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hree of America’s greatest presidents – no way am I counting Teddy Roosevelt in that group [thanks, Coop!] – were dishonored by Greenpeace today when the group defaced Mt. Rushmore with a banner portraying FDR wannabe Barack Obama.  The message is ludicrous:  “America Honors Leaders, Not Politicians. Stop Global Warming.”

The banner seems to imply that Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln were not leaders.  The Greenpeace idiots should be very, very glad we have First Amendment rights in this country.  I won’t dispute that Obama’s a leader; it’s just a disagreement with Greenpeace over the way he’s leading us.  I don’t believe “honor” should be ascribed to a person who is leading America towards socialism and economic ruin.

And as for stopping global warming, pshaw.  All Obama’s policies will do is make everything more expensive; they will do nothing to significantly alter the atmosphere or the globe’s climate.  His “leadership” on cap and tax is better described as “ruinship.”

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he Arctic holds about a tenth of the world’s known oil and natural gas reserves – and it’s not clear what nation owns which offshore reserves because ownership is based on where the edge of the continental shelf is, and we don’t have a clear picture of undersea topography there.

As a result, the US, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, China and even South Korea, Singapore and Japanare all making forays into the region to establish drilling rights – rights that are becoming more valuable as ice-free navigation becomes possible in some parts of the Arctic.  So it would make good sense, wouldn’t it, for the US to establish operations wherever it can as quickly as it can, give a reasonable regulatory regimen?

And we would be doing just that, were it not for the Center for Biological Depravity Diversity.  The Washington Times reports today that the Center’s endless and aggressive litigation has brought much of the exploration by US companies to a halt:

Richard Ranger, senior policy adviser at the American Petroleum Institute, an industry lobbying group, said direct legal challenges are also slowing exploration and production off Alaska’s coast.

The Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation group, is the principal party behind Arctic litigation, Mr. Ranger said. The group has filed lawsuits with the federal Minerals Management Service to halt the issuing of air quality permits to Royal Dutch Shell, asserting, according to the center’s Web site, that the oil giant has not adequately assessed how exploratory drilling would affect wildlife and native populations.

Shell announced earlier this week that it was withdrawing its 2007-2009 drilling plan in the Beaufort Sea and would submit a new plan for 2010. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco blocked the company from oil drilling in July 2007.

The new lawsuits come on the heels of the Center’s central effort in getting the polar bear listed, a ridiculous, political contortion of the Endangered Species Act that should have been stopped in its tracks by the Bush Administration, but wasn’t, in one of Bush’s most signficiant domestic failures.  Building on that success, the Center is actively pursuing listings of numerous ice-dependent seals,  – the ribbon, bearded, spotted, and ringed seals – making similar arguments that worked well with its polar bear litigation strategy:

In addition to loss of its sea-ice habitat from global warming, the ribbon seal faces threats from oil and gas development in its habitat, and the growth of shipping in the increasingly ice-free Arctic. Last month, important summer feeding areas for the ribbon seal in the Chukchi Sea were leased for oil development, while seismic surveys are planned for the area this summer.

And what is the answer to these seals’ plight?  Hint: It’s not to just let them survive, as they have survived previous warming spells that melted the Arctic ice. No, we have to attack industry, the economy and the American way of life to save the seals:

“With rapid action to reduce carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon emissions, combined with a moratorium on new oil-and-gas development and shipping routes in the Arctic, we can still save the ribbon seal, the polar bear, and the entire Arctic ecosystem,” said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director for the Center. “But the window of opportunity to act is closing rapidly. Endangered Species Act protection for the ribbon seal and other Arctic species will provide important tools to protect these species and their fragile habitat in the Arctic.”

Going after multiple seal listings at the same time is the same strategy that has worked so well for the Center in Central California, where its Delta smelt listing, which has slashed water deliveries and spiked unemployment in some areas to 40 percent, has been followed by similarly disruptive listings of the long-finned smelt and Delta-dependent salmon species.

The new litigation’s focus on air quality shows how opportunistically the Center bends environmental laws and regulations to their favor. Air quality is an area of easy pickings since the baseline arctic air is unusually clean. Regulations written for the Lower 50 are easy to exploit there, and exploit they have.

