Letter To Congress: Stop The Off-Shore Drilling Moratorium

There is something noble about dedicating one's life to building a family-owned business. It is a huge investment of time, money, energy, and human emotion. However, one family's dream of helping power America has been shattered by President Obama's six-month moratorium on off-shore drilling. In the letter below, citizens Cliffe Laborde and Peter Laborde ask Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Senator David Vitter (R-LA) to intervene on behalf of their state and their country. They ask that their Senators do whatever it takes to lift the moratorium for the sake of protecting the livelihoods of thousands of American citizens.

The simple fact is that an overwhelming majority of the people working in America's oil and gas industry are honest, hard working Americans that love their country. They're sick and tired of being demonized by this Administration because one company, British Petroleum, made irresponsible decisions that led to a massive oil spill off the Gulf Coast. This letter captures the zeitgeist of how oil and gas workers feel about what's going on in America. It's a compelling story and we invite you to read on.

Letter From Laborde Marine To Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) And Senator David Vitter (R-LA)
June 4, 2010


The Honorable Mary Landrieu
United States Senator
724 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable David Vitter
United States Senator
516 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

RE: Moratorium on Deep Water Drilling


Dear Senators Landrieu and Vitter,

The B.P. blowout and its aftermath constitute a continuing tragedy of gigantic proportions, both for the nation as a whole, and for Louisiana in particular. However, the Administration’s moratorium on deep water drilling is ill-advised and compounding the tragedy.

Over 50,000 wells have been drilled in the Gulf of Mexico with no environmental incidents of any consequence. Of that number, 4,000 were deepwater wells (drilled at a depth greater than 1,000 feet), and over 700 were ultra-deepwater wells (over 5,000 feet in depth); none of these had any problems. These impressive statistics establish that the offshore drilling industry has an excellent safety record. This record was achieved by advances in drilling technology, coupled with an industry culture of exceptional and safe performance. No one in the industry wants to see our water polluted with oil, and no one wants anyone injured or killed in the production of energy for our nation. The fact that the MMS conducted a safety assessment of each of the deepwater rigs in the days following the blowout and found no significant problems is testament to the industry’s commitment to safe operations.

While the investigation into the BP blowout is still underway, it is apparent that the cause of this tragedy was a series of human errors in judgment, with catastrophic results. The technology and processes were in place to prevent this accident, but they were circumvented to expedite completion of the project. To shut down the entire industry is overkill and analogous to shutting down all commercial air traffic after one plane crash due to pilot error. It is a decision that makes no sense and should be reversed.

Laborde Marine is a family-owned business headquartered in New Orleans which employs over 200 people. Over the last three years, we have built in US shipyards or acquired new US built and flagged vessels primarily designed to service the deepwater drilling market. We own and/or operate 21 vessels, all built in US shipyards. We have invested over $150 million to build or acquire our fleet of vessels. Our annual payroll is over $14 million. Now the US government is telling us to simply “park” our vessels for at least six months. Never in the history of the United States has the government decided to shut down an entire industry for six months. That decision seems to be a knee-jerk reaction based on an emotional response to the spill, and made without a full appreciation of the consequences which will adversely impact tens of thousands of hard working people who are engaged in the industry. It is a decision that advances the Administration’s agenda for transferring to a clean/alternative energy- economy, but at an enormous cost to the thousands of us engaged in offshore exploration and development.

If the moratorium on deep water drilling is not lifted, the 33 semi-submersible rigs and/or drillships affected will simply go to other countries where they will be well received, such as Brazil, the countries off West Africa, and Southeast Asia. They will not return to the US Gulf of Mexico for years, if ever. The damage to our industry will be irreversible. And the companies most adversely affected by this plan are the US based service companies — particularly the marine/boat companies which built their vessels in US shipyards, as required by US law to work in US waters. For us to move internationally, we will have to compete with vessels built in foreign yards at a much lower cost and often subsidized by foreign governments. It will not be a level playing field. The moratorium may well be the death-knell for US businesses engaged in the energy service sector. The major and independent operators — the “oil companies” — are not nearly as adversely affected by the moratorium as service firms, inasmuch as the operators will still own the oil in the ground, and can come back later, after the moratorium is lifted and oil prices have increased, and then produce the oil. The local service companies may not be around to come back.

We are proud to be a part of the offshore industry, doing our small part to assist in the production of energy for our nation. We believe that we are enhancing the national security of the United States by lessening its reliance and dependency on foreign sources of oil. While alternative energy is a laudable goal, it will be decades before alternative fuels make a dent in our country’s needs. The transition to alternative fuels must be done over time — not by a six month moratorium that may well put us out of business. This is the United States of America, where reason and sound judgment have always been the foundation of our system of government — not poorly thought out and capricious reactions that destroy the livelihoods of thousands of its citizens in order to promote a partisan political agenda. Please do whatever it takes to lift the moratorium on deep water drilling immediately, before irreparable harm to our nation’s and state’s economy occurs.


Sincerely,

Cliffe F. Laborde
J. Peter Laborde, Jr.


Cc: Governor Bobby Jindal
Louisiana Congressional Delegation

How Environmentalists Are Killing American Energy

We've all seen it on television. America is in a deep recession. The national unemployment rate according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics has risen to 10.2%. People are losing their jobs, struggling to pay the bills, and what are environmentalists doing in response? They are systematically waging war against job-creating sources of affordable energy while promoting a fanatical religion known as "global warming".

CARE's most recent blog guest, Edwin X Berry, PhD, has been gracious enough to provide our readers with insights on how extreme environmentalist groups are Turning Off The Lights In America. He begins by telling us how an aluminum plant has recently shut down in Montana due to environmental regulations and outlines how the Environmental Protection Agency has been working diligently since 1988 to spread global warming propaganda. He tells us how credible scientists have been silenced for fear of losing their government jobs and updates us on how the EPA is trying to declare carbon dioxide as a pollutant. That's right! When you exhale as a human being the federal government wants to declare you a pollutant! He finishes off by building the case that global warming is a religion rather than a scientifically-based theory.

His writing is provocative, his determination is admirable, and his writings are credible as Doctor Berry is a respected atmospheric scientist. We at CARE strongly believe that this piece will help change your view of the global warming debate in America. Please read on!

