Do We Have To Develop Everything? Can’t We Just Leave Some Places Alone?

A CARE Blog reader directed us to an interesting newsletter called Whiskey and Gunpowder. Some recent postings on one of the team’s visit to Alaska are likely to be of interest to you. We encourage you to give them a look. These two should be of particular interest to you: There’s Money to Be Made in Alaska’s Resources and “Pretty High Land.” (Please note Whiskey and Gunpowder is written by a team of investment counselors and that perspective is found within their writings. They offer an interesting viewpoint.) While Whiskey and Gunpowder has been landing in the CARE “in-box” for a couple of months, it is this response from a Whiskey and Gunpowder reader to the Alaska postings that prompted us to introduce you to this resource. “Resident geologist” Byron King offers some thought provoking insights to a question many of you may have asked: “Do we have to develop everything? Can’t we just leave some places alone?”

Part of “responsible energy” is responsibly developing the resources that are there for us. Somehow the common perception is that drilling is equal to raping the land. This report shows how it not only does not destroy the natural habitat, it actually encourages the critters reportedly being destroyed.

Richard in Illinois asks:
“You seem to view the industrial development of Alaska as a good thing, and further development as a foregone conclusion. Do we have to develop everything? Can’t we just leave some places alone?”

Byron’s Reply:
Actually, Richard, I try to play these issues down the middle. ARCO and its geologists discovered the Prudhoe Bay oil field in 1967, when I was in middle school. The development consortium, acting under legislation passed by the U.S. Congress, built the Alaska Pipeline in the 1970s, when I was in college. I had nothing to do with it. And now I am merely describing where we are and forecasting where the ominous trends seem to be taking us. As Bill Bonner once mentioned to me, “I wouldn’t send somebody to cover a baseball game who does not understand the game of baseball.” And if during the past 30 years or so you have driven a car, or flown in an airplane, or heated your house, or eaten food grown on and transported from a farm, you have benefited directly or indirectly from the oil of Prudhoe Bay and the Pipeline. After 15 billion barrels of oil production, it’s a little late in the game to be complaining about industrial development in Alaska. So spare me the preaching and scolding, OK?

But you raise a good point, Richard. “Do we have to develop everything?” Yes, damn good question. Do we? That oil and gas of the North Slope has been there for millions of years of geologic time, and it will stay there for millions more years if it is left alone. (Now, if it were in China, I am inclined to think that the drilling rigs would be turning and burning. It’s a cultural thing.) What are you prepared to give up if, say, “we” decide not to build a Northern Pipeline to transport natural gas from the Arctic through Canada and to the Lower 48? You, for example, live in Illinois. And I read somewhere that it gets cold in Illinois in the winter. What’s your plan?

I mentioned in one article that the Alaska Pipeline and Haul Road are rather difficult to spot from the air. At the end of the trip to Prudhoe Bay, we flew down to Fairbanks in Caribou aircraft, and I was sitting in the co-pilot seat with a God’s-eye view of the Brooks Range. I knew what I was looking for, and I knew exactly where to look, and from 9,000 feet I could barely spot the Pipeline and Haul Road. So that aspect of development is visually insignificant in the grand scheme.

As for the roads and drilling pads of Prudhoe Bay, they are all just a few feet of gravel. When the oil is pumped out, sometime in the far distant future, I suspect that people will just plug the wells and dig out the gravel and give the land back to Mother Nature and her permafrost. It is not as if anybody is building housing developments up on the North Slope. Really, do you want to live up there? It’s just plain cold and harsh, plus dark for months of the year.

I mentioned the Haul Road in one article. It is a 20-foot-wide gravel road about 420 miles in length from Fairbanks to Deadhorse. It was upon this road that the equipment and materials were hauled in the 1970s to construct the Alaska Pipeline. Of interest, many forms of wildlife actually use the Alaska Pipeline and adjacent Haul Road as an assistance to living. Generally, the gravel beds under the Pipeline and Haul Road are built up to just a few feet above the nearby elevations. So moose and caribou walk on the elevated tracks to catch some breezes and keep the bugs away. Also, the open nature of the road, with almost no trees or ground cover, means that birds hunt for small game nearby. And dust from the Haul Road blows over nearby snow, which causes that snow to melt first in the spring. The availability of open water near the Haul Road tends to attract waterfowl, so the Haul Road has created something of a bird breeding corridor.

