Because physicist Steven Chu worked out so, so well:
MIT Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems and director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Ernest Moniz will be nominated as the new head of the U.S. Department of Energy, an agency which runs 17 national laboratories, and has more than 16,000 federal employees and 90,000 contract employees.
President Barack Obama said Monday that he will nominate Moniz to lead the DOE, which is the largest funder of research in physical sciences.
A faculty member at MIT since 1973, Moniz has focused his research in theoretical nuclear physics and in energy technology and policy studies. Under Moniz’s direction, MITEI has been responsible for nearly 800 research projects at the institute and has brought in 25 percent of the MIT faculty in its pojects and programs, two-thirds of which have been in renewable energy, energy effeciency, carbon management and developing tools used in biotech and nanotech. Of those projects, more than 100 have been in solar energy.
In fact, MITEI received another $25 million pledge from oil giant BP for research over the next five years. The pledge doubled the amount the company has given to MITEI.
However, Moniz is on the record — post Fukushima — as supporting the continued use of nuclear power and is in favor of natural gas, calling it a “a bridge to a low-carbon future.” So maybe there’s some hope in this change?
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is no fan of Gina McCarthy:
McCarthy “Wholly Unqualified” To Serve As EPA Administrator, CEI Says
Nominee Has Misled on Major Regulations and Is Implicated in Email Scandal
WASHINGTON, Mar. 4, 2013 — Gina McCarthy has decades of experience as an environmental bureaucrat, but a number of factors make her wholly unqualified to serve as EPA Administrator, say experts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. President Barack Obama nominated McCarthy on Monday to succeed Lisa Jackson to lead EPA.
“As Assistant EPA Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, Gina McCarthy has implemented radical environmental policies that will put hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work but do little to nothing to improve environmental quality,” said Myron Ebell, Director of the Center for Energy and Environment at CEI.
“McCarthy has regularly tried to conceal the Obama administration’s economically destructive policies by misleading Congress, the public and industry. She has regularly stonewalled congressional requests for crucial information. And she is up to her ears in the Richard Windsor e-mail scandal,” Ebell said.
McCarthy testified under oath to Congress in October 2011 that fuel-economy standards and regulating greenhouse gas emissions are “closely aligned but not related.” Subsequent releases of information reveal McCarthy and the EPA were fully aware – as is everyone else – that regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles is inextricably related to fuel-economy standards. This matters because EPA has statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions but not set CAFE standards for vehicles.
On coal, she told a gathering of industry officials the emissions regulations her office was developing would not require utilities to switch from coal to natural gas in building new power plants, as long as they used best available technology. But the New Source Performance Standards for new power plants released in 2011sets limits natural gas plants can meet but coal plants cannot.
More reasons from CEI on why she shouldn’t head the EPA here.
The Times is discontinuing the Green blog, which was created to track environmental and energy news and to foster lively discussion of developments in both areas. This change will allow us to direct production resources to other online projects. But we will forge ahead with our aggressive reporting on environmental and energy topics, including climate change, land use, threatened ecosystems, government policy, the fossil fuel industries, the growing renewables sector and consumer choices.
Thanks to all of our readers.
Andrew Revkin, of the Time’s “Dot Earth” blog, isn’t very happy, however:
The news side of The Times has nine sports blogs; nine spanning fashion, lifestyles, health, dining and the like; four business blogs; four technology blogs (five if you include automobiles as a technology); and a potpourri of other great efforts, with four of my favorites being the Learning Network blog, Scientist at Work, the IHT Rendezvous blog on global news and Lens, run by the paper’s photo staff. You can tour the paper’s blogosphere here.
I would like to have thought there was space for the environment in that mix, even though these issues are still often seen by journalists weaned on politics as a sidenote (remember Candy Crowley‘s post-debate comment about “all you climate change people”?).
One of the sports blogs Revkin mentions is “The Rail,” providing an “insider’s view of horse racing action.” Who knew horse racing was more important to the Times than the environment?
A 15-year-old rape victim has been sentenced to 100 lashes for engaging in premarital sex, court officials said.
The charges against the girl were brought against her last year after police investigated accusations that her stepfather had raped her and killed their baby. He is still to face trial.
