GlobalWarming.org

Carl Sagan

Common sense teaches that the world would be a better place if people were more informed about it. Scientists with the fervor of corner preachers exhort anyone who will listen to take an interest in scientific matters. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan writes, for example, that:

the consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time than in any that has come before. It’s perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential growth….How can we affect national policy… if we don’t understand the underlying issues?

Certainly everyone wants to overcome ignorance in the world, but notice that Sagan does not just complain about ignorance. Rather, he says that it is “dangerous,” “perilous,” and “foolhardy” to be ignorant of environmental issues. Passages like these rarely create “average citizens” who become experts on environmental policy, particularly when these issues barely warrant a mention in the rest of the book. Instead they create average citizens who become experts on caring about environmental policy. They tell the reader that it’s “perilous and foolhardy”  to ignore these issues. After all, they’re scientific.

The Experts on Caring then go out and flood politicians and bureaucrats with questions about the environment. What will you do about this or that new catastrophe? Those who ignore such calls are labeled as “anti-science.” Anyone who disagrees just doesn’t understand science.

This weekend, one such Caring Expert told me that “all our wealth has a downside. Think about global warming. We are responsible for that. Hurricanes and floods kill people.” Statements like these encapsulate the major problem with Experts on Caring: Even if they’re right about a problem, their sense of proportion has been totally distorted by the Carl Sagans of the world who tell them it’s “dangerous” not to care.

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Senate Takes Up Highway Bill; Pickens Payoff Plan Hangs in the Balance

A logjam on the highway bill broke loose Wednesday afternoon when a unanimous consent agreement was reached in the Senate. The agreement provided for votes on twenty germane amendments and ten non-germane amendments, equally divided between amendments offered by Democrats and Republicans.

Voting on the non-germane amendments, which require a sixty-vote supermajority to pass, commenced at just after 2 PM on Thursday, 8th March. A number of the amendments concern energy policies.

First up was Senator David Vitter’s (R-La.) amendment (#1535) to require more oil and gas drilling in federal offshore areas. It failed on a vote of 46 to 42. Senator Susan Collins’s (R-Me.) amendment (#1660) to delay the EPA’s job-killing Boiler MACT Rule was defeated on a 52 to 46 vote.

The major drama of the day was provided by two very different amendments on the Keystone XL Pipeline. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.) offered an amendment (#1817) that would further delay permitting the 1700-mile pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries in the Gulf States. It would also ban any oil moving through the pipeline from being exported. This is truly goofy, as my CEI colleague Marlo Lewis explains here. Wyden’s amendment was defeated overwhelmingly, 34 to 64.

Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) then offered amendment #1537 that would permit the Keystone XL pipeline upon enactment of the legislation. The amendment failed on a 56 to 42 vote.

Eleven Democrats voted yes on the Hoeven amendment. Two Republicans, Senators Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who is recovering from a stroke, and John Thune (R-SD), missed all the votes.  Assuming they both would have voted yes on the Hoeven amendment, support in the Senate to approve the Keystone pipeline is getting close to the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural obstacles.

The amendment might even have passed without some last minute lobbying by President Barack Obama. Politico reported and the White House confirmed that the President called several Senators to urge them to vote no on Keystone.

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President Barack Obama’s slide into daffy irrelevance continued this week. In yet another speech on what he’s doing to lower gas prices, the President proposed raising the federal subsidy for buying an electric vehicle from $7,500 to $10,000.  And instead of a tax credit, the President wants to give electric vehicle buyers the $10,000 up front at time of purchase.

This should get the cost-to-buyer of new Teslas and Fiskers below $100,000. Dozens or even scores of new electric cars will no doubt be zooming out of showrooms if the Congress enacts President Obama’s proposal.  And low-to-middle income Americans struggling to fill their tanks with $3.75 gas can take satisfaction knowing that their tax dollars are doing so much good.

Politics is, well, political, and as such, few battles in Washington are fought over principles as much as over power and image. That’s why in many political debates both sides are wrong because they fight for goals no American should want—namely, for the power to control society in their own way. That both parties share the same underlying myths about government and its role in the economy has been on elaborate display during the current bickering over whether the president should release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

As I pointed out in a previous blog, the President shouldn’t just release some oil from the SPR, as Congressional Democrats want—he should release all the oil and close the SPR permanently. The reserve’s origins and purposes are entirely based on myth—that the 1973-74 OPEC oil embargo decreased imports so dramatically that a massive oil shortage resulted (read why this is wrong here). The political benefits of this myth are plentiful. It outsources blame for the energy crisis to foreigners—in particular, Arabs. It also creates a climate of fear that showers extraordinary powers on politicians and bureaucrats. Finally, it permits political saviors to rescue us from high gas prices.

