How many Americans Will Follow Obama’s Leadership On Climate Change?

We here at CARE noticed (perhaps you did too) that President Obama repeatedly states, “Few challenges facing America—and the world—are more urgent than combating climate change,” and that “We will make it clear that America is ready to lead."

Building upon the work of CARE Blog contributor Paul Driessen, we’ve decided to raise some questions: How many Americans will support a 1400-page energy and climate bill that will create a trillion-dollar cap-trade-and-tax industry? How many Americans will follow the leadership of a man who is working hard to ensure that energy and food costs “necessarily skyrocket,” killing jobs, and imposing an all-intrusive Green Nanny State? How many Americans are willing to point an economic gun to the heads of their neighbors and to pull the trigger during this economic downturn?

These questions have serious implications and we encourage our readers to delve further into the issue with our friend Paul Driessen.

Leader of None
"Few challenges facing America--and the world--are more urgent than combating climate change," President Obama has asserted. "We will make it clear that America is ready to lead."

The President and Al Gore are certainly ready to lead. But how many will follow?

Even in America, and certainly on the world stage, the two increasingly look like Don Quixote and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. As they tilt for windmills, and against a "monstrous giant of infamous repute"--climate disasters conjured up by computer models and Hollywood special effects masters--their erstwhile followers are making politically correct noises, but running for the hills.

The House of Representatives passed a 1400-page energy and climate bill - by a razor-thin margin, and only after Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman packed it with enough last-minute deals to protect favored congressional districts, buy votes, and curry favor with assorted special interests. Not one legislator actually read the bill--which would create a trillion-dollar cap-trade-and-tax industry, ensure that energy and food costs "necessarily skyrocket," kill jobs, and impose an all-intrusive Green Nanny State.

Republicans want to control what people do in their bedrooms, insists the old canard. Democrats, it appears, want to dictate what we do everywhere outside of our bedrooms. And Sancho Gore wants to become the world's first global warming billionaire, by selling climate indulgences, aka carbon offsets.

The reaction has been predictable--by anyone except House and White House czars and czarinas.

Citizens are livid over yet another attempt to use a purported crisis to justify further expanding the government and spending billions more tax dollars for alarmist research, activism and propaganda, just ahead of the Copenhagen climate conference. Global warming continues to rank dead-last in Pew Research and other polls that actually list it as an issue. Rasmussen puts the President's approval ratings at 46% and falling. Zogby reports that 57% of Americans oppose cap-and-trade bills.

Manufacturing states, which get 60-98% of their electricity from coal, worry that the only thing they'll export in ten years will be jobs. Democrat senators from those states worry that the energy and climate issue will be "toxic for them during midterm elections," says Politico magazine.

Even companies that had eagerly sought seats at the negotiating table are now gagging. ConocoPhillips, Caterpillar and others finally realize that cap-and-tax will severely penalize them and their customers.

Not even the climate is cooperating. Outside of Dallas, 2009 has brought some of coldest summer days on record across the US. Near freezing temperatures nipped at crops, and gas heaters were sine qua non at an August 29 outdoor wedding in Wisconsin. The Farmers Almanac predicts a brutal 2009-2010 winter.

In Europe, every longitude has a platitude about saving the planet. But EU countries that agreed to slash greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels are well above their Kyoto Protocol targets - Austria by 30% and Spain by 37% as of 2008. And despite new commitments to cut emissions 40 years from now, you don't need tarot cards or entrails to predict the more probable EU emissions future.

Germany plans to build 27 coal-fired electrical generating plants by 2020. Italy plans to double its reliance on coal in just five years. Europe as a whole will have 40 new coal-fired power plants by 2015, columnist Alan Caruba reports. The Polish Academy of Sciences has publicly challenged manmade global warming disaster hypotheses. And only 11% of Czech citizens believe rising carbon dioxide emissions caused global temperatures to climb 1975-1998--and also caused them to rise 1915-1940, fall 1940-1975, then stabilize and decline again 1998-2009.
Australia just voted down punitive global warming legislation. New Zealand has put its emissions-bashing program in a deep freeze.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's top economic aid bluntly dismissed any talk of following President Obama's quixotic lead. "We won't sacrifice economic growth for the sake of emission reduction," he told reporters at the July 2009 G8 meeting.

