Don't be surprised that Biden "forgot" some details in the debate with Paul Ryan

Biden Fibbed: Green Cronyism Is Alive and Well
By Diana Furchtgott-Roth

RealClearMarkets.com
October 16, 2012
How soon he forgets. In Thursday's vice presidential debate, Joe Biden denied any "cronyism" in the award of Energy Department grants and loan guarantees to encourage the development of renewable energy. Plus, he asserted that government-assisted green energy projects had a better "batting average" than do projects backed by investment bankers.

Just one problem: Neither of Biden's assertions was true. Plus, the Vice President himself had a role in the cronyism.

Emails that rebut Biden's assertions were made available to me last week.

The email traffic was between BrightSource Energy, which sought and received $1.6 billion of government guarantees, its subcontractor, and its lobbying firm. The emails specifically refer to the Vice President's involvement in the $1.6 billion Energy Department loan guarantee to BrightSource for its proposed Ivanpah solar power project in the Mojave Desert in Southern California.

Some may dispute that the Vice President's support, itself, was a manifestation of cronyism. Whatever Biden's motive for supporting the application, the Vice President's role sheds light on a larger issue, one of principle, which separates President Obama and Mitt Romney. It is the question of "industrial policy," whether government should support business ventures in new technologies that are unable to secure private financing.

Another disapproving term for industrial policy is "picking winners." Government appears to be worse at this than are private markets.

In addition to putting taxpayer money at risk, industrial policy also undesirable because it creates opportunities for political influence on what should be decisions on the merits.

Vice President Biden's involvement in BrightSource Energy was not an isolated incident. There was Solyndra, a solar panel company that received $528 million in government loan guarantees before declaring bankruptcy in September 2011. The Republican-controlled House Energy and Commerce Committee has published emails that specifically refer to Biden and his staff as advocating for Solyndra.

Such advocacy illustrates a pernicious aspect of industrial policy. Winning government support appears to be determined, or influenced, by whom you know, rather than the merits of the proposal.

On Thursday night, Biden said to Representative Paul Ryan, referring to Energy Department green energy grants and loan guarantees, "And all this talk about cronyism. They investigated and investigated, did not find one single piece of evidence. I wish he would just tell -- be a little more candid."

Yet an email from BrightSource Energy's subcontractor, Bechtel Systems and Infrastructure, dated December 2, 2009, said that Biden met weekly with Energy Secretary Steven Chu to discuss Energy Department loan guarantees, to wit: "apparently VP Biden meets with Secretary Chu and [Matt] Rogers (in charge of loan program) on a weekly basis to push progress on all DOE loan guarantees...BrightSource would like to see if we can help get VP Biden to focus on the tasks that DOE needs to accomplish and have him help drive DOE..."

Bernard Toon, Biden's former chief of staff when he was a senator, was a principal vice president and manager for Bechtel. In an email to BrightSource CEO John Woolard dated December 3, 2009, Toon wrote, "Calls are in to Biden's staff and I will be approaching the political affairs office at the White House tomorrow as well, as this project could benefit two [Democratic] Senators who are in cycle and whose races will be tough next year-[Barbara] Boxer [CA] and the Majority Leader, Sen. Reid [NV]." Both won reelection in 2010.

A month before the loan guarantee was approved, on March 8, 2011, Arthur Haubenstock of BrightSource wrote to Woolard, "We have a lot of force gearing up to leverage them now, including the WH and VP office, [New Mexico Senator Jeff] Bingaman, [Nevada Senator Harry] Reid and [California Senator Dianne] Feinstein, and Gov. Brown."

Vice President Biden was also instrumental in the hurried approval of the Solyndra project in September 2009. In fact, Solyndra was rushed through precisely because Biden wanted to appear at an opening ceremony at the plant on September 4. On August 31, Elizabeth Oxhorn, a communications aide to the Vice President, asked Aditya Kumar, director of special projects for White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, to speed up the OMB decision so that the VP's office could announce his attendance after OMB approval rather than before.

Kevin Carroll, chief of the OMB energy branch, replied on the same day, "I would prefer that this announcement be postponed...this is the first loan guarantee and we should have a full review with all hands on deck to make sure we get it right."

