Category: Climate & Energy

Waxman-Markey pre-vote count…

Waxman-markey pre-liminary head-count as of Thursday afternoon (courtesy Myron Ebell):

218 needed to win…

Yes

Yes = 175
Leaning Yes = 35
TOTAL = 210

Undecided = 20

No

No = 190
Leaning No = 14
TOTAL = 204

Undecided or Won’t Say:

Kirkpatrick Az
Boyd Fla
Brown Fla
Bishop Ga
R Kirk Ill
Foster Ill
Donnelly Ind
R Jones NC
McIntyre NC
R Frelinghuysen NJ
Tonko NY
Arcuri NY
Space Ohio (he voted for it in committee)
Carney Penna.
Davis Tenn
Al Green Tex
Jackson Lee Tex
Ortiz Tex
Eddie Bernice Johnson Tex
Kind Wisc

Leaning Yes:

Mitchell Az
Cardoza Calif
Costa Calif
Baca Calif
R Castle Del
Grayson Fla
Meek Fla
Kozmas Fla
Abercrombie Hi
Bean Ill
R Cao La
Kratovil Md
R Ehlers Mich
Kildee Mich
Schauer Mich
Peters Mich
Clay Mo
Skelton Mo
Thompson Miss
Shuler NC
Adler NJ
Lance NJ
Meeks NY
McMahon NY
Murphy NY
R McHugh NY
Maffei NY
Driehaus Ohio
Fudge Ohio
Kilroy Ohio
Cooper Tenn
Edwards Tex
Rodriguez Tex
Nye Va
Kagan Wisc

Leaning No:

Salazar Colo
Marshall Ga
Boswell Iowa
Minnick Idaho
Halvorson Ill
Etheridge NC
Kissell NC
Massa NY
Kaptur Ohio
Boccieri Ohio
R Gerlach Penna
Hinojosa Tex
Mollohan WV
Rahall WV

Afraid of defeat: Al Gore cancels DC trip on behalf of Waxman-Markey

Politico.com reports that Al Gore has canceled what was to be a personal appearance on Capitol Hill today to lobby House Democrats on Waxman-Markey.

According to the Politico report:

“As the list of undecided Members narrowed, the Speaker thought it was unnecessary to impose on the Vice President’s schedule to travel to Washington, and instead to continue coordinating efforts from Tennessee,” spokesman Drew Hammill said in an e-mail.

Perhaps … or does Gore figure that the House vote will be so close that he doesn’t want to risk personal embarrassment in the event that Waxman-Markey goes down to defeat?

Greens issue unprecedented threat: ‘No’ votes on Waxman-Markey get no endorsements in 2010

The League of Conservation Voters issued the following “unprecedented” threat to Congress on June 23:

In light of the tremendous importance of this legislation, LCV has made the unprecendented decision that we will not endorse any member of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election cycle who votes against this historic bill.

Click here for the LCV letter.

This is no idle threat since, as recounted in Green Hell, the LCV was instrumental in making Barack Obama a U.S. Senator in 2004 and, well, you know the rest…

Feds thwart mini-nuclear power technology

Venture capitalist Bob Metcalfe writes in the Wall Street Journal that his firm has been discouraged from investing in tabletop-sized nuclear reactors because about $50 million of the requested $100 million investment would be swallowed up by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission itself.

Waxman-Markey delenda est!

Spotted Owl of Solar Power?

This one-inch fish is shaping up to be the excuse for blocking water-cooled solar projects on public lands in Western deserts:

Pupfish

Remember the allegedly endangered spotted owl that nearly brought timber harvesting in California to a halt in the 1980s? Not only was the spotted owl never “endangered,” but now with logging greatly reduced, it (and all else) faces an even more devastating threat — uncontrollable forest fires. Go green, yeah!

So now we have a situation where there’s a “planetary emergency” (just ask Al Gore) and where solar power could be part of the solution to the alleged problem. But because of the one-inch pupfish that lives in desert pools (a vital part of the global ecosystem?), the solution to the emergency can’t be implemented. Go green, yeah!

Click here for today’s Wall Street Journal story on the all-important pupfish.