Prosecutors said her conviction did not relate to the rape case.
I love how the BBC describes the Maldives: “An Islamic archipelago.”
The legal system of the Maldives, an Islamic archipelago with a population of some 400,000, has elements of Islamic law (Sharia) as well as English common law.
I wonder if the Maldives uses that in their tourism materials? Come for the Sharia law, stay for the sun!
The test of President Obama’s seriousness about addressing climate change is not hispending decision on the much-debated Keystone XL pipeline. It’s whether he effectively consigns coal-fired power plants — one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions — to the ashcan of history.
Since his reelection, Obama has signaled a new focus on climate change. “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms,” he said in an inaugural address that devoted eight sentences to the issue, more than he spent on any other item on his policy agenda.
The strong words from Obama were a welcome surprise. Few doubted that the president understood and accepted the scientific consensus about humankind’s impact on the climate. His dramatic toughening of automobile fuel-economy standards, announced last year, was a major step that will eventually produce great benefits. But it has been unclear whether he is prepared to take similarly bold action to mitigate the other big source of atmospheric carbon dioxide: emissions from power plants.
“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” Obama vowed in his State of the Union speech. That’s what I’d call unequivocal.
As if Obama needed more of an incentive, a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study, published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, confirms that temperatures have been rising ever since the Industrial Revolution — when the burning of fossil fuels dramatically increased — just as climate scientists have been telling us.
The fight continues between Tesla and the scathing review the Times gave their Model S sedan.
First up, Elon Musk posted on the Tesla blog tons of technical information showing where the Times allegedly erred in their review.
Then the New York Timesresponded, with, basically, we stick by our story.
And finally, Rebecca Greenfield of the Atlantic wrote a detailed, point by point, analysis of the Musk technical data and concluded:
Not all of Musk’s data is entirely convincing and the parts that are don’t point to a malicious plot. In the end, it looks like Broder made some compromises to get from the Newark charging station to the Milford one, in both speed and temperature. Broder may not have used Musk’s car the way Musk would like, but Musk is, for now, overhyping his case for a breach of journalism ethics.
Oh no, $120 million dollars over nine years split over 100 organizations! Those evil Koch bros.:
Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.
The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising “wedge issue” for hardcore conservatives.
The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.
Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organisation assured wealthy donors that their funds would never be diverted to liberal causes.
“We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,” she said in an interview.
By definition that means none of the money is going to end up with groups like Greenpeace, she said. “It won’t be going to liberals.”
Via twitter, Cato adjunct scholar Scott Lincicome commented (on his own behalf, not Cato’s):
@heavyhokie can’t decide my favorite pt: the tiny amnt of $, the repeated use of scary adjectives or…
But Musk says Broder’s account was less than accurate.
As the price of Tesla’s stock fell on Monday, possibly a reaction to the review, Musk tweeted “NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake. Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn’t actually charge to max & took a long detour.”
Tesla enables data-logging on all of the cars it loans to the media for test drives as a safeguard against inaccuracies in reporting. It’s a feature available to owners, as well, to help provide the company with information to further develop its vehicles, but only with their express written permission.
In an interview with CNBC following the tweet, Musk called the article “something of a setup,” and “really misleading.” He went on to accuse Broder of not fully charging the battery, taking an extended tour of Manhattan and driving the vehicle faster than recommended on the highway, as much as 10 mph or more above the posted speed limit.
“We explicitly warned him that you can’t do these things,” Musk said.
Musk compared it to not filling up the tank of a gasoline-powered car, meandering around and then racing to your destination only to be surprised that you ran out of gas.
“People would just think you’re a fool.”
In response, The Times issued a statement calling the report “completely factual, describing the trip in detail exactly as it occurred,” adding that there was “no unreported detour.”
Tesla said it was preparing a blog post detailing its complaints with the article, but it has not yet been published on the company’s website.
We’ll publish the blog post from Tesla as soon as its available.
Kudos to Mike Tidwell for his clear commentary explaining why we need a revenue-neutral carbon tax to reduce emissions and slow climate change (“Forecast calls for pain,” Feb. 6). I’m convinced, but how are the American people going to convince Congress to pass such a tax?