Biden said on Thursday night, referring to green jobs, "It was a good idea, Moody's and others said that this was exactly what we needed to [stop the economy's decline.] It set the conditions to be able to grow again. We have, in fact, 4 percent of those green jobs didn't go under -- went under, didn't work. It's a better batting average than investment bankers have."

Biden appears to be saying that 4 percent of Energy Department-supported projects were unsuccessful, compared with a higher failure rate for private investors.

This is false. Government-supported energy companies have had a notoriously unsuccessful track record. Of the 33 energy loan guarantees made since 2009 under the Energy Department's programs, I calculate that 30, or over 90 percent, have shown signs of trouble. "Trouble" ranges from missed production goals to bankruptcy filings.

Take Compact Power, a subsidiary of LG Chem, which received a $150 million Recovery Act grant. Reports have recently surfaced that the Holland, Michigan battery company has placed its roughly 200 workers on rolling furloughs, where employees work three-quarters of their normal schedule, due to insufficient demand for batteries for electric cars.

A report by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee published in March stated that 23 loans were judged by ratings agencies as "junk" because of their low credit quality. An additional four were rated BBB, a low investment trade. This is not surprising, given that borrowers with top-drawer credit ratings do not need government guarantees.

All this matters because President Obama has promised to continue government support of alternative energy projects if he is elected to a second term. Mitt Romney would end this support. American voters have a clear choice: do they want taxpayer support of renewable energy projects, and possibly attendant cronyism, to continue?

On this as on other matters, the Obama-Romney contest offers the voters an opportunity to choose.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Do you like your home the way it is?

If Obama's administration gets its druthers about renewable energy, you will have to rebuild or retrofit.

Demolish all the buildings, then put them back green

By Ron Arnold

What did Wednesday's first presidential debate tell us about the energy policy of President Obama versus former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney?

Obama said, "I think it's important for us to develop new sources of energy here in America." He argued that he was doing so, based on increased oil and gas production.

Romney's reply: "Yeah, but not due to his policies. In spite of his policies."

I've written in previous columns how Obama has staked his presidency on the land-gobbling wind-and-solar bundle of renewable money sponges, in stark contrast to the "all-out, all-of-the-above" rhetoric that still echoes from his State of the Union speech early this year. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso and New Mexico Rep. Stevan Pearce, both Republicans, put it even more bluntly in their 24-page joint report from the two chambers' Western Caucuses. Its title: "Beyond Belief: The Obama Administration's All Out, None-of-the-Above Energy Strategy."

The short version: Obama's energy policy is "say one thing, do another." Obama campaigners look for votes in a coal state and praise coal. Obamacrats in the Environmental Protection Agency make rules that eliminate coal in the name of climate change to get green votes and money.

During Obama's term, his allies in Big Green coalitions have crushed fossil fuels, nuclear power and hydroelectric dams in the courts. Obama appointees have failed to rein in these groups -- even though they seem to think they have the power to do so.

For example, when Obama nominated Gina McCarthy to lead the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation in 2009, Barrasso opposed her confirmation, fearing that "special interest groups are scheming to sue the EPA to prosecute hospitals, farms, nursing homes, commercial buildings and any other small emitter of greenhouse gases," with devastating consequences.

McCarthy assured Barrasso that only large emitters would be regulated, but did not rule out the possibility that lawsuits might force the EPA to regulate smaller sources. If that happened, "I will follow up with the potential litigants." Incredibly, McCarthy was suggesting she could stop Big Green from filing lawsuits.

McCarthy was subsequently confirmed and has zealously enforced Obama's "none of the above" energy agenda, with no apparent efforts to stop green lawsuits.

Obama routinely overstates the importance of renewable energies, such as solar and wind power, making them the centerpiece of America's electricity mix. His own Energy Information Administration tells a different story. It projects that electricity generation from all renewable sources (including hydropower dams) will fill only 15 percent of the total need for electricity in the U.S. by 2035.

Where's the other 85 percent coming from? Nowhere, if you believe a new analysis from the U.S. Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "California's Energy Future: Portraits of Energy Systems for Meeting Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets" says that meeting the California Global Warming Solutions Act mandate -- emissions must drop 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 -- is "possible, but difficult."