Greens: Replace dams with wind, gas

The New York Times reports to day that the Sierra Club wants to raze dams in the Northwest and replace them with

… wind turbines in more places, to help balance power generation by ensuring that some are always in an area where the wind is blowing, or relying more on the Northwest’s natural gas plants in combination with energy-saving measures.

This is, of course, another half-baked, hare-brained idea designed more to cause energy chaos and shortages than to provide “clean energy” and help the “endangered salmon.”

The erratic nature of wind power cannot be remedied by more windmills in more places because… well… wind power is erratic. Just because the wind isn’t blowing here doesn’t mean it’s blowing there. Then there are the problems of all those expensive transmission lines that would need to be installed for the extra windmills, the eyesore nature of windmills, their large footprint, the migratory bird-Cuisinart controversy, additional taxpayer subsidies and more.

And what’s this, the Sierra Club wants to replace low greenhouse gas emitting hydropower with fossil fuels? Are they serious? What about the planetary emergency? Is saving salmon more important than saving the world from the dreaded global warming? Didn’t Kofi Oil-for-Food Annan just say that global warming kills 300,000 people every year? And WWAGS?

Energy-saving measures? Now we get to the nut-cutting, as Lyndon Johnson used to say. “Energy-saving” is green-speak for rationing — and isn’t that what the greens really want?

Obama’s new coal scare: U.S. not the ‘Saudi Arabia’ of coal

A new report from the Obama administration’s Department of Energy says we may no longer be the “Saudi Arabia of coal,” according to the Wall Street Journal, because we may only have 120, rather than 240 years years of economically accessible reserves.

I promise to worry about what people will do for energy in 120 years right after I finish worrying about free enterprise and capitalism surviving the Obama administration.

Greens vs. Al Gore?

The greens are using their chokehold on water supplies to thwart water-dependent solar projects.

This may upset Al Gore. His venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, has invested millions of dollars in the solar power firm, Ausra, which uses the water-dependent solar technology.

It’s hard to pick sides on this one. Maybe the Earth can just open up and swallow both of them.

Greens commemorate nuke plant shutdown

Tom Hayden, Chicago Seven radical and former Mr. Jane Fonda, will help Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) celebrate the 20th anniversary of

… Sacramento voters going to the polls to shut down Rancho Seco, a nuclear power plant operated by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) about 25 miles southeast of the city. It was the first and only time voters shut down a nuclear power plant – but it has been called the “shot heard round the world” since it echoes to this day.

Yes, that would be the greens celebrating the shutdown of a power plant that emitted no carbon dioxide…

And speaking of “social responsibility”, Reuters reported today that Russian Prime Minister and former KGB officer Vladimir Putin — that’s right, Mr. Human Rights himself — upbraided a Russian businessman for being “greedy” and asked him,

“Where is the social responsibility of business?”

Perhaps a future Russian chapter of PSR could be called Physicians for Putinism?

Calvert Cliffs-hanger: Nukes’ now or never?

The ongoing battle over the proposed reactor at the existing Calvert Cliffs, MD nuclear power plant is shaping up to be do-or-die for the U.S. nuclear power industry, according to a report in Carbon Control News.

The Constellation Energy-Electricite de France joint project moved a step closer to reality on April 28 when the Maryland Public Service commission recommended that initial construction on the reactor be allowed to commence. Then on May 19, the proposed reactor became one of four projects to be considered by the Department of Energy for part of the $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees available for new nuclear projects. At least $10 billion in loan guarantees are needed for the plant to proceed, according to Constellation.

But the greens are claiming that the project’s 49.99% ownership by Electricitie de France would allow a foreign government to control a U.S. nuclear reactor  and are raising concerns about Constellation’s finances, including its ability to secure financing for the eventual decommissioning of the plant.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce told Carbon Control News that the Calvert Cliffs project,

“… will have a ridiculously huge bearing over what happens with the rest of the industry.”

The greens are downplaying the notion of any imminent “nuclear renaissance” since only four applications have been filed with the DOE for loan guarantees. The anti-nuclear group Public Citizen told Carbon Control News,

“Four applicants is not a renaissance.”

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.”