The Center takes no prisoners. It doesn’t believe in compromise. It certainly does not believe in an economically robust, expansive America. Its founder has made it clear he sees his purpose as the depopulaiton of the West. The Center’s mission obviously has grown, and its actions in the Arctic not only could lead to greater dependence on foreign oil, but also, tragically, could lead to foreign ownership of drilling sites that are rightfully ours.

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K, gang, let’s start prepping for the Senate showdown and, hopefully, the crashing and oh- so- carbon- emitting burning of the cap and tax lunacy.  Let’s start in a chilly place that by rights should be one of the leading proponents of global warming.  Lord knows, the weather certainly could stand to get a wee bit warmer in Scotland.

But for reasons unfathomable by rational minds, Scotland has decided its proper role as a nation is to lead the lemmings off the global warming cliff.  It hails itself, claiming it has the world’s most ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals – a 42 percent reduction by 2020 and a mind-numbingly stupid 80 percent slash by 2050. Just listen to Scotland’s Climate Minister (Climate Minister?! He should be filed on the spot! Have you seen Scotland’s climate? Disgusting!) says about it all:

Scotland can be proud of this bill, the most ambitious and comprehensive piece of climate change legislation anywhere in the world. As a country, we are leading global action and expect others to follow our lead as we look to the international summit in Copenhagen this December.

I bet it’s going to be bone-chillingly cold in Copenhagen this December – big global warming confab or not.

I bring all this up because in Scotland’s goals we see what’s ahead for a cap and tax America.

Get ready for hefty fines if your household doesn’t do its part. And heftier fines if your business doesn’t. That’s now the rule in Scotland.

Prepare yourself for the Greenshirts busting into your house in search of plastic bags, or forcing your corporation to drop its theft-resistant packaging for something more easy to steal. OK, they’re not yet breaking down doors in Scotland, but they are attacking plastic bags as heinous, anti-social tools of destruction, only slightly more acceptable than the dreaded product packaging.

To incentivize thrifty Scots to part with some of their cash to reduce their carbon footprints, the Scotish Parliament has approved a 50 pound reduction in a local tax.  That sounds exactly like Obama thinking.  Everyone who pitches in to save the planet gets a tax cut.  Never mind that you’ll spend a 500, or 1,000 or 10,000 pounds to insulate your quaint cottage or install solar – that 50-pound tax cut is exactly the sort of great incentive a big government control freak would come up with. And we have more than a few of those in DC.

Not all the Scots are buying it, of course.  Here’s university prof Dr. James Buckee attempting too late to interject some rationality into all this:

“As far as reducing emissions by 80 per cent, banning the internal combustion engine, and coal-fired power stations from Scotland would not get close to doing it. This is clearly unobtainable.

“More energy has been expended on finding ways to infringe on human activity than has gone into understanding the science.”

Heh.  Loved that.  And speaking of understanding the science, there was one heck of an article in Forbes the other day, Waxman-Markey Flunks the Math.  Math is the base of all science, so that’s bad news for the Warmies. Here we go with the basics:

In the U.S., electricity is produced from these sources. If you are reading this on a handheld and can’t read Wikipedia’s wonderful pie chart, here is the breakdown:

48.9% — Coal
20% — Natural Gas
19.3% — Nuclear
1.6% — Petroleum

Got that? A tick over 88% of U.S. electricity comes from three sources: coal, gas and nuclear. Petroleum brings the contribution of so-called “evil” energy–that is, energy that is carbon- or uranium-based–to almost 90%.

The remaining sources of U.S. electricity, the renewables, are, by comparison, tiny players:

7.1% — Hydroelectric
2.4% — Other Renewables
0.7% — Other

Hydroelectric accounts for 70% of renewable energy in America. But, of course, hydro is mostly tapped out. Almost every dam that could be built has been built. Ironically enough, political opposition to building more dams comes from the same crowd of tree huggers who oppose coal, gas and uranium.

Waxman-Markey is all about punitively taxing the energy sources that make up 90 percent of our electrical generation, in order to subsidize the 10 percent that’s renewable.  Well, really 3 percent if you don’t count hydroelectric generation, which isn’t targeted for big Waxman-Markey subsidies. The author then reveals what the bill is all about; not stopping global warming, but good ol’ politics as usual:

In other words, Waxman-Markey is betting the future of U.S. electricity production on sources that now contribute 3% or supply 10 million Americans with electricity. That’s enough juice for the people in Waxman’s Los Angeles County. Or, if you prefer, for Nancy Pelosi’s metro San Francisco plus Markey’s metro Boston.