One interesting way of viewing the condition of wildlife in Alaska is to compare what is happening near the industrial development of the North Slope with an absolutely protected and essentially pristine area such as Denali National Park. Denali covers about 6.2 million acres, which makes the place larger than, for example, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (Of those 6.2 million acres, about 1 million acres are covered with glaciers or permanent snow pack.) Yet Denali has all of 15 miles of paved road and about 40 miles of gravel road, of which half are off limits to all but official traffic. So imagine what it would be like to try to “see” Massachusetts if the place had only about 35 miles of paved and gravel roads for ingress.

Yet for all of its vastness and isolation, according to one park guide, Denali is home to fewer than 40 wolves. This is simply a function of the large territory that a wolf requires for its feeding and breeding ground, and the harsh climate for most of the year. There are far more wolves in the zoos of Massachusetts than there are in Denali, which is a larger and utterly undeveloped area. This says something about the general state of nature in Alaska, and the fragility of the Arctic environment, as well.

I also mentioned in an article how clean the Haul Road was, and I am still astonished at that fact. It got to where we were all looking for litter, and just not finding it. OK, there might be a piece of plastic, or an aluminum can somewhere along the 420-mile stretch, but I sure did not see it. Today, the Haul Road is an industrial service road for access to the Pipeline, and for goods going to and from the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. But why is it so clean? And I mean country club clean, dear readers. Actually, there was more litter at Oakmont during the U.S. Open than there was on the Haul Road in Alaska.

On reflection, the Haul Road is used by just a few hundred truck drivers at most, and everybody seems to know everybody else. There is something of an honor code among the drivers to keep the stretch clean. The Haul Road is, to be specific, a public highway, but you really have to have a good reason to trek up north. It is just not a road for a Sunday drive, by any means. According to one knowledgeable individual, no more than 4,000 tourists per year visit Deadhorse, and about half of those are with one particular cruise-ship line that arranges overnight tours to the area. The other 2,000 or so tend to be scientific or “adventure” explorers, such as our group of 22 geologists.

Really, most people do not have the slightest clue about how far away, how vast, how isolated, how harsh, how just plain alone is the territory of the Brooks Range and North Slope. It is an area far larger than the size of California, with a total population less than that of a typical American shopping mall on a busy Saturday afternoon.

In terms of numbers, the North Slope of Alaska is home to about 10,000 or so industrial workers who commute up there for a few weeks at a time. They live in temporary housing constructed on gravel pads. The oil wells and pipelines all sit on gravel pads. And it is all connected to the south by the Haul Road. The place appears to be very clean, and the end result is currently 775,000 barrels of oil per day to keep the U.S. economy running. Looked at in this light, I think that we have quite a remarkable trade-off going here. People are, of course, free to differ in that assessment.

Do you differ with Bryon's assessment? Do you agree? Please share your insights here!


Byron King currently serves as an attorney in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1981 and is a cum laude graduate of Harvard University. Byron is also co-editor of Outstanding Investments.

From Big Oil to King Corn: What Are We Solving?

No, we do not mean to beat up on ethanol exclusively. We aim to point out any energy solution that doesn’t work, that is not responsible—and those that do, that are responsible! It is just that there is so much good stuff out there against ethanol.

As was mentioned in the previous posting, one has to question the motives. It is bad for the environment and bad for the economy. Why aren’t the environmentalists squawking? The economically focused groups are. Here’s a piece that recently landed in CARE’s “in-box” from the National Taxpayers Union. We believe you will find it as interesting as we did. The evidence abounds. Will you help spread the word? America needs energy, but we need responsible energy!

