According to the World Health Organization, more than half the world’s population uses dung, crop matter, and coal to cook and heat inside their homes. Full disclosure: I’ve lived in a dung-powered home. From 2004 to 2006, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Kyrgyz Republic. The family with whom I lived was poor even by Kyrgyz standards, and sheep poop was a primary fuel. The furnace ventilation system was inefficient, to say the least, and smoke would get everywhere. Such smoke kills 1.6 million people every year. Every 20 seconds, another poor person dies of indoor air pollution.
Thankfully, there’s a solution to this killer problem: coal fired power plants. By building a centralized coal power plant, it is possible to take energy production out of the home, and thereby save lives. Allow me to repeat: Coal power saves lives in the developing world. Of course, there are many other benefits to affordable and reliable energy; foremost among them is economic growth.
The World Bank was established in 1945 to fight poverty. Accordingly, the institution long has financed new coal fired power plants in developing countries, for the life-saving and prosperity-creating reasons I cite above.
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In yesterday’s Greenwire (subscription required), reporter Paul Voosen reviews of the efforts of various firms to develop commercially competitive motor fuel from two types of single-celled photosynthetic bugs — algae and cyanobacteria.
For several years, biofuel entrepreneurs and alt-energy gurus touted oil extracted from algae as the next big thing — abundant, cheap, home grown, hi-tech, carbon neutral. In addition, unlike corn-ethanol production, growing algae in ponds or bioreactors would not inflate grain prices or divert food from hungry mouths into gasoline tanks.
But this narrative increasingly looks like hype. Voosen summarizes: [click to continue…]
Let’s acknowledge the irony here. From a copy of Obama’s prepared remarks today at Georgetown University discussing his administration’s energy plan:
But here’s the thing – we’ve been down this road before. Remember, it was just three years ago that gas prices topped $4 a gallon. Working folks haven’t forgotten that. It hit a lot of people pretty hard. But it was also the height of political season, so you had a lot of slogans and gimmicks and outraged politicians waving three-point-plans for two-dollar gas – when none of it would really do anything to solve the problem. Imagine that in Washington.
The truth is, of course, was that all these gimmicks didn’t make a bit of difference. When gas prices finally fell, it was mostly because the global recession led to less demand for oil. Now that the economy is recovering, demand is back up. Add the turmoil in the Middle East, and it’s not surprising oil prices are higher. And every time the price of a barrel of oil on the world market rises by $10, a gallon of gas goes up by about 25 cents.
President Obama is decrying gimmicks and slogans (as he should be), noting their inability to achieve anything, with his newest slogan “Win the Future” in the background.
“WTF” indeed.
Tomorrow, the Senate is scheduled to vote on the Inhofe-Upton Energy Tax Prevention Act (S. 482) to overturn EPA’s Endangerment Rule and most of the agency’s other greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations. The bill is based on the constitutional premise that Congress, not an administrative agency with no political accountability to the people, should make the big decisions regarding national policy.
The fact that Congress remains deadlocked on climate and energy policy is a reason for EPA not to act — not an excuse for the agency to substitute its will for that of the people’s representatives.
I am a huge fan of the Inhofe-Upton bill. But even a good thing can be improved. S. 482 should be amended to preempt public nuisance litigation against GHG emitters under federal common law. Indeed, in its current form, S. 482 could actually increase the risk that the Supreme Court will empower trial lawyers and activist judges to ‘legislate’ climate policy. [click to continue…]
Paul Krugman, never one to mince words when writing about Republicans, looks desperately for common ground on two unrelated issues in his latest column. As a result of a blog post (among other pieces) written by a Professor William Cronon of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin State Republican Party has requested copies of all communication that Cronon has made using his University e-mail related to the recent union struggle in Wisconsin.
They seem to be legally entitled to this information under a state law similar to the Freedom of Information Act. It’s not clear that Cronon’s e-mails could be construed as anything other than embarassing, as he isn’t directly involved in preparing policy summaries that have enormous political implications.