Chinese and Indian leaders are equally adamant. China is playing a smart hand in this high-stakes climate poker game, drawing up plans to combat global warming sometime in the future, and gradually improve its energy efficiency and pollution control. However, it is building a new coal-fired power plant every week and putting millions of new cars on its growing network of highways.

So is India, which will double its coal-based electricity generation and produce millions of Tata and other affordable cars by 2020. "India will not accept any binding emission-reduction target, period," Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has stated. "This is a non-negotiable stand."

India and China have a "complete convergence" of views on these matters, Ramesh added. No wonder: 400 million Indians still do not have electricity; 500 million Chinese still do not.

No electricity means no refrigeration, to keep food and medicines from spoiling. It means no water purification, to reduce baby-killing intestinal diseases. No modern heating and air conditioning, to reduce hypothermia in winter, heat stroke in summer, and lung disease year-round. It means no lights or computers, no modern offices, factories, schools, shops, clinics or hospitals.

Fossil fuels are "gradually eliminating poverty in the Third world," observes UCLA economist Deepak Lal. Any call to curb carbon emissions would "condemn billions to continued poverty. While numerous Western do-gooders shed crocodile tears about the Third World's poor, they are willing to prevent them from taking the only feasible current route out from this abject state" - oil, gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric energy development. The situation is intolerable, unsustainable, lethal and immoral.

The only way India and China would agree to cut their emissions is if the United States cut its emissions 40% by 2020, says Ramesh - back to 1959 levels and pre-JFK living standards, when the US population was 179 million (versus 306 million today). No way will that happen. So Asian energy and economic development will continue apace. And rightly so, to foster human rights and environmental justice.

All is not bleak, however, for Canute Obama's impossible dream of controlling global temperatures.

British politicians remain committed to slashing CO2 emissions and replacing hydrocarbons with wind power. Unfortunately, the biggest UK wind projects have been abandoned or put on indefinite hold--and a growing demand/supply imbalance portends still higher energy prices, widespread power cuts, rolling blackouts and energy rationing, the Daily Telegraph reported on August 31. Brits may soon trade their stiff upper lips for contentious town hall meetings and ballot-box revolution.

The Democratic Party of Japan's landslide victory in the August 30 election will likely create a new coalition government tilted strongly to the left. The DJP has pledged to cut carbon dioxide gas emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 - though this will likely strangle economic growth and job creation, especially if one coalition partner's opposition to nuclear power becomes DJP policy.

Then there is Africa, where leaders appear ready to support curbs on energy use--in exchange for up to $300 billion per year in additional foreign aid, "to cushion the impact of global warming." That will be nice for their private bank accounts, but less so for Africa's 750 million people who still don't have electricity. Those people will simply be sacrificed, to prevent natural or fictitious climate disasters.

Of course, the real goal was never to control the climate. It was always to control energy use, lives, jobs, economies, transportation and housing--and usher in a new era of high tax global governance. The American people are increasingly saying they're not ready to grant that power to Obama Gore & Company.


Paul Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death (http://www.eco-imperialism.com/) and senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, whose new book (Freezing in the Dark) reveals how environmental pressure groups raise money and promote policies that restrict energy development and hurt poor families.

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.

The Social Responsibility of Coal

Omigosh! Reading this is like reading all of the last year’s worth of op-eds, newsletters and blog posting from CARE. It is like the author Paul Driessen got inside CARE and said everything in one smart, and articulate posting. You must read this!

In fact, CARE and Paul are very close--as you will see if you go back and review the various writings available through CARE. But this piece is just brilliant! It captures the current worldwide energy picture in a clear and concise manner. Read it and pass it on to everyone you know who cares about energy.

Relying More on Coal Generates Benefits that are Too Often Ignored
They get little credit for their efforts, but most resource extraction, manufacturing and power generation companies strive to be “socially responsible”--by emphasizing energy efficiency, resource conservation, pollution control and worker safety in producing the raw materials, consumer products and electricity that improve, safeguard and enrich our lives.