Readers should go to Washington, D.C. on Feb. 17 for a noon rally and march assembling on the mall near the Washington Monument. The goal of the march is to let President Barack Obama know we have his back on his plans to impose more EPA regulations, to deny permission to build the Keystone XL pipeline, and whatever other environmental orders he chooses to issue with his executive authority. The longer Congress takes to pass a carbon tax, the more pain businesses will have to endure with extra regulations.
My prediction: Snow, ice and generally arctic conditions will greet the global-warming alarmists. Any takers?
If you’re a struggling electric-car company and you’re trying to impress the media, it’s best not to lend said media an electric car that has to be towed between charging stations.
The entire (comical) piece from the Timeshere, but this picture says it all. What good is an all-electric car if it can’t even make it between charging stations that, in this case, Tesla itself set up?
Editor’s Note: This post originally incorrectly identified the company that was the subject of the electric car failure as Fisker. The two companies are not related.
President Barack Obama in next week’s State of the Union speech will lay out a renewed effort to combat climate change that is expected to include using his authority to curb emissions from existing power plants, people who have talked to the administration about its plans said
The action, building on a pledge in the second inaugural address, fits within Mr. Obama’s larger strategy of making full use of his executive authority in areas where Congress is putting up obstacles to his agenda.
The speech, to be delivered Tuesday, isn’t finished.
Mr. Obama is likely to signal he wants to move beyond proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules on emissions from new power plants and tackle existing coal-fired plants, people familiar with the administration’s plans said.
The EPA has prepared rules for existing plants to minimize pollution from particulate matter, mercury and other toxins. But this would be the first time the agency regulates existing plants to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases scientists believe contribute to global warming.
“You will ultimately see a proposal from EPA to regulate existing power plants,” one person familiar with the matter said. “How he talks about it in the State of the Union could be anything from, ‘We’ve taken important steps and we need to take more,’ to ‘We need to make more [progress] and the next one on the chopping block is existing sources’ ” of carbon emissions.
The Superdome blackout reveals another energy company that, while preening to the public about its green morals, forgot its core business. Just as no one will remember BP’s pre-Deep Horizon green rebranding of itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” so will no one remember that — before its disastrous, prime-time, Superdome blackout — New Orleans utility Entergy was billing its Super Bowl efforts as a new benchmark for green sustainability.
Green? Now the only color associated with Entergy is a black eye.
The Super Bowl’s “a wonderful platform to bring people together to think about how our actions as individuals matter, and what we can do about climate change,” Patty Riddlebarger, director of corporate social responsibility (we’re not making this up) for Entergy, told National Geographic. She bragged about “protective and energy-saving features” from improved rainwater control to 26,000 LED lights to buying carbon credits.
Too bad they didn’t buy better power lines.
The Associated Press reports that the utility neglected decaying infrastructure coming into the stadium — despite a memo sent months before the big game warning of “a chance of failure” due to “concerns regarding the reliability of the Dome service from Entergy’s connection point to the Dome.”
Oh. Though the blackout’s cause is still under investigation, Entergy’s first priority was clearly not lighting the game.
Rewind to the 2010 BP oil spill and an oil company obsessed with image over substance. Hidden behind BP’s politically correct PR blitz was a corporation that was one of the industry’s worst in offshore-oil-drilling safety.
“BP got distracted from its core businesses and spent its energies getting into solar ventures and carbon-trading schemes, and otherwise losing the plot of an energy company. The absurd re-branding to ‘Beyond Petroleum’ speaks volumes,” reported the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Chris Horner on Planet Gore after the Gulf disaster.
Allen Hershkowitz of the left-wing Natural Resources Defense Council said the NFL’s teaming with his group has “the potential to become one of the most important collaborations in the history of the environmental movement.”
Make that one of the most embarrassing collaborations.
