Month: March 2009

Greens move to wreck ethanol industry

Green is a cutthroat business. Just ask the ethanol industry.

As part of its proposed low-carbon fuel standard, the California Air Resources Board has proposed that so-called “indirect land use change” impacts be included in the calculation of the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for biofuels, like corn-based ethanol. The proposal states,

Carbon intensities are calculated under the LCFS on a full lifecycle basis. This means that the carbon intensity value assigned to each fuel reflects the GHG emissions associated with that fuel’s production, transport, storage, and use. In addition to these direct GHG emissions, some fuels create emissions due to indirect land use change effects. An indirect land use change impact is initially triggered when an increase in the demand for a crop-based biofuel begins to drive up prices for the necessary feedstock crop. This price increase causes farmers to devote a larger proportion of their cultivated acreage to that feedstock crop. Supplies of the displaced food and feed commodities subsequently decline, leading to higher prices for those commodities. The lowest-cost way for many farmers to take advantage of these higher commodity prices is to bring non-agricultural lands into production. These land use conversions release the carbon sequestered in soils and vegetation. The resulting carbon emissions constitute the “indirect” land use change impact of increased biofuel production.

According a report in today’s Carbon Control News, environmentalists support this proposal, which would:

  • Make it more difficult for corn-based ethanol to be classified as a low-carbon fuel in California — and perhaps elsewhere as the green-bug that bites California often spreads to other states; and
  • Discourage increased agricultural production of food intended to make-up for crop acreage lost to ethanol production.

The point here is not to cry for the rather unsympathetic ethanol industry — a group that tried to ride the green wave to the detriment of our country’s energy and food supply.

The point is that when you (the biofuels industry and everyone else) lie down with dogs (greens) you get up with fleas. No disrespect to dogs intended.

Feds aim to track where you drive

In an article discussing the possibility of the federal government taxing you by the mile driven rather than by the gallon of gas purchased, the New York Times reports on studies of the mileage tax where cars are

equipped with tracking devices to record where motorists have been.

Study author Jon Kuhl told the Times that,

“We’re looking at how you would bill people, at invasion of privacy issues, and, human nature being what it is, people will always be looking at ways to beat the system.”

The Times continued,

Privacy advocates and economists, though, wonder about the complexity — and the public’s reaction to tracking where and when people drive.

“You’d have to have a record where the car is at all times, and that certainly would frighten America,” said Mike Moffatt, an economist at the Ivy School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. “And it also seems like a much more expensive way to collect taxes.”

Steve Milloy’s new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them describes how the greens are coming after your wheels.

Washington Post questions Obama’s sincerity on clean energy

In the wake of President Obama’s decision to kill the Yucca Mountain project for spent nuclear fuel, the Washington Post questioned the credibility of Obama’s plans for clean energy. In a March 8 editorial, the Post wrote,

By stripping the funding for the nuclear repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, President Obama has succeeded in killing the contentious project that remains unfinished 22 years after Congress selected the site. He compounds the error by not offering an alternative. If the president’s vision for a clean energy future is to be believed or is to come to fruition, nuclear energy must be a part of the mix, and the safe disposal of its radioactive waste must be given more serious consideration. [Emphasis added]

Perhaps it’s dawning on the Post that President Obama is not really a well-intentioned liberal so much as he is a hardcore green intent on causing energy chaos and establishing total government control over the energy supply. Obama owes his national political career to greens. He is one of them.

Regardless of the lip service he pays to domestic drilling, nuclear energy and “clean coal,” Obama’s actions — including canceling oil/gas drilling leases in Utah, ending Yucca Mountain and pursuing draconian anti-coal climate legislation — speak louder than words.

Steve Milloy’s new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them describes how President Obama plans to green America, whether you like it or not.

Greens reject Pickens Plan

Massachusetts’ Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs pretty much ruled out the alternative energy plans of T. Boone Pickens in a March 7 a New York Times op-ed.