How they are turning off the lights in America
On October 31,2009, the once largest aluminum plant in the world will shut down. With it goes another American industry and more American jobs. The Columbia Falls Aluminum Company in Montana will shut down its aluminum production because it cannot purchase the necessary electrical power to continue its operations.

How did this happen in America? America was once the envy of the world in its industrial capability. America's industrial capacity built America into the most productive nation the world had ever known. Its standard of living rose to levels never before accomplished. Its currency became valuable and powerful, allowing Americans to purchase imported goods at relatively cheap prices.

America grew because of innovation and hard work by the pioneers of the industrial revolution, and because America has vast natural resources. A great economy, as America once was, is founded on the ability to produce electrical energy at low cost. This ability has been extinguished. Why?

Columbia Falls Aluminum negotiated a contract with Bonneville Power Administration in 2006 for Bonneville to supply electrical power until September 30, 2011. But, responding to lawsuits, the 9th US Circuit Court ruled the contract was invalid because it was incompatible with the Northwest Power Act. Therefore, the combination of the Northwest Power Act and a US Circuit Court were the final villains that caused the shutdown of Columbia Falls Aluminum.

But the real reasons are much more complicated. Why was it not possible for Columbia Falls Aluminum to find sources of electricity other than Bonneville?

We need to look no further than the many environmental groups like the Sierra Club and to America's elected officials who turned their backs on American citizens and in essence themselves, for they too are citizens of this country. These officials bought into the green agenda promoted by the heavily funded environmental groups. Caving to pressure, they passed laws and the environmental groups filed lawsuits that began turning off the lights in America. The dominos started to fall.

They began stopping nuclear power plants in the 1970's. They locked up much of our coal and oil resources with land laws. They passed tax credits, which forces taxpayers to foot the bill for billionaire investors to save taxes by investing in less productive wind and solar energy projects.

In 1988, the Environmental Protection Agency called a meeting of atmospheric scientists and others with environmental interests. I remember well the meeting I attended in the San Francisco Bay Area. The meeting was in a theater-like lecture room with the seating curved to face the center stage and rising rapidly toward the back of the room. Attending were many atmospheric scientists whom I knew from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Stanford Research Institute and some local colleges.

The room became silent when a man walked up to the lectern. He told us that the next big national problem was global warming. He explained how human carbon dioxide emissions were trapping the earth's radiation like a greenhouse and causing the atmosphere to heat beyond its normal temperature. He said this will lead to environmental disasters. He finished by saying the EPA will now concentrate its research funding toward quantifying the disasters that would be caused by our carbon dioxide.

The room was silent. I was the first to raise my hand to ask a question, "How can you defend your global warming hypothesis when you have omitted the effects of clouds which affect heat balance far more than carbon dioxide, and when your hypothesis contradicts the paper by Lee * in the Journal of Applied Meteorology in 1973 that shows the atmosphere does not behave like a greenhouse?"

He answered me by saying, "You do not know what you are talking about. I know more about how the atmosphere works than you do."

Not being one to drop out of a fight, I responded, "I know many of the atmospheric scientists in this room, and many others who are not present but I do not know you. What is your background and what makes you know so much more than me?"

He answered, "I know more than you because I am a lawyer and I work for the EPA."

After the meeting, many of my atmospheric science friends who worked for public agencies thanked me for what I said, saying they would have liked to say the same thing but they feared for their jobs.

And that, my dear readers, is my recollection of that great day when a lawyer, acting as a scientist, working for the federal government, announced global warming.

Fast forward to today. The federal government is spending 1000 times more money to promote the global warming charade than is available to those scientists who are arguing against it. Never before in history has it taken a massive publicity campaign to convince the public of a scientific truth. The only reason half the public thinks global warming may be true is the massive amount of money put into global warming propaganda.

The green eco-groups have their umbilical cords in the government's tax funds. Aside from a few honest but duped scientists living on government money, the majority of the alarms about global warming - now called "climate change" because it's no longer warming - come from those who have no professional training in atmospheric science. They are the environmentalists, the ecologists, the lawyers and the politicians. They are not the reliable atmospheric scientists whom I know.

Nevertheless, our politicians have passed laws stating that carbon dioxide is bad. See California's AB32 which is based upon science fiction. (For readers who take issue with me, I will be happy to destroy your arguments in another place. In this paper, we focus on the damage to America that is being caused by those promoting the global warming fraud.)

In the year 2000, America planned 150 new coal-electric power plants. These power plants would have been "clean" by real standards but the Greens managed to have carbon dioxide defined legally as "dirty" and this new definition makes all emitters of carbon dioxide, including you, a threat to the planet. Therefore, using legal illogic, the Sierra Club stopped 82 of these planned power plants under Bush II and they expect it will be a slam dunk to stop the rest under Obama.

And now you know the real reason the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company had to shut down. America stopped building new power plants a long time ago. There is now no other source where the company can buy energy. Our energy-producing capability is in a decline and it is taking America with it.

I used to belong to the Sierra Club in the 1960's. It used to be a nice hiking club. In the late 1960's the Sierra Club began turning its attention toward stopping nuclear power. Then I quit the Sierra Club. It continues to prosper from the many subscribers who think they are supporting a good cause. What they are really supporting is the destruction of America brick by brick. The Sierra Club and similar organizations are like watermelons - green on the outside, red on the inside. They are telling us we have no right to our own natural resources, and in doing so they are sinking America.

Inherent in ecology are three assumptions: "natural" conditions are optimal, climate is fragile, and human influences are bad. Physics makes no such assumptions. By assuming climate is fragile, the global warming supporters have assumed their conclusion. In fact, the climate is not fragile. It is stable. The non-adherence to physical logic in the global warming camp is what makes many physical scientists say that global warming is a religion.

So we have a new age religion promoted by environmentalists, incorporated into our laws and brainwashed into our people that is now destroying America from the inside.

Like a vast ship, America is taking a long time to sink but each day it sinks a little further. The fearsome day awaits, when America, if not quickly recovered by its real citizens, will tilt its nose into the water to begin a rapid and final descent into oblivion ... her many resources saved for whom?

Edwin X Berry, Ph.D., is an atmospheric physicist affiliated with the American Meteorological Society.