Well, what about electricity for the other 295 million? You can’t get there from here with Waxman-Markey. At very best, solar, wind and cellulosic ethanol will make 20% contributions by 2025. The smart money would bet on 10%.

Besides, those nasty ol’ Devil fuels are doing very well on the technology front, advancing at a clip that rivals or surpasses gains made in alternative energy.  Engines are cleaner and more efficient, fuels burn hotter and cleaner, and extraction and processing technologies are greener than ever.

There simply is no reason for Waxman-Markey … except for power-grabbing and money-sucking.  But there is a great alternative, an absolutely brilliant alternative, promoted today by Doug Ross:

We start with the most useless government agencies we can find. The Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, The Department of Health and Human Services, The Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FCC and Amtrak. For the sake of argument, let’s say that together, they consume $250 billion a year.

Congress’ job? They would be required to cut spending for these ridiculous bureaucracies according to the following schedule (which I had a lot of fun creating — all numbers in billions).

2012 – $250
2013 – $210
2014 – $190
2015 – $160
2016  – $140
2017 – $120
2018 – $110
2019 – $100
2020 – $90
2021 – $75
2022 – $60
2023 – $50

Pay-cuts? Layoffs? Closing unnecessary facilities? Who gives a crap? That’s for them to figure out.

How do you like Cap-and-trade now, Democrats?

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ere they are, with an art hat-tip to Michelle Malkin, the Cap and Tax 8. Mary Bono Mack was a known commodity going in, apparently having suffered some transfer of her former husband’s fatal brain injury. Who are these other losers-to-be?

Mike Castle of Delaware doesn’t even have “energy” as in issue on his Web site, but the environment section makes it clear his green runs pretty deep and he’s a long supporter of cap and tax because he’s bought into the gloom and doom faction’s global warming myth.  He links to this story in the local rag:

Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., said several developments bode well for climate-change legislation: the arrival of a new president and new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the growing cooperation of businesses and the realization that such legislation will open up new market opportunities.

“I think all these things combined will give us the opportunity to see something happen in the course of this year,” said Castle, who supports a cap-and-trade program.

So his vote is really no surprise; just his party designation is.  He’s thinking about running for the Senate and this vote may have been calculated to shore up his green base for that statewide campaign.

Mark Kirk, who has signaled he’d like to run for gov, leads his web site with a video in which he promises to read every page of the bill before voting, saying he’s got a couple hours and a few hundred pages to go before the vote – how thorough a read was that?  Like Castle, he has no “energy” issue paper on his Web site. His environment paper notes that he has been ranked one of Congress’ top 13 environmental champions, for his work “saving” Lake Michigan – there’s that enviro-egomaniacal behavior again. He believes government must force America off it’s “addiction to oil,” was a co-sponsor of legislation for higher CAFE standards and is a big alternative energy funding proponent – including, of course since he’s from Illinois, ethanol – a fuel which makes no sense whatsoever, just like cap and trade.

The NY after John McHugh’s name is for upstate NY of course – it’s hard to elect a Republican anywhere else in the state – but he’s Obama’s designee for Sec. of the Army and this was payback time, pure and simple. His environment paper gives no hint that he’d vote for cap and tax, and his energy paper shows him to be pro-nuke and concerned about rising gas prices. So despite all that alligator-tear concern, he voted yes in return for a new gig.  Politics!

Now for the New Jersey trio, who could have turned the vote around if they’d all stayed with the GOP.  Let’s start with the man with the totally NJ name, Frank LoBiondo.  He with the head Sarah Palin could easily poke fun at … or mistake for a football and kick.  His Web site boldly leads off with a news release proclaiming his vote for cap and tax:

U.S. Congressman Frank A. LoBiondo (NJ-02) today voted in favor of H.R. 2454, the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009” – comprehensive legislation that seeks to make the United States energy independent by focusing the nation’s energy policy toward clean, renewable sources such as wind, solar and nuclear.

“For South Jersey residents who lived through the energy crisis of the 1970s, the nation witnessed the rationing of gas, stations sold-out of fuel, and our country’s absolute reliance on foreign nations to save us from our increasing consumption. Jobs were lost. The economy sank further into recession. And the nation did not take action.