Ian Bowles recommended that,

… lawmakers should resist calls to add an extensive and costly new transmission system that would carry electricity from remote areas like Texas, the Great Plains and Eastern Canada to places with high energy demands like Boston, Chicago and New York…

Unlike our federal highway system, which is needed to transport goods across the country, or the “information superhighway” of the Internet, which is the fastest way to carry information around the world, long-distance transmission lines have no inherent value. On the contrary, the farther electricity is transported, the more of it is dissipated. “Line loss,” as this is called, gobbles up an estimated 2 percent to 3 percent of electricity nationally.

Long distance transmissions lines of course are what T. Boone Pickens is counting on to transmit electricity from his planned “world’s largest windfarm” in the Texas panhandle to the rest of us.

Perhaps Pickens — who apparently has abandoned every conservative principle he ever had in order to sell his wind farm nonsense — will now team up with Ted Kennedy, who has also been “wronged” by the Massachusetts bureaucrat.

Bowles, after all, supports the Kennedy-hated Cape Cod wind farm that would be within sight of the family’s Hyannis Port compound.

You can read about the green strategy to cause energy chaos in America in Steve Milloy’s new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

Hillary: Exploit financial crisis for CO2 regulation

Reuters reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a group of young Europeans at the European Parliament that,

“Never waste a good crisis … Don’t waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security… “Certainly the United States has been negligent in living up to its responsibilities.”

In what can only be viewed as a comical lack of self-awareness, she also chastised Russia for using energy as a political weapon against Ukraine in recent years:

“We are … troubled by using energy as a tool of intimidation… We think that’s not in the interest of creating a better and better functioning energy system.”

Is anyone “troubled” about the greens using the financial crisis as a political weapon?

John Kerry: CO2 regulation won’t work

Senate Foreign Relations committee Chairman Sen. John Kerry — a.k.a Mr. Teresa Heinz — said in a March 5 speech yesterday that, even with “the best” climate regulation proposed so far, including the cap-and-trade scheme outlined in President Obama’s budget proposal, atmospheric CO2 concentrations will nevertheless increase and cause “catastrophic and irreversible climate change,” according to Carbon Control News.

Kerry’s statement is based on a forthcoming analysis from the Heinz Center (Teresa Heinz, vice chair of the board of trustees), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Fidelity Investments.

“If you factor in the best of everything that is currently proposed — the best — and if you can presume that we do what is best,” CO2 emissions will still exceed 500 parts per million (ppm) by 2050,” Kerry said, while noting that 350 ppm was the CO2 concentration that policymakers should aim for.

“All the current plans take you to about 550 [ppm], but science has now said 550, 450 is not enough,” Kerry said. “We have to go back to 350.”

Bottom line: As spotlighted in Steve Milloy’s new book “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them,” the greens want to control your life and destroy your standard of living in return for nothing.

Green activist free after attacking UK minister

A green activist opposed to the expansion of London’s Heathrow airport assaulted a UK minister with green goo as he arrived at a green summit.

Activist Leila Deen told Sky News that,

“We should stand up against people who are going to make political capital out of pretending to be green.”

A neighbor of Deen’s said,

“I think her mother would be proud.”

Most shocking is that Deen simply walked away after the attack. Scotland Yard apparently won’t be charging her.

Imagine what would happen to you if you attacked a U.S. government official.

Steve Milloy’s new book “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” discusses how greens are escaping criminal prosecution.

Irony for GE CEO: Green is not much green

GE CEO Jeff Immelt is fond of saying that “green is green,” apparently in hopes that his corporate greenwashing and lobbying for global warming regulation would be profitable.

But as GE’s stock price closed yesterday at $6.66, its lowest value since 1992 and about 10 percent of its peak value, the Washington Post point out in a front-page, above-the-fold story that:

The price of a GE share, $6.66, was less than the cost of a single compact fluorescent light bulb.

Question of the Day:

Which will last the longer?

  1. Jeff Immelt’s tenure as GE’s CEO, or
  2. A GE light bulb

Steve Milloy’s new book “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” spotlights GE’s dubious effort to go green.