NRO contributor Iain Murray and Geoffrey McLatchey write in Forbes on the president’s protectionist policies to protect “green” industry in America. The opener:
Trade wars benefit nobody, but we may need to brace for one soon. This month, China is set to decide on whether to place a tariff on U.S. chemical imports—specifically polysilicon—used in the solar cell manufacturing process. Chinese polysilicon producers accuse the U.S. of dumping said chemicals onto the Chinese market. If the Chinese do impose a tariff, American polysilicon producers will lose access to a significant market while the cost of solar panels will rise significantly everywhere—making everyone a loser. Yet this bad outcome is likely because the Obama administration has already fired shots in what could become the world’s first “green” trade war.
The Department of Commerce fired those shots last October, when it levied a 31 percent tariff on Chinese solar panel imports, supposedly as a “retaliatory antidumping measure” against “unfair” government subsidies to Chinese manufacturers that subsequently dumped their product onto the U.S. market.
Of course, “unfair” is a relative term. In 2010, U.S. officials reported that China spent $30 billion on subsidies to solar energy, which led President Obama to accuse China of “questionable competitive practices.” Yet his administration spent $60 billion in domestic renewable energy subsidies in 2010. Currently, it offers a 30 percent tax credit for any business investing in solar energy and a renewable energy grant equal to that 30 percent to businesses purchasing solar power systems.
When the Ravens and 49ers face off Sunday in Super Bowl XLVII, it will be in a city—and stadium—that have spent more than six years battling back from natural and ecological disaster.
So it’s no surprise that New Orleans aims to set a new mark for environmental sustainability in its ninth turn at hosting the NFL’s marquee event, reflecting a broader green movement that is changing the look of stadiums and attitudes throughout the sports world.
“It’s a wonderful platform to bring people together to think about how our actions as individuals matter, and what we can do about climate change,” says Patty Riddlebarger, director of corporate social responsibility for the Gulf Coast energy company Entergy. She has chaired the New Orleans Host Committee’s environmental effort over the past two years.
Riddlebarger notes that much of the world holds a lingering image of the Superdome far different from the renovated stadium that will showcase the game. After a $336 million restoration, the “refuge of last resort” for 30,000 people during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 is now buttressed with protective and energy-saving features. The stadium’s outer wall is a specially designed double barrier system with improved insulation and rainwater control. The Mercedes-Benz Superdome, as it is now known, is ringed with 26,000 LED lights, covering two million square feet and supported by five miles of copper wiring, but which draw only ten kilowatts of electricity—as much as a small home. The stadium stands as an example for “not just rebuilding what was there before, but making it more environmentally sound,” Riddlebarger says.
When the Ravens and 49ers face off Sunday in Super Bowl XLVII, it will be in a city—and stadium—that have spent more than six years battling back from natural and ecological disaster.
So it’s no surprise that New Orleans aims to set a new mark for environmental sustainability in its ninth turn at hosting the NFL’s marquee event, reflecting a broader green movement that is changing the look of stadiums and attitudes throughout the sports world.
“It’s a wonderful platform to bring people together to think about how our actions as individuals matter, and what we can do about climate change,” says Patty Riddlebarger, director of corporate social responsibility for the Gulf Coast energy company Entergy. She has chaired the New Orleans Host Committee’s environmental effort over the past two years.
Riddlebarger notes that much of the world holds a lingering image of the Superdome far different from the renovated stadium that will showcase the game. After a $336 million restoration, the “refuge of last resort” for 30,000 people during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 is now buttressed with protective and energy-saving features. The stadium’s outer wall is a specially designed double barrier system with improved insulation and rainwater control. The Mercedes-Benz Superdome, as it is now known, is ringed with 26,000 LED lights, covering two million square feet and supported by five miles of copper wiring, but which draw only ten kilowatts of electricity—as much as a small home. The stadium stands as an example for “not just rebuilding what was there before, but making it more environmentally sound,” Riddlebarger says.
Trillions of dollars worth of oil found in Australian outback
Up to 233 billion barrels of oil has been discovered in the Australian outback that could be worth trillions of dollars, in a find that could turn the region into a new Saudi Arabia.
The discovery in central Australia was reported by Linc Energy to the stock exchange and was based on two consultants reports, though it is not yet known how commercially viable it will be to access the oil.