“Then, in the 1990s, there was a bitter debate over increasing fuel efficiency standards in automobiles, yet minimal action was taken despite the technological capabilities to go further. I have long said that if Congress had passed higher standards in the 1990s – standards I supported – then our consumption and annual fuel costs now would be half. However, the oil corporations and automobile makers were against such standards and now lose billions of dollars to foreign competitors who were forward-thinking, developed fuel efficient technologies and sell hybrid vehicles that get 40 to 50 miles per gallon.

“The ‘American Clean Energy and Security Act’ is the opportunity to break the cycle of inaction and finally move our nation towards real energy independence.

The Rep would do well to remember the oil excess profits tax, which dropped US oil production by 8 percent and increased imports by 13 percent. He’s a loon if he thinks cap and tax will have a less negative impact. His pre-election platform was almost straight party line – except he opposed opening off-shore oil leases and the construction of new oil refineries. We could easily see this vote coming.

Leonard Lance, the former NJ GOP senate leader, is not held in high regard by this commenter at New Republic:

Most people know that New Jersey is only second to California for financial trouble. First term Congressman Leonard Lance who lives in one of the most affluent areas of New Jersey, Hunterdon County was an unsuccessful lawyer in Clinton New Jersey and practiced under the wing of his father, a useless State Senator.

Like LoBiondo, Lance has a news release on his site heralding his monstrous vote as “a vote for energy independence:”

I am voting for this bill because it is time America turned the corner and took bold action to clean the environment and develop alternative energy. We cannot allow countries whose opposition to democracy and support for terrorism grow with every barrel of oil they sell to continue to dominate energy politics.

Yeah, I’m with him on that; he just picked the wrong legislative vehicle to accomplish that end. The computer didn’t become dominant because Congress put a hefty tax on typewriters. Like LoBiondo, Lance is blitheringly ignorant of basic economy, which makes him de facto not a Republican.

Rounding out da three guys from Joisey is Chris Smith of Trenton, who unlike his gang brothers, isn’t discussing his vote on his Web site.  Smith co-authored a bill with cap and trade co-author Ed Markey that would spur global investment in alternative energy (a great alternative to cap and tax!) and writes on his environment paper:

As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I believe it is equally imperative that we address environmental issues—such as climate change—on a global scale. Global warming is a real threat and an increasing danger to our environment. All major greenhouse emitting countries need to cooperate in reducing and stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of these gases, and the United States must play a leadership role in bringing nations together for a global solution to climate change.

That sure isn’t what Waxman-Markey will accomplish.  By penalizing the US, it will only encourage cheaper, dirtier uses of energy elsewhere.  NJ conservative political blogger Chris Wysocki writes of Smith’s vote:

And Chris Smith? WTF? He’s usually a level-headed thinker. He fights the good fight for children and victims of the bureaucratic behemoth. So why in the world did he vote to escalate the power of that behemoth by a thousand fold? He just consigned hundreds, if not thousands, of his constituents to the unemployment line. Their employers won’t be able to afford to keep the lights on, never mind maintain their current staffing levels. Thanks Congressman, you screwed us, and we’ll work to screw you back.

That brings us to Dave Reichert of the Peoples Republic of Washington, whose “yes” vote was long suspected. In a news release on his Web site, he admits “this bill is not perfect.”  He should have ended it there, before the “but” that took us to the now-expected explanation that it’s all about energy independence – the standard RINO excuse for voting for this bill. He even goes so far to laud the progressive Teddy Roosevelt – you know, as in “Progressive” – for his conservation ethic, without noting that Teddy pushed America down the road to big, obtrusive government.

There was no decent excuse to be had from any of the eight.  Those that are seeking higher office obviously thought this an intelligent political play – but it’s unlikely now that any of them will survive the primaries in their states.  A couple appear to be dyed in the wool greens.  All of them certainly are going to be recipients of future earmarks – keep your eyes open for that!  And none of them deserve the honor of having an “R” after their names.

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emember the BTU Tax?  I didn’t, which caused me to make a mistake in my post yesterday, when I made this comment in response to this, from Obama’s Rose Garden shill for the Waxman-Markey energy tax, “We have been talking about this issue for decades, now is the time to finally act.”  I said:

“We’ve been talking about carbon taxes for decades?!”  Where does he get this stuff? How dumb does he think we are?  If you stretch the timeline rather aggressively, pressure to tax carbon began within the last ten years, and even then it was promoted only by a small group of whackos.