NY Gov. attacked for acting without greens’ OK

Green groups are attacking New York Gov. David Paterson for permitting electric utilities more flexibility with carbon dioxide emissions. Worse, according to the greens, he did it without first asking them for permission!

The New York Times reported this morning that,

At the urging of the energy industry, Gov. David A. Paterson has agreed to reconsider a key rule New York adopted as part of a 10-state pact aimed at reducing the threat of global warming by cutting power plant emissions.

Mr. Paterson appeared to overrule the State Department of Environmental Conservation in making the move, which would reopen state regulations to provide power plants leeway to release greater amounts of emissions at no additional cost. Administration officials said the governor was concerned the rule might unfairly burden the energy industry.

His decision infuriated environmental groups, which learned of Mr. Paterson’s decision just this week, though he met with energy executives privately last fall and assured them he would take the step.

Take Action:

The Times reported that

Several environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Advocates of New York, sent a letter on Wednesday to the governor’s top deputy, Larry S. Schwartz, protesting the move.

Fire off your own e-mail supporting Gov. Paterson’s move!

Steve Milloy’s new book, “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them,” focuses on how the greens are making energy more expensive and less available.

Three cheers for ExxonMobil!

Exxon Mobil announced yesterday that it would:

invest at record levels — between $25 billion and $30 billion annually over the next five years — to meet expected long-term growth in world energy demand.

DRILL, BABY, DRILL!

ExxonMobil’s 2008 highlights include:

  • Production started at eight major projects in 2008, which at their peak are expected to add the net equivalent of 260,000 barrels per day to the company’s production. A further nine major projects are expected to commence production in 2009, and at their peak are expected to add the net equivalent of an additional 485,000 barrels per day to production.
  • The company once again replaced more than 100 percent of production through proved reserves additions in 2008. It was the 15th consecutive year that the company’s proved reserves additions have more than replaced production. In addition, net exploration acreage has been increased by about 40 percent since 2003.
  • In the downstream, the company is progressing plans to invest more than $1 billion in lower-sulfur diesel projects at three refineries in the US and Europe. Once complete in 2010, these projects will allow an increase in lower-sulfur diesel production of 140,000 barrels per day.

Steve Milloy’s new book “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” discusses how there’s plenty of oil for our energy needs — if only the greens will let us at it.

Click here for ExxonMobil’s press release.

Business Climate Lobby: Once ‘at the table’, now ‘on the menu’

Kim Strassel writes in today’s Wall Street Journal about how lobbying for climate change regulation is shaping up as a giant miscue for corporate America.

Strassel cites Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers’ original rationale for lobbying:

“If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’ll wind up on the menu.”

Now, Strassel writes,

Duke sat, yet it and its compatriots are still shaping up to be Washington’s breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Obama plan will cost plenty, upfront, which will be borne by Mr. Rogers’s customers.

Stassel closes her terrific piece by recommending that:

Business leaders might do better to use this as an opportunity to kill the beast. They might get some credit for protecting their customers from what they are now, finally, admitting is a giant tax — in the middle of a recession.

The odd saga and miscues of corporate climateers like Duke Energy are spotlighted in Steve Milloy’s new book “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

Take Action:

E-mail Strassel’s column to a USCAP CEO that you know.

Renewable Pipedream?

Robert Bryce points out in today’s Wall Street Journal that if you convert the amount of electricity produced on a daily basis by so-called “renewable” energy sources into barrel-of-oil-equivalents, you get about 76,000 barrels of oil per day. But the America’s total primary energy use is equivalent to about 47.4 million barrels of oil per day.

President Obama declared in his address to Congress last week that,

“We will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next there years.”

But even if the President was to achieve his ambitious goal, we’ll still depend on hydrocarbons. It’s no wonder that Bryce’s column was entitled, “Let’s Get Real About Renewable Energy.”

Bryce is the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of ‘Energy Independence’ — which is available through the JunkScience.com store.