The reports estimated the company’s 16 million acres of land in the Arckaringa Basin in South Australia contain between 133 billion and 233 billion barrels of shale oil trapped in the region’s rocks.
It is likely however that just 3.5 billion barrels, worth almost $359 billion (£227 billion) at today’s oil price, will be able to be recovered.
The find was likened to the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale oil projects in the US, which have resulted in massive outflows and have led to predictions that the US could overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer as soon as this year.
Peter Bond, Linc Energy’s chief executive, said the find could transform the world’s oil industry but noted that it would cost about £200 million to enable production in the area.
More to come on how much it will cost to get the oil, but the takeaway is that the more we look for oil, the more we find. This 2005 op-ed from the Manhattan Institute’s Peter Huber and Mark Mills is a great read arguing the problem with oil isn’t that we don’t have enough, it’s that the oil in really, really bad places is so cheap to pump and can make the economics of oil in really, really good places too expensive to consider.
Detroit – At Monday’s inaugural, President Obama declared global-warming mitigation a second-term priority. On Tuesday, a deadly arctic blast here in the Midwest was a reminder of how frivolous that pursuit is.
Saving polar bears may be fashionable among rich elites, but Detroit’s jammed shelters this week are evidence that cold weather threatens the poor among us. City shelters reported they were at capacity as the frostbitten homeless took refuge from the bitter cold. Exposure to sub-zero temperatures were blamed for four deaths in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Government’s primary role is to provide public safety, reliable infrastructure, and a safety net for the poor. Yet, the Obama administration’s global warming obsession shows how far Washington has strayed from core services.
While Detroit’s needy freeze, millions of federal dollars are going to the politically connected well-to-do. Inside the Detroit Auto Show this week, billionaire Elon Musk — one of America’s richest men — is displaying his latest Tesla electric SUV for the well-to-do, financed by a half-billion dollars in federal loans.
A Michigan State professor has received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study the impact of global warming on the state’s farming industry. And in Metro Detroit, hundreds of DTE Energy utility workers labored around the clock to restore power to freezing customers — even as Michigan renewable power mandates force utilities to divert monies to inefficient wind farm projects in the name of fighting warming.
Adding insult to frostbite, scientific studies show that, even if Obama and other world leaders managed to cut greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050 (a reduction that would devastate the American economy), it would only cut expected warming by a measly 7 percent. Washington pols may get good press for protecting polar bears — but the real climate victims are freezing in city shelters.
Inside a midnight-blue BMW, a Sicilian entrepreneur delivered his pitch to the accused mafia boss. A new business was blowing into Italy that could spin wind and sunlight into gold, ensuring the future of the Earth as well as the Cosa Nostra: renewable energy.
“Uncle Vincenzo,” implored the businessman, Angelo Salvatore, using a term of affection for the alleged head of Sicily’s Gimbellina crime family, 79-year-old Vincenzo Funari. According to a transcript of their wiretapped conversation, Salvatore continued, “for the love of our sons, renewable energy is important. . . . it’s a business we can live on.”
And for quite awhile, Italian prosecutors say, they did. In an unfolding plot that is part “The Sopranos,” part “An Inconvenient Truth,” authorities swept across Sicily last month in the latest wave of sting operations revealing years of deep infiltration into the renewable energy sector by Italy’s rapidly modernizing crime families.
The still-emerging links of the mafia to the once-booming wind and solar sector here are raising fresh questions about the use of government subsidies to fuel a shift toward cleaner energies, with critics claiming huge state incentives created excessive profits for companies and a market bubble ripe for fraud. China-based Suntech, the world’s largest solar panel maker, last month said it would need to restate more than two years of financial results because of allegedly fake capital put up to finance new plants in Italy. The discoveries here also follow so-called “eco-corruption” cases in Spain, where a number of companies stand accused of illegally tapping state aid.
We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.
As President Obama wouldn’t sign a single “executive order” on guns and relied on lesser “executive actions,” I’d put my money on “not much” getting done about climate change in his second term. Scientific American at least writes honestly that, yes, the president finally mentioned climate change in a big speech, he didn’t mention any specifics:
Now the question turns to what Obama can accomplish. His climate priorities are unknown and his address yesterday failed to set out his goals, but that could come later in his State of the Union address.