References:

* R. Lee: "The 'greenhouse' effect" J. Appl. Meteor. 12, 556-557 (1973)

Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner: "Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics," Version 4.0 (January 6, 2009)

International Journal of Modern Physics B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) 275-364.

http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/23/2303/S02179792092303.html
Page 37: "Lee's paper is a milestone marking the day after which every serious scientist or science educator is no longer allowed to compare the greenhouse with the atmosphere."

What Started the Environmental Craziness?

Following CARE’s active involvement in the Mount Taylor TCP situation and the subsequent frustration, we were pleased to see this piece arrive in our mailbox. There is a general misunderstanding of NEPA and its ramifications by the public and an overall misuse by those who seek to block energy production--or any type of development they do not like.

This was sent to us by Perry Pendley, President and Chief Legal Officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation and author of several books including Warriors for the West. A new source of information for Comments About Responsible Energy. We hope to hear from him more often.

After reading this, you are apt to ask two questions. Who are these “groups?” And, “How can they do this?” Our answer to the first one is the Sierra Club, et al. Lest you think we are just being mean, read what they say, in their own words, about the Mount Taylor issue. Additioanlly, please check out the “Watermelon” section of CARE’s website. In answer to the second question, please CARE’s recent commentary about the current outcome of the Mount Taylor battle and a slightly earlier piece entitled Hypocrisy That Knows No Bounds which includes an interesting quote from Patrick Moore, one of the founders of GreenPeace.

Please print this out and pass it on to anyone you know who might be interested in it. The general public needs to have a more clear idea of what is happening.

NEPA Needs U.S. Supreme Court Intervention
On New Year’s Day 1970, President Richard Nixon signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the purposes of which, among other objectives, were to “encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment [and] stimulate the health and welfare of man.” NEPA’s most significant single provision was its requirement that federal agencies prepare an environmental study whenever any proposal for “major Federal action” would “significantly affect the quality of the human environment,” in essence, the workshop equivalent of “measure twice, cut once.”

Unfortunately, in the nearly 40 years since its enactment, NEPA has become the weapon of choice for groups and judges to kill activities of which they disapprove. It is not just that NEPA has killed major projects like oil refineries, nuclear power plants, and pre-Katrina improvements to New Orleans’ levees; it also has delayed and thus killed salvage of fire-damaged timber, transfer of a rig from one drilling site to another, and movement of cattle to a different grazing location. Three NEPA cases now in court provide new evidence of NEPA’s pernicious effects.

In 1997, natural gas was discovered on a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lease in New Mexico. Over the next eight years, the BLM produced thousands of pages of documents, received hundreds of comments, and held scores of meetings and hearings.

In January 2005, it issued an oil and gas plan that allows a maximum surface disturbance of only 1,589 acres in Otero and Sierra Counties from well pads, roads, and pipelines--less than one-tenth of one percent of the total surface area. Because only 141 exploratory wells could be drilled with no more than 84 producing wells, the plan was the BLM’s most restrictive ever. Nonetheless, neither environmental groups nor Governor Bill Richardson was satisfied; they sued. Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that the BLM had not taken the “hard look” that NEPA requires and sent the BLM back to the drawing board.

In 2008, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, as to the right “to keep and bear arms,” and following a request from 51 Senators, the National Park Service (NPS) adopted a new rule regarding the possession of guns in parks and wildlife refuges. That rule--like those of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the BLM--provides, in accordance with principles of federalism, that state law determines whether park visitors may possess guns. Anti-gun groups sued, claiming that the NPS should have conducted a NEPA study to assess the environmental impact. The NPS argued that there was no environmental impact, hence no NEPA requirement. The judge ruled that, because guns will be used for “self-defense against persons and animals,” the NPS’s rule “will obviously have some impact on the environment, whether direct, indirect, or cumulative.” The NPS was sent packing.

In the Allegheny National Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania where oil and gas activity is underway on privately owned resources beneath the federal surface, environmental groups filed a “sweetheart lawsuit” to require the USFS to do a NEPA study when an oil and gas company advises the agency that it is operating in the forest. Notwithstanding that the agency, like every other surface owner, can do nothing short of a lawsuit to deny oil, gas, or mineral owners access to their property, the USFS appears to have concluded that the mere receipt of the notice--as to which it has no discretion and can take no action--is “major federal action” and triggers NEPA. A recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reaffirming the property rights of oil and gas operators should have ended the USFS’s plans; instead, the agency says it will prevent all oil and gas activity.

What NEPA needs now is an intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court; whether the Court will take such a case remains to be seen.

Environment and Elected Officials: A Conflict of Interest?

Shamefully, we at CARE have been remiss in getting you up-to-date information on current energy issues—as is the goal of our Blog. We have not been lax. There is just so much going on regarding energy and the elections that we have been busy writing opinion editorials. Last week we had three different ones posted in three different papers in New Mexico. Today, one of our commentary pieces was sent to the top 500 papers in the US and that same piece was posted on Heartland’s site. So, we have been getting the word. Just not through our own Blog.

We have several relevant items to post. Just not the time to post them. And then this one landed in the in-box. We just had to stop everything and share it with you! While it specifically addresses New Mexico, our home base, similar activities are probably happening in other states. This is especially enlightening in relation to the upcoming elections. Please let us know if you know about any comparable cases. This could start an interesting nationwide study.

Elected Officials on the Payrolls of Environmental Groups
Every special interest group that seeks to influence public policy pays lobbyists. There is nothing remarkable in that observation. Manufacturers, hospitals, insurance companies, banks, even churches pay lobbyists to transubstantiate their agenda into laws, money, and regulations. But some environmental groups in New Mexico have gone where no interest group has gone before. They have three elected officials directly on their payrolls.

Deanna Archuleta is Vice Chair of the Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners and Southwest Regional Manager for The Wilderness Society. State Representative Jeff Steinborn of Las Cruces is the Southern New Mexico Director for the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (NMWA). Las Cruces City Councilor Nathan Small is also on NMWA’s payroll as a “wilderness protection organizer.”

The mission of these groups is to influence public policy to preserve wilderness and other public lands. Their work has expanded to include fighting the oil and gas industry as a general principle. Their fight against oil and gas drilling has taken them from the Rocky Mountains to the depths of the oceans.