The devilish detail is on Page 5: Just getting to 60 percent with technologies available today would take ridiculous measures: "We found that all buildings would either have to be demolished, retrofitted or built new to very high efficiency standards, that vehicles of all sorts would need to be made significantly more efficient, and that industrial processes would need to advance beyond technology available today."

The EIA predicts a more likely future: Eighty-five percent of American energy in 2035 will come from natural gas, coal, oil, nuclear, and hydroelectric dams. If Big Green and the executive branch keep killing off the wellsprings of those American energies, the survivors will be left freezing in the dark.

Examiner Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.

Don't let politics interfere with what SHOULD be done to lower gas prices.

Read CARE favorite Diana Furchtgott-Roth's take on the issue

Tapping the SPR Is a Bad Idea Every Time 
By Diana Furchtgott-Roth
RealClearMarkets.com
August 21, 2012

We're approaching the Labor Day weekend. Election Day is 10 weeks away. Gasoline prices have reversed last spring's declines and have been rising. President Obama's poll numbers are drifting downwards. Every election year, if gasoline prices rise, rumors swirl in Washington that the president will release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It's a bad idea, no matter who suggests it.

Most recently, that suggestion has come from unnamed White House sources, reported by first by Reuters, and then by other news organizations.

Let's give this bad idea some context. On January 20, 2009, when Mr. Obama was inaugurated, the average price of gasoline was $1.84 per gallon and the price of oil was about $39 for a 42-gallon barrel. On Monday refiners had to pay about $96 for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate and the average price of regular gasoline was $3.72, up from $3.45 a month earlier.

However, the purpose of the 696 million barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve, stored in underground salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana, is to protect America against "severe energy supply disruptions," according to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975. With imports of oil and petroleum products about 345 million barrels per month, that works out to about two months of supply, in the unlikely event of a complete cutoff of foreign crude. That is hardly an extravagant buffer.

Gasoline prices are the most visible energy prices in America, more obvious than monthly utility bills. Motorists see them regularly as they drive, even if they do not stop to fill up. Rising gasoline prices cause politicians to worry. But a rising price of oil two months before a presidential election does not qualify as a severe supply disruption, even if it may jeopardize the president's chances for a second term.

Rather than release oil from the reserve, Obama could take other actions to enhance the domestic supply of crude oil and modify environmental regulations that tend to push up gasoline prices.

Let's first examine the regulations. People see four kinds of motor fuel when they fill up, regular, mid-grade, premium, and diesel. Most don't know that Environmental Protection Agency regulations require 18 different blends of gasoline in different states, depending on the season and on air quality.

These "boutique fuel requirements," as they are called by critics, keep the price of gasoline high because excess gasoline in one state cannot be sent to another. Waiving these requirements temporarily would let the price of gasoline decline without significantly affecting air quality.

Senator Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, has introduced the Boutique Fuel Reduction Act of 2011. The bill, which has 38 Republican cosponsors, would give the EPA administrator flexibility to waive or expand boutique fuel requirements for states if the need warrants. A similar bill in the House, sponsored by Representative Lee Terry, a Republican from Nebraska, has 13 Republican cosponsors.

Another factor increasing the price of gasoline is the statutory requirement that ethanol, made from corn, be included in motor fuel. It was enacted in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act with heavy lobbying by corn growers and environmentalists. Now, prices of ethanol are high because there's a drought, corn yields are down, and corn prices are up.

More recently, environmentalists have turned against ethanol because they say it is responsible for avoidable greenhouse gas emissions. Rising corn prices encourage farmers all over the world to transform their land from forests and fallow fields to corn, thereby losing the capture of airborne carbon dioxide performed by trees and shrubs.

In addition, ethanol production diverts corn from the food pipeline. The diversion raises corn, meat, and other food prices-in the United States and all over the world.

Ethanol's use in gasoline lowers a vehicle's fuel mileage. Mileage per gallon of gasoline with an ethanol component is lower than without ethanol.

Ethanol no longer has a federal tax subsidy, but its use in gasoline is required by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. The law required 13.95 billion gallons in 2011, 15.2 billion in 2012, with 36 billion gallons in prospect for 2022.

Rather than be driven by dictate, the composition of ethanol in gasoline should be determined by the relative marginal costs of each product, which would mean greater efficiency in the energy market, and lower prices for consumers.

