WHEN British consumers are compelled to buy energy-efficient lightbulbs from 2012, they will save up to 5m tons of carbon dioxide a year from being pumped into the atmosphere. In China, however, a heavy environmental price is being paid for the production of “green” lightbulbs in cost-cutting factories.
Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs. A surge in foreign demand, set off by a European Union directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment.
Doctors, regulators, lawyers and courts in China – which supplies two thirds of the compact fluorescent bulbs sold in Britain – are increasingly alert to the potential impacts on public health of an industry that promotes itself as a friend of the earth but depends on highly toxic mercury.
Making the bulbs requires workers to handle mercury in either solid or liquid form because a small amount of the metal is put into each bulb to start the chemical reaction that creates light… Continue reading Green lightbulbs poison workers
Month: May 2009
FOXNews: Greens oppose renewable energy
FOXNews reports,
A key part of President Obama’s energy plan — replacing fossil fuels with green alternatives — is facing increasing opposition from an unlikely source: environmentalists.
Some environmentalists, who have successfully fought a wind farm on the border of Oregon and Washington, are trying to block a massive solar plant in the Mojave desert. And now an Oregon county is considering a ban on wind power in the foothills of the blue mountains.
“We all want to be as green as we can be. But at what cost?” Richard Jolly of the Blue Mountain Alliance. “To take everything from us? This valley could be surrounded by them.”
Green lightbulbs poison Chinese workers
There’s a reason CFLs aren’t made in the USA. Continue reading Green lightbulbs poison Chinese workers
Conservatives should just say ‘no’ to GOP’s ‘New America’
As President Obama exploits the ongoing financial crisis in an effort to socialize America (government-owned banks and industry, nationalized health care and centrally-planned energy and economic policy) as much as possible before anyone can do anything about it, you might think that Republican politicians would be focused on combating the destruction of the American way of life and our standard of living.
Instead, the GOP’s leaders have gathered together their most well-known clucking hens and presidential candidate rejects to tell conservatives that they need to abandon cherished and time-tested principles in favor of a new set of values — let’s call it Obama-lite with details to come.
The so-called “National Council for a New America” was announced by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) on April 30. The “council” part of NCNA appears to be led by the very Capitol Hill Republicans who have served the rest of us so ineffectively-to-disastrously that we are now at the mercy of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid hydra. These Keystone Cop legislators include: Reps. John Boehner, Cantor, Mike Pence, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, John Carter, Pete Sessions, David Dreier, Kevin McCarthy, and Roy Blunt; and Sens. Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, Lamar Alexander, John Cornyn, and John Thune. While Rep. Pence and Sen. Cornyn are good conservatives, in the context of NCNA, they are little more than window dressing or “beards.”
The NCNA has a platform that differs from the hydras only in that it is the lite version of “leave no government program behind.” Though the NCNAs couldn’t defeat Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, perhaps two of the most unpopular Congressional leaders ever, or Barack Obama, the least-experienced-and-most-socialist major party presidential candidate of all time, they think they’re up to fixing the economy, healthcare, education, energy, and national security through more government. Let’s look at what NCNA says about energy, one of this blog’s main issues:
American families and businesses cannot afford an energy policy where we are held hostage by foreign oil cartels and dictators. As a nation, we can no longer send billions of dollars overseas each year, often to countries that help fund our enemies. We must implement a comprehensive energy policy that includes traditional fuels, alternative energy, and conservation resulting in affordable, reliable domestic energy. Such a policy will stabilize costs for families and businesses while at the same time creating much-needed jobs here at home.
If the NCNAs knew anything about energy they’d know that we’re not being held hostage by “foreign oil cartels and dictators” — we’re being held hostage by domestic rent-seeking energy cartels and green dictators. We don’t need a “comprehensive policy” that interferes destructively with free markets. Rather, we need open energy markets that are able to choose workable energy solutions and deliver them at competitive prices. Free market prosperity creates good jobs — pork-barreling congressmen create non-productve bureaucracy. We don’t send money to fund our enemies. We buy oil on the open market. It’s called trade. BTW, our “enemies” will get our money anyway — through Chinese oil purchases.
NCNA is sending out a “national panel of experts” on a listening tour of the nation. On the panel are former presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney, and potential future presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Louisana Gov. Bobby Jindal. While Gov. Barbour is a good conservative caught in a bad organization, Bush and Jindal leave much to be desired.