The Wilderness Society has been one of the leaders in opposing opening the Outer Continental Shelf and areas in the Gulf of Mexico to energy exploration and production. NMWA has led the opposition to natural gas drilling in Otero Mesa, a sprawling desert emptiness on the Texas border. Blocking energy production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been at the top of the agenda for The Wilderness Society for a generation. Even though the Arctic plain is thousands of miles distant, with a climate, flora and fauna unlike anything in New Mexico, NMWA has joined that fight.

Both organizations want reintroduction of large predators in New Mexico, expansion of their range and restrictions on human activities that come in conflict with the animal’s needs and behavior. These groups have worked aggressively for reintroduction of wolves in southwest New Mexico. They also want to see reintroduction of the jaguar. The current executive director of NMWA has called for releasing grizzlies in New Mexico even though that might cause an “inconvenience” for human beings. Both organizations also participate in litigation to stop human activities, from recreation to natural resource extraction, which they deem contrary to the interests of selected wildlife species.

The programs of these organizations adversely impact the oil and gas revenues that constitute a third of the New Mexico state budget and support schools around the state. These organizations’ wildlife policies also place them into direct conflict with agriculture, one of the major employers and sources of income and taxes in rural New Mexico.

Opposition to developing ANWR, the OCS and other federally owned energy deposits has the added consequence of reducing federal revenues critical to New Mexico’s economy and contributes to the nation’s increasing dependence on foreign sources of oil.

The Wilderness Society has headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, meaning it does not pay taxes on its income. According to its 2006 report to the IRS, The Wilderness Society earned $37.5 million in income. It claimed assets of $53.9 million, including an investment portfolio of $27.6 million. Its top executive officer earned nearly $300,000. It has more than 85 employees who earn over $50,000, about twice the median income of a New Mexican family of four.

Though it is much smaller, NMWA has offices in Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Carlsbad and Santa Fe. Its budget in 2005 exceeded $750,000. Its 2006 budget was $427,000. Its executive director makes more than $50,000. Details on other staff salaries are not public information.

ETHICAL PROBLEMS OF ELECTED OFFICIALS WORKING FOR PRESSURE GROUPS

(a) Nondisclosure and Misleading Disclosure

Under state and federal law, a person paid to influence legislators and their staffs is required to register as a lobbyist, disclose their clients, and report gifts, meals and trips provided to legislators and staff.

Environmental groups, like industry groups, have teams of lobbyists that work Capitol Hill and the Roundhouse in Santa Fe. Certain New Mexico lobbyists, such as Gregory Green and Linda Siegel, specialize in representing environmental groups as part of a “progressive” advocacy practice. A search of lobbyist disclosure records reveals the identity of their clients. A search by organization, conversely, reveals the lobbyists each organization has retained.

No similar disclosure requirements apply to the three elected officials on the payrolls of The Wilderness Society and NMWA. The on-line legislative profile of Jeff Steinborn describes his occupation only as “land conservation.” That information is so inadequate it is misleading. The occupation of “land conservation” could equally apply to a range scientist working with ranchers and farmers. Much of the work of Steinborn’s employer, on the other hand, is intended to, or has the consequence of, adversely impacting agricultural activities. Steinborn’s employer’s idea of “land conservation” is removing land from all uses except sitting idle as wilderness.

Steinborn’s vague occupational description fails to reveal that he works in direct opposition to the state’s largest private employer, the oil and gas industry, and the largest single pillar upholding state government’s budget. NMWA fights the industry throughout the state. Sometimes those battles swirl around remote areas like Otero Mesa. But NMWA has also jumped into the fight to prevent oil drilling in the Galisteo Basin outside Santa Fe. This area has been so impacted by human activity—subdivisions, roads, utility corridors, mining—it would never qualify for wilderness designation.

NMWA also injects itself into controversies about oil and gas operating regulations. NMWA has endorsed tighter and more costly restrictions on oil and gas operations that, by their very nature, do not take place in wilderness but in existing production areas.

Neither Bernalillo County nor the City of Las Cruces requires very detailed financial disclosure information from elected officials. The nature of the employment of Archuleta and Small is not described on those governments’ websites.

Because so little information is publicly available about the work and financial interests of these public officials, the author e-mailed four questions to each of them at the address of their environmental employers. The questions were identical for each official:
1. What are your duties and responsibilities for The Wilderness Society [or NMWA]?
2. How do you separate your role as County Commissioner [State Representative, City Councilor] from your role as an employee of The Wilderness Society [or NMWA], particularly how do you prevent your public office and title from benefiting The Wilderness Society’s [or NMWA’s] work?
3. Do you perceive any conflicts of interest between the interests of The Wilderness Society [NMWA] and the interests of your constituents? If so, please explain.
4. What is your compensation from The Wilderness Society [NMWA]?

None of the officials would answer these questions.

(b) Separating the Special Interest from the Public Interest

The New Mexico State Legislature is a volunteer legislative body. Legislators receive only a per diem while in session or performing committee work between sessions. Their occupations range from lawyer to rancher. Many are educators. Many are retired. A few work for non-profit organizations or tribal governments.

No legislator but Steinborn works for an organization whose sole reason for existence is to influence public policy and law through political action, grassroots pressure and lobbying.
Bernalillo County pays commissioners just under $30,000 for what is supposed to be a part-time job, but sometimes balloons into a full-time calling. The Commissioners have other jobs in real estate, broadcasting and education. None but Archuleta works for an organization that exists to bend governmental policy to serve its organizational objectives.

The Las Cruces City Council is composed of volunteers. Only Small is employed by an organization that also lobbies the Council.

Other legislators have occupations and trades. Why does it matter that these elected officials work for organizations that exist to influence governmental action and policy?

Consider more closely Nathan Small’s dual role as a Las Cruces City Councilor and a “wilderness protection organizer.” He and Steinborn have spearheaded a multi-year, costly campaign by NMWA to persuade Congress and the President to designate about 400,000 acres surrounding Las Cruces as federal wilderness and National Conservation Areas. The wilderness designation is the most forceful tool in the preservationist’s toolbox. It imposes the most stringent, sweeping restrictions of any federal conservation measure. No building or road construction may occur and no motorized vehicles or mechanical equipment may be used in wilderness. Flood control authorities may not use bulldozers, the lame cannot use wheelchairs, and policemen would have to get out of their vehicles and chase on foot or horseback a criminal driving—illegally—into a wilderness area. The implications of these restrictions for life in a large urban area have triggered opposition from the Chamber of Commerce, community leaders, off-road vehicle recreationists, and law enforcement.