Tom Friedman, never one to miss an opportunity to herald China’s infrastructure when compared with America’s, is eerily silent on the pollution in Beijing. Bloomberg reports:
Pollution in Beijing soared for a second weekend as smog started to cover most of the city from late yesterday, prompting the government to warn residents to reduce outdoor activities and urge companies to curb emissions.
The city’s meteorological bureau issued yellow alerts for fog and haze while children and the elderly were advised stay indoors as the air became “heavily polluted,” according to Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center classifications. Readings of PM2.5, fine airborne particulates that pose the largest health risks, rose as high as 400 micrograms per cubic meter in some parts of the city, compared with World Health Organization guidelines of no more than 25.
Bad air quality and pollution is prompting more Chinese to travel abroad for the weeklong Chinese Lunar New Year holiday which starts Feb. 9, state-run China National Radio said today.
Snow is forecast to fall in Beijing today and tomorrow which should improve the air quality, the official Xinhua News Agency reported today, citing the local weather bureau.
Beijing ordered government vehicles off the city’s roads on Jan. 13 as part of an emergency response plan to ease pollution that engulfed the capital and left hospitals inundated with patients complaining of heart and respiratory ailments. It also told dozens of factories to temporarily halt production and construction companies to suspend work.
Official measurements of PM2.5 rose as high as 993 micrograms per cubic meter on Jan. 12. At 4 p.m. local-time today, the PM2.5 reading was 125 while the Air Quality Index was at 164, a level the government describes as “lightly polluted.”
‘Beijing Cough’
The U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which uses a monitor in its compound in the east of the capital, showed a PM2.5 reading of 71 at 4 p.m., down from 371 at 10 a.m. Its Air Quality Index reading was 154, down from 415.
Long-term exposure to fine particulates raises the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases as well as lung cancer, according to the WHO. The official English-language China Daily newspaper said Jan. 14 that Beijing was becoming better known for “Beijing Cough” than it was for Peking Duck or Peking Opera.
To put an AQI reading of 415 in perspective, here is a chart provided by the EPA. Beijing is way down there in the maroon “don’t breath unless you really, really need to” zone.
And for even more perspective, Bakersfield, California has the worst air pollution in the United States. Earlier this year while Beijing’s AQI reached 755, the highest Bakersfield has reached in the past 12 months is 159.
I would hope Tom Friedman keeps these pollution numbers in mind the next time he is marveling at the wi-fi access on some Chinese high-speed rail train. Would you rather breath or check Facebook, Mr. Friedman?
Only regular people have to worry about their carbon emissions and travel on — gasp — a commercial flight.
I hope the Washington Post does a follow-up piece on whose private jets are blocking the runway at Dulles, and then see how many of the private-jet travelers are in the “global warming is a coming apocalypse” camp.
Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute writes in today’s WSJ:
California Could Be the Next Shale Boom State
Thanks to the Golden State’s dire fiscal situation, don’t be surprised if the governor were to proclaim: ‘There will be oil.’
Could 2013 find California lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown finally making the connection between fiscal challenges and energy markets? The Golden State is well positioned to become an exporter of hydrocarbons and enjoy a gusher of oil revenues. While many Californians will find that hard to contemplate, ideology bends more easily than the laws of physics and the imperatives of economics.
The $6 billion a year in additional income taxes Gov. Brown convinced Californians to approve in Proposition 30 last November won’t begin to solve the state’s fiscal problems. Last year’s State Budget Crisis Task Force, co-led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, estimated the state’s long-term debt at no less than $370 billion.
But California has Saudi Arabia-scale oil resources, notably in its largely untapped Monterey shale field, which stretches northeast for more than 200 miles from Bakersfield in central California. New technologies, especially smart, horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing, aka “fracking,” make that oil accessible, and cleanly. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the Monterey shale field alone holds 15.4 billion barrels of oil, rivaling America’s total conventional reserves.
I’m skeptical, even with new water-free fracking technology, especially in a state that finds ways to use environmental regulations to stop “green” projects like solar, wind and high-speed rail. But just because I think California won’t do this, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be.
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