During last night’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama made the eye-catching claim that, “Right now—right now—American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years.” In fact, this is malarkey, because the increase in oil production has nothing to do with the President’s policies. Indeed, the increase occurred in spite of this administration’s actions. As is explained by our friends at the Institute for Energy Research:
The reality is that oil production on federal lands is falling, while production on private and state lands is rising.[2] There is a long term trend of decreasing oil production on federal lands. In fact, oil production on federal lands has fallen by 43 percent over the past 9 years according to the Obama administration’s Energy Information Administration.[3] And it has dropped rapidly on President Obama’s watch.
IER provides this handy graph in order to help make its point:
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During last night’s State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama drew a parallel between government support for fracking and green energy:
And by the way, it was public research dollars, over the course of 30 years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock –- reminding us that government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground. (Applause.)
Now, what’s true for natural gas is just as true for clean energy….Because of federal investments, renewable energy use has nearly doubled, and thousands of Americans have jobs because of it.
This comparison is grossly inapt.
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Global warming ranks dead last among Americans’ priorities, according to a public opinion poll released yesterday by The Pew Research Center for The People & The Press.
As the graph to the right indicates, global warming alarmism wasn’t always in the cellar. Five years ago, it ranked ahead of campaign finance, global trade, and lobbyist influence. Since then, however, the percentage of Americans who prioritize climate change has been in a free-fall. The Pew report states that,“Since it was first tested on the annual policy priorities list in 2007, the share of Americans who view dealing with global warming as a top priority has slipped from 38% to 25%…the decline has occurred across party lines: In 2007, 48% of Democrats rated dealing with global warming as a top priority, as did 23% of Republicans.”
That’s not the only bad poll news for green special interests. Today, Rasmussen Reports issued the results of a telephone survey showing that, “59% of Likely U.S. voters say, generally speaking, that creating new jobs is more important than environmental protection. Twenty-nine percent disagree and say protecting the environment is more important. Another 12% are not sure.”
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In a previous post, I compared renewable energy spending in the 2009 Stimulus to a green albatross burdening the President. I argued that Stimulus spending was inherently wasteful, because politics invariably corrupts government’s investment decisions. The result is taxpayers losses on bankrupt companies that existed only by the grace of political favoritism, a la Solyndra. I predicted the green stimulus would haunt the President, in the form of a slow drip public relations nightmare, as a litany of bad investments go belly-up in the run up to the 2012 elections.
And so it continues. Yesterday, Evergreen Energy, a manufacturer of renewable energy components and recipient of Stimulus largesse, filed for bankruptcy.
Power grabbing is hard work. Usually the power grabbee resists the infringement of its rights, so the Environmental Protection Agency has had to employ a number of machinations to get the job done. Without further ado, I present to you nos. 10 through 6, of EPA’s top 10 tricks to steal more power:
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Over at the PJ Tattler today, my colleague Chris Horner receives warmly the news that the President might make the administration’s record on renewable energy a focus of his State of the Union Address:
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Last week I spoke with an editorialist at the Orange County Register, about the silliness that is the California Energy Commission’s latest efficiency mandate, for battery chargers. On Saturday, the paper ran an editorial about our conversation. The entire editorial, “Bureaucrats Eyeing Your Device Chargers,” is reprinted below. Afterwards, I have two extra thoughts on energy efficiency policy.
It’s enough to make the Energizer Bunny pound his drum in protest. This month the California Energy Commission imposed new regulations – the Appliance Efficiency Standards for Battery Chargers. According to the CEC’s website, “The purpose of this rulemaking is to adopt efficiency standards, certification and marking requirements for large and small battery charger systems.”
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News You Can Use
Hedge Fund Wins Big Bet against Solar
In a quarterly newsletter, the hedge fund Greenlight Capital, Inc. announced that it has closed its short position in First Solar, “one of the most profitable shorts in the history” of its funds. Stock prices for First Solar, which received a $1.4 billion stimulus loan from the same program that propped up Solyndra, plummeted primarily because Germany rolled back solar power subsidies.
Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell
Obama Punts on Keystone (again)
President Barack Obama on Wednesday, 18th January, announced that he would not approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries in the Gulf States. A provision in the payroll tax cut extension legislation required the President to make a decision before 21st February based on the national interest. The President’s statement used the deadline to blame Congress for his decision:
“This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people.”
The New York Times was almost alone among major papers in supporting the President’s decision. The Washington Post noted that the President’s own Council on Jobs and Competitiveness had reported the day before that the United States needed to be building more energy infrastructure, including pipelines. Post columnist Robert Samuelson wrote that Obama’s decision was an “act of national insanity.”
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