I forgot one particular whacko, Al Gore, who in 1993 – decades ago – tried to move a tax on energy – British Thermal Units, or BTUs,  through Congress.  Mea culpa.

Matt Dempsey, a GOP staffer at the Senate Energy & Public Works Committee brought me back into the light:

As the House prepares to vote on the largest tax increase in American history, otherwise known as the Waxman-Markey bill, and as President Obama tries to persuade his House allies to vote for same, EPW Policy Beat took another trip down memory lane.  We landed in 1993 as the House was voting on the Al-Gore-backed BTU tax.  As we and others have stated before, the historical and political parallels between the BTU tax and Waxman-Markey are striking: members fearful that voting for an energy tax would have political repercussions at the ballot box; members fearful of voting for a bill that would then die in the Senate; members fearful that an energy tax would be regressive, harm consumers, destroy jobs and slow economic growth; members fearful of a man named Gore pushing an energy rationing scheme that harms the heartland; and Democratic congressional leaders and Administration officials (read: Gore) desperately searching for exemptions and last-minute deals to shore up support.  As the proverb goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

As you know, because “we have been talking about this issue for decades,” the BTU tax did fail, as Clinton dropped the bill in the Senate, when it became clear it didn’t have enough Democratic support there. Many of the Dems who voted for it in the House found themselves scrambling to defend their votes, and many could not, losing their seats. And America was spared having to commit forced economic suicide at the hand of a radical environmentalist politician.

We don’t have to go back to 1993 for lessons on how bad Waxman-Markey is; we need only visit Spain today. As George Will pointed out in his column yesterday:

[Gabriel] Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report that, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration’s green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it.

Calzada says Spain’s torrential spending — no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources — on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada’s report concludes that they often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies — wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation — sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency — of capital. (European media regularly report “eco-corruption” leaving a “footprint of sleaze” — gaming the subsidy systems, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc.) Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs elsewhere in Spain’s economy.

A GOP study found the same thing here in the U.S. – green jobs aren’t particularly high-paying, but require an average government subsidy of $100,000.

I attempted to engage some green-tinted lefties in a meaningful conversation on the topic yesterday on a  New Mexico political blog (I got there via a Twitter link, if you’re curious). I response to a guest column plea for a yes vote on Waxman-Markey, I wrote:

Ask yourself, which is melting faster, the ice caps or the economy? Hint: It’s the latter by far, and spiking all energy costs in at least the short- to mid-term will only deepen and lengthen the recession.

As for all those new clean energy jobs, you cannot count the jobs Waxman-Markey supposedly will open up unless you also count the jobs it will destroy in oil, gas and related sectors of the economy, where several million are employed.

Out of work New Mexicans will suffer through higher costs long before they get the benefit of any new green jobs, I’m afraid. Call your representatives and ask them to vote NO on Waxman-Markey.

That spawned a raft of responses, mostly negative, including one saying I sounded like an oil industry propagandist. I challenged them to find anything wrong with anything I said, but they didn’t even try.  Instead, they waxed on about all the jobs Waxman-Markey, or ACES as they refer to it lovingly, will create.  As I understand their argument it goes like this:

We would feel really good if we could get jobs in the green industry because the world is like dying, you know, and we’re so excited about it, we’d like everyone to pay more money for everything in order for us to get those jobs.

That’s what we’re up against folks: Ignorant self-interest.  And ignorant self-interest is what they’re really talking about when they say “money,” as in “money makes the world go ’round.”

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ichael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus met while trying to save redwoods. Their Breakthrough Institute is funded by the leftist Nathan Cummings Foundation – but they understand who wrong Waxman-Markey is, and they’ve got a pretty good idea about how to encourage new energy technologies without destroying the good old economy.

In an NPR interview, they lay it out:

“When was the last time human beings modernized our energy sources by making older power sources more expensive?” [Shellenberger] asks …. “And, of course, by now you probably know that the answer is never.”

Personal computers didn’t take off because there was a tax on typewriters, he says. And the Internet didn’t sprout up because the government made telegraphs more expensive.

