The White House recently announced a “jobs plan” that will cost American taxpayers about $500 billion starting in 2013 for a government spending spree today. We knew what to expect: green-energy subsidies, tax breaks for people who already pay no income tax, further stimulus for non-shovel-ready projects, increased taxes on the wealthy — in short, most anything except what would actually create jobs, namely lifting the prohibitive regulatory and tax burdens on the nation’s job creators. Obama’s policies — particularly his heartless energy policies — promise to eliminate many more jobs than they create.
In times of economic hardship, high energy prices cut particularly deep. Nobody has said it better than the empathizer-in-chief:
One area of particular concern has been the cost and security of our energy. In an economy that relies on oil, rising prices at the pump affect everybody — workers and farmers, truck drivers and restaurant owners. Businesses see it hurt their bottom line. Families feel the pinch when they fill up their tank. For Americans already struggling to get by, it makes life that much harder.
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Talk like that (from his big energy speech last March) is meant to convey empathy, understanding, and common cause. The trouble is, he’s got other things to consider. If we can’t save the planet from global warming, what’s the point of worrying about the cost of living today? Do you remember when Obama locked up the Democratic nomination back in 2008? That was “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,” as he put it that night.
I’m not much for this sort of oratory. I prefer when people get to the point, as when incoming Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said, before one congressional committee, “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” That exclamation was wonderful not just because it was simple, and clear as a mountain stream. It was also an accurate description of the administration’s energy policy.
The “alternative energy” movement has an enormous obstacle to contend with, namely that none of the alternative energy sources produce nearly as much energy, nearly as reliably, nearly as cheaply, as fossil fuels. Sources such as wind and solar are inherently intermittent and unpredictable, even when they are found in high enough density that it is economical to use them, which is virtually never. As long as fossil fuels are cheap, the subsidies to alternative sources have to be huge, and therefore politically painful. But even if oil prices reach a point at which renewables can compete on price (which would plunge the world into an incalculably deep economic crisis), there simply isn’t enough marketable renewable energy to replace the vast bounty of fossil fuels.
The president likes to target the “special subsidies” we give oil companies. What he’s talking about is manufacturing tax deductions, expensing for intangible business costs, and depletion tax allowances. These tax-related provisions, which the president misleadingly characterizes as special perks for oil and gas companies, are generally available to all American manufacturers. Eliminating them would in fact single out the energy industry for punitive tax treatment — and it already pays out a higher proportion of its income in taxes than virtually any other industry. In his 2012 budget, Obama proposed eliminating twelve such tax-related provisions, generating $46 billion over ten years, all of which would go to his proposed $148 billion in subsidies for green and renewable energy.
If adopted, this confiscatory scheme would transfer more than $4 billion a year from the oil-and-gas sector to alternative energy — and the administration is proud of it! Mark this, from the White House website:
The energy industry objects that drillers will have to cut back the money they spend on development by about a third, eliminating or deferring hundreds and potentially thousands of jobs. No doubt the thought of all those job losses keeps the president up at night — but we have to start shutting down the fossil-fuel industry in order to make sure the oceans begin to recede and the planet begins to heal.
The energy policies of the Obama/Chu crew are more than just stupid. They are insane. And cruel as well. How can these people sleep at night knowing that their decisions have caused millions of hard pressed families and businesses to pay more than necessary for their daily energy needs. Such policies have a human cost that seems a matter of total indifference to the book-smart life-stupid Obama bureaucrats.
It kills me how people who preach environmentalism yet live a comfy modern life have never stopped to really think about what our life would be like without affordable energy. I am thankful to have a car to get to the grocery store, oil to heat my home, and electricity to run my refridgerator. I know Al Gore is so rich he does not have to worry about the cost of oil or electricity and who needs a car when you have a private jet. Where I live we depend on cars. I proposed that World Car Free Day which was celebrated last week by spolied trust fund kids, should be renamed Rural Genocide Day. When I picture a future with no cars and unnaffordable energy, I envision a dark and miserable dystopia, not a fluffy unicorn and rainbow utopia as the radicals on the left do.
Don't get me wrong, I love the Amish. They are great people who I am thankful to have as neighbors. However I know full well my limitations. Anyone without the family, community, skills, and upbringing they have had would most likely starve to death or be forced to move to a city and live in poverty if cars were prohibited or prohibitively taxed or gas mileage mandated out of practical existence.
You forgot to mention Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's recent effort to restrict even more Western lands from oil and gas development by designating them as "wildlands," an effort that was defunded by the House. The specter of a presidential declaration creating additional national monuments in the West, and thus gobbling up vast tracts and their mineral resources, as was done by President Clinton with the Escalante Grand Staircase in southern Utah, looms large as long as President Obama is in the White House, despite concessions and promises wrangled from him by western congressional leaders that he won't do what Clinton did. Salazar's Interior Department would love to designate additional large swaths of the West as wilderness, and is receiving unrelenting pressure from environmental groups to do so.
Frankly, I am sick of the trust fund kids and Al Gores of the world who don't have to worry about the cost of anything, trying to starve and destroy the lives of my rural neighbors. Don't tread on us!
If it's proven that carbon dioxide isn't the "devil incarnate", (and I honestly believe it's not) then there is absolutely no point whatsoever to alternative energy schemes, electric cars or even hybrids like the Prius. Let's stop this nonsense and get serious about using our rich oil, gas, and coal resources and make electrical energy as cheap and abundant as possible for the whole world
As a matter of fact, if it is not the devil incarnate, then efforts that intentionally destroy our standard of living and way of life are genocidal.
The green movement in this country is just a few degrees less despicable than the one child policy in China, where women are forcibly and violently coerced into killing their unborn children. We are already facing in that direction. Even if it is the devil incarnate, can we really justify solutions that will hurt so many people. Perhaps the solutions are worse than the problem.