Regardless of how you feel about this specific issue, Krugman errs when he tries to relate this to Climategate, insinuating that they are at all similar:
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No Rubber Stamp for EPA’s Agenda
Phil Kerpen, AFP Blog, 29 March 2011
Japan: Ignoring the Real Threats
Henry Payne, Planet Gore, 29 March 2011
A Green Energy Economy Revisited
Jerry Taylor & Peter Van Doren, Forbes, 29 March 2011
Gallup: Global Warming Least Concern of Least Concern for Voters
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air, 28 March 2011
“Drill, Brazil, Drill,” Obama Says
Conn Carroll, The Foundry, 28 March 2011
Pawlenty and Gingrich on Global Warming
David Weigel, Slate, 22 March 2011
I almost choked on a complimentary pretzel during a recent flight when I read the final page of the April edition of Scientific American, this country’s premier science periodical for mainstream audiences. The page was titled “Clean Tech Rising” and the subtitle read, “China outshines the U.S. as the top investor, while Europe is a close third.” It featured bar graphs indicating what different nations are spending on so-called clean energy, like biofuel, wind, and solar power. The attendant text warned that “The U.S. has been a major player in clean energy technologies, but China is now the leader.” It recommended that, “…stepping up U.S. investment could enhance the country’s competitiveness…”
Now, it might or might not be true that China is spending more than the U.S. on “clean” energy. The ruling Communist government is not known for openness and transparency, so I take “official” investment data with a grain of salt. However, it is unequivocal that the Chinese are building coal power plants at an unprecedented rate. Estimates vary, from 4 new coal plants every week to 1 plant every week. All we know for sure is that coal, and not renewable energy, is powering the Middle Kingdom’s meteoric economic growth. This is why China, which became the world’s number one emitter of greenhouse gases only three years ago, now has a carbon footprint 40 percent bigger than the next largest emitter (the United States).
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In an editorial cleverly titled, “Drill, Brazil, Drill says the U.S.“The Washington Post joined in the growing public displeasure over President Obama’s public support for the Brazilian oil industry, which seems to be rising at the expense of administration support for the oil industry in the United States.
As CEI’s Myron Ebell pointed out last week:
This is the same President who has spent the last two years doing everything he can to reduce oil production in the United States. Cancelled and delayed exploration leases on federal lands in the Rocky Mountains; the re-institution of the executive moratorium on offshore exploration in the Atlantic, the Pacific, most Alaskan waters, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico; the deepwater permitting moratorium and the de facto moratorium in the western Gulf. The result is that domestic oil production is about to start a steep decline.
The editorial also mentions the tariff on ethanol. Trade restrictions are bad policy. However, the case for Brazilian ethanol is slightly more complicated than that. If Brazilian ethanol were imported to the U.S., it might displace some ethanol production that is occurring in the U.S. as historically Brazilian ethanol has been cheaper. This would be fine.
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Not every State is suffering economically. According to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by Joel Kotkin, unemployment in North Dakota is 3.8 percent (nation-wide, it’s about 9 percent), due primarily to increasing production of oil and gas. And, as noted by Bonner Cohen in a letter to the Journal, North Dakota’s energy boom was made possible primarily because almost all of North Dakota’s rich deposits of oil and natural gas lie beneath privately-owned land. Otherwise, it would have been locked up by the Obama administration.
Senate Looks Ready to Vote on EPA Pre-Emption Amendment
The Senate now appears headed for a floor vote next week on S. 482, which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced on 15th March as an amendment to the Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Transfer Programs Re-Authorization Act, S. 493. S. 482, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, was introduced by Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) and is identical to H. R. 910, which the House plans to vote on as a free-standing bill next month. McConnell’s amendment would block EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions until authorized by Congress.
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) postponed a vote on the amendment last week when it became clear that it might come close to the 60 votes required for passage. First, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced his bill to delay EPA regulations for two years as an amendment. When that seemed to gain little support, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) introduced an amendment that would codify EPA regulations into law but permanently exempt from regulation smaller stationary sources that emit less than 75,000 tons per year.
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