It pays to be friendly with the majority party in Congress. The proof is in the new energy bill that recently passed the House during the Democrats' "100-hour" agenda. The CLEAN Energy Act of 2007, a contrived political acronym for "Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives for the Nation," has been portrayed as ending preferences for so-called "Big Oil" - a familiar victim on the left-wing's whipping post. In truth, what the bill does is raise taxes to subsidize a lesser-known but growing conglomerate: "Big Corn"

The first main component of the bill raises taxes and fees paid to the federal government by oil and gas companies. It does so by eliminating tax deductions instituted by Congress to spur domestic exploration activities and by raising royalties paid for oil exploration in offshore areas under federal control. The net effect of these policies is, of course, a $14 billion tax increase on oil companies.

If Democrats want a reduction in our dependence on foreign oil, tax increases are not the way to go. History tells us that vengeful tax hikes on the oil industry serve no economic purpose. In 1980, Congress instituted a windfall profits tax to punish the energy industry. The result, according to a Congressional Research Service study, was a drop in domestic oil production of 3 to 6 percent and an increase in oil imports of 8 to 16 percent. According to the Tax Foundation, the average effective tax rate on major oil and gas companies is roughly 38.3 percent, as opposed to a rate of 32.3 percent for the market as a whole. This is hardly the profile of an industry failing to pay its "fair share."

A second provision establishes the "Strategic Energy Efficiency and Renewables Reserve." What that means in English is that the $14 billion in additional taxes on the oil industry will be dumped into a slush fund from which Congress can subsidize what are defined as "clean domestic renewable energy resources." This fund would exist above and beyond the normal budget, which already includes significant spending on politicians' favorites like ethanol and "clean coal" technology.

Democrats would have you believe that they are breaking the link between special interests and energy policy. If Pelosi, Reid, and company really wanted to do so, they'd hold their legislation up to a mirror and acknowledge that it looks no better than the energy bill that the GOP ushered to passage in 2005.

Furthermore, the federal government has a dismal record of subsidizing successful alternative-energy programs. Simply stated, members of Congress are all thumbs in trying to point out emerging technologies, because they distribute funding based on political concerns rather than sound science.

The Carter years brought us the $2 billion boondoggle called the "Synfuels" program, which sought (and failed miserably) to produce alternatives to petroleum. The Clinton administration hatched the $1.1 billion Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles whose main focus, diesel technology, has since fallen out of favor as an inherently dirtier fuel. The technology that we use today to improve mileage and lower emissions (hybrid drive trains, cylinder shutdown, etc.) is more often the result of private companies in search of profits, not government agencies in search of PR plaudits.

A recent federal favorite is corn-based ethanol, which is subsidized by taxpayers at roughly $2 billion per year (not counting tariffs and government-usage mandates that prop up an artificial market for the commodity). Despite acknowledgement that ethanol from this source won't fuel energy independence, it enjoys heavy government support because of powerful Midwestern members of Congress who do the bidding of farmers in their districts.

The Democrats have passed a bill that may lead to greater dependence on foreign oil and higher costs at the pump. A sound energy policy means keeping taxes low, eliminating government meddling, and allowing the market to determine which technologies merit significant investment. President Bush and members of Congress ought to know that bureaucracies and energy policy mix like ... well, oil and water.

Andrew Moylan is Government Affairs Manager for the 350,000-member National Taxpayers Union, a non-partisan citizen group founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes and smaller government.

Does China Know Something America Does Not?

As Americans, we have an expectation that we have all the right answers and we have them first. After all, we are the “superpower.” While much innovative research is being done here on the energy front, it seems that China--who followed our lead--has seen the light on ethanol while our government remains in the dark, putting its figurative “head in the sand.”

In an effort be sure we are accurate in our reporting, an extensive Internet search was done for the original source for the following story’s feedstock. After spending more than an hour online, one has to conclude that the mainline media has virtually overlooked this Associated Press feature (June 11). Was this an oversight—or was it conveniently missed because it does not fit within the politically correct viewpoint being clung to despite more and more being released to the contrary? At CARE we are looking for energy solutions—responsible energy. Here is just one more piece of evidence that ethanol is just another energy elixir. Like the corked brown bottle of the old west, ethanol may make us feel better, it may make us feel like we are doing “something,” but it will do little to solve the real problem. It is just more snakeoil.