“So is there a better way to do this? Well, we think that there is. It’s very simple: It’s that we need to make clean energy cheap worldwide.”

Shellenberger and Nordhaus support government investments in alternative energy – a new Manhattan or moon project, which is hardly a new idea, but they articulate their well-researched points well.

Shellenberger tells the [Institute's] interns that environmental groups — like the ones he used to work for — are going about it all wrong. By urging Congress to cast carbon dioxide as a pollutant that needs to be controlled, he says, they will constantly swim against the tide of public opinion.

“We’re stuck in this kind of poor paradigm for dealing with climate change, this pollution paradigm,” he says, “not because environmentalists are failures, but actually because they were so successful. The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the cap and trade on acid rain — these things worked really well.”

How refreshing to hear an environmentalist actually acknowledge that things are getting better, not worse – that existing levels of regulation have accomplished their goals.  I’m a free market guy, but even so, I have to acknowledge that government investment in technology works – it’s government control of the market and stomping on competition that I don’t like.  They explain the benefits of public investment:

“There’s this idea that the government shouldn’t be involved in technology, the government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers,” Shellenberger says. “Which is sort of a funny thing to say. It’s kind of like, well, why not? And when hasn’t the United States government been involved in picking technology winners and losers?”

He points to the computer industry as just one example of something that came into being because of deliberate federal investments.

And railroads. And rockets.

Of course, the hotheads are screaming that there’s not enough time, we have to act now, the world is melting and carbon dioxide is a terrible poison. These are largely the same people who condemned Bush’s “rush to war.”  Unfortunately, Waxman and Markey are staunchly set in the camp of the hysterics.  Shellenberger and Nordhaus have been in DC this week, trying to get more reasonable electeds to behave more reasonably.

I hope they succeed.  You can help.  Sign the petition.

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f you’re not interested in buying that bridge in Brooklyn, perhaps I could interest you in some stark, middle-of-nowhere desert land that’s ideal for the energy of tomorrow – solar! Yes, friends, imagine this dreary wasteland glimmering with solar panels as far as the eye can see! And what else glitters, friends? Gold! Yes, there’s gold to be made buying up desert land for the inevitable solar revolution! Step right up!

Er, before you whip out that checkbook, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Greenie, who loves alternative energy – unless, of course, someone proposes to actually build an alternative energy facility anywhere. As the amazingly appropriately named Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club in Phoenix told the Phoenix Business Journal:

We are very supportive of a mix of renewable generation. But we’re not in favor of paving the desert with mirrors.

Here’s a story about environmentalists concerned about a desert solar plant’s impact on pupfish.  It’s all pretty frustrating, says the governor of CahLEEforNEEa in Capitalism Magazine:

As Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put it, “But, I mean, if we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave Desert, I don’t know where the hell we can put it.” The answer, Governor, is nowhere, according to many environmentalists. A group called the Alliance for Responsible Energy Policy, discussing the plans for arrays in the desert, argues that this portends the “permanent destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine public lands . . . [this is] wilderness killing.” Despite lip-service to human needs, protecting “pristine nature” is their goal, and “pristine nature” means nature undefiled by any human presence—even a footprint in the desert.

The NY Times succeeded in actually finding some desert residents who don’t like the idea of productive use of their woebegone climes:

But it is also home to the Mojave ground squirrel, the desert tortoise and the burrowing owl, and to human residents who describe themselves as desert survivors and who are unhappy about the proliferation of solar projects planned for their home turf.

“We’re tired of everyone looking at the desert like a wasteland,” said Donna Charpied, who lives with her husband, Larry, in Desert Center, Calif., where they have been farming jojoba, a native shrub cultivated for its oil, for 27 years. She is also the policy advocate for the Desert Communities Protection Campaign of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice.

Wait a minute! Some desert rat is also an environmental justice radical who just happens to have a hotline to the NYT?  What are the chances?!  You got to hand it to those NYT reporters – if there’s a radical leftist to quote, they’ find ‘em, even in the remotest of places.  Don’t be deceived by that highfalutin’ “Desert Center” name – the hardscrabble place has a population of 125.

Even if you succeed in overcoming environmentalist opposition and get your incredibly difficult permits from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which will be watching out for every bush and bunny, you’ll still have to figure out how to get your power to anywhere, since Greenies are fighting the new power line corridors that would bring electricity to metropolitan areas from the desert.

