I and several of my CEI colleagues were looking forward to an informal debate late Friday afternoon on energy policy sponsored by McKinsey and Company, the global consulting firm. As part of their “Drinks and Debate” series, McKinsey’s Washington, DC office invited David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation and Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress’s Climate Progress blog to make some remarks and then take questions from an audience of around 40 people representing all shades of the political spectrum. It sounded like a lot of fun because Romm often seems enraged and slightly deranged in his frequent blog posts, but unfortunately Romm cancelled at the last minute. Our host explained that Romm had pulled out without giving a reason and that his side of the debate would be represented by a bottle of Corona Light. It was still fun: David Kreutzer gave an engaging and stimulating presentation, as he always does, and the bottle of Corona Light proved to be more rational and less misleading than Romm.
Today and tomorrow, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will mark up H.R. 3548, the “North American Energy Access Act,” Rep. Lee Terry’s (R-Neb.) bill to nullify President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) will offer an amendment that would bar U.S. refiners from exporting any petroleum products made from Keystone crude.
Waxman and Markey know full well the GOP majority will reject the amendment. But that’s the point. By forcing Republicans to vote no, they hope to “expose” Keystone as an “export pipeline” and a “scam” that won’t provide any consumer or energy security benefit.
Today at Master Resource.Org (here), I explain why the Waxman-Markey amendment deserves raspberries.
To be sure, I’m a staunch defender of wealth creators, and I begrudge no one for his or her riches…as long as he or she doesn’t say silly things like “The focus on profit has caused significant negative, unintended consequences.”
I have two problems with Sir Richard Branson’s commentary. First, it’s wrong. Profits incent wealth creation, which, in turn, improves the environment, because wealthier societies are friendlier to the environment. More importantly, wealthier societies are healthier societies.
Second, having a billionaire say that profits are secondary—after he earned his money—is akin to Sir Branson raising the drawbridge immediately after gaining entry into the castle, while the peasant throngs stand on the other side of the moat.
Bryan Walsh in Time Magazine broke the big story this week that the Sierra Club received over $25 million from the natural gas industry to serve as a corporate shill for the natural gas industry’s attacks on the coal industry. Walsh wrote: “TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010—and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations—the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club’s independence and its support of natural gas in the past.”
McClendon and Chesapeake Energy several years ago funded a multi-million dollar advertising campaign against the coal industry called “Face it, coal is filthy.” Two months ago, it was revealed that McClendon and Chesapeake had given as much as $100 million to the American Lung Association, one of the most reprehensible of the environmental pressure groups, to fund the ALA’s “Fighting for air” disinformation campaign.
House Natural Resources Committee Votes To Open ANWR and OCS to Oil Production
The House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday, 1st February, passed three bills to increase oil production on federal lands and offshore areas. The House Republican leadership plans to include the three bills as provisions in the five-year, $260-billion highway bill that was passed by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee after a grueling seventeen-hour mark-up that ended at 3 AM on Friday, 3rd February.
H. R. 3407, which passed the committee on a 29 to 13 vote, would open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) on Alaska’s North Slope to oil exploration. Three Democrats voted for the bill: Representatives Dan Boren (D-Okla.), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), and Pedro Pierluisi (D-Puerto Rico). No one knows how much oil there may be below ANWR’s coastal plain, but the U. S. Geological Survey estimates recoverable reserves of 11 billion barrels. That is probably a very conservative estimate.
[click to continue…]
Alternate title: “Sierra Club Acknowledges Role as Corporate Front Group, Industry Shill, Hired Gun for Natural Gas Industry.” From Time:
Now the biggest and oldest environmental group in the U.S. finds itself caught on the horns of that dilemma. TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010—and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations—the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club’s independence and its support of natural gas in the past. It’s also sure to anger ordinary members who’ve been uneasy about the Club’s relationship with corporations. “The chapter groups and volunteers depend on the Club to have their back as they fight pollution from any industry, and we need to be unrestrained in our advocacy,” Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director since 2010, told me. “The first rule of advocacy of is that you shouldn’t take money from industries and companies you’re trying to change.”
Of course I’m kidding. The Sierra Club holds their respective opinions on energy and environmental policies, and then goes out and seeks funding for donors, some who may have their own corporate interests at heart. In this case Chesapeake Energy gave the Sierra Club millions of dollars to attack the coal industry, and the new head of the Sierra Club decided to end that relationship because the Sierra Club and their members don’t particularly like natural gas either, especially when its hydraulically fractured from the ground.
[click to continue…]
Dumping on Al Gore’s hypocritical, hysterical climate change posturing is like bitching about metro service here in the nation’s capital: It’s trite, but nonetheless gratifying. Having acknowledged as much, I draw your attention to an excellent editorial in yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily, about the former Vice President’s plan to go on a star-studded cruise to Antarctica. Here’s a snippet:
Al Gore, who invented global warming hysteria, has most recently been found planning a trip to Antarctica where he will surely find evidence that man is overheating the planet.
