November 2011

Obama Punts on Keystone Pipeline: Political Cynicism in the Guise of Energy Policy

by Marlo Lewis on November 11, 2011

in Features

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For President Obama, approving the Keystone XL Pipeline should have been a no-brainer. All the State Department had to do was conclude the obvious — the pipeline is in the U.S. national interest.

What other reasonable conclusion is possible? Building the 1,700-mile, shovel-ready project would create thousands of construction jobs, stimulate tens of billions of dollars in business spending, and generate billions of dollars in tax revenues. Once operational, the pipeline would enhance U.S. energy security, displacing oil imported from unsavory regimes with up to 830,000 barrels a day of tar sands oil from friendly, stable, environmentally fastidious, democratic Canada. Canada already ships us more oil than all Persian Gulf states combined, and Keystone would significantly expand our self-reliance on North American energy.

Obama had only two policy choices. He could either disapprove the pipeline on the grounds that environmental concerns over incremental greenhouse gas emissions and oil spill risk outweigh the substantial economic, fiscal, and energy security benefits of the pipeline. Or he could approve the pipeline on the grounds that its benefits outweigh potential environmental impacts.

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The U.S. Should Surrender in the Solar Trade War with China

by William Yeatman on November 11, 2011

in Blog, Features

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On October 19th, a handful of American solar panel manufacturers petitioned the Commerce Department asking for the imposition of trade tariffs on their competitors in China. In response to this petition, the Commerce Department on Wednesday agreed to investigate whether China’s trade practices in the solar sector violate international law.

There are many stupid environmentalist talking points, but the stupidest is that the Chinese government is undercutting the growth of America’s solar power manufacturing industry. According to this line of reasoning, generous state subsidies allow Chinese solar panel manufacturers to dump their products onto the American market at artificially low prices.

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EPA’s Sinister Franken-Regs

by William Yeatman on November 10, 2011

in Blog, Features

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This blog has kept a close eye on the Environmental Protection Agency’s aggressive expansion of its own authority (see here and here). The latest such power grab is taking place in the western United States, where the EPA is hybridizing disparate provisions of the Clean Air Act in order to engineer greater regulatory authority for itself. These Franken-regs are being used to trump the states’ rightful authority on visibility-improvement policy and impose billions of dollars of emissions controls for benefits that are literally invisible.

In 1977 and 1990, Congress passed amendments to the Clean Air Act providing that states work together to improve visibility at federal National Parks and Wilderness Areas. Together, these amendments are known as the Regional Haze provision. Notably, this provision accords states a uniquely high degree of control relative to the EPA. According to the EPA’s 2005 Regional Haze implementation guidelines, “[T]he [Clean Air] Act and legislative history indicate that Congress evinced a special concern with insuring that States would be the decision-makers” on visibility-improvement policy making. The courts, too, have interpreted the Clean Air Act such that states have primacy on Regional Haze decision making. In the seminal case American Corn Growers v. EPA (2001), which set boundaries between the states and the EPA on Regional Haze policy, the D.C. Circuit Court remanded the EPA’s 1999 Regional Haze implementation guidelines for encroaching on states’ authority.

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Naomi Klein Adresses Climate Change

by Brian McGraw on November 10, 2011

in Blog

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The Competitive Enterprise Institute gets a disapproving nod from Naomi Klein in her latest essay for The Nation:

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who specializes in harassing climate scientists with nuisance lawsuits and Freedom of Information fishing expeditions, angles the table mic over to his mouth. “You can believe this is about the climate,” he says darkly, “and many people do, but it’s not a reasonable belief.” Horner, whose prematurely silver hair makes him look like a right-wing Anderson Cooper, likes to invoke Saul Alinsky: “The issue isn’t the issue.” The issue, apparently, is that “no free society would do to itself what this agenda requires…. The first step to that is to remove these nagging freedoms that keep getting in the way.”

(Before we go any further, Horner addressed this FOIA complaint earlier this week, after Lisa Jackson suggested that those engaged in asking for taxpayer funded communications that they are entitled to under the law were “criminal.” )

She’s going to call us on this — right? She doesn’t want to end capitalism as we know it, she just wants a large carbon tax so we can dot our landscape with windmills in the next few decades and ride off into the sunset on our new carbon-free ponies. Well, no, she’s going to largely confirm that she believes unfettered capitalism is going to destroy the world, and we need to reorganize society around localized organic farming or community co-ops or something: [click to continue…]

The Sun is Setting on Solar Sustainability

by Jackie Moreau on November 10, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Paul Krugman’s recent article in the NY Times is a weak attempt to convince those who have been led astray by our “fossilized political system” that solar power is somehow becoming a rising star of reliability since, as he claims, it is now “cost-effective.”  This pipedream is of course followed by a casual alarmist condemnation of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).   It seems Krugman has gotten a little too solar-happy based on his overt distortion of both solar and fracking facts.

First, let’s get the sun out of our eyes and the buzzing Krugman out of our ears so the reality of solar energy can come into focus.  Holman W. Jenkins’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal shatters Krugman’s application of solar energy under “Moore’s Law,” explaining the real reasons behind the decrease in solar energy price, which Krugman claims was actually the “technological success” of Solyndra’s failure.   In Jenkins’s piece, he uses a fictitious acceptance letter from Herbert M. Allison, a former chief financial officer of Merrill Lynch, recruited by the White House to counsel on the Department of Energy’s “green” loan program, who was recruited after the collapse of Solyndra.  He states:

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Salazar’s New Order Contradicts His 2010 Order

by Marita Noon on November 8, 2011

in Blog

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Weeks after the infamous BP oil spill in late-April 2010, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the agency that managed leasing and regulation, was split up into three parts.