It’s not easy, due to the nature of their business, public intolerance for any ecological impacts--and the fact that “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) is often defined and used by activist groups to promote ideological agendas. Above all, activists want to engineer a “wholesale transformation” of our energy and economic system, away from hydrocarbon fuels and into “eco-friendly” renewable resources; reduce our living standards to “sustainable” levels (their definition again); and give them power over the power that sustains our modern society.

This “hard green” version of CSR largely ignores socio-economic considerations, the many benefits of fossil fuel and nuclear power, the significant land and environmental impacts of wind, solar and ethanol--and the oppressive effects of soaring energy prices on jobs and poor families.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi closed down the House of Representatives on August 1, to avoid an energy vote that Democrats would have lost, and later displayed her acumen on the subject when she opined: “natural gas is a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels.” News flash: Natural gas is a fossil fuel.

An Energy Economics 101 course is clearly needed, so that members of both parties can legislate more astutely … understand why mining and burning coal is a socially responsible component of sound energy policy … and help stanch the unnecessary flow of $700 billion a year in foreign oil payments.

Energy is the master resource, the foundation for everything we eat, use and do. Sound policies ensure that energy is abundant, reliable and affordable. Restricting supplies in the face of rising global demand drives up prices and sends shockwaves through families, industries, communities and nations.

Average total energy costs for a typical American household doubled from $2,400 in 1997 to over $5,000 in 2007. Food prices also soared, while wages remained relatively stagnant. More low and middle income families have been forced to choose between heating, eating, driving, medicines and housing--with little left over for vacations, emergencies, retirement, college or charity.

Thankfully, most electricity bills rose more modestly, because half of all US electricity is generated using coal, and the price for that fossil fuel has risen far less than oil, gasoline and natural gas prices. However, in places like Florida--where coal is verboten, natural gas is promoted but drilling for it is banned, and wind and solar are all the rage--electricity prices continue to climb. Florida Power & Light must pay four times as much for photovoltaic power as for coal power, the Heartland Institute reports, and schools face budget crunches for buses and electricity.

America has centuries’ worth of coal. Our reliance on this resource has tripled since 1970--but sulfur dioxide and particulate emissions are down 40% and 90% below 1970 levels, respectively, notes air pollution expert Joel Schwartz. New technologies and regulations will reduce coal power plant emissions even further by 2020, but even current emissions (including mercury) pose no significant risks to human health, he emphasizes.

Radical environmentalists worry and wail about speculative health risks, to justify anti-coal campaigns. But their concerns often disappear when the discussion shifts to millions of Africans who die every year from real, preventable lung and intestinal diseases that result from an absence of electricity for cooking, heating, refrigeration, safe drinking water, hospitals and decent living standards. Wind and solar will save few of those lives--and yet green pressure groups stridently oppose fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power for Africa.

US electricity consumption will continue climbing, even with conservation, because our population and technology use are increasing steadily. Meanwhile, 59 coal-fired plants were cancelled in 2007 thanks to eco-activists, who are challenging 50 more.

The US now has virtually no excess capacity, and switching to natural gas as a primary power plant fuel (and fuel for backup generators to support wind farms) means electricity prices could increase “as much as tenfold,” says energy analyst Mark Mills, especially if we continue to ban drilling. “After that we may see forced conservation, or even blackouts in rotation among business and residential customers.”

Energy shortages and price hikes could cost millions of jobs in the automotive, airline, tourism, food and beverage, textiles, paper making, plastics, chemicals, metals and manufacturing industries--especially if Congress also enacts cap-and-trade rules. Most will never be replaced by “green collar” jobs that some claim will be created by intermittent, unreliable wind and solar energy.

Switching to plug-in hybrid cars will only exacerbate the problem. They will need a well-stocked power grid to plug into, and current energy policies virtually ensure that it won’t be there.

In addition to balance of trade issues, over-reliance on imports has major national security implications, as Russia’s invasion of Georgia forcefully reminded Europe. Germany imports 40% of its natural gas from Russia, and six Eastern European countries are entirely dependent on Mr. Putin’s energy. Shackled further by their opposition to nuclear power, fear of climate change Armageddon and fixation on the Kyoto Protocols, the EU has barely protested actions by a rogue bear that has already cut off natural gas supplies to Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic, to impose its will.

