The environmental movement, only recently poised for major advances on global warming and other issues, has suddenly found itself on the defensive as high gasoline prices shift the political climate nationwide and trigger defections by longtime supporters.
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Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
That the presidential race inhabits every nook and cranny of the mind of cable television news hosts became ridiculously clear in a Wolf Blitzer interview with Chevron Corp. CEO David O'Reilly:
Blitzer: You know you have — you and ExxonMobil, the Big Oil companies –have a huge public relations problem. In all the recent polls, when the American public is asked, who do you blame for these huge gas prices at the pump, they — more than any other single source — they blame Big Oil. They blame you. What's going on?…
Blitzer: There's other blame, but more than any other single source, they blame Big Oil….
Blitzer: Because you have had record profits, right?
O'Reilly: We're investing those record profits.
Blitzer: But billions and billions of dollars in profits, more than ever before….
Blitzer: You know that Barack Obama says if he's president, he wants a windfall profits tax. He wants to take a chunk of your profits right now and give it back to the American people. John McCain opposes that, as you know. So I assume you would like to see John McCain elected president?…
Blitzer: So, I guess, given the stark difference when it comes to Big Oil between Obama and McCain — let me rephrase the question — do you want McCain to be elected?
Talk about obsessed — and can someone please tell me how that's "rephrasing the question?!"
If you read the whole interview, CNN's iReporters show themselves to be better questioners than the Blitzer.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
As Drudge notes today, $4-per-gallon-(plus!) gasoline has put environmentalists on their heels (it's the economy, stupids!), with arguments from their apologists getting ever sillier:
John McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, opposed new offshore drilling in his 2000 presidential campaign. He said Tuesday that he now supported lifting the long-standing ban.
"I believe it is time for federal government to lift these restrictions and put our own reserves to use," the Arizona senator said in a Houston speech on energy security….
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) decried McCain's stance. "He ought to know he'd ruin Florida's $65-billion tourism economy by allowing oil rigs off the coast."
Dear Senator: Do the math. If folks can't afford the fuel (airline tickets, etc.) it takes to travel to the Sunshine State or other like places, you aren't going to have a "tourism economy."
For a quarter-century, drilling for oil and gas off nearly all the American coastline has been banned in part to protect tourism and to lessen the chances of beach-blackening spills.
In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
My colleague at the John Locke Foundation, Geoff Lawrence, in a blog post today looks at economic modeling for costs of solar power as North Carolina lawmakers last year were putting together a renewable portfolio standard law for the state's utilities. His analysis shows that modelers were way off:
The model they developed included scenarios in which the price of solar power (the most expensive form of electricity production) declined by 25, 50, and 75 percent by year 2021.
These projections likely made the solar set-aside more palatable to consumer groups. However, they have little basis in reality. The primary chemical input into production of solar panels is polysilicon – the same chemical that is used to manufacture microprocessors.
Limited supplies of this chemical are resulting in a global shortage as more of the chemical is demanded for solar panel production. As a result, the price has increased from $20 per kilogram to $300 per kilogram over the past five years and continues to rise. The solar panel industry has grown into a major competitor with microprocessor manufacturers for this resource and is starting to bid polysilicon away from microprocessor manufacturers. Government mandates for solar power will undoubtedly cause this trend to accelerate.
These guys were about as good as all those global warming modelers!
This movement has become a religion and the faithful will never listen to logic and/or reason. Most are not aware that this movement is an anti-capitalist, anti-free enterprise movement. It has nothing to do with climate change but everything to do with weakening America. When the Berlin wall fell in the late '80s, the communists had no where to go but soon found that the environmentalists were getting a foothold with our political leaders. It has become the perfect venue to alarm the folks on doom and gloom. The sad thing is that most people buying into this madness are so emotional and unwilling to listen to reason, that any conversation or contradiction is met with scorn and halted. My conclusion is that these folks are sadly misinformed and if common sense doesn't come into play soon, we will cripple our economy and a millions of people will be hurt beyond repair. You will see food shortages, fuel shortages and a depression that will dwarf the 1930s.
President Bush's hopes for reaching a climate-change agreement among the world's biggest economies got a boost from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe's leading global advocate for tough new greenhouse-gas limits.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
The Washington Post today reports there is great movement in Congress to set aside thousands upon thousands of more U.S. acreage as (mostly) untouchable wilderness area, as environmentalists gain ever greater influence in the nation's capitol. Meanwhile that kind of effort, as the Washington Times notes, is undermining the enviros' own goals (mandates, that is) of expanded use of renewable fuels to generate electricity. They want solar and wind energy tapped, which generally is found in the largest amounts in remote areas (the desert sun, and mountain and coastal breezes, respectively), yet oppose connecting those sources to the users:
Build one of the world's largest solar-power operations in the Southern California desert and surround it with plants that run on wind and underground heat.
Yet San Diego Gas & Electric Co. (SDG&E) and its potential partners face fierce opposition because the plan also calls for a 150-mile, high-voltage transmission line that would cut through pristine parkland to reach the nation's eighth-largest city.
The showdown over how to get renewable energy to consumers will likely play out elsewhere around the country as well, as state regulators require electric utilities to rely less on coal and natural gas to fire their plants – the biggest source of carbon-dioxide emissions in the U.S.
Is there any element of environmentalism where these activists can apply their "solutions" while not showing themselves to be foolish, hypocritical, or both?
A financial analyst on Bloomberg TV stated that drilling for oil in the U.S. would increase our oil supply and also send a message to the oil cartel that the U.S. is serious about moving away from foreign oil. Both actions would lower the cost of oil.
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