One of the strategies of the campaign directed by Small and Steinborn has been to seek endorsements from local governments to demonstrate for Congress local support for the wilderness proposal. Before Small was elected, he lobbied the City Council to win its endorsement for wilderness. Since Small’s election, opposition to wilderness has exploded and the Council is being asked to join other local governments in reversing its position. The Las Cruces City Council has yet to schedule that vote.

During City Council consideration of any matters involving wilderness, Small makes a show of excusing himself. But a theatrical departure from chambers cannot completely insulate council from his influence. Legislation is a process of compromise, negotiations, trading favors and storing up payback. At some point, a fellow council member will need Small’s support on a close vote for roads, sewers, playgrounds and public improvements in their council district. Legislators remember favors granted and favors denied. Small may be out of the room when wilderness is being discussed, but he is never out of the picture.

Tom Cooper of Las Cruces is co-chair of People for Preserving Our Western Heritage, a coalition of ranchers, industry organizations, and hundreds of businesses opposed to NMWA’s wilderness proposal. Does Small’s recusal from chambers while wilderness is being discussed satisfy Cooper? “Absolutely not,” Cooper says. “It is difficult to take seriously. He constantly works on wilderness. That’s his job. We’ve been told many times he works behind the scenes.”

A second problem is that the elected office and title held by these individuals cannot help but benefit their employers.

Small cannot seem to keep his NMWA role separate from his official duties when he is in the public eye. He led a rally on June 24, 2008 in support of the wilderness proposal. The story earned a banner across the top of the front page of the Las Cruces Sun-News. Small’s photo occupied the upper right hand corner. He was identified as a city councilor speaking in support of wilderness.

Hatch is an agricultural village in Dona Ana County north of Las Cruces. Small sought support for NMWA’s campaign from its village trustees and chamber of commerce. He was identified in those proceedings as a Las Cruces City Councilor. Hatch Village Trustee David Sment says he did not know Small was being paid by NMWA until sometime afterwards.

Then there is the battle over Otero Mesa.

Otero Mesa is located about 150 miles east of Las Cruces, across the Organ Mountains, White Sands Missile Range, and tens of thousands of acres of other federal land. It can only be reached by rough roads with a well-earned reputation for destroying tires, as this author has personally experienced. Otero Mesa contains large groundwater reserves that are currently being tapped for agriculture across the border in Dell City, Texas. The El Paso metropolitan area is the most likely recipient of that groundwater if it is ever mined for municipal use.

Ranching is the sole industry on Otero Mesa. This shadeless, windy steppe offers little recreational value to a distant urban population. It has no developed visitor sites, campgrounds or trails. If you visit Otero Mesa, bring your own water. The only potable water is inside the few isolated ranch houses. A person who comes unprepared will have to decide if they are thirsty enough to slurp the muck from earthen stock tanks.

Since Small’s election, the Las Cruces City Council has discovered Otero Mesa. This year City Council voted to endorse NMWA’s proposal to block gas exploration and production in Otero Mesa.

Bob Gallagher, President of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, points to the curious interest of the Las Cruces Council in an empty patch of New Mexico in another county as evidence that Small’s status as a city councilor is being exploited by NMWA. Except for the fact that Small is a member of that body, asks Gallagher, “What the hell does the Las Cruces City Council have to do with whether some gas drilling takes place on Otero Mesa?”

Gallagher also points to Steinborn’s record of fighting his industry in the State Legislature and the administrative agencies of New Mexico government. “I don’t think it’s right that Steinborn is a legislator employed by NMWA. It has absolutely hurt our ability to work with the Legislature. Every day I hear from legislators who don’t want to cross him by supporting our industry, or I receive warnings that he’ll somehow use his office to hurt us.”

Kent Evans, a Dona Ana County Commissioner, is challenging Steinborn for his seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives. “To me,” says Evans, Steinborn’s employment “is an issue. He’s trying to pretend he doesn’t work for an environmental group. It is a clear conflict of interest. He has a definite agenda, and that is forcing wilderness on the community.”
“And,” continues Evans, “just the fact that he works for the wilderness group is enough. It is clear where he’s coming from, who pays him, and where his interests lie.”

In researching this report, inquiries were made as to whether any industry advocacy group has any elected official on their payroll. No elected official on the payroll of an industry advocacy group could be identified. Gallagher says he’s never heard of it. Michelle Frost of the New Mexico Cattle Growers/New Mexico Wool Grower’s Association laughed. “We have only two people on staff, period. Me and our executive director.”

Coincidental or not, every one of the elected officials on the payroll of these environmental groups is a Democrat.

By placing on their payroll politicians with no other significant source of income, these environmental groups can effectively subsidize a political career. As that career advances, the politician is in a better position to repay, if not simply remember, who their patron has been.

U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, released in September 2008 a report on the increasingly indistinct lines between tax-exempt environmental organizations and prohibited partisan political activity. Entitled, “Political Activity of Environmental Groups and Their Supporting Organizations,” the report details the myriad creative ways environmental organizations have been using tax-exempt money to engage in electoral politics. New Mexico may be on the cutting edge of a disturbing new development in this area.


Jim Scarantino is an investigative reporter with the Rio Grande Foundation. A nationally recognized political columnist, Scarantino appears as a regular panelist on KNME-TV’s weekly public affairs program, “In Focus”. Scarantino also was executive director of The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance in 2003 and served as Chair of the Coalition for New Mexico Wilderness from 2000 to 2004.

There is No Energy Shortage—There is a Shortage of Legislative Will

This interesting piece was passed on to CARE by one of our members. A version had been published as an editorial in the local paper. The CARE Member knew it was something that would catch our attention. He was correct.

Not only is this posting insightful, we believe it to be accurate in pointing out where the true shortage is and where the surplus is: special interest groups who are killing energy production.

There are several elements to this commentary that we found to be especially helpful. First, it caused us to identify a new source of information—the author Donald Wolberg, Ph.D., a geologist and an adjunct professor at New Mexico Tech. Another asset in our new association is that he has vast expertise in coal—something that we have been lacking in our panel of experts. We hope you’ll enjoy this new source and we hope to have additional posting from him in the future. Let us know what you think!