The working class can't win with the radicals in charge. The reason I live in a car dependent rural area is because the open spaces zoning (as mentioned in Thomas Sowell's article today) and untaxed ivy league land in the nearest population center makes the cost of housing prohibitively expensive to anyone other than the well off Elizabeth Warrens of the world and the free riding poor. Anyone in the middle has no choice but to commute outside of the liberal dystopia. It is wonderful that the Elizabeth Warrens of the world make obscenely high salaries thanks to the universities tax exempt status and immense subsidy from the taxpayer and can afford a house close enough to their job to walk or ride a bike. Those of us in REALITY have children to feed and bills to pay and we need our cars and affordable energy just to get by.
I've looked at the evidence, and I accept that anthropogenic global warming is a real phenomenon.
There's no other way to explain the long-term retreat of the North polar ice cap in summer (the Northwest Passage has been open water in summer only since 2007, something that hasn't been true in all the prior time that the U.S. existed).
But Obama is lying when he claims that somehow we're going to create "millions of green jobs" to cope with this. It's Bastiat's "broken windows" fallacy all over again. The work needed to cope with global warming could have been put to more productive uses if global warming weren't real. In this case, the 3,500 jobs created so far by the "green" loan guarantee program is going to be dwarfed by the job losses in the coal and oil industries.
And so, the bottom line:
Anthropogenic global warming is a real phenomenon. I'm sure of that.
And dealing with it is going to cost like hell. You might as well knock 1 or 2 percent off U.S. GDP from now on, permanently.
I think you can knock more than 1 or 2% off the GDP. Once the coal and oil industries are taken down, the average consumer and businesses will be spending a much higher percentage of their income on essentials, leading to collapses in other non essential industries as well. We might as well get ready for a permanent reduction in standard of living, a perpetual depression. Also, what you stated above may be a case for global warming, but what evidence do you have that it is anthropogenic rather than a natural occurence? Where I lived a glacier once resided, is that evidence that ancient humans caused the earth to warm?
Glaciers have been retreating for the last 400 years. What caused it before CO2? You do know that the records for the extent of the polar ice cap only go back 30 years. The entirety of the record covers one warm phase of the PDO. BTW, since 2007, the polar caps have been recovering, yet CO2 continues to increase.
As to the Northwest Passage, it is regurally ice free. We have ships logs going back several hundred years to vouche for that.
AGW, is a real phenomena, however it only accounts for at most 0.1 to 0.2C of warming.
Beyond that. Warming is good for the planet.
CO2 is plant food, more CO2 means plants grow bigger, faster, and use less water.
There is absolutely no downside to having more CO2 in the atmosphere. (Up to the point it becomes poisonous, somewhere around 15,000ppm.)
If we hadn't had global cooling we wouldn't have had glaciers a mile or more thick covering much of N. America and we wouldn't have the Great Lake's basins eroded by the ice. If we didn't have global warming New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and most of Canada would be under a mile of ice. The Great Lakes, Long Island, and the Finger Lakes would not exist. Sea level would be 300 or so feet lower than today if the water were locked up in ice. Of course climate changes. Only a scientific dunce who never took an introductory geology course would expect a climate never to vary. It's man's contribution to climate change that is in question. I think our CO2 contribution is of trivial significance
One minor technical point about drilling risks offshore. The statement about virtually no risk while drilling through sheer rock before hitting the productive reservoir is not accurate. The stratigraphic layers that are penetrated on the way to the pay zone may well be over-pressured. This is not an uncommon occurrence, and is managed routinely.
Everyone benefits if we keep our energy costs as low as possible. If man's activity has increased the temperature of the atmosphere so what? We'll have a longer growing season, we can feed more people. We can also have more money in our pockets thus economic activity is enhanced. The governmental guys should love that cause tax revenue will expand. It is criminal to not have incentives to keep energy costs low. Everyone's standard of living would improve, especially those on the lower end of the socio-economic ladder. Compassion is not on Obama's agenda. If it were, he'd be doing the opposite of what he's doing. We should be encouraging the expansion of all means of energy production. Wouldn't it be nice if we could tell OPEC to pound sand? We can do it. We are Americans.
I emphatically agree with the gist of the previous comments, especially those that point out that our comfortable (for the most part) modern life depends on ample supplies of affordable energy. It also seems to me that the widespread abhorence of the use, even the careful use, of nuclear energy (the French have succeeded in doing so) is insane.
Liberals like to cast the oil companies as evil and their money as blood money, but if we continue policies like those of this administration the oil companies will just do like the automobile companies are doing - pick up their toys and move to Asia. Nothing else will change except that all of the jobs and all of the revenue associated with the oil business will be flowing into China instead of America. America may have to be less concerned about air polution, but only because our grandchildren won't be able to afford to buy cars. I work in the nuclear power industry. I can tell you that, because of our long building sabatical, most of the nuclear companies have moved overseas, sold their patents and plans and/or been absorbed by foreign countries. We have no large foundaries here as a concequence and we lost our stranglehold on the heavy equipment industry. Also as a concequence, all of our replacement parts are made in China, Korea and Europe. It takes a long time to dominate an industry and when you willingly forfeit that dominance, it is nearly impossible to recover. In my industry, putting off building has been devastating to our nation. Not only because of the loss of supporting foundaries and equipment and those associated jobs, but because we now are forced to hire a large number of our engineers from Asia because nuclear degree programs in the US are few. The auto industry is soon to follow. GM is now building and selling more cars in China than in the US and Ford is gearing up for production in India. Once gone, we won't get that industry back either. If oil goes, what else will remain? We've already lost windmills to China and electronics to the Pacific Rim.