In addition to such short-run solutions, the administration could consider longer-term supply easures that would enable more gasoline to reach consumers. The administration could speed up approval of offshore oil and gas exploration and production applications, just as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on August 7 announced that he would "fast-track" seven solar and wind electricity generating plants in California, Arizona, and Nevada.

For instance, Obama could "fast track" the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring oil from Canada to our refineries on the Gulf coast to replace the diminishing supply of Mexican and Venezuelan oil.

Instead, Enbridge Inc., a Canadian pipeline company, is planning a new pipeline from Alberta to the Canadian West coast so that the oil can be shipped to China, and Kinder Morgan, a U.S. company, is expanding its existing pipeline.

In addition, Obama could give speedy approval to requests from individual states for oil exploration off-shore. Alaska wants to explore for oil in the Chukchi Sea and in a small part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Obama administration revoked a permit for exploration off the Virginia shore that had been approved by the Bush administration. The revocation should be rescinded.

There are many actions that the government can take to expand the domestic supply of crude oil and refined gasoline. Release of oil reserves from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve should be saved for a genuine emergency. And a close election just doesn't qualify.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Don't Expect an Apology from the Obama Administration

Obama’s green “investments” drown in red ink

Sacrificing taxpayer dollars on the altar of green ideology is destroying our economy

Deroy Murdock

“We’ll invest $15 billion a year over the next decade in renewable energy, creating five million new green jobs that pay well, can’t be outsourced, and help end our dependence on foreign oil,” candidate Barack Obama pledged in a November 1, 2008 radio address.

Three years and eight months later, as unemployment has exceeded 8 percent for 41 straight months, Obama seems incapable of keeping this promise. With the worst employment figures since at least 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ started measuring them, Obama has made a dog’s breakfast of jobs – green and otherwise.

Consider three key Department of Energy programs. DOE’s website boasts that its “clean energy” initiatives – dubbed 1703, 1705, and Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) – loaned $34.7 billion and launched “nearly 60,000” jobs. This totals a staggering $578,333 per position.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, private employers pay average workers $62,757 in wages and benefits. So, Obama is “creating jobs” at 922 percent of the private sector’s cost. Thus, for every green job that Obama supposedly spawns with taxpayer dollars and borrowed Chinese money, private enterprises could hire nine people.

Obama touts green-energy “investments,” even though this is not Obama’s money to invest. Rather than choose winners and losers, which would be bad enough, Team Obama picks losers. It subsidized at least ten “clean” companies that went kaput.

• Abound Solar consumed $70 million of its $400 million Energy Department loan guarantee. The Loveland, Colorado-based company blamed Chinese subsidy payments and European subsidy cuts for falling prices in its thin-film-panel sector. On July 2, Abound Solar filed for Chapter 7 liquidation and prepared to lock shop and fire its 125 employees.

• Solar Trust envisioned Earth’s largest solar-power plant. DOE enthusiastically offered it a $2.1 billion loan guarantee in April 2011, provided that it raised private capital. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar attended the company’s Blythe, California groundbreaking and hailed “a historic moment in America’s new energy frontier.” Solar Trust missed DOE’s benchmarks, however, and announced Chapter 11 bankruptcy last April 2.

• Energy Conversion Devices, a solar-laminate supplier, received a $13.3 million Stimulus tax credit in January 2010 to update its Auburn Hills, Michigan factory and hire some 600 people. ECD pleaded Chapter 11 bankruptcy last Valentine’s Day.

• Ener1 received a $118.5 million DOE Stimulus grant in August 2009. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Greenfield, Indiana to tour Ener1 on January 26, 2011. “Here at Ener1,” Biden said, “we’re going to harness electricity and bring it to the world, like Edison did more than a century ago.” The electric-car battery company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last January 26, exactly one year after Biden’s visit.

• Aptera Motors aspired to build three-wheel electric cars. DOE offered it a $150 million ATVM loan, conditioned upon Aptera’s raising $150 million in non-government capital. Aptera never convinced private investors to finance glorified tricycles. So, last December 2, CEO Paul Wilber stated: “After years of focused effort to bring our products to the market, Aptera Motors is closing its doors, effective today.”