This clearly insecure man who so desperately needs an audience that approves of his world-saving efforts says he will be taking with him “a large number of civic and business leaders, activists and concerned citizens from many countries.”
He expects them “to see firsthand and in real time how the climate crisis is unfolding in Antarctica.”
For Gore’s reading material on this trip, we suggest he look at some data released by Great Britain’s Met Office. He would find himself meeting head-on a terribly inconvenient truth.
According to the data, there’s been no warming for more than a decade. The global temperature that Gore and the rest of the alarmist tribe are so concerned about was about one full degree cooler (as measured in Celsius) last year than it was when temperatures peaked in 1997.
Of course 2012 could be warmer than 2011 just as 2010 was warmer than 2008 and 2009.
Or it could be cooler. Who knows?
Read the whole thing here.
Both industry and environmentalists were paying close attention to yesterday’s House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment hearing on the “fractured science” behind the groundwater (not drinking water) contamination research in Pavillion, Wyoming conducted by US Environmental Protection Agency. On December 8, 2011, the EPA released a draft report recapitulating the findings of their investigation. “Investigation” is too strong a word, because the point of the hearing was to find out why EPA released the draft report before key results were reproduced, or before the study was even peer reviewed. EPA’s draft report has been exploited by environmentalist zealots, so it is strange that the Agency failed to vet the document before it was released. This is especially true in light of the many methodology problems alleged by state and industry officials.
Fracking, the gas extraction process in which several tons of pressurized water laced with sand and a small amount of chemicals are injected through the drill hole to break up apart shale rock so trapped gas can flow more freely, has been improved by the new technology of horizontal drilling. The ability to drill horizontally is valuable because it can reach and recover more gas that is inaccessible by vertical drilling alone. This is a new and valuable practice that involves environmental precaution, so it’s only natural for environmentalists to jump to conclusions. Unfortunately, so is EPA.
[click to continue…]
As noted here last week, the sparks flew at a Jan. 25 House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing titled “The Volt Fire: What Did NHTSA Know and When Did They Know It?” Three witnesses testified: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Administrator David Strickland, General Motors (GM) CEO Daniel Akerson, and John German of the International Council on Clean Transportation. My earlier post was based on newspaper accounts of the hearing. Over the weekend, I watched the archived video of the proceeding and read the testimonies and Committee Staff Report. Here are the key facts and conclusions as I see them:
- The Volt battery fire occurred on June 2, 2011 in the parking lot of a Wisconsin crash test facility. The car caught fire three weeks after the vehicle had been totaled, on May 12, in a side-pole collision. The fire caused an explosion that destroyed not only the Volt but three other vehicles. The blast hurled one of the Volt’s components (a strut) a distance of nearly 80 feet.
- The fire was caused by the leaking of coolant into the Volt’s powerful 300-volt battery, which had been punctured by the crash.
- NHTSA could have avoided the fire had it run down (“drained,” “depowered,” “discharged”) the battery after the crash. This raises obvious questions: Was NHTSA responsible for the fire? Was the agency’s six-month silence partly an attempt to hide regulatory incompetence?
- The Volt is a safe car; consumers should not fear to drive it. Gasoline-powered vehicles are more likely than battery-powered vehicles to burn after a crash. The post-crash explosion from a damaged gas tank can occur in seconds as opposed to weeks. Electric vehicle batteries are harder to puncture than gas tanks. NHTSA tried and failed to replicate the fire by crashing other Volt test vehicles. To induce another battery fire, NHTSA had to impale the battery with a steel rod and rotate it in coolant with special laboratory equipment.
- GM is retrofitting Volt batteries to make them stronger and more leak proof, and is updating safety protocols to ensure batteries are depowered after crashes.
- NHTSA kept silent about the fire for six months, acknowledging it only after Bloomberg News broke the story on November 11, 2011.
- GOP Committee members produced no smoking gun evidence of collusion to cover up the Volt battery fire, such as an email saying ‘We’ve got to keep this under wraps or it will depress Volt sales, jeopardize EPA’s fuel economy negotiations with automakers, and make President Obama look bad.’
- Nonetheless, the Obama administration’s heavy investment (financial and political) in GM in general and the Volt in particular creates an undeniable conflict of interest.
- NHTSA determined the cause of the fire in August 2011, yet waited until November 25 to advise emergency responders, salvage yard managers, and Volt owners how to avoid, and reduce the safety risks associated with, post-crash fires.
- Administrator Strickland’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, it is difficult to explain the agency’s secretiveness apart from political considerations that should not influence NHTSA’s regulatory deliberations.
[click to continue…]
Last week, 16 scientists published an oped in the Wall Street Journal about how global warming isn’t a big deal. Yesterday, 38 scientists published a letter in the same paper, about how global warming is a big deal. Tomato, tamato.
Personally speaking, global warming is the last of my concerns. This is the predominate view among Americans. So my eyes glazed over the science squabbles in the two letters. I did, however, find it interesting that the second letter, representing the “consensus” view, contradicted itself.
[click to continue…]
RSS Updates 
RSS E-Mail Updates 
CEI.org