Fuzzy Facts and Fuzzier Logic
I frequently enjoy the astute comments of Dr. Charles Krauthammer, whether delivered via the local paper on Sundays or his televised appearances. However, I suggest that some facts may have escaped his research regarding matters of energy pricing and availability, "U.S. Can Tax Itself Off Oil Addiction," Sunday June 8. Of course the U.S. (and all of the industrialized and industrializing world) has an oil addiction. Oil and its refined products offer the most efficient sources of energy available in quantity, safe when used properly, available in the market place, and is an efficient provider of "energy" for certain uses. Petrochemicals are an additional set of products needed by the entire world. The recent spike in cost of fuel and other products is complex, involves much speculation, but can be remedied by increasing, not rationing supply.

There is really no shortage of energy in terms of reserves available for development and production. There is a shortage of legislative will. There is also a surplus of special interest and agenda pleading without concern for the socio-economic impact on the lives of real people.

North American tar sands and oil shales hold somewhere between 800 billion and 1 trillion barrels of oil 1,000 billion barrels), more oil than is present in the entire Middle East, combined. This oil can be recovered. The mid-continent Bakken Formation has another 3-4 billion barrels of recoverable oil, sitting largely untapped. Apart from the overly abused mention of ANWR, where the total footprint of development would be equivalent to a few football sized areas in the state of Indiana, there are untapped mega-reserves on all our continental shelves, the Western Interior and Gulf coast.

The only development of oil platforms and drilling off of Florida by the way, are likely to be operations by China and other nations via permits issued by the Cubans. Most "cartel" oil in the world is now state owned or controlled (at least 80%) and American or other "Big Oil" actually produces a very small share of the oil pumped in the world--size and supply matters in the oil industry. It still costs the Saudis less than $2/barrel to pump oil. It costs American companies the same $30-40/barrel to pump American oil as it did before the oil price spike. The difference is that most American oil is old oil, since it is almost impossible to gain access to new fields because of the bizarre actions of a less than motivated Congress and the pressure of elitist and mostly urban special interest alarmist groups.

The pricing of oil is complex but it is obvious that expansion of production will cause the price to decline greatly, no matter how long it takes to bring the increased production on line. More importantly, oil is a strategic necessity, and I suggest that those who prevent the expansion of a domestic production strategy are guilty of a "fuzzy logic" that threatens our economy and society.

U.S. oil consumption has actually stabilized at about 20.6 million barrels/day. This consumption rate has not changed much since 2000 and actually decreased compared to 2004 and 2005. In truth, we do not "over-consume" given the diversity, geography and needs of our economy and social structure. New England homes tend to use oil for heating and that is not likely to change. Railroads use oil to move trains since there are very few corridors for overhead or third rail power in the U.S. Trucks use oil. One truck with 200-300 gallons of diesel capacity--1500 mile range--may need 3-4 refills on transcontinental runs to haul what we all need.

Interestingly, there is sufficient available known U.S. and North American untapped oil reserves for perhaps the next 500 years or more at present consumption. There is sufficient coal to be used as coal for 500-600 years with enhanced uses as coal or modified products. New Mexico has significant undeveloped coal resources in the San Juan and Raton basins. New Mexico can and should be a major participant in nuclear energy development and together with reactor technology, these resources can provide nuclear power of virtually infinite duration. In the end, significant development of these resources will reduce energy costs to a more reasonable and marketplace driven level.

What is required immediately is an expression of legislative will, especially by Congress to free this nation from the increasing burden of reliance on foreign oil sources and the dangerous transfer of dollars abroad. At stake is our economy and the welfare of Americans, as well as national security. There is nothing magical about an immediate solution, except perhaps the will of elected representative who have forgotten that they serve all of our citizens.

Donald Wolberg, Ph.D.Socorro, NM

Memo to Senator Bingaman: Start Drilling!

With the President pushing for more drilling in his speech today adding to the public chorus of "Drill here. Drill now. Pay less." members of Congress opposed to drilling are getting it from all sides. Here Ron Arnold, an integral part of CARE’s founding, offers his thoughts on those who oppose drilling, especially Senator Bingaman. Do you agree?

"No Drilling" is not an energy policy

Like many in Congress, New Mexico’s Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman doesn’t get it.

If you tell him, “Good energy policy leads to more supplies of affordable American energy and bad policy leads to less,” his eyes glaze over.

While the public groundswell for more domestic oil drilling grows, Democrats like Sen. Bingaman consistently block American energy for Americans, arguing that it will take at least 10 years to bring more oil into production.

That line is so stale that Tonight Show host Jay Leno freshened it up in a recent monologue: “President Bush has blasted Congress for not allowing oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Democrats said it wouldn’t do any good because it wouldn’t produce oil for 10 years. That’s the same thing Democrats said 10 years ago.”

The audience laughed bitterly, because some recalled that President Clinton vetoed a 1995 bill to go get that ANWR oil, enough to run America all by itself for at least 10 years and probably twenty.

We would be using it now if it weren’t for politicians like Sen. Bingaman.

Washington Post contributing editor Robert J. Samuelson said, “We’re almost powerless to influence prices today because we didn’t take sensible actions 10 years ago.”

The headline on his column: Start Drilling.

Senator Bingaman won’t allow that. He cites Department of Interior statistics showing that “oil companies are agonizingly slow in developing federal lands that are already open to production,” and “about three-quarters of the all the Federal lands we have leased onshore is not currently producing.”

He insists it’s because oil companies are holding the leases for speculation.

Wrong. It’s his fault, not the oil companies.

Take a peek into the real world: once an oil company submits the highest bid for a drilling lease on federal lands, it takes months – sometimes years – for them to get the actual drilling permit from the federal agency.

Lease? Permit? Consumers having to wait months or years because of leases and permits tied up in red tape?

It’s true. We American consumers have to wait for our own American energy on some foot-dragging bureaucrat.

But it gets worse.

Let’s say you’re the oil company and you finally get your permit. Then, you find out that the agency only lets you explore to see if there’s any oil there when none of the local wildlife are mating or migrating. And bureaucrats are always adding new species you have to watch out for.