• Massachusetts-based Beacon Power Corp. received a $43 million loan guarantee in October 2010 – DOE’s second such subsidy. The energy-storage concern declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 30, 2011.

• Solyndra, the most notorious of Obama’s green-energy baubles, filed for bankruptcy on August 31, 2011. Taxpayers are liable for this solar-panel maker’s $535 million in loan guarantees – the first that DOE made under Obama.

In death, Solyndra has proved to be anything but green. As San Francisco’s KCBS-TV reported last April, Solyndra’s Milpitas, California facility features metal drums marked “Hazardous Waste.” Cadmium, lead, unidentified black chemicals, and other toxins haunt the premises. A company called iStar said it would remove these poisons — as soon as Solyndra pays its bills.

Solyndra also discarded still-valuable solar-panel components, even though selling them could have generated capital to reimburse its creditors, including America’s taxpayers.

• In June 2009, SpectraWatt scored a $500,000 grant from the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory PV Technology Pre-Incubator program and $150,000 from the National Science Foundation in June 2010. Facing stiff Chinese competition, this solar-cell manufacturer closed its Hopewell Junction, New York factory and dismissed all of its 117 workers in April 2011. SpectraWatt filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on August 19, 2011.  

• Raser Technologies received a $33 million Treasury Department Stimulus grant in February 2010. As its dreams of a geothermal plant in Beaver County, Utah turned to steam, its payroll subsequently evaporated from 42 workers to 27 to 10. Raser declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2011.

• Despite Mountain Plaza, Inc.’s 2003 bankruptcy, the EPA decided to inject $424,000 in Stimulus funds for that Tennessee company’s “truck-stop electrification” technology. Nonetheless, Mountain Plaza again went bankrupt on June 3, 2010. EPA officially awarded those funds 12 days later, despite Mountain Plaza’s insolvency and a related lawsuit.

These doomed projects alone devoured $3.4 billion in taxpayer funds and commitments.

Rather than slam Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital – which deployed private capital behind Staples, Sports Authority, and other still-thriving corporations – President Obama should beg taxpayers’ forgiveness for pouring their hard-earned cash down at least ten “green” rat holes.

___________________

New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a Fox News Contributor, a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service, and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. This column was originally published by National Review Online in July 2012.

You are in favor of the Keystone Pipeline, right?

You should continue to be, because these statistics show such a pipeline is the best way to transport fuels

Pipelines: The Safest Way to Move Fuel By Diana Furchtgott-Roth
RealClearMarkets.com
June 21, 2012

The administration appears unwavering in its decision to block construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would bring oil from Canada, our closest trading partner, to American refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

The relative safety of pipelines vis-à-vis road and rail to transport oil and gas is a topic of preeminent importance. Data published by the U.S. Department of Transportation clearly show that pipelines have lower injury and fatality rates than road and rail, in addition to enjoying a substantial cost advantage.

These findings have substantial relevance for America's energy future. Petroleum production in North America (Mexico, Canada, and the United States) is now over 16 million barrels a day, according to the Energy Information Agency, and could climb to 27 million barrels a day by 2020. Natural gas production in Canada and the United States could rise by a third over the same period, climbing to 22 billion cubic feet per day.

This oil and gas will have to travel to where it is needed. Whether it is produced in Canada, Alaska, North Dakota, or the Gulf of Mexico, it will be used all over the country, especially since new environmental regulations are resulting in the rapid closures of coal-fired power plants. Large fleets of buses and trucks are switching to natural gas, General Motors and Chrysler are making dual-fuel pickup trucks, and newspapers are speculating about the timing of natural gas passenger vehicles for the American market.

The obvious solution is pipelines, which result in fewer fatalities, injuries, and environmental damage than road and rail. Already almost 500,000 miles of interstate pipeline crisscross America, carrying crude oil, petroleum products, and natural gas. The network of pipelines has a remarkable safety record. Americans are more likely to get struck by lightning than to get killed in a pipeline accident.

America has 175,000 miles of onshore and offshore petroleum pipeline and 321,000 miles of natural gas transmission and gathering pipeline. In addition, over 2 million miles of natural gas distribution pipeline send natural gas to businesses and consumers. This is expected to increase as America shifts to natural gas to take advantage of low prices that are expected to last into the foreseeable future.