Here, read what one of CARE’s Energy Counsel Members, Dennis Avery, has to say about ethanol’s viability and its impact on the environment. You are encouraged to think about his question toward the end about the environmental movement’s motives. Stay tuned you’ll hear more about that here soon!

China announced its ban on further expansion of its corn ethanol industry, after a radical 43-percent increase in pork prices over the past year. Xu Dingming of the Chinese National Energy Leading Group told a recent seminar that “Food-based ethanol fuel will not be the direction for China.” The Chinese turnabout comes as President Bush is cheerleading a massive corn ethanol expansion, supposedly to help the U.S. achieve “energy independence.”

Unfortunately, U.S. corn land produces only 50 gallons worth of gasoline per acre per year—against an annual gasoline demand of 135 billion gallons. New U.S. ethanol plants coming on line could take 30 percent of next year’s U.S. corn for auto fuel—an unprecedented diversion of the world’s scarce cropland. Supplying the Bush goal of 35 billion gallons of ethanol per year would currently force farmers to clear more than 200 million acres of Midwest forest to supply even 10 percent of our gasoline demand from corn ethanol.

Even without ethanol demand, farmers would need to triple existing crop yields over the next 40 years just to keep up with food supply demands. Population growth is likely to produce a peak human population of 8–9 billion. Economic growth will raise the number of affluent consumers from today’s 1.5 billion to 7 billion—accompanied by soaring demand for meat, milk, eggs and pet food.

World corn prices are already nearly double last year’s level, and wheat prices are up 10 percent. Mexican consumers are in the streets protesting a 60 percent tortilla price increase. Midwest economist Tom Elam says current oil prices will support corn at $4.50 per bushel. A serious drought or crop disease could drive corn to $6 per bushel.

Why did the environmental movement, which is pledged to defend the wildlands, silently approve Bush’s corn ethanol diversion and risk a massive forest loss? I would guess it’s because the world is currently building or planning more than 40 new nuclear power plants. The Greens didn’t wage their 30-year campaign against fossil fuels just to produce a shift to nuclear-powered air conditioners; they want dramatic reductions in humanity’s use of technology.

The Kyoto Protocol demands we eliminate at least 80 percent of the world’s current energy sources. Solar and windmills have proven woefully inadequate to supply our base energy needs. There is currently no cost-effective way to produce ethanol from cellulose sources such as wood chips or switchgrass.

Brazilian sugarcane is three times more efficient at converting sunlight to transport fuel, mainly because corn-growing takes more diesel fuel, more fossil-fueled fertilizer, and lots of natural gas to heat the conversion process. But even ethanol from sugarcane is more expensive than gasoline with oil at $65 barrel.

The deeper reality is that fossil fuels probably aren’t to blame for our global warming. Roman histories and modern studies of ice cores, seabed sediments and fossil pollen all agree that the world has a moderate, natural 1,500-year climate cycle. That cycle explains most, or all, of the planet’s warming since 1850. There is no evidence that human-emitted CO2 has significantly increased global temperatures. We will probably have a moderate warming for the next several hundred years whether we burn fossil fuels or not. Then we will have centuries of colder weather.

Let’s keep our trees. Let’s forget the Kyoto Protocol. Instead, let’s get rid of the trade barriers that prevent American farmers from selling their corn and meat to the increasingly affluent consumers in densely populated Asian countries. Then both our farmers and our urban consumers can move sustainably forward into the 21st century.

DENNIS T. AVERY Center for Global Food Issues

The Evolution of Fuel

The 1940’s movie The Proud Valley—starring Paul Robeson, depicts a community in South Wales whose economic sustenance depends on coal. Set in the depression era, the film echoes the declining need for coal worldwide. At the time, England was accustomed to being one of the leading providers of coal despite the fact that she occupied only .04% of the world’s land mass.

Long before The Proud Valley story was conceived, Stanley Jevons’, in his book The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines, predicted the fall of England’s industrialism and global might due to a limited supply of coal. With the benefit of history on our side, we can see that while economics did shift over time, England has hardly lost its place as a world leader.

Despite the fear that England would run out of coal—causing its ruin, more than 100 years after Jevons’ pronouncement, England has yet to run out of coal. It is still being mined and used in the UK today. The World Coal Institute says, “The UK has proved coal reserves of around 220 million tonnes however total reserves could be well in excess of 1 billion tonnes.”