Once the myth is accepted by both sides, however, facts can be jettisoned, and arguments can proceed on purely political grounds. Should the reserve be used or not?  Economic-sounding arguments are discussed, but in the end, the question isn’t economic—it’s political.

Economics explains how people will act in a market under the forces of supply and demand that are represented in prices. In a market, an action is worth taking if output exceeds input—that is, if the sales price of the finished good is sufficiently greater than the prices of the materials required to make it. In this way, we know that consumers valued the final good more highly than its inputs, producing profit or wealth for society. On the other hand, if consumers value the inputs more than the final good, the result is a loss signaling to the business that society demands those resources elsewhere in the economy.

That’s economics, but the decision to release oil from the SPR isn’t based on the forces of supply, demand, profits, nor prices. Rather, it’s pure politics, and in politics, you can’t be wrong.

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Lately, President Obama has been bragging about the drop in America’s dependence on foreign oil—now less than fifty percent. Earlier this week, he introduced a new chart to show how oil imports have declined under his leadership. The chart does not show the drop in America’s oil consumption, due to the bad economy. Nor does it give any indication of the trend for the future based on his policies—which will likely lead to increased use of foreign oil.

President Obama’s energy policy is largely set by his environmental base that favors “alternatives” and eschews fossil fuels—especially drilling for oil. His policy mirrors that of California where the resistance to tapping the resources under the residents’ feet has resulted in increased imported oil from the Middle East. Once the largest oil producer in the world, California is now importing nearly 50% of its oil—with about 21% coming through the Strait of Hormuz. California’s gas prices are routinely the highest in the country. If Iran closes the Strait, as they’ve been threatening, California will be in dire straits.

While less dependent on Middle Eastern oil than California, the United States is like California, in that we have vast resources that are locked up due to regulation, blocked access, and delayed permitting. President Obama touts the reduction of imported oil, but his bragging rights may be short-lived, if he continues on the same anti-drilling track California has been on.

Gasoline prices are driven largely by the headlines. They are full of talk about Middle East unrest and devoid of American drilling announcements. Hence, fear over future supplies keeps bumping the price up and up.

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The front page of this morning’s RealClearEnergy, a screenshot of which sits above, features an illuminating juxtaposition.

On the left column, there are six news stories about how the natural gas industry and other engines of capital investment are putting their own money into expanding the market for gas into the transportation sector. Thanks to the technolution in oil and gas drilling known as hydraulic fracturing, or fraking, gas production is booming, and prices are down. At the same time, geopolitical instability is pushing the price of gasoline to $5 a gallon. The upshot is that gas now makes for an attractive motor fuel. To that end, the industry is investing in infrastructure (natural gas powered engines for trucks and fueling stations), in order to grow and thereby seize market share from the oil industry. Whether the gas industry succeeds or fails in its competition with the oil industry, the consumer can only win.

On the right column, the first story is an oped by T. Boone Pickens, in favor of H.R. 1380, the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act (a.k.a., the NAT GAS Act, a.k.a.,  the “T. Boone Pickens Earmark Bill,” a.k.a., the “Pickens-Your-Pocket Boondoggle Bill,” a.k.a. the “Billionaire’s Bailout,” a.k.a. the “Pickens Payout Plan”). As its many nicknames would suggest, this legislation was written by billionaire T. Boone Pickens, in order to makes himself even richer. Pickens purveys in natural gas, and the legislation would have taxpayers throw money at infrastructure (natural gas powered engines for trucks and fueling stations), in order to facilitate the gas industry’s growth into the transportation sector, at the expense of the oil industry. Pickens proposes these subsidies (to himself), DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE INDUSTRY IS ALREADY DOING SO WITH ITS OWN MONEY!!!!! Alas, Pickens already has won over the President. If he succeeds in per$uading enough Members of Congress to get his Billionaire’s Bailout passed, then the taxpayer will suffer an egregious loss.