John Norquist: ILUVCENTRALPLANNING

In an effort to play the “energy efficiency” card on opponents of oppression-via-CO2-regulation, former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist concludes a piece entitled “Global Warming Skeptics Often Own Worst Enemy” with:

Is it a good idea to obsess on global warming as a threat to human life on earth? I don’t know, but as a supporter of free-market capitalism I do know that if we can produce the same or more wealth with less energy, we should do it. And if that also helps the environment, what’s the problem?

Norquist says he supports free-market capitalism yet he resorts to the collective — that is, “if we can produce the same or more wealth with less energy, we should do it.” Who is “we,” Mr. Norquist? The government? If so, count me out of we.

Has not the 20th century entirely debunked the concept of central planning? How many more people, Mr. Norquist, must suffer and/or die to prove the folly of central planning on a societal scale.

Certainly any capitalist can determine on his own and without the assistance of bureaucrats whether energy efficiency efforts make sense. As a sop to those with central planning inclinations, however, if we are going to do anything, why not act to make energy more available and more affordable, rather than act to make it less available and less affordable.

A few more points. The potential gains of energy efficiency on a societal basis have been way oversold and there is no reason to believe that will change any time soon.

Also, Mr. Norquist, perhaps you’ve heard about the problems with the compact fluorescent lightbulbs you seem to embrace? You know: they are expensive, provide inferior light, aren’t reliable, may be dangerous and are definitely a hassle if broken, come from China (as opposed to incandescent bulbs from Kentucky), pose quite a health risk to Chinese factory workers and, in all likelihood, provide no environmental benefits whatsoever.

As far as your penchant for smart growth, Mr. Norquist, you may want to live in a “compact” community, but count me and many Americans out. We like our spacious homes and yards, and the comfort, convenience and freedoms afforded by automobiles, cheap gas and roads. We don’t want our lives circumscribed and rationed by the pestilence that is meddlesome government.

Finally, how is anything that the green movement wants to do, particularly with respect to greenhouse gases, going to help the environment? I’ve worked on environmental issues for 20 years and have yet to be so enlightened. As far as I can tell, societal wealth is what makes for a clean environment. As the greens want to make us poorer, be assured that the quality of our environment will suffer if they succeed.

No stop signs. No speed limits. John Norquist would put us on the highway to:

Green Hell JACKET.indd

Western Climate Initiative: Costly and Ineffective

From the Western Business Roundtable:

A new study says that a climate action plan promoted by several Western governors could prolong the economic recession, weaken already overburdened Western power grids and will deliver a temperature “benefit” of only one ten-thousandth of a degree Celsius even after a century of operation.

Most popular: Green Hell on GlennBeck.com

Glenn Beck’s radio interview with Green Hell author Steve Milloy is at the top of GlennBeck.com’s “Most Popular” item list.

Click here to check out the interview about Chinese workers being poisoned with mercury while making compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs).

Subsidymagination: GE CEO advises Obama to just ‘give me the money’?

It has paid General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt very well to snuggle up to President Obama and his plan to socialize America and to do away with free markets and free enterprise.

General Electric will receive $40 million in federal stimulus money and another $15 million in New York State grant money to build a $100 million locomotive-battery plant near Albany, NY, according to the Wall Street Journal. The plant will eventually employ 350 people and could generate as much as $500 million per year in revenue by 2015, according to GE.

A few points to ponder:

  • The feds and NY state will be spending a total of $55 million to create 350 factory jobs. That works out to government spending of about $157,000 per factory job created. The median household income in Albany County for 2007 was about $70,000 per year. The factory jobs would not commence until mid-2011.
  • If it only takes a $100 million capital investment to build a plant that will be generating $500 million in revenue in six years and $1 billion within ten years, shouldn’t GE — a company with almost $180 billion in annual revenue, $19 billion in cash flow and $18 billion in operating profits — be able to afford the plant without nursing off taxpayers?
  • Since taxpayers will front 55 percent of the plant’s construction costs, what exactly will taxpayers receive in return? Will GE repay taxpayers with profits from the factory?
  • Hybrid locomotives are not some slam-dunk technology. A recent effort to market a hybrid locomotive designed for limited railyard use just failed.
  • Keeping in mind that GE’s hybrid locomotive has yet to be commercialized, it’s featured benefit is only a 10 percent fuel savings at best, plus the attendant reduction in air emissions — hardly something to get excited about.
  • Is GE getting this sweetheart stimulus deal because CEO Jeff Immelt sits on President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board? Exactly what advice does Immelt provide to Obama — ‘give me the money’? Isn’t this a conflict-of-interest?
  • Immelt is also a big supporter of Obama’s plans for greenhouse gas regulation (called “Ecomagination”) and nationalizing health care (called “Healthymagination”) since GE would benefit immensely from such legislation.
  • GE has already received a $140 billion bailout from taxpayers.

Ask Gary Sheffer, GE’s Director of Communications and Public Affairs, whether GE should just collapse its rent-seeking efforts under the single rubric of Subsidymagination. E-mail him at gary.sheffer@ge.com or phone him at 203-373-3476. Feel free to share his response with the rest of us.

White House looks to re-brand ‘cap-and-trade’; JunkScience.com announces naming contest

What’s in a name? Apparently, nothing conducive to green oppression if it’s “cap-and-trade.”

The White House is looking to replace the term “cap-and-trade” with something more exciting to the public, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. According to the Times,

Today, aides in Obama’s Council on Environmental Quality will meet with a research and marketing group that is promoting an alternative to the phrase “global warming,” which some pollsters say fails to capture the idea of greenhouse gases threatening the environment.

“There is value in trying to get the messaging right,” said a senior White House environmental aide, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “Because at the end of the day this is tricky policy. . . . We want to make sure we’re talking in a way that people understand.”

Let’s save the taxpayers some money.

E-mail your suggested alternative to “cap-and-trade” to junkman@junkscience.com

The best entry received by Monday, May 18, 2009 wins an autographed copy of Steve Milloy’s new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.

So put your thinking caps on — no recycling “cap-and-tax” or “cap-and-charade” — it won’t be easy to buff the cap-and-trade turd into a popsicle!

Green lightbulbs poison workers

From the Times (UK):

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

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.”

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.