What happened to coal in England? How was Stanley Jevons—and other notable thinkers of his day, and Robert Malthus of days past—so wrong? Other fuels emerged and began to replace coal for industrial boilers and electricity generation—stretching its supply. Additionally, advanced technology allowed for the discovery of new coal reserves.

Like Jevons in the mid 1800’s, we have our own doomsayers today. Just this morning a link to an article in the June 25 issue of Business Week landed in CARE’s “inbox.” The article, titled From Peak Oil to Dark Age, declares that “peak oil represents a mortal threat to the US Economy.” The author, Eugene Linden, goes on to say, “Alternatives are still a decade away from meeting incremental demand for oil. With nothing to fill the gap, global economic growth would slow, stop, and then reverse; international tensions would soar as nations seek access to diminishing supplies, enriching autocratic rulers in unstable oil states; and, unless other sources of energy could be ramped up with extreme haste, the world could plunge into a new Dark Age.” He concludes the article by suggested a new oil tax.

However a quick review of the history of fuel leads to the conclusion that just as Jevons was wrong, so is Linden and the cadre of other modern-day pessimists. The missing link in the evolution of fuel is human ingenuity.

In his 29 page article in The Review of Austrian Economics, CARE’s Energy Council Member, Robert Bradley, offers an insightful view of various economic models as they relate to the fuel supply. In reading this historical look, one cannot help but to go back to fuel’s ancient history.

Fire was one of man’s earliest inventions. With the thinking capacity that is unique to mankind, early humans discovered that wood would burn—generating heat to stave off the cold and to allow for cooking. Later, man discovered the whale as a source for oil with which he could generate heat and light. Taking a quick jump though history, American settlers had nearly stripped the local forests of wood in their attempts at heating and cooking. Coal was discovered in the 16th century, saving the forests. The whale was nearly extinct when oil from the earth was found and used to light lamps. These are just two examples of orderly transitions between primary energies in world history.

Moving back to England, the starting point of this progression, there was wide-spread and well-founded fear that coal would run out. But before this prediction came true, a new fuel source was developed: oil and gas—allowing the life of the coal supply to be extended (something Jevons could not have imagined). Additionally, as previously mentioned, technology improved to discover new reserves. What we see in this brief history is “resource expansion,” new resources are developed and new techniques created to allow us to make better use of known supplies.

Looking at history, we can assume the same will happen. Despite Linden’s gloom and doom, he suggests that the wide scale use of alternative fuels is ten years off. With human ingenuity, chances are very high that we have ten years worth of oil and gas available. We have time for whatever “the alternative” becomes to be developed. Linden says, “Policymakers can hide behind the possibility that vast troves will be available from unconventional sources.” It is not just policymakers who may cling to that belief, but anyone who studies history. Linden apparently holds to the fixity/depletionism model, believing that there is a limited supply that will run out. On the flip side is mineral resourceship, which is much like manufacturing—the making of capitol goods; the distinction between depletable and nondepletable resources for the sciences of human action.

In its short life (three years) CARE has seen this first hand. We have seen both human ingenuity and the development of new resources come together. Canada’s tar sands and Shell’s oil shale project are just two examples of new resources—both of which required human creativity. Interestingly, exploiting fixed resources promotes future progress because wealth is created from present usage. Higher prices signal the market to develop substitutes. Enforced conservation in ages past would have held back the progress responsible for today’s high standards of living and the capacity to mine new resources. (Industrial development would have been greatly retarded it sixty or eighty years ago the warning of conservationists about the threatening exhaustion of the supply of coal had been heeded.) Again, we have seen this principle ring true at CARE. One of our members has been working on entering old, abandoned wells. These wells once produced oil but were closed when the easy oil was obtained. With modern technology, this group is able to reenter these wells and reap the rewards that higher prices make cost-effective. The tar sands, the oil shale and the reentry of previously mature wells are simple examples of how modern technology, through improved geological techniques and through the incentive of the market, has been finding new petroleum reserves at a rapid rate. Each invention gives rise to numerous others—though the sister resources that can perform the same or similar function may be at a higher cost (at least for the transition period).

