinance company mentioned in the interview.

Why is Al Gore never asked about his financial interests? He is, after all, a partner in UK-based Generation Investment Management and in the U.S.-based venture capital outfit, Kleiner Perkins. When Al Gore testified in the Senate in January, he never mentioned, and no Senator asked about the billions of dollars his firms stand to make off global warming regulations.

Are only politically incorrect activists suspected of profiteering?

Will Planet Earth sign a mercury emissions treaty?

The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration has embraced the idea of an international treaty to limit mercury emissions.

According to the EPA, the U.S. is only responsible for 3% of manmade mercury emissions — and U.S. emissions are on the decline. Let’s not forget that Mother Nature’s mercury emissions are thought to be on the same order as anthropogenic emissions.

Should we just let the world’s other emitters knock themselves out and leave us and our sovereignty alone?