An Information Resource on Cap and Trade

The Heritage Foundation has a webpage where one can access information related to the very costly Cap and Trade legislation enacted at the behest of environmental extremists.

In an article titled Cap and Trade Sold under False Pretenses authors Nicolas Loris and Ben Lieberman write:

The goal of cap and trade is to drive up the costs of energy in order for people to use less of it. Because just about every business uses energy to produce goods and must pay their own electricity bills, the cost of production for businesses increases, and consumer demand falls for two reasons:

1.Price hikes on goods reduce demand, and
2.People have less disposable income due to higher energy prices.

Overall, production cuts and reduced consumer spending destroy jobs and slow economic growth, which further increases unemployment.

This legislation is bound to impact the poor and the middle class severely in the form of increased prices and fewer jobs. Sadly the environmental benefits are very dubious. This is yet another illustration of a powerful special interest group- environmentalists- throwing roadblocks in the way of prosperity. The environmental sloganism has an air of religiosity to it.

Cleaner Oil with Fungii?

Newly discovered fungus strips pollutants from oil reveals a new possible ally in the effort to burn cleaner fuel- a fungus discovered in Iran. The fungus is able to grow in crude oil and can metabilize sulpher and nitrogen pollutant compounds. One of the advantagous of fungus useage would be the much lower temperatures at which such compounds could be removed. Currently high temperatures are required to remove sulpher and nitrogen.

Removing sulpher from crude oil was known to be possible through the use of what are called desulphurising bacteria. In a "contest" between fungus and bacteria fungus came out as the more efficient sulpher remover. However, chemically based technologies rather than biological ones may win out in the end. A simple ester was shown to be a more rapid remover of sulpher from diesel fuel. Stay tuned.

The High Cost of Ethanol

'Crime' and Ethanol is a Breakpoint commentary authored by Chuck Colson. From Chuck:

Biofuels are one of the major reasons you and I are paying more for groceries these days. For most of us, it is just an inconvenience. For many around the world, however, it is a catastrophe. Last week, United Nations Special Investigator Jean Ziegler called the use of biofuels, such as ethanol, a “crime against a great part of humanity.”

In the past, global food crises were sparked by natural disasters and bad harvests. What makes this food crisis a crime against humanity is: We caused it. And like many man-made problems, this one can be traced to our false worldview.

Here in the United States, egg prices are up 35 percent; milk up 23 percent; and bread up 16. For most Americans, who on average spend 10 percent of their income on food, these increases squeeze our budgets.

But for the “great part of humanity” Ziegler talks about, it is a lot worse. In countries like Ethiopia and Bangladesh, people can spend 70 percent of their income on food; so even modest increases in food prices can impair their ability to feed their families. And price increases for the staples they depend on have not been modest: Wheat prices have doubled and corn prices quadrupled in the last year.

Rising food prices are causing social instability. According to the World Food Program, “33 countries in Asia and Africa face political instability as the urban poor struggle to feed their families”—which is why the president and Congress are talking now about increasing aid to these countries.

While the rise in food-staple prices has many causes, as Ziegler noted, one of them is definitely man-made: the use of cropland and food-staples to produce bio-fuels such as ethanol. He called “transforming hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tons” of foodstuffs into fuel “absolutely catastrophic for the hungry people.”

Look at it this way: It takes 510 pounds of corn to make 13 gallons of ethanol—that amount could “feed a child in Zambia or Mexico for a year,” while it fuels your car only for a week!

Ziegler is not alone; the IMF (International Monetary Fund) has raised grave concerns, and Secretary of State Rice recently spoke of the “unintended consequence from the alternative fuels’ effort.”

What is maddening about this is that the biofuel effort is fueled by politicians handing out massive subsidies to the farm belt and pandering to glassy-eyed environmentalists. Every presidential hopeful who participated in the Iowa caucuses had to sing the praises of ethanol. That is why John McCain stayed away, because he opposes the subsidies.

Now, I am all for farmers making money on their crops. They deserve it. But no politician with a shred of integrity can deny that it is more important to feed a child in Zambia for a year than to feed your car for a week. And—as if I need to remind you—this is an election year, so ask your candidates where they stand on this tragic political folly. And call your members of Congress to tell them how you feel.

A properly informed worldview is the key here. Two non-Christian worldviews have merged to bring about this crisis: one that sees maintaining political power as an end in itself, and one that sees the environment as our chief concern, even at the expense of humans.

