May 2008

What will it take for Americans to realize that we are in the midst of an energy crisis?  

Much of our dilapidated electricity infrastructure—power plants, transmission towers, transformers, utility poles, etc.—was built generations ago. Thanks to the stifling hand of government regulation, investment has lagged, and today the system is buckling under ever greater demand for juice. Capacity margins (the difference between how much electricity a utility can produce and how much it uses) historically has hovered around 20%, but now are as low as 3% in many parts of the country. According to a report by Nathanial Gronewold in yesterday’s Climate Wire, industry experts predict demand-driven blackouts as soon as this summer!

Paradoxically, rolling blackouts across America might be just what the doctor ordered.

For too long, the citizens of this country have taken energy reliability for granted. We assume that a flick of the switch will turn on a light. So there is no sense of urgency, even as a full blown electricity crisis gathers steam with each passing day.

A rude awakening—say, a prolonged blackout in mid summer—might jar Americans out of complacency and get them to pay attention to the needs at hand.  

The decision on Wednesday by the U.S. Interior Department to declare the polar bear a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act is a major victory for environmentalists who have been looking for a back-door legal mechanism to limit carbon-dioxide emissions.

As today’s coverage of McCain’s cap-and-trade speech makes clear, one cannot underestimate the power of the press in sustaining the global-warming movement. The Republican candidate’s Oregon speech outlines the usual GW drivel, demanding, reports the Associated Press, that “the country return to 2005 emission levels by 2012; 1990 levels by 2020; and to a level 60 percent below that by 2050.”

Really, and how is the current Kyoto plan to reduce to 1990 levels by 2010 going? CO2 emissions in the EU were 26 percent over their 1990 targets as of 2005.

But, of course, the AP won’t report this failure, meaning that the average reader has no context by which to judge McCain’s fanciful rhetoric.

Consider, by contrast, how AP (that most liberal and most ubiquitous of establishment news sources) reports on a different, “controversial” McCain policy — Iraq. Here are the nut graphs:

KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 7, 2008 — . . . Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, McCain criticized Obama and Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and insisted that last year’s U.S. troop buildup in Iraq brought a glimmer of ‘something approaching normal’ there, despite a recent outbreak of heavy fighting and a U.S. death toll that has surpassed 4,000. Clinton and Obama, still battling for the Democratic presidential nomination, dispute the claims of success, arguing the war has failed to make the United States safer.”

Note the qualifiers: “insisted” and “despite a recent outbreak of heavy fighting and a U.S. death toll that has surpassed 4,000” as well as the reference to McCain’s critics, all of which give the reader important context.

AP’s coverage of McCain’s climate speech, however, contained not a single qualifier, much less a critic. So let’s rewrite it to make the language consistent with AP’s Iraq form (my additions in italics):

PHOENIX, Ariz., May 12, 2008 — John McCain . . . argues (insisted) that global warming is undeniable despite the fact that temperature data indicates the earth has not warmed in ten years.

“In remarks prepared for delivery Monday at a Portland, Ore., wind turbine manufacturer, the presidential contender says expanded nuclear power must be considered to reduce carbon-fuel emissions. He also sets a goal that by 2050, the country will reduce carbon emissions to a level 60 percent below that emitted in 1990. But leading economists dispute McCain’s reduction targets, arguing that European nations have failed to meet more modest 2010 reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.”

Without journalistic malpractice, the global warming debate would be very different today.