Folks who stop at a slot machine in the Las Vegas airport between flights can usually risk the few dollars that will probably disappear, but the serious gambler—whether the stock market, the ponies, or cards—assesses the risk before they cash in their chips. Even then, they make miscalculations. That’s why they call it gambling.
Last week, Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund miscounted his cards when he claimed that new EPA regulations will “protect the IQ of countless of American kids and help clear the air for millions of Americans with asthma.” Citing the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards the EPA rolled out on December 21, that he said was 21 years in the making, his widely-published op-ed said that the US “has always had good sense when taking on hazardous substances in our environment.”
The first card Krupp lays down in support of his argument that the U.S. has “good sense” is DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane)—which the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) cofounder, Victor Yannacone, was instrumental in banning back in 1972. Using DDT as an example of “good sense,” Krupp says it was banned “after learning that the pesticide was killing birds of prey.” Even though the EDF sprang up in the late sixties with the single purpose of battling the use of DDT, it is surprising that he is still trying this old trick.
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In Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health, CEI’s John Berlau describes how environmentalists have intervened in the economy in ways that have caused many deaths. In this passage, he criticizes the precautionary principle, the idea that the government should wait to be absolutely certain before it permits the use of certain products.
Eco-Freaks was published in 2006
Today’s environmentalists wax eloquently about the Precautionary Principle. In green manifestos like the Wingspread Consensus, they argue that if there is any doubt about a certain chemical’s effects, it should not be introduced. Advocates liken it to the adage, “Look before you leap.” But, points out science writer Ronald Bailey, the principle goes against another wise adage, “He who hesitates is lost.”
Imagine if the army had followed the Precautionary Principle of today’s advocates. The military and drug companies did do some tests and found that DDT posed no harm to humans, but they could not be certain. But, had DDT not been used in World War II, millions of soldiers, civilians, and Holocaust victims would have died of insect-borne diseases. When talking to students, Gloria Lyon expresses a principle similar to that stated by University of Texas environmental law professor Frank Cross, that in protecting public health, “there is no such thing as a risk-free lunch.”
Chemical pioneer Joseph Jacobs was also critical of the Precautionary Principle. He noted that one of the products he helped develop saved many lives, but also “caused quite a few deaths.” But this substance was not DDT. It was penicillin, which has caused allergic fatalities. No deaths of humans, by contrast, have been linked to DDT. Yet “no one has ever bemoaned the discovery of penicillin or caused it to be banned,” Jacobs wrote. “If this had been given the Rachel Carson treatment, think of all the lives which would no t have been saved.”
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“Ethanol ventures backed by billionaire entrepreneur Vinod Khosla — including Range Fuels, which built a failed factory in Georgia — were given the green light for an estimated $600 million in federal and state subsidies,” reports The Atlanta Journal- Constitution,
Yet,” the AJC article continues, “none of the dozen or so companies financed or controlled by Khosla over the last decade has produced commercially viable [cellulosic] ethanol. Some failed or, hamstrung by unproven technology and insufficient capital, remain behind schedule.”
The cost to taxpayers? “To date, the companies have tapped about $250 million of the $600 million. Even though they are now unlikely to ever receive the full amounts, tens of millions have been lost.”
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Bloomberg New Energy Finance reports that the U.S. has overtaken China as the world’s most reckless energy investor. This race to the bottom will end poorly for both nations.
Since 2008, China has been global leader in government subsidies to renewable energy like solar and wind power. To be sure, the Chinese government isn’t investing in green energy for its people to use–China is building 1,000 megawatts of coal power every three weeks to satisfy the demand for electricity within its borders. Instead, these subsidies are meant primarily to spur the manufacture of solar panels and wind turbines that are needed to meet Soviet-style green energy production quotas enacted by the U.S. and European countries. To put it another way, China is subsidizing the supply of green energy, while the U.S. and Europe are mandating its demand.
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CBS News is reporting that there are 11 more Solyndras in the Obama Administration’s green-energy program:
CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra. . .Standard and Poor’s had given the [Beacon] project a rating of ‘CCC-plus.’
(A CCC rating is also shared by Greece, a virtually bankrupt nation embroiled in a massive debt crisis).
A liberal Congress must share the blame for this fiasco, since the massive $800 billion stimulus package it passed in 2009 funded these boondoggles. As a Solyndra stakeholder exulted, “there’s never been more money shoved out the government’s door in world history.” But as the Washington Post noted, energy programs were “infused with politics at every level” under Obama. His Administration hastily approved subsidies for Solyndra, whose executives are now pleading the 5th Amendment, despite obvious danger signs and warnings about the company’s likely collapse. (Later, federal officials successfully pressured Solyndra to delay its announcement about upcoming layoffs until just after the 2010 election, to avoid embarrassing the Obama Administration).