We Christians insist on the proper use of government: that is, to restrain evil and promote justice. And we believe in proper environmental stewardship. But we insist that people, especially the poor, must come first.

Well said Chuck. Environmentalists too often have a zeal that clouds their better judgement. The thinking that guided the trail to the ethanol debacle was one dimensional. If the source of fuel can be grown it is renewable and that's all we need to know. Unfortunately there was more to it. The large input of energy needed to process ethanol has been previously mentioned at this blog. A significant input of energy is needed to produce the fuel.

Now add cheating the poor to inefficiency. Higher food prices exact a high toll from those least able to afford it. In the future more thorough analyses free of idelogically driven concerns ought to motivate decision makers.

Media Bias and the Energy Crisis

My son recently give a talk at the college he attends which dealt with the issue alluded to by the title of this blog entry. The following is an altered version of it. He can deliver good speeches.


America's current energy predicament, depicted by sharply rising fuel costs accompanied by increased dependency on foreign energy sources, finds its causal genesis in energy policies centered around the concerns of environmental activists. That environmental advocacy groups were able to set our energy agenda is in no small part attributable to media bias. The bias is subtle but detectable. It is built around four tacit understandings upon which the ediface of our current polices was fashioned.

The most basic of the four frames the debate. I'll illustrate by example. The New York Times recently featured an article entitled Bush Will Seek to End Offshore Oil Drilling Ban. The article cited President Bush's attempt to reverse longstanding policy which bans offshore oil drilling. The following quote points out an often repeated strategy.

...Mr. McCain sought to straddle the divide between environmentalists and the energy industry, while facing accusations from his Democratic opponent, Senator Barack Obama, that he had flip-flopped and capitulated to the oil industry.

Note how the opposing factions are described. Environmentalists are pitted against energy industries or most particularly big oil. Without even having the related arguments who do you think comes out on top in the perception of the public? Those concerned with the environment or fat cats concerned with profits? The writer did not use the term fat cats but he did not have to.

So what's wrong with the envirnmentalists vs. rich oil company paradigm? Plenty. Yes, big companies are involved in the search for energy resources and they do reap profits when successful. That's a business reality. So are the thousands of jobs and billions of dollars that flow through the American economy when energy resources are produced. We become a more prosperous nation when we produce what we consume rather than import our needs. Therein lies an insidious and underreported fact. We have not reduced our needs for fossil fuels by curtailing domestic production. All we have succeeded in doing is sending our wealth overseas and burning oil drilled in other nations. The other nations reap the benefits of our payments in terms of increased jobs and prosperity while we reap the consequences of increased dependency on foreign and sometimes hostile energy sources.

Burning imported oil yields the very same carbon emissions that domestic fuel combustion engenders but without the economic benefits. We sacrifice the upside and continue to experience the downside of fossil fuel useage. Where is the environmental benefit to this half-baked policy?

A second underpinning of current energy policies, promoted through the media, is the belief that scientific issues related to human causes of global warming are settled. They are not. A study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by Friedericke Wagner, Bent Aaby and Henk Visscher, presented data indicating that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have varied over geologic time periods when there were no human sources of CO2 emissions and more importantly the elevated levels of carbon dioxide may be an effect of climatic changes rather than a cause of them. Moreover, even if one assumes that effects of fossil fuel combustion alter the earth's climate, there is no hard data quantifying a precise cause and effect relationship between curtailing carbon emissions from human sources and cutailing atmospheric CO2. Predictions are largely speculative and because of the uncertainty linking fossil fuel emissions to climate change, global warming arguments are de facto demands for blank checks prioritizing climate concerns over jobs and lower fuels costs. That may be necessary but how often is the dichotomy reported this way? If it were how would public opinion be impacted?

The third pillar of media coverage of energy issues is pointed out in the linked article entitled Environmental Doomsday: Bad news good, good news bad. The article accurately highlights an underappreciated fact- we have made great progress in ameliorating pollution. Quoting from the article:

The iron law of contemporary environmental understanding in the United States is: Bad News Good, Good News Bad. Though by almost every measure the Western environment at least has been getting better for decades, voters, thinkers, and pundits have been programmed to believe the environment is getting worse. Thus conditioned, Americans greet environmental bad news with a welcoming sigh as confirming the expected, while regarding environmental good news as some kind of deception. Bad News Good, Good News Bad.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, for example, much was made of Houston becoming the "smog capital of America." But Houston's overall air quality was improving at the time. Houston became the nation's smog capital only because Los Angeles's air improved even faster, passing Houston in a race of positives. Perhaps the commentators who spoke as though Houston's air were getting worse did not understand the issue. More likely they did not want to understand-for cleaner air would violate the rule of Good News Bad.