Pipeline transportation of oil and gas is safer than transportation by road and rail. Pipelines are the primary mode of transportation for crude oil, petroleum products, and natural gas. Approximately 71 percent of crude oil and petroleum products are shipped by pipeline on a ton-mile basis. Tanker and barge traffic accounts for approximately 22 percent of oil shipments. Trucking accounts for 4 percent of shipments, and rail for the remaining 3 percent. Essentially all dry natural gas is shipped by pipeline to end users.

If safety and environmental damages in the transportation of oil and gas were proportionate to the volume of shipments, one would expect that the vast majority of damages to occur on pipelines. But the opposite is true: the majority of incidents occur on road and rail.

Data on pipeline safety are available from the United States Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration Office of Pipeline Safety (PHMSA). Operators report to PHMSA any incident that crosses a certain safety threshold. These reports enable the public to calculate the safety of pipelines in comparison to road and rail.

The Transportation Department has compared the incident, injury, and fatality rates for oil and gas pipelines with transportation by road and rail for the period 2005 through 2009. Road and rail have higher rates of serious incidents, injuries, and fatalities than pipelines, even though more road and rail incidents go unreported.

Rail had the highest rate of incidents, with 651 per billion ton miles per year. This was followed by road, with 20 per billion ton miles per year. Natural gas transmission came next, with 0.89 per billion ton miles. Oil products were the safest, with 0.61 serious incidents per billion ton miles.

With respect to pipeline systems, natural gas transmission lines had the lowest average fatality rate for operator personnel and the general public between 2005 and 2009, with a rate of one person killed per year. This was followed by oil and rail, with an average of 2.4 people per year. The highest is road, with an average of 10.2 people a year.

To draw another comparison, according to the National Weather Service there was an average of 39 reported deaths annually caused by lightning from 2001 through 2010. From 1992 to 2011 fatalities related to pipeline incidents were about 20 per year. An individual had about twice the chance of getting killed by lightning as being killed in a pipeline incident.

Injury rates, defined as numbers of people hospitalized, show a similar pattern. On average, annual injuries for 2005 through 2009 were lowest for oil, at 4 people per year, and natural gas, at 6.2 people per year. The rate was highest for rail, at 25.6 people per year; although this number was heavily biased by the 2005 observation. Road accidents were 21.8 people per year, on average.

Some claim that pipelines carrying Canadian oil sands crude, known as diluted bitumen, have more internal corrosion, and are subject to more incidents. However, PHMSA data show no incidents of oil releases from corrosion from Canadian diluted bitumen between 2002 and 2010. Oil sands crude has been transported in American pipelines for the past decade.

Pipeline safety matters because America continues to ramp up production of oil and natural gas. We need better pipelines to get oil from North Dakota to the refineries in the Gulf, and natural gas from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania (and New York, should the State allow production to move forward) and the Utica Shale in Ohio to the rest of the country.

In the next few years, the administration may allow more states to explore for oil offshore. In addition, Congress might vote to give coastal areas a share of oil drilling revenue, providing a powerful incentive for more drilling. Congress could also form a liability risk pool to allow independents to expand drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. In order for these resources to get where they are needed, we need more pipelines-the safest way to move fuel.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Want to Change Your "Consumption Patterns?"

Listen to Agenda 21 and "benevolent" government may force you to!

Read the warnings of CARE favorite Dreissen and Duggan Flanakin 

"Sustainable justice" = redistribution of scarcity 

The UN Rio+20 agenda means less freedom, happiness, true justice and human rights progress

Paul Driessen and Duggan Flanakin

Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that his Administration would "fundamentally transform the United States of America."  He gave a clue to exactly what he had in mind when he told now-congressional candidate Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher: "When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody."

Not necessarily – especially when activists, regulators, politicians and ruling elites do all they can to ensure there is less and less wealth to spread around.

Just this week, the Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development Perspectives released a new report to the United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit on Sustainable Development. The executive summary of No Future Without Justice begins with the heading, "The World Is in Need of Fundamental Change." The document then offers "solutions," which include "universal fiscal equalization" and a "massive and absolute decoupling of well-being from resource extraction and consumption."

