Category: Green Hell

Anti-gasoline jihad makes key chemical scarce

The Financial Times reported this morning that,

The crisis in the car industry has led to a global shortage of a chemical solvent used for everything from checking the mould level in a chocolate bar to making sure a tablet of aspirin is safe.

The solvent, acetonitrile, is a by-product of the process used to make acrylic carpets and plastic parts for the car industry, and as demand for cars has plunged in the global financial crisis, so have supplies of acetonitrile.

That is alarming, say some observers, because the substance is used to break down products such as food or pharmaceuticals into their component parts to check their safety or efficacy, a process known as chromatography. “This is very serious,” said the head of procurement at a large European pharmaceuticals group. “If you cannot test products you cannot sell them.” And, “in many cases, you cannot even make them”.

What’s this got to do with the greens?

The looming-demise of the Big Three automakers can easily be traced back to the green choke-hold on our gasoline supply. The ongoing financial crisis has certainly intensified the Big Three’s problems, but rising gas prices was the root problem.

Steve Milloy discusses in his new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them how green policies pose a threat to your safety and standard of living.

California car futility

California’s bid to compel carmakers to make special “California cars” with lower CO2 emissions is shaping up to be an exercise in futility.

As U.S. car sales dipped in February to a rate of about 750,000 vehicles per month, Chinese car sales rose 24 percent last month to 607,300 and cars sales in India rose 22% to 115,386 vehicles.

None of the cars sold in China and India are “California” cars.

Along with a large existing auto fleet and slowing auto turnover slowing in the U.S., rapidly increasing automobile ownership in the developing world is sure to overwhelm whatever environmental impact California cars could possibly have.

Steve Milloy discusses in his new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them how the greens are trying to turn America into a car-less society.

EPA proposes CO2 reporting

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today a proposal to require large greenhouse gas emitters to report their emissions annually.

Covered emitters would include: “suppliers of fossil fuel and industrial chemicals, manufacturers of motor vehicles and engines, as well as large direct emitters of greenhouse gases with emissions equal to or greater than a threshold of 25,000 metric tons per year.”

EPA estimates that the cost of the program to the private sector would be $160 million in the first year and $127 million annually after that. Reporting would commence in 2011.

EPA claims it has authority under the Clean Air Act to require such reporting. Does it? Where? Will any covered industry will have the guts to challenge the proposal? Tune in to find out…

Meanwhile, you can read about our looming Big Green Brother in Steve Milloy’s new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.

Swedes to raise fuel taxes to cut CO2

Earth Times reports,

Higher taxes on vehicles and fuel are in store for Swedish motorists, transport companies and industry as part of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the government said Tuesday. Finance Minister Anders Borg, Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren and Enterprise Minister Maud Olofsson said in a joint statement that the measures would take the current financial slump into account.

As of 2011 taxes on diesel fuel were to be raised in two stages by 0.40 kronor (0.04 dollars), as would taxes on carbon-dioxide emissions while the forestry and agriculture sectors would be included in emissions trading schemes.

The measures that included taxes on heating were part of a pending bill on energy and environment, and the goal was to cut greenhouse gas emissions by a further 2 million tons by 2020.

Steve Milloy’s new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them, discusses how going green will raise your taxes and lower your standard of living.

Higher electric rates to subsidize renewables?

California state Sen. Fran Pavely has proposed that utilities be required to buy renewable energy at above-market costs for fixed periods, according to a report in Carbon Control News (March 9).

Major California utilities oppose the proposed subsidy/tariff noting, in part, that “it could significantly raise electricity rates on customers during a recession,” according to the report.

CCN notes that “the tariff may serve as a model for other states or the federal government.”

Take action:

E-mail Sen. Pavley and tell her that you don’t want to pay more for electricity in these tough times, especially since increased use of renewable energy will have no discernible positive impact on the environment.

Santa Barbara drillin’ was just California dreamin’

The California State Lands Commission denied the first new oil drilling lease in 40 years, ending a much-hoped for energy project off Santa Barbara.

No one should be surprised, but here’s a noteworthy back story.

Amid last summer’s $4/gallon gasoline crisis, Andrew Cline enthused in a July 12, 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed about how an oil exploration company reached an agreement with Green activist groups to permit drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara, California — the first new wells since the January 1969 oil spill in that area.

Cline gushed,

“When an environmental group formed for the sole purpose of opposing offshore oil drilling warmly embraces a plan to drill off its own coast, you know something important has changed in our culture; Americans have recognized that offshore drilling is largely safe.”

But less than a week later, the greens wrote the Journal to correct the record. The greens’ attorney who negotiated the deal wrote,

“[T]o be accurate, the [op-ed’s] title should have read “Environmentalists Secure End to Oil Development… The agreement struck… is remarkable because it sets a fixed date for the termination of existing offshore and onshore oil production facilities in Santa Barbara County. Without the agreement, this oil development could continue indefinitely, for decades to come. With the agreement, significant oil production facilities will be shut down in the next several years… We see this agreement as a direct complement to our support for the federal oil moratorium. Just as we need to say “no” to new oil development, we must put an end to existing development if we are to protect our coast from the risks of offshore oil and gas development, and protect society from climate change… environmentalists support actions that move away from, not toward, dependence on fossil fuels…

Then on August 27, 2008, the Journal reported that,

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to support increased oil production off its coast, a move supporters hope will add to growing pressure to lift bans on offshore drilling.

But in the end, the greens — via the State Lands Commission — won.

Moral of the story: trusting the greens is shear folly.

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?

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.

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.