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In the News
The Biggest Cost of EPA’s Climate Power Grab
Marlo Lewis, The Environmental Forum, January/February 2012
Moisturizing the EPA
R. J. Smith, American Spectator, 13 January 2012
Commerce Secretary Bryson Wants Higher Energy Prices
Iain Murray & David Bier, Washington Examiner, 13 January 2012
Why I Turned against “Green” Wind Power
Michael Morgan, Master Resource, 13 January 2012
Energy Department Makes More Bad Bets
Paul Chesser, National Legal and Policy Center, 13 January 2012
“Climate” and the Campaign
Chris Horner, AmSpecBlog, 12 January 2012
Markey’s Misguided View of Energy Exports
Nicolas Loris, The Foundry, 12 January 2012
Please, Alarmists: Stop Denying Climate Change
James Taylor, Forbes, 12 January 2012
Chairman Chu’s Auto Show
Henry Payne, The Michigan View, 11 January 2012
Procrastinator-in-Chief Needs to Address Keystone XL
Rep. Lee Terry, The Hill, 11 January 2012
EPA’s War on Transparency
William Yeatman, GlobalWarming.org, 11 January 2012
Not long ago, I blogged about how Energy Secretary Steven Chu was being unfairly scapegoated by the House of Representatives for the spectacular collapse of Solyndra. As I explained then, Members of Congress were the ones who passed the porkulus, a.k.a. the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which required the Department of Energy to spend almost $30 billion on “green jobs” as soon as possible. Moreover, the Energy Department received over 500 letters from Members of Congress on behalf of loan guarantee applicants (presumably constituents). In playing fast and loose on risky energy investments, Secretary Chu was following the Congress’s orders.
This week, the Congress further bolstered my defense of Secretary Chu. Today’s Politico Morning Energy reports:
The collapse of efforts in the House to save the uranium enrichment firm USEC through legislative tactics has left lawmakers in an awkward position with Energy Secretary Steven Chu: They need a favor. After legislators in both chambers raced — and ultimately failed — to insert measures into last month’s omnibus spending bill to prop up USEC’s multibillion-dollar American Centrifuge project in Piketon, Ohio, leaders in the House are now urging Chu to use his existing powers to help the project, according to a draft copy of a letter obtained by POLITICO.
According to the Hillsboro Times Gazette, the future of the American Centrifuge project depends on a $2 billion loan guarantee from the Energy Department Loan Programs Office (whence Solyndra). The deal was near completion at the end of the George W. Bush administration, and but it has been in a holding pattern under the Obama administration. Evidently, the U.S. Enrichment Corporation (USEC)—the parent company—cannot wait much longer for the loan to come through. BusinessWeek recently reported that USEC might have to lay off about 450 workers in Ohio, Tennessee and Maryland if uncertainty about funding meant it had to stop most activity on the project. That warning prompted a bipartisan push in the Congress last month to throw American Centrifuge a lifeline, in the form of a $150 million bailout, to keep it above water until the loan guarantee materializes.
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In theory, environmentalism is about protecting the poor and middle class from the careless capitalists. In reality, it amounts to persistent attacks on all those groups—capitalists on down. The Clean Water Act is commonly used to deprive families of their property without due process. The Endangered Species Act is similarly abused to violate property rights with little benefit to wildlife. Cities fine residents millions for violating their mandatory recycling programs. Energy taxes, renewable energy mandates, ethanol tariffs, cap-and-trade schemes, energy rationing, and a host of other programs raise the price of electricity and fuel, which primarily hurts the poor.
In an opinion article in today’s Washington Examiner, Iain Murray and I document how the current Commerce Secretary has repeatedly advocated not just the policies that lead to higher energy prices, but the higher prices themselves.
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Greenwire (subscription required) reports that EPA has sent its proposed regulation establishing greenhouse gas (GHG) New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for new and modified power plants to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review.
The stringency of the regulation is unknown to outsiders at this time. Environmental lobbyists hope EPA will set the bar so high that only natural gas power plants, or coal-fired plants equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, can comply. Industry representatives want EPA to propose separate standards for coal- and gas-fired electric generating units reflecting the different carbon intensities of coal and natural gas.
No previous NSPS has ever required new power plants to use natural gas rather than coal, and none has ever required modified plants to switch from coal to natural gas. Industry representatives contend that Congress never intended the NSPS program to block construction of coal power plants or mandate fuel switching. They’re right. [click to continue…]
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