The 18-member Group includes no Americans – but condemns the US and other governments for their dedication to economic growth, rather than wealth redistribution, and demands that governments play a key role in promoting "sustainability" and welfare. They insist that all governments provide universal access to public health care, guaranteed state allowances for every child, guaranteed state support for the unemployed and underemployed, and basic universal pensions and universal social security.

It is, in short, the total nanny state – but with little or no resource extraction or economic growth to support it. In other words, it guarantees sustained injustice and redistribution of increasing scarcity.

The Group admits that human civilization "will still need some form of growth in large parts of the world, to expand the frontiers of maximum available resources for poor countries." However, the massive investments needed to shift to a totally renewable energy and resource-based economy will require "massive de-growth (shrinkage) of products, sectors and activities that do not pass the sustainability test" – as devised by them, affiliated organizations and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Key financial support for the push toward "sustainability" includes a "greener" and "more progressive" tax system featuring a financial transaction tax, abolition of subsidies for all but renewable energy, cutting military spending while dramatically increasing "stimulus" spending, a compensation scheme to pay off "climate debts" to poor countries supposedly impacted by hydrocarbon-driven climate change, a new regulatory framework for financial markets, a financial product safety commission, and still more regulations for hedge funds and private equity funds. The Group also demands public control of financial rating agencies and a government takeover of international accounting standards.

To ensure that "sustainable development" permeates every aspect of society, the Group proposes a new "Sherpa" for Sustainability (with cabinet rank), a parliamentary committee on policy coherence for sustainability, a UN Sustainability Council, a Universal Periodic Review on Sustainability, and an Ombudsman for Intergenerational Justice and Future Generations. It also proposes an International Panel on Sustainability that builds on the "success" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Of course, guiding all this would be the world’s premiere political body and bastion of freedom, fairness, democracy and human rights – the UN General Assembly.

To guide this "fundamental" shift toward the sustainability paradigm, the Group laid down eight principles – the key being the "precautionary principle," which forbids any activity that might involve risk or "do harm." Its own sustainability prescriptions are, of course, exempted from any reviews under the precautionary principle.

The objective, they state, is to build economies that drastically limit carbon emissions, energy consumption, primary resource extraction, waste generation, and air and water pollution. Society must also stop the asserted and computer-modeled loss of species and ruination of ecosystems.
All this naturally will require mandatory changes in consumption patterns and lifestyles (at least for the common folk), and the recognition that work (unlike capital) is not a production factor. Indeed, says the Group, work is not even a commodity. Moreover, only "decent" work qualifies under the sustainability paradigm. (While "decent work" is never defined, it presumably includes backbreaking sunup-to-sundown labor at subsistence farming, which under the Group’s agenda would be called "traditional" or "organic" farming and would not be replaced by modern mechanized agriculture.)

What is the source of all of this gobbledygook? Agenda 21, the centerpiece of the original Rio Earth Summit – which is being perpetuated, refined and redefined at parallel proceedings in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, while the main sustainability discussions are ongoing in Rio de Janeiro.

Agenda 21 states, for example, that "achieving the goals of environmental quality and sustainable development will require ... changes in consumption patterns." This too would be achieved under UN auspices because, as Earth Summit creator Maurice Strong has explained, the days of national sovereignty are over, and the world needs to embrace a system of wealth transfer to ensure environmental security.

In short, "sustainable development" is a system that requires a redefinition of business activity, away from the pursuit of personal profit – and of government activity, away from the pursuit of individual happiness and justice – and toward the pursuit of societal good, as defined by activists and the UN.

Simply put, as Brian Sussman points out in his new book, Eco-Tyranny, the ultimate goal of those who endorse the sustainability paradigm is to expunge "the most precious" rights expressed in the American Declaration of Independence: "that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – that to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed."

The Agenda 21 and sustainability paradigm also rejects and undermines Adam Smith’s belief that mankind’s natural tendency toward self-interest, profit and self-improvement results in greater prosperity, opportunity, health, welfare and justice for all.