In creating the better, we must often destroy the good. Look at history, you’ll see that the bulk of man’s resources are the result of human ingenuity, aided by slowly, patiently, painfully acquired knowledge and experience. The constraints toward particular resources are overcome by the propensity of human capitol to expand the family of resources. If we exhaust creative imagination, we will exhaust resources. However, this is where America leads! This is the vital role of capitalism: the savings and investment generated by a market economy to locate and produce new deposits at stable or declining cost. The countries rich in oil, are not rich in human ingenuity. They are not rich in creativity.

One must acknowledge that the total supply of any mineral is unknown and unknowable because the future knowledge that would create minerals cannot be known before its time. Therefore the distinction between renewable and non-renewable resources is tenuous.

The resources of the future are waiting for us. They are waiting for the forces of economics to come together with human ingenuity. We have the creativity, we have the energy, to again make America great—a leader in mineral resources. America can once again be a world leader. Do we need to worry about peak oil? What does history tell you? The future is likely beyond your imagination!

Energy Restrictions Would Hurt Low Income Individuals

For those who question whether or not modifying America’s lifestyle to meet the proposed standards that are thought to impact the warming of the earth will have any financial impact on the average person, this action--aimed at Caterpillar--is worthy of reading about. As the global warming advocates are beginning to be taken seriously, more and more is coming out from those with opposing view points. The following piece is from the National Center for Public Policy. These opinions and researched arguments are largely ignored by the major news sources. As the global warming noise and the mandates it is apt to impose drastically affect energy and its role in the American way, we will continue to bring you views you may not hear/see in the mainstream media. What do you think?

Deneen Borelli of the African-American group Project 21 will confront Caterpillar Inc. management at the corporation's shareholder's meeting Wednesday, demanding it explain why it joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), which lobbies for energy restrictions on the U.S. economy that would hurt both low income individuals and Caterpillar customers.

The Congressional Budget Office found that the restrictions USCAP seeks would hurt the poorest fifth of the population more than other income groups. As a percentage of wages, the poorest quintile would pay nearly double the costs borne by the richest quintile.

The "cap-and-trade" system for which Caterpillar is lobbying also would target major Caterpillar customers. (Please read a pervious blog posting on cap-and-trade.)

"Caterpillar's participation in the United States Climate Action Partnership is an example of both corporate financial and social irresponsibility," said Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli. "Financially, cap-and-trade regulations will harm the mining industry -- a key customer of Caterpillar's products -- thereby hurting future profits and shareholders' interests. In addition, cap-and-trade will have a negative economic impact on consumers, especially lower-income households. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 'most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers,' disproportionably harming fixed- and lower-income households. What kind of CEO would intentionally cause financial hardship to his company and millions of consumers?

"Caterpillar's stance has already cost it money: Robert E. Murray of Murray Energy Corporation has stopped doing business with Caterpillar: "Caterpillar has joined with some of the most radical environmentalists who have been enemies of mining, including coal, for decades... As a result of this, I sent [Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens] a letter a couple of months ago telling him that Murray Energy Corporation will no longer do business with Caterpillar. This will result in the loss of millions of dollars in business to Caterpillar."

Farmer Joyce Morrison says, "Where Caterpillar used to think first about American agriculture, they have now joined with groups that have been consistently opposed to the growing of America's food, and opposed to the use of Caterpillar machinery. It is difficult to understand why Caterpillar would work with groups who are unfriendly to agriculture when agriculture has been a source of Caterpillar's success." (Read what others have said on this issue.)

70+ public policy organizations and affected companies sent a letter Tuesday to Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens urging him to immediately withdraw Caterpillar from USCAP. The letter is available at www.nationalcenter.org/caterpillar_climate.pdf.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, non-profit educational foundation based in Washington, D.C.