Addressing the reorganization, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, said: “We will be able to strengthen oversight of the companies that develop our nation’s energy resources.” He addressed a perceived conflict of interest between departments due to the leasing and regulatory functions being in one agency—one brings in revenue and one regulates (and perhaps punishes) the businesses generating the income.

His mid-May 2010 actions bring his new Secretarial Order to reorganize a different agency into question.

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This Week in the Congress

by Myron Ebell on November 6, 2011

in Blog

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Sen. Rand Paul Files for Vote to Overturn Cross-State Air Pollution Rule

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has filed a resolution under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to disapprove the Environmental Protection Agency’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR).  A vote on the Senate floor could come as early as 9th or 10th November. The CSAPR has come under intense criticism from a number of States and several major electric utilities.  EPA has responded by proposing some limited modifications.

Under CRA rules, once thirty Senators have sponsored a resolution of disapproval, it can be brought to the floor at any time even if the Majority Leader opposes doing so, no amendments are in order, a final vote cannot be blocked by procedural maneuvers, and passage requires only a simple majority rather than the 60 votes usually required.

If the Senate passes the resolution, which seems possible but unlikely, the House will probably schedule a vote within a few days.  The House has already voted for a rider to delay the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.  If both chambers pass the resolution, then it will be up to President Obama to sign or veto it.

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Auto Dealers Rebut “Concerned” Scientists

by Marlo Lewis on November 4, 2011

in Blog, Features

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The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and seven other green groups sent the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) a letter (dated October 19) criticizing NADA’s opposition to President Obama’s plan to increase new-car fuel economy standards to 54.5 miles per gallon by Model Year (MY) 2025.

The UCS letter parrots the administration’s claims about the many wonderful benefits more stringent fuel economy standards will achieve during MYs 2017-2025. In a letter dated November 2, NADA points out that the claimed benefits depend on assumptions, such as future gasoline prices and, most importantly, whether consumers will want to buy the cars auto makers are forced to produce.

The UCS letter neglects to mention that, according to the administration’s own estimates, the MY 2025 standard would add at least $3,100 to the average cost of a new vehicle. NADA also notes other likely consumer impacts:

  • Vehicles that currently cost $15,000 and less effectively regulated out of existence.
  • Weight reductions of 15%-25%, with potential adverse effects on vehicle safety in collisions.
  • 25% to 66% of the fleet required to be hybrid or electric, even though hybrids today account for only 2-3% of new vehicle sales.

The “concerned” scientists also completely ignore NADA’s critique of the legal basis of Obama’s fuel economy agenda. [click to continue…]

Keystone XL Pipeline: Alleged Conflict of Interest Much Ado about Nothing?

by Marlo Lewis on November 2, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Blocking the Keystone XL Pipeline — the $7 billion, 1,700-mile project that could create 20,000 construction jobs and eventually transport 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil from friendly, stable, democratic Canada to hubs in Oklahoma and Texas — has become the environmental movement’s top agenda item.

This is not surprising, because Canada’s booming oil sands industry demolishes two popular narratives of green ideology — the claim that oil is a dwindling resource from which we must rapidly decouple our economy before supplies run out, and the notion that most of the money we spend on gasoline ends up in the coffers of unsavory regimes like Saudi Arabia. In reality, more than half of all the oil we consume is produced in the USA, and we get more than twice as much oil from Canada as from Saudi Arabia.

Much of the anti-Keystone agitation is vintage ’60s stuff. In late August, during a weeks-long protest rally outside the White House, 800 demonstrators (including celebrities Margot Kidder and Daryl Hannah) were handcuffed and bused to local police stations. In late September, more than 100 demonstrators were arrested trying to enter Canada’s House of Commons. In October, 1,000 protesters showed up outside President Obama’s $5,000-a-head fundraiser in San Francisco, and organizers claim 6,000 demonstrators will encircle the White House on Sunday, Nov. 6.

Meanwhile, oil bashers on Capitol Hill are engaging in some political theater of their own. Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), two other senators, and 11 congressmen requested that the State Department’s inspector general (IG) investigate an apparent conflict of interest in the preparation of State’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Sanders et al. point out that Cardno/Entrix, the firm State commissioned to conduct the EIS, listed TransCanada, the corportion proposing to build the pipeline, as a “major client.” This “financial relationship,” they suggest, could lead Cardno/Entrix to low-ball the project’s environmental risks. They even insinuate that Cardno/Entrix may have understated oil spill risk just so it could later get paid by TransCanada to clean up the mess.

Earlier this week, State responded to Sanders et al. As far as I can see, there’s no there, there.

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College Students: Check Yourself Before You Wreck the Economy

by Jackie Moreau on November 2, 2011

in Blog, Features

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College students enticed by the environmental activist movement should give serious consideration to the consequences of their actions before jumping on this bandwagon.  This unsettling epiphany came to me as I read EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s recent remarks condemning the coal industry at a Sierra Club-hosted event at Howard University.  Her speech incited students to join the green ranks of the Sierra Student Coalition’s “Campuses Beyond Coal” initiative, which aims to eliminate campus-owned coal plants in a move to go “beyond coal” and onto “100% clean energy solutions.”  Whether students recognize it or not, they do not live in a bubble and their university is not isolated from the community in which it is embedded.  Students who support this cause must be held accountable for destroying the livelihoods of working people of that community and the economic opportunity for future generations that industries like the coal industry afford.

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