But let’s say you get past that hurdle.  Now, let me introduce you to the rather formidable Diane Feinstein.

In a move that could pit usual allies — environmentalists and the solar and wind industries — against each other, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is preparing legislation that would permanently put hundreds of thousands of acres of desert land off limits to energy projects. The territory would be designated California’s newest national monument. …

“It’s frustrating. We really do have competing national priorities here,” said Paul Whitworth, whose San Diego-based LightSource Renewables hopes to put in a solar project on about 6,000 acres near Amboy. “We spent a lot of time researching the desert, and consulting with the BLM to make sure we didn’t apply on top of an area of critical environmental concern, or area with other issues. . . . Now, there’s uncertainty on whether these projects will go ahead.” [LA Times]

My advice?  Buy oil.

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ur Nobel Laureat energy sec, Steven Chu, has been chewing on an idea for a while and finally spit it out:  Let’s save the planet by painting all the roofs and roads white!

Chu, speaking at the St. James’ Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, said the calculations are based on work done at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he used to work and where three researchers concluded last year that changing surface colors in the world’s 100 largest cities would offset 44 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. (Source)

Who’s to fault the good scientists at Lawrence Berkeley? After all, they’ve scored millions of bucks to study the terrible effects of global warming, so they can be trusted.  And besides, the idea is simplistic as can be, right?  Just step from a concrete sidewalk to an asphalt street on a hot, sunny day.

But wait.  What is the urbanized land mass vs. the global land mass?  Factoring in the oceans, the arctic and antarctic regions (which already are white) and the massive amount of undeveloped territory, I’m sure it’s under one percent.

And why hasn’t Chu proposed to dye the oceans white?

And what is the greenhouse gas impact from manufacturing, transporting and applying all that white paint?

And what the heck are we going to do if Chu & Co. are all wrong and the long-anticipated global cooling process kicks off soon?

You see, this save the planet biz isn’t as easy as they crack it up to be.

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he Dems dream of a vast new IRS is still alive even as Congressional Dems back off from Obama’s concept – cap and trade as a tax – in favor of a seemingly less onorous cap and trade as a grant concept. But that darn Congressional Budget Office just keeps on pointing out the obvious: No matter how its structured, cap and trade will be an economic Katrina on the American economy.

The CBO has issued a second letter opining on the Dem scheme, WashTimes reports:

Congress’ chief scorekeeper says the global warming bill moving through Congress will either be scored as a major tax increase or a massive expansion of the federal government – and either one could give opponents substantial ammunition to complicate Democrats’ efforts to pass a bill.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in a letter sent last week to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman, said Democrats’ approach of creating allowances for emitting greenhouse gases requires developing from scratch a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars. …

The six-page CBO letter also listed repeated examples of situations in which, for purposes of the federal budget, it will assume that the cap-and-trade approaches will dampen businesses’ income, meaning less revenue to the federal government.

The Dem response?  Well, they’re trying to work with CBO.  They figure that maybe if they threaten the CBO budget or start making personal attacks on its staff, they’ll be able to get the watchdogs to change a couple assumptions and come out with a rosier report. In other words, they’re not looking at the bill, seeing it for what it is and deciding to wait until the economy is back on its feet to cut its legs out from under it.  Instead, they remain intent on kicking the economy while its down and want to get fudged numbers to excuse their action.

Meanwhile, the environmental lobbying machine is busy discounting the CBO:

Dan Lashof, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate center, said the CBO will still have to issue a final score on the bill when it passes the committee, and NRDC hopes the letter is not the last word.

“What they have left out of their analysis is the benefit to consumers of energy efficiency – that actually lowers their bills. I don’t see anywhere in this long set of examples this accounts for that,” Mr. Lashof said.

That’s because the CBO hasn’t yet come up with the metrics to measure pipe dreams and fantasies.  There is no energy efficient replacement immediately available that would allow us to avoid the immediate impacts of cap and trade. As one commenter to the WashTimes story sarcastically put the Dem view of things,

The CBO is full of partisan hacks who want to do nothing more than destroy this once great nation. But, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate center is a straight down the middle lovable group who would never do anything that might tear apart the very foundations of our economy.