Environmental lobbyists intent on raising money have a stake in spinning everything in alarming terms. (Everyone is aware that corporate lobbyists have financial stakes in the positions they advocate. Why the same isn't understood about environmental lobbyists numbers among the small mysteries of our moment.) And when environmental lobbyists depict all news as bad, most of the media reflexively echoes this line.

Note that idealistic environmentalists are not immune to the self-serving, self-promoting impulses that afflict the rest of us. Noone is opposed to clean air and water but environmentalists have their own subjective biases as do those reporting on these issues.

This brings us to the final pillar sustaining media news coverage. This one touts the plausibility of alternative sources. Wind and solar power come to mind. Yet the actual obstacles to efficient wind and solar power technology are often glossed over when the issue of alternative fuels is suggested. Technological brakthroughs are on the way but this link illustrates the realistic economic and technical barriers that have stood in the path of green energy alternatives.

The problem with renewable energy sources, like sunlight and wind, is a lack of continuous energy flow. Sunlight is not available 24 hours a day and it is not always windy. Storage of energy has been problematic because the batteries needed have been too expensive and their useable lifetime too short. So called Smart Storage battery technology may be the sought after solution. The hybrid battery would combine a standard lead-acid battery with an asymmetric supercapacitor electrode which could rapidly absorb and release charges allowing for a steady release of power as needed by power supply systems. Performance increase is estimated to be 50 per cent greater with respect to the charge and discharge of power. Take note though of the future promises of this technology which is not about to replace conventional fuel sources any time soon.

Charles Krauthammer wrote a compelling piece titled Embrace oil drilling over environmental imperialism which details underreported costs of current energy policies. Quoting:

Gas is $4 a gallon. Oil is $135 a barrel and rising. We import two-thirds of our oil, sending hundreds of billions of dollars to the likes of Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. And yet we voluntarily prohibit ourselves from even exploring huge domestic reserves of petroleum and natural gas.

At a time when U.S. crude oil production has fallen 40 percent in the last 25 years, 75 billion barrels of oil have been declared off-limits, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That would be enough to replace every barrel of non-North American imports (oil trade with Canada and Mexico is a net economic and national security plus) for 22 years.

Until technology catches up with our desires for clean renewable energy an energy policy designed to make the USA self-reliant as Krautheimer argues is the wisest course. But where is the emphasis on self-reliance in the mainstream media?

One final story reminds us of the media's obtuseness with respect to tactics used by environmentalists. A Yahoo news item reported on 7/12/08 that U.S. District Judge David Lawson of Detroit nullified an oil drilling permit granted for a site in Michigan. The possibility of environmental harm was cited.

There is a clear pattern evident in cases like this. Environmentalists cite the possibility of environmental harm and advise that drilling be done elsewhere. This tactic is employed all the time across the country. An exagerated possibility of harm is linked to the advice that drillers go elsewhere. Elsewhere amounts to locations outside the United States although that is not stipulated. Can we have a critical analysis in place of doom and gloom possibilities? These possibilities don't play out often and less and less so as precautions and technology improve. This is, up to this point, a one sided story.

When Self-Interests Clash With Ideals

Chuck Colson's essay Gone with the Wind Farm is a reminder that when lofty ideals and selfish interests come into conflict it is often the former that suffers for it. The lofty ideal in this case is caring for the environment and the selfish interests belong to some wealthy homeowners at Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod. The selfishness involves a proposal to construct an environmentally friendly wind farm consisting of 130 wind turbines. Many advantages accrue from this type of energy source. Since there is no fossil fuel combustion resources are conserved and pollution alleviated. This type of home grown energy also lessens the dependence of the United States on unreliable foreign sources. There are economic, political and environmental benefits to be gained.

So what is the drawback? The proposed wind farm might be barely visible on a clear day to some of those wealthy homeowners previously alluded to. That panoramic view they have might be slightly compromised and we cannot have that can we? So far the rich and powerful residents of one of America's most exclusive residential areas have had their way and the wind farm remains an idea rather than a reality. It looks like it is up to us less affluent types to take up the environmental burden.