Most of all, the UN/Maurice Strong/ Civil Society Reflection Group vision is merely the latest embodiment of Plato’s Republic. Under Plato’s thesis, an educated, elite, but benevolent and mythical, ruling class acts on the belief that its self-appointed philosopher kings have all the right answers, and do not require the Consent of the Governed. The rest of humanity must fall into lockstep or face the consequences; however the results will be exemplary.

Unfortunately, as Alexander Hamilton observed, men are not angels. Moreover, it defies experience and common sense to suppose that the elitist UN, UNEP and environmental activist community will ever display wisdom detached from ardent ideology – or benevolence toward the humans they seek to govern.
____________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org and www.CFACT.tv) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death. Duggan Flanakin is director of research and international programs for CFACT.

Why Should the U.S. Government Subsidize Corn Ethanol?

Read CARE favorite Dennis Avery to find out why it should not.

JUNE 5, 2012
 CORN Ethanol AND a non-warming Earth BY DENNIS T. AVERY

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The earth has failed to warm at all for 15 years now, and American farmers are afraid of losing the “renewable fuel” mandate for corn ethanol—which has given them record crop prices and incomes since 2007. So, they’re proposing a new entitlement designed to ensure that they’ll never lose money again. Their proposed new federal farm bill would guarantee that farmers’ incomes don’t decline—and if future farm prices rise even more, the Feds’ guarantee would ratchet up too.

Thus, if Congress should decide the planet isn’t parboiling itself after all, the taxpayers would be on the hook for even more farm subsidy than today. Forget about that federal debt problem. Everyone else can pitch in to cut government spending, but farmers shouldn’t have to. Never mind that they’re now earning more than the average American, and have far more net worth.  

Bruce Babcock at Iowa State says the new program could give farmers $8 to $14 billion per year, compared to the $5 billion they’ve been getting in direct subsidy payments— on top of their ethanol subsidies. And if they lose the ethanol mandate, and crop prices fall, the government direct payments will get even bigger.

Gasoline prices have doubled under Obama. Even so, the 10 percent ethanol that the EPA forces into our gasoline—“to save the planet” from fossil fuels—still costs even more than the gasoline. While delivering 35 percent fewer miles per gallon. Recently, the EPA approved mixing even more ethanol into our gas—15 percent instead of 10. Automakers warn they cannot stand behind their engine guarantees at the higher blending rate.

Meanwhile, food prices have soared almost as much as gas prices and for the same reason. As we divert more of our corn from cereals and livestock feed to low-grade auto fuel, we’ve created an instant global food shortage. The price of corn was under $2 per bushel in 2007, but has since averaged nearer to $7. Farmers are making so much money they’ve bid up their own land prices to record levels. Thus they raise their own costs to match their payments.

But aren’t we saving the planet? Nope, not even that. Producing a gallon of corn ethanol produces almost the same level of carbon in the atmosphere as burning gasoline. Moreover, instead of temperatures soaring upward, as the environmentalists claimed they would, the earth’s temperatures have gone down since 2007.

The Arctic ice is returning, as the Russians predicted it would due to the 70-year Arctic Ocean cycle. The Antarctic has been cooling since the 1960s. The greenhouse theory said both poles would melt as CO₂ levels rose, but neither has. The Polar bears are at least 600,000 years old, which means they’ve already been though five warm interglacials with open water at the North Pole. The seals must bask on the beaches, instead of on the ice, and the bears romp down to catch them anyway.

So why subsidize corn ethanol?  

I grew up on a farm, and have worked with farmers all my life. As a group, they are my heroes; but, while corn ethanol over-rewards crop farmers, it penalizes livestock farmers. (driving up the cost of hamburgers and chicken tenders). It’s a wash as far as farm belt votes are concerned. Corn ethanol, unfortunately, is the worst farm program ever conceived because it raises gas and food prices simultaneously.

And, now that we’ve discovered shale gas and oil, guess who’ll get a royalty on every cubic foot of shale gas that gets pumped up from below? Answer: The farmers who own the land above the gas. That reward may go to a different set of farmers, but they’re all equally deserving, right? More to the point, they will all bid their own land values up until they can’t make a profit even at $7 per corn bushel.

What will the senators do to ensure their re-election then?

Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., is an environmental economist. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years. Readers may write to him at PO Box 202 Churchville, VA 2442; email to cgfi@hughes.net. Visit our website at www. cgfi.org