The new bill gives the GOP and blue dog Dems some hope that cap and trade might be the first Obama policy initiative to fall flat on its face.  That certainly must be the goal, both to protect the economy from Warmie lunacy and to signal an end to the devastating run Obama’s enjoyed.

Do your part. Write your member of Congress and demand they tell you before they vote how the bill will impact your power bill and the price at the pump.  Keep asking; hold them to it.

Art: The Talk of the Times 

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T

he Center for Biological Depravity Diversity was its hyperbolic self yesterday in an email sent to its supporters (and watchers, like me):

[Interior Sec. Ken] Salazar confirmed our worst fears for his tenure as Secretary of the Interior — he announced that he will adopt Bush’s polar bear extinction plan …

You have to hand it to the folks at the CBD; they know how to gin up the language, turning a simple rule that allows the careful, ongoing use of existing oil production facilities as “Bush’s polar bear extinction plan.” Of course, it’s easier to turn a phrase like that when you don’t need to worry about facts, ethics or honesty like the rest of us.

Leaving CBD’s hyperbole aside, here’s what Salazar did, from DOI’s news release:

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced today that he will retain a special rule [a "4(d) rule"] issued in December for protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, but will closely monitor the implementation of the rule to determine if additional measures are necessary to conserve and recover the polar bear and its habitat. …

Section 4(d) of the ESA allows the Fish and Wildlife Service to tailor regulatory prohibitions for threatened species as deemed necessary and advisable to provide for the conservation of the species. Hence, the special rule is referred to as a 4(d) rule. …

The rule also states that incidental take of polar bears resulting from activities outside the bear’s range, such as emission of greenhouse gases, will not be prohibited under the ESA.

“Incidental take” means harming, harrassing or killing, when done incidental to other legal activities; stated less bureaucratically, it means “not deliberate.” The polar bear is classified as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, so if you go out and just shoot one for sport, you’re in big trouble. But with Salazar’s action yesterday, it remains legal to go about the legal activities of maintaining oil production facilities and exploring for oil on oil lease land, even if by some unprovable nexus, your activities cause a chunk of ice to melt, a polar bear to tumble into the sea, somehow forget how to swim, and drown.

The greens pushed hard to get the polar bear listed as endangered, because the 4(d) rule can only be applied to threatened species, not endangered ones.  Bush was justified in not listing the polar bear at all – their populations are stable, even growing in some regions, and there’s no proof that polar icemelt is permanent; indeed, last winter’s ice build-up was record-breaking.  But in one of his weaker moves, Bush gave in and took the middle ground, listing it as threatened and writing the 4(d) to protect energy production and other activities.

I’ve lived through this myself.  In the early 1990s, Hugh Hewitt and I orchestrated the campaign to keep the California gnatcatcher from being listed under Cailfornia’s ESA, then eked out a “threatened” listing from the incoming Clinton administration, dodging the “endangered” bullet.  As a result, thousands of new homes and commercial/industrial facilities were built that otherwise would have been stopped dead by the less flexible endangered listing.

And the gnatcatcher, God bless it, is thriving.

The same will certainly be true of the polar bear, which has survived previous warming spells.  I’m not sure if the same can be said now of Obama’s cap and trade tax movement, which is already unpopular in Congress.  If you doubt the signficance of the hurdles Obama’s facing with this madcap scheme, just ask the free market: The price of CO2 credits has dropped dramatically.

Now Obama must defend the urgency of imposing cap and trade on a crippled, job-shedding economy even while admitting through Salazar’s action that things really aren’t all that urgent.  If global warming were the immediate threat the hysterics Obama campaigned to say it is, Salazar would have suspended the 4(d) rule at a minimum and could have even re-opened the process to go for an endangered listing.

That  he didn’t is solid evidence that the Obama administration is watching gas prices, which are beginning to creep up again.  They know that a repeat of last year’s run-up in gas costs will spell doom to cap and trade, and cost any politician who’s anti-drilling points in the polls.  So to keep his numbers up and the changes of cap and trade alive, Obama approved the continuation of the 4(d) in spite of howling opposition from the environmentalists.

That he could make so politic a trade at the expense of the polar bear (at least that’s how the Greenies put it) can only be read as proof that Obama doesn’t view global warming and cap and trade to be issues as important as his own popularity.  Smart opponents of cap and trade just got some powerful new ammunition, and I hope they’re loading their legislative and rhetorical weapons as I write.

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