That should cause Congress to reflect more soberly on US dependence on oil from Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran and Russia. Coal could be converted into synthetic liquid and gas fuels, to replace the oil and gas we refuse to develop, but legal and regulatory hurdles restrict that option, too.

A key justification for these anti-energy policies is cataclysmic global warming. However, 32,000 scientists have signed the Oregon Petition, saying they see “no convincing evidence” that humans are causing climate change, or that it will be catastrophic. Climate models continue to predict chaos but, as one scientist wryly notes, faith in their predictions is as misplaced as reliance on emails from Nigeria, advising recipients that they have won the Lotto.

Global temperatures have not increased since 1998, despite steadily increasing carbon dioxide levels, and solar scientists like Pal Brekke say the sun’s formerly high activity level is leveling off or abating, which could bring falling global temperatures.

China and India are planning or building 700 coal-fired power plants; European countries plan to build 50 more in five years, to reduce dependence on Russian gas; and other nations are also increasing fossil fuel use for transportation and power generation.

Thus, no matter how much the USA reduces its energy use, driving, heating, air-conditioning and living standards--no matter how much it punishes poor families or commits economic suicide--its actions would not reduce global CO2 levels, or affect Earth’s climate.

We need to conserve, and continue improving renewable energy technologies that currently provide just 0.5% of our energy. But at this time renewables are simply too inefficient, expensive and unreliable to permit a shutdown of hydrocarbon-based systems.

Putting “social responsibility” and “environmental justice” in the hands of eco-activists and liberal Democrats is like giving a machine gun to an idiot child. We need definitions that recognize the full spectrum of societal needs, and energy policies that acknowledge life in the real world.

Paul Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death (http://www.eco-imperialism.com/) and senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, whose new book (Freezing in the Dark) reveals how environmental pressure groups raise money and promote policies that restrict energy development and hurt poor families.

Environmental Justification

The term environmental justice is often used to justify the enviro zealots actions to push one plan or another. Here in Albuquerque, NM--where CARE is based--this term was recently bandied about at a farce of a hearing where the public’s say had no sway and the deciding committee had already made up its mind before the formality of a hearing was held. The more accurate term might “environmental justification.”

In this new piece from Energy Counsel Member Paul Driessen, he suggests a flip in the “environmental justice” policies. The enviro zealots use the term to punish those who do not agree with their policies--as you’ll note in Driessen’s piece. Here, he hypothetically suggests that we punish the enviro zealots when children people die due to their policies.

Could the plans set forth by the enviro zealots be hurting people--even killing them? Read on, and tell us what you think.

Humpty Dumpty Environmental Policies
Playing games with language, justice and people’s lives
“Environmental justice” is often used to benchmark corporate social responsibility.

“People of color and low-income populations are disproportionately impacted by pollution,” argues Leslie Fields, Sierra Club director of environmental justice.

It’s unjust that people lose their jobs when companies merge or downsize, to cut costs or boost profits, activists claim.

“Every time a child dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned,” for causing global warming, rants UK firebrand George Monbiot. Government leaders “should go to jail” for failing to act more quickly to prevent planetary climate cataclysm, insists Canadian eco-zealot David Suzuki.

These assertions range from simplistic to outrageous to straight out of Lewis Carroll.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” Humpty Dumpty replied, “who is to be master. That’s all.”

Indeed, activist terminology often guides public policy--and dictates who is to be master: those who must live with the consequences of their personal choices--or those who must live with policies imposed by others. That reality underscores why policies must be founded on full and fair assessment of risks and benefits, especially to the poor and powerless, rather than on what advances political agendas.

A few years back, mostly black residents of Convent, Louisiana welcomed the construction of a modern plastics factory that would have brought 2,000 construction jobs and 165 permanent positions that paid double the wages of working in sugar cane fields, plus health benefits and a stronger tax base. The local NAACP also supported the facility.

But Sierra Club activists opposed the plant, claiming Shintech, Inc’s factory might increase allegedly high cancer rates, in violation of environmental justice principles. The factory was built elsewhere, in a mostly white community, and Convent remained poor.