The “Coal is Filthy” Ad-Scam

If you have visited CARE’s website, you’ve seen that we repeatedly use the phrase “Presenting the public with a clear view of the complete energy picture.” Yet, if you’ve been reading our newsletters and this blog, you’d see we have hardly presented a complete view as we have virtually ignored coal—despite the fact that our home page says, “Coal is still a great resource and clean coal technology is rapidly becoming a reality.” Coal is the “ugly step-sister” no longer. We were thrilled when one of our Energy Council Members, Paul Driessen, sent us this commentary that puts coal into the picture.

Ad Campaign Could Impact US Energy Policies and Consumers
Perhaps you’ve seen the prominent advertisements in major US papers featuring an ethnic spectrum of smudge-faced California models, whose misleading claims about emissions from coal-fired electrical generating plants were reinforced by a CleanSkyCoalition.com website. The campaign urged citizens to tell government officials, “No more filthy coal plants.”

The hope is that new laws would make it harder to build more coal-fired plants or retrofit old plants to meet tougher air quality standards, and force massive switching to natural gas. As demand rose and supplies tightened, gas prices would surge. Consumers, especially poor families, would suffer.

Every $1 increase in gas prices costs US consumers an additional $22 billion a year for heating, air-conditioning, food, consumer goods and services—many of which use natural gas for energy or raw materials—says the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Indeed, consumers paid $140 billion more in 2006 for gas and electricity than they did in 2000—an extra $1900 a year for every family of four.

That hit poor families especially hard, and the US manufacturing sector lost 3 million jobs.

But America doesn’t have enough gas to supply needs that energy demand and legislative air quality mandates have helped stoke. Demand has outstripped domestic production since 1985, forcing us to import the difference, largely from less than friendly countries, and in competition with other nations. Following the disingenuous ads’ prescription—substituting gas for coal-fired electricity—would send tsunamis rippling through our economy. Hardly responsible energy.

America certainly could produce more gas. Geologists say the US Outer Continental Shelf could contain 420 Tcf—enough to meet current demand for 15 years. But over 85% of these areas are off limits to drilling; the situation is similar with onshore public lands; and eco purists want to keep it that way.

Electricity provides 40% of all the energy we use, and the EIA and other analysts say the United States will need 100,000 megawatts of new electricity by 2020. Colorado alone will need another 5,000 Mw; Texas, over 25,000. Conservation and efficiency efforts could pare that back somewhat. But growth in population and technologies that use electricity mean we will need every available source of energy: gas, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, biofuel, waste-to-energy—and coal. Right now, coal generates 50% of all the electricity we consume, and we have no viable alternatives in the near term.

The ads and environmental group websites say coal-fired power plants are responsible for scary-sounding portions of total US air pollution. While burning coal obviously does generate pollution, some inconvenient truths make their Pollution Monsters look more like Sesame Street Cookie Monsters.

Between 1970 and 2004, the US population grew by 40% … its Gross Domestic Product by 187% … miles traveled by 171% … electricity consumption by 115% … and coal burning by 80 percent. And yet, during this period, our aggregate air pollution was cut in half, thanks to steady advances in efficiency and pollution control, air quality expert Joel Schwartz points out. Lead and certain other pollutants were reduced by 90% or more.

Since 1998, annual power plant SO2 emissions have declined 28% and NOx 43 percent, he notes. New rules require large additional reductions during the next decade that will eliminate most remaining power plant emissions. The ads also fail to mention that:
* total air pollution is now so low that it poses no significant health risks, even for children;
* asthma prevalence has been rising even as all types of air pollution have been falling, so air pollution cannot be a factor;
* even eliminating all human-caused ozone would reduce respiratory hospital visits by at most a few tenths of one percent; and
* coal-generated electricity costs much less per kilowatt hour than alternatives—leaving families with more money to spend on nutrition and healthcare.

Coal-fired power plants are now the primary source of US mercury emissions, not because their emissions are large or increasing, but because the real sources of mercury (incinerating wastes and processing ores containing mercury) have been eliminated. The US reduced total mercury emissions by over 80% since the early 1980s; America accounts for only 2% of global mercury emissions; two-thirds of mercury deposition in the States comes from other countries; 55% of global emissions come from volcanoes, oceans and forest fires; and Americans’ mercury exposure is a tiny fraction of levels necessary to cause brain damage.