Okay, let’s say you find oil and at last you’re ready to drill. Then you get formal protests or lawsuits to stop the drilling because of tangled laws that can stop anything.

Try to schedule an expensive oil rig under those conditions.

You wonder why oil companies are agonizingly slow in getting your energy out of your federal lands?

Who passed all those leasing laws? Who made all those permit regulations? Who built all those roadblocks to speedy energy production?

Politicians like Sen. Bingaman.

The next time you see a chorus of politicians blaming the energy crisis on slow corporations, tell them, “You’d look more believable if you took your foot off America’s brakes.”

Then look them straight in the eye and tell them, "Start drilling."


Ron Arnold, executive vice president, Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1976 to protect individual rights, private property, free markets, and limited government.

Economic Impact of the Energy Bill and the Economic Stimulus

Since the release of his book Energy Keepers - Energy Killers, Roy Innis has become quite an advocate for energy. He is especially interested in the economic impact America's energy policies will have. Here he incorporates a wide spectrum of energy related issues in what has become CORE's energy platform. We at CARE believe this piece incorporates answers to many questions you may have as well. Read on!

Politicians Are Prescribing Aspirin To Treat The Economy They Are Poisoning
Congress and the White House, Democrats and Republicans finally agree on something!

We need a stimulus package, they intone. The economy is stagnating, unemployment is climbing, families can’t pay their bills. We have to prime the pump, reduce interest rates, increase unemployment benefits, provide temporary tax relief.

These unlicensed physicians are prescribing aspirin to counteract the poisons they routinely inject into our economy, while they prepare even bigger doses of arsenic.

Every one of these supposed shots of economic adrenaline is counteracted by toxic policies that drive up prices, cause layoffs and put families on energy welfare. It would be laughable, if it weren’t so hypocritical.

Oil, gas, coal and other resources on America’s citizen-owned public lands could meet US energy needs for centuries. Developing these resources – with full regard for ecological values – would generate jobs, economic growth and tax revenues, stabilize energy prices, and reduce our need to buy oil from unfriendly countries.

Onshore and offshore public lands could hold enough oil to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years – and enough natural gas to heat 60 million homes for 160 years.

But Energy Killer legislators, regulators, courts and eco activists have made most of them unavailable to the workers and families who own them. In addition, a Utah area with a trillion dollars worth of public coal was placed off-limits by President Clinton. Nuclear power has been in a regulatory stranglehold for decades. And activists blocked construction of dozens of coal-fired electricity plants in 2007.

The “energy” legislation President Bush signed doesn’t foster the production of a single drop of oil, whiff of natural gas, or kilowatt of new coal or nuclear power. No wonder OPEC ministers rejected his plea to increase oil production. Instead, the bill:
* Adds $6,000 to the price of new cars, while reducing passenger safety, by forcing manufacturers to downsize cars to meet 35 mpg ratings;
* Replaces billions of incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lights, necessitating expensive recycling facilities that can safely handle the mercury in each CFL;
* Increases ethanol production to 35 billion gallons a year – five times what we produced last year from corn grown on an area the size of Indiana, using 42 billion gallons of water and 5 billion gallons of petroleum (for fertilizers, pesticides and fuel);
* Promotes wind power – although generating enough electricity to power New York City requires huge turbines across an area the size of Connecticut, and they only work eight hours a day on average.

Because they keep our oil and gas locked up, these actions mean every barrel of oil “saved” via these “eco-friendly” measures is offset by reserves we use up and don’t replace. They create a huge energy gap between what we need – and what politicians let us have. Between real energy from fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power (96% of today’s energy) – and imaginary energy that politicians promise will someday come from wind, solar and ethanol (less than 1% today).

Worse, every ounce of “stimulus” is offset by a pound of new government arsenic.
Some 22,000 magnificent polar bears now roam the Arctic, and their numbers continue to increase. But bureaucrats and environmental activists want the bears designated as a “threatened” species.

Doing so would put courts and bureaucrats in charge of any activity that produces greenhouse gases: heating, cooling, transportation and manufacturing … bakeries, dry cleaners, hotels, office and apartment buildings, cement plants and dairy farms. The price of everything we do, eat, drive and wear would soar; jobs would disappear; and for millions the American Dream would slip out of reach.

Energy Killers justify these demands by pointing to computer models that conjure up disaster scenarios in which rising carbon dioxide causes icy habitats to melt 50-100 years from now, driving polar bears to extinction. However, hundreds of climate scientists emphasize that these models can’t forecast accurately even one year in advance, much less 50. They say there is no evidence that Earth’s moderate warming of the past century will turn into a disaster, or that CO2 is the primary cause of climate change.

Empirical evidence, they argue, demonstrates that climate change is driven primarily by solar energy output, cosmic rays and other natural causes. Indeed, average global temperatures have been stable since 2001, despite steadily rising CO2 levels.

Costly, punitive efforts to cut CO2 will likely have zero to minimal benefits. They would also affect crop and wild plant growth, which improves as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase.
Nevertheless, the same models and alarmist reasoning are being used to promote legislation to slash carbon dioxide emissions and establish complex cap-and-trade systems. Politicians claim the legislation will stabilize a climate that has changed repeatedly over the ages.

Senator Jeff Bingaman’s bill is the least draconian. But the EPA says even it would send gasoline prices up an extra 57 cents a gallon, spark a 20% increase in electricity prices, and cut up to $370 billion from our Gross Domestic Product.

These sacrifices would reduce global CO2 levels in 2050 by 1.5% and average temperature by perhaps 0.05 degrees.

Other bills would be vastly more expensive. Senator Joe Lieberman admits his bill would cost “hundreds of billions” of dollars. Others demand that we eliminate up to 80% of CO2 emissions by 2050.

All would give bureaucrats control over virtually every aspect of our lives. All would make reliable, affordable energy a distant memory – even with an all-out program to build more nuclear power plants, which is anathema to many greens and legislators. All would force industry to spend trillions of dollars to capture, pipeline and store carbon dioxide. Experts say forcing the CO2 into high pressure subterranean storage could trigger small earthquakes, and ruptures could cause gas leaks and mass asphyxiations.

To quell concerns about US jobs and riches heading to China and India, the Administration is prodding them to take “measurable actions” to cut CO2 emissions. But their focus is properly on reducing poverty through economic growth, and cleaning up filthy air and water. Speculative climate catastrophe is a low priority.