Although Rep. Cantor told the Washington Times that
“The Republican Party is founded on some common-sense conservative principles that are as effective today as they’ve always been. We just need to make sure we’re listening to the people,”
“Expert panelist” Jeb Bush told the Times,
… that it’s time for the Republican Party to give up its “nostalgia” for the heyday of the Reagan era and look forward, even if it means stealing the winning strategy deployed by Democrats in the 2008 election.
And what would strategy that be, Jeb? Having John McCain win the Democratic presidential nomination? Oh and thanks, Jeb, for working to block oil drilling off the Florida coast. How’s that going to get us out of the grip of OPEC and oil dictators like Hugo Chavez?
Speaking of McCain, let’s not forget that he was one of the early Republican proponents of global warming alarmism. Remember McCain-Lieberman? McCain thinks that the worst tha can happen by going green is that we’ll leave future generations a cleaner planet. Sorry, John, if the greens run the world, we’ll all be poorer and the planet will be dirtier.
I almost lost my dinner at the March National Republican Congressional Committee soiree when keynote speaker Jindal spoke rapturously of reaching the nirvana of green energy or some such nonsense. It’s not surprising that Jindal and the NCNA members don’t know what they’re talking about — none have ever been leaders on energy issues.
Rather than forgetting about Ronald Reagan, we need to remember his fervent anti-communism now more than ever. The hydra has already hung the sharp left. We need someone who can grab the wheel and make a U-turn.
Eco-industrial complex writes climate bill
The Washington Times reports,
Democratic lawmakers who spent much of the Bush administration blasting officials for letting energy lobbyists write national policy have turned to a coalition of business and environmental groups to help draft their own sweeping climate bill…
At the kickoff to hearings last week on the massive climate bill, Myron Ebell, climate and energy policy director for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told lawmakers, “The authors of the draft bill have invited the beneficiaries of what could turn out to be the biggest transfer of wealth from consumers to special interests in American history to write the rules for this legalized plunder.”
Although the pain of the climate bill will hit consumers and taxpayers first, it will eventually hit the businesses (a.k.a. useful idiots) who are helping the greens. The USCAP companies are just too short-sighted to see their eventual demise.
Blame poverty, not pork for swine flu
From Green Hell author Steve Milloy’s piece at the National Review‘s Planet Gore blog:
… You can almost hear the first green president channeling JFK: “Ask not what you can do for a crisis; ask what the crisis can do for you.”
Stupid Banker of the Day: HSBC’s Kevin Bourne
European bank HSBC’s dalliance in the U.S. subprime bubble cost its shareholders more than $15 billion in losses. So you might think the bank would be wary of wandering into the next financial bubble — that is the green one. But once again, you would be wrong to apply common sense to today’s financial industry.
Reuters reports today that a large U.S. pension fund is interested in investing in companies in HSBC’s Climate Change Market Index. HSBC equities chief Kevin Bourne told Reuters,
“It doesn’t matter if investors believe in climate change or not, they know it’s a good investment category.”
Apparently, investing in companies that provide tangible value to society is so old-school. It seems to have been replaced by getting in while the getting is good and getting out before the bubble bursts. But few, including HSBC, seem to have a good track record in that regard.
Bourne added,
“But investors are global and if they can’t find your company, they can’t lend their money to you. The tough question is how to let investors know that you’re involved in climate change.”
HSBC seems not to view its challenge as asking whether investing in dubious climate change schemes is appropriate so much as it is jumping over that due diligence question and onto figuring out how to find the next sucker.
Moving past HSBC’s investment bubble recidivism, there is the question of the unnamed pension fund willing to gamble its assets on climate change scams.
While Bourne would not name the pension fund, he did indicate to Reuters that it was among the four largest: either the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, California Public Employees Retirement System, State of New York Employees’ Retirement System, or the Florida Retirement System.
So the money going into HSBC ‘s green bubble is not that of some private, cowboy investment group; it’s the taxpayer money intended for California, New York or Florida public sector retirees.
Aside from the direct risk of investing in bubbles, there’s the innocent bystander effect. The ongoing subprime bubble-caused financial crisis has already cost state pension funds an estimated $1.3 trillion.The two California public employee retirement systems have so far lost a combined $110 billion — even though the two were never heavily invested in them in the first place. New York and Florida public employee funds have taken similar losses.
The problematic intersection of state pensions funds and global warming has been preliminarily explored in the report, “Pensions in Peril.”
Switching metaphors, maybe Kevin Bourne, HSBC and the rest of the fast-talking, but slow-witted Wall Street crowd ought to step back from, and reconsider pressing the handle that will cause the green vortex that will flush hard-earned taxayer and investor money down the toilet again.
When the green bubble bursts, will there be any money left to pay state retirees?