Nevertheless, new EPA rules require a further 70% reduction in mercury from power plants over the next decade. That’s tremendous bucks for the bang, but it will be done.

Climatologist John Christy points to another consideration. In 1900, the world supported 56 billion human life years: 1.6 billion people times a 35-year average life span. Today it supports 429 billion life years: 6.5 billion people times a 66-year average life span – and they are living far better than anyone in history.

For that we can thank energy, primarily fossil fuels. And in exchange for this incredible progress—if fossil fuels are a primary cause of global warming—we have had a net increase in average global temperature, over the past 100 years, of about 1 degree Fahrenheit, or 0.7 degrees Celsius. (As a percentage of Earth’s atmosphere, carbon dioxide emissions from US coal-fired power plants equal the thickness of a single human hair on a football field.)

All in all, the ad campaign added greatly to the pervasive misinformation that drives so much US energy, health and environmental policy. It will doubtless be used to justify global warming legislation, such as the Sanders-Boxer bill (S. 309) that a new MIT study concludes would impose a tax-equivalent of $4,500 annually on every family of four by 2015—and more thereafter.

As Congress conducts additional experiments on constituents—with mandates, cap-and-trade, tax incentives and other pork-laden “environmental” legislation—the problem will only get worse. Unless citizens demand a change in business-as-usual.


Paul Driessen, Senior Policy Advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death (http://www.eco-imperialism.com/).

Is Today's Climate Optimal?

Omigosh! This is a day of computer work and online research. Having already posted two new items here on CARE’s Blog, an effort was being made to hold a couple of items for another day—then the following arrived in CARE’s “inbox.” Since one of the items being held was the transcript of Michael Griffin’s interview on NPR, and this piece is fresh, we could resist no longer. Here’s one more item for today—from one of our favorite sources The Business and Media Institute. A link to the edited transcript is included so you can check it out yourself. Better yet, follow the link to listen to the complete interview. It will give you a much clearer idea of Griffin’s actual comments—in context.

ABC Attacks NASA Skeptic with 'Incensed' Scientists
Offer any skepticism of global warming and the media quickly line up experts to discredit you.

That’s exactly what happened on “World News with Charles Gibson” on May 31. Correspondent Bill Blakemore’s report was about a “controversy” over recent skeptical remarks made on NPR by NASA administrator Dr. Michael Griffin.

“I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with,” Griffin told NPR.

Blakemore called Griffin’s remarks “startling,” before summarizing Griffin’s main point: that is “arrogant to assume today’s climate is the best climate for humans.”

“World News” then quoted two “incensed” scientists to attack Griffin’s opinion, including “NASA’s top climate scientist” James Hansen.

“I was shocked,” said Hansen in an interview. “I almost fell off my chair because it is a statement of which indicates and ignorance of what has been learned over the last few decades, primarily from NASA observations.”

Hansen has been referred to by the media as the “leading research on global warming,” but his liberal politics is not always included.

He openly supported George W. Bush’s previous two Democratic opponents. Hansen says he voted for Kerry "because he recognized global warming problem" and he also stated that he had great respect for former Vice President Al Gore, noting that he met with Gore in January 2006 and ended up consulting for Gore on his climate change slide show presentations.

Blakemore also quoted a second upset scientist.

“I think the administrator ought to resign,” said Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. “I don’t see how he can be an effective leader of a science agency if he doesn’t understand the threat.”

Oppenheimer is hardly the voice of reason when it comes to sound environmental policy. In an article published in Science on March 23, Oppenheimer co-authored an article that favored the implementation of a cap-and-trade system of carbon credits. Oppenheimer suggested in the article “a market-based system with a economy-wide cap on emissions and trading of emissions allowance would do the same. The article favored this policy over carbon taxes or the use of carbon subsidies to stimulation innovation, but didn’t rule them out.

Blakemore neglected to include anyone who would support Griffin’s claim, saying there are only a “tiny” number of scientists who agree with him. However, Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes was recently able to produce a list of scientist critical of the global warming hysteria.

Blakemore, himself, is a vocal proponent of the notion global warming is a manmade phenomenon, having attacked companies about the issue earlier this year.

Jeff Poor, Business and Media Institute