Allegations of high cancer rates turned out to be false. In fact, cancer rates might well have declined, because workers with medical benefits would have discovered the disease in time to get treatment. But activist notions of “environmental justice” had prevailed. They were the masters, and Convent’s residents never had a choice. By the time the truth came out, the activists were off lambasting other facilities.

Losing a job is always a wrenching experience. Capitalism’s forces of “creative destruction” are as powerful today as when horse-and-buggy craftsmen were laid off by automobile makers--and mountains of manure were replaced by exhaust from internal combustion engines. Mergers and acquisitions fueled by innovation, competition and profit-seeking clearly create jobs, though they also destroy jobs.

However, corporate decisions affect a limited number of workers--whereas government policies affect millions. The drive to eliminate fossil fuels, switch to a CO2-free economy and prevent computer-generated climate disasters might create some new jobs, but it would also cost countless jobs and impact families all across America.

European industries are already reevaluating investment decisions and cancelling projects, largely because of an increasingly strict and unpredictable regulatory climate in the EU, according to World Energy Council vice chairman Johannes Teyssen. New power plants are being put on hold, threatening to hike electricity prices even further and exacerbate a growing energy shortfall--and companies are pondering relocation to China and India, as it becomes harder to get building and expansion permits.

Similar anxieties are increasing in the United States, as Congress considers a dozen tough climate change bills. Not one of them acknowledges the uncertainties inherent in climate models and predictions of catastrophic warming. Not one considers recent solar magnetic readings that some researchers fear could reflect a downturn in the sun's energy output, which could trigger a planetary cold spell, severe weather and widespread crop failures.

Will legislators and eco agitators be as outraged about widespread job losses caused by such legislation, as they have been about comparatively minor “injustices” perpetrated by capitalists? Will they restore funding to the FutureGen coal project that was to evaluate the economic and technological viability of carbon sequestration initiatives on which so much climate change policy relies?

Will they reverse land use policies that have driven tens of thousands of blacks from San Francisco and other California cities--and reject proposals to limit how many miles workers can drive each year to get from affordable homes to jobs in those cities?

Drownings in impoverished Third World countries are tragic, but no more so than far more numerous deaths from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition and lung disease among children in those nations. But environmental justice agitators are among the perpetrators of these unnecessary deaths.

They pressure countries and aid agencies not to use DDT, insecticides or larvacides, causing disease, death and eventual resistance by mosquitoes to pyrethrum in bednets and by parasites to ACT drugs. They oppose biotech crops and medicines, which could reduce blindness, malnutrition, intestinal disease and deaths--and enable Third World farmers to grow more nutritious crops, with less water and fewer pesticides, under widely varied climate conditions.
Eco-alarmists tell impoverished Africans that global warming is the greatest threat they face--when Al Gore uses more electricity in a week than 100 million Africans together use in a year. Those people rarely or never have electricity and must burn wood and animal dung, resulting in lung diseases that cause millions of deaths annually. Yet alarmists oppose fossil fuel power plants, as well as nuclear and hydroelectric projects--guaranteeing that Africa’s poverty and death toll will continue.

Should we demand that eco-imperialists be jailed or drowned every time children die because of these policies? Certainly not. But we should demand real environmental justice. We should demand an end to the censorship and intimidation practiced by the United Nations and many colleges, as documented by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and Evan Maloney’s provocative film, “Indoctrinate U.”

We should insist that the US government begin developing our publicly owned energy resources, as Congress of Racial Equality chairman Roy Innis suggests in his new book, “Energy Keepers - Energy Killers: The new civil rights battle.”

We should define “environmental justice” to recognize economist Indur Goklany’s finding that “future generations will be better off in even the richest but warmest” IPCC scenarios, and under worst-case scenarios presented by the Stern Review. If communities have abundant, affordable energy to sustain economic growth and technology, they will enjoy better health and be able to adapt to whatever climate changes nature (or humans) might bring.

We need kilowatts, not Killawatts--and reliable, affordable energy, not anti-energy policies that force poor families to rely on BeggaWatts.


Paul Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death (http://www.eco-imperialism.com/) and senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, whose new book (Freezing in the Dark) reveals how environmental pressure groups raise money and promote policies that restrict energy development and hurt poor families.