Congressional and other “physicians” who are experimenting on our energy, economy and lives need to abide by the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm.

Affordable, reliable energy transforms constitutionally protected rights into actual rights and opportunities for better jobs and living standards. Restricting energy supplies rolls back civil rights gains.

CORE is not going to let politicians do that. Neither should you.


Roy Innis is chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality (http://www.core-online.org/), one of America’s oldest civil rights organizations, and author of Energy Keepers - Energy Killers: The new civil rights battle.

Standing Up for Energy

Clearly we at CARE were not the only ones alarmed by Parade Magazine’s outright attack on energy. Colorado State Senator Bill Cadman is demanding a public retraction of Parade’s anti-energy article. This posting reports on his efforts on behalf of energy. In addition to applauding his stand, we include this feature here because he brilliantly exposes the myths addressed in the Parade piece and offers the contrasting truth.

Western Senator Picks Fight With 'Parade' Magazine
Senator Demands Retraction and Apology by 'Parade'
New York City-based Parade magazine has stirred up a hornet's nest in the Western U.S. with its recent article demonizing oil and gas development, and a Colorado State Senator is now demanding a public retraction and apology by the magazine to its readers and to tens of thousands of industry workers.

In a letter to Parade, Colorado State Senator Bill Cadman (R) today demanded that the magazine issue a public apology to readers after an article in the publication’s Dec. 30, 2007 edition contained numerous inaccuracies about the U.S. oil and gas industry.

The article in question – “The Dirty Side of Domestic Fuel” – accepted as fact a number of false statements from the National Resources Defense Council, a radical environmental group that opposes domestic oil and gas production, according to Cadman.

Cadman specifically questioned whether the magazine has any links to the NRDC, whether NRDC paid to have the article published, and whether any members of the oil and gas industry were contacted about the “facts” in the article prior to publication.

"It looks like Parade magazine took NRDC’s extremist line and reprinted it as a news article,” said Cadman. “There seems to have been no effort made to find out the facts about the regulations faced by the oil and gas industry."

Cadman challenged Parade on several areas of the article, a story that focused on the question: “Is extracting domestic oil and natural gas important enough that companies should be granted exemptions from pollution laws?”

Of course, companies that develop oil and natural gas in the United States are not exempt from pollution laws and are in fact heavily regulated, both by states and the federal government. Cadman - a member of the board of Americans For American Energy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about the importance of domestic energy production - in a letter to Parade’s editors said “At a minimum, you owe your readers a correction – and an apology – for the factual misstatements in this article. I would suggest you also publish an apology to the hard-working men and women of the American oil and gas industry who are committed to producing the energy our nation needs to survive.”

“This article flunks even the most basic standards of journalism, “ said Cadman. "This type of article, if it's going to be published at all, needs to be marked as an opinion piece and Parade should disclose the actual author.

"Whatever happened to checking facts before an article is published?"

Among the misstatements and factual errors cited by Cadman:

1. “Loopholes make such wells … exempt from parts of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Air Act that would control these substances.” Cadman noted this implies that oil and gas production escapes oversight in these areas. In fact, Congress ensures that oil and gas production is regulated primarily by state and local agencies because local officials are in a better position to tailor regulations to meet local conditions. Though this forces oil and gas companies to deal with a wide array of differing state-based regulatory structures, and increases costs to industry and to consumers, it still is the best approach for ensuring effective, highly-targeted and economically efficient environmental regulation.
   
   
2. “Extracting oil and gas is known to release toxic chemicals, including mercury, benzene, arsenic, and harmful chemicals are routinely injected underground to boost output.” In fact,boosting the output of oil and gas wells through the process of fracturing underground rock formations primarily utilizes water, sand and food-grade gel. Studies conducted by both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Groundwater Protection Council found no evidence that the injection process questioned here, regulated by state oil and gas agencies, has resulted in groundwater contamination.
   
   
3. “Well operators are not required to file an annual toxic release inventory, a list of chemicals emitted.” In fact, oil and gas producers do report air emissions and “produced water” disposal to state regulatory agencies. Cadman also notes that operators are subject to the “Community Right to Know” law, and must file “Material Safety Data Sheets” for chemicals used in the production process with local emergency planning committees.
   
   
4. "People living near wells have reported alarming health problems.” Cadman notes the article cites only anecdotal reports of these impacts and does not cite a single specific worker exposure or epidemiology study to back up these claims.
   
   
5. Cadman notes that the magazine’s “poll” question - Is extracting domestic oil and natural gas important enough that companies should be granted exemptions from pollution laws? - is completely illegitimate because it is based on the presumption that the domestic oil and natural gas industry is “exempt” from pollution laws, which it is not.
   
   
6. The underlying premise of the article – that “American oil may not be worth the price” – suggests that America should produce less of its domestic oil and gas resources. Even with greater conservation efforts, that will lead to only one outcome: forcing America to rely more on imports of foreign supplies. And that would result in more global pollution, not less, because environmental standards for oil and gas development in nearly every other nation are less stringent than those in the United States.
   
   
7. The article misleads consumers because it speaks of the costs of producing domestic energy but completely ignores the heavy price that consumers – as well as our nation – pay by sending billions of energy dollars to foreign nations for imported oil and gas. Some of those nations are hostile to the United States, and some of that money ultimately winds up in the hands of terrorist organizations.
   
   
8. Cadman pointed out that Parade chose not to report that America’s ever-growing dependence on foreign oil – and thus our increasing subsidization of hostile foreign nations and the terrorist organizations they support – is caused, in growing measure, by the political efforts of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an extremist environmental organization. Not challenging this group’s assertions raises serious ethical questions about whether Parade made any effort to substantiate the NRDC’s claims, and calls into question the journalistic integrity of the article.

Said Cadman, “To take the NRDC’s extremist anti-American energy line and report it as factual is a disservice to your readers and to a vital U.S. industry that is working hard to supply secure, domestic energy in an environmentally responsible manner.

“Perhaps Parade supports sending billions of dollars overseas to pay for our critical oil supplies? They seem to want to export the already high cost of energy production to poor nations abroad, and in the process are complacent to the documented flow of some of these dollars to nations hostile to American interests and the terrorist groups they support,” Cadman said.