Videographer Paul Budline writes:
First, pardon the overwrought subject heading. But I would like as many people as possible to see a 5-minute piece that I just finished. It focuses on the unintended consequences of marchers demanding an end to fossil fuels.It’s obviously shot on a shoestring and relies heavily on stock footage, but it’s an important topic:
Mr Paterson will, for the first time, reveal clearly just what we have now been committed to under the two Lib Dem ministers, Chris Huhne and Ed Davey, who, since 2010, have presided over our energy and climate change policy. Most of this is hidden away in policy documents so obscure that few non-insiders have any idea of where we are heading. But Paterson will explain, first, what is really now being planned, and, second, why it cannot conceivably work. He will then set out what hard-headed technical experts believe to be the only practical policy that could save us from an almost unimaginable national disaster.
1. The reality of our existing policy
Key to all our present energy policy is the fact that Britain is now, uniquely in the world, legally committed under Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act to cutting our CO₂ emissions by more than 80 per cent by 2050. When this Act – which Mr Paterson wants repealed – passed almost unanimously through Parliament in 2008, not one politician tried to explain how in practice such a target might be achieved. But since then, the officials at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) have been trying to devise ways in which it might be possible, within 36 years, to eliminate those four-fifths of all the CO₂ emissions on which any modern economy depends.
Their declared aim, at an estimated cost of £1.1 trillion, is the almost complete “decarbonisation” of our economy. Astonishingly, this means that, before 2030, the Government plans to eliminate almost all use of the fossil fuels we currently use to generate 70 per cent of our electricity, to cook and heat our homes and workplaces, and to power virtually all our transport. They want all our existing coal- and gas-fired power stations to close.
Out will go petrol-driven vehicles, along with all gas-powered cooking and central heating. These are to be replaced by such a massive switch to electricity for heating and powering our vehicles that it will require a doubling of our electricity needs. Much of this is to come from “renewables”, such as wind turbines; most of the rest from new nuclear power stations – although, after 2030, new gas- and coal-fired power stations will again be allowed, on condition that all the CO₂ they emit is buried in holes in the ground (what is called “carbon capture and storage”, or CCS).
2. Why the policy cannot work
Mr Paterson will then show how any hope of achieving those Decc targets hidden away in a mass of opaque documents is, in practical terms, just pure make-believe. The EU would have us provide 60GW of electricity from wind turbines, which, thanks to the wind’s intermittency, would require a total capacity of 180GW. We would thus have to spend £360 billion on some 90,000 giant wind turbines, 85,000 more than we have at present, covering an area the size of Scotland.
To meet our 2050 target would require building 2,500 new windmills every year for 36 years, a rate eight times greater than we have managed in the past decade.
Because wind is so unreliable, the Government hopes instead to keep the lights on by adding 1.5GW of power every year until 2050 from huge, new “zero carbon” nuclear power stations. But we can already see what a pipe dream this is, from the only plant so far given approval, at Hinkley Point in Somerset. This is not expected to begin generating its 3.2GW until 2023, at a cost now estimated to have soared sixfold, to a staggering £24 billion.
Equally wishful thinking is Decc’s belief that by 2030 we might have “carbon capture and storage”. Even if this can ever be made to work on a commercial scale, its costs could treble the price of their electricity. As for providing electric replacements for two thirds of the 36 million vehicles on Britain’s roads, last year’s uptake was just 10,000. At this rate, we might get there in 20,000 years’ time.
In other words, there is not a chance of meeting any of Decc’s targets, except by closing down virtually our entire economy. So, as Mr Paterson will ask on Wednesday, is there any way in which such an incredible disaster can be averted?
3. Paterson’s ‘Plan B’
Having consulted a range of practical experts, Paterson will end by suggesting a revolutionary new energy policy, based only on proven technologies. This might not meet the requirements of the Climate Change Act, but at least it could achieve a dramatic cut in our CO₂ emissions (for what that is worth) – and, unlike Decc’s policy, his “Plan B” could guarantee to keep our lights on, our buildings heated, and our now almost wholly computer-dependent economy still functioning.
The first leg of his new policy would be to tackle what has long been one of the real scandals of the way we use energy, by wasting colossal amounts of heat from power generation. This could be used to warm most of the buildings in the country by what is known as “combined heat and power” (CHP). Official figures from the US government show just how dramatically gas-fired CHP compares with the inefficiencies of wind and solar power. At well over twice their efficiency, a CHP system can generate more than twice as much electricity as wind, and, furthermore, produces large quantities of heat, at significantly less cost – while actually saving 50 per cent more in CO₂ emissions. And if ever we can emulate the “shale revolution” that has recently cut US gas prices by two-thirds, the costs of CHP would be even lower.
The second proposal is that, instead of relying for nuclear power only on hugely expensive plants such as Hinkley Point, using obsolete reactor designs, we should look to hundreds of mini-reactors. These would be similar to those that have been used safely for decades to power ships (Rolls-Royce has been running one for 50 years next to Derby football ground). These could thus be installed much nearer to population centres, both to generate electricity and to power CHP district heating schemes.
The third leg, the only one Decc is currently looking at, is to use the latest computer technology to provide what is called “demand management”. This uses sophisticated techniques to reduce electricity demand so drastically that we could actually reduce our capacity by 40 per cent, without anyone noticing.
The stark alternatives, Mr Paterson will conclude, are that either we continue down the present course, which cannot begin to achieve any of its desired goals – or we can adopt an entirely new strategy, which could actually allow us to survive as an industrial nation.
In his lecture on Wednesday, he will be the first politician to kick off a properly realistic debate on Britain’s energy future. It could not be more desperately overdue.
For years, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has demanded that the U.S. and other industrialized countries cut carbon emissions to 20% of 1990 levels by 2050.
While most countries claim to support huge carbon caps, in practice they have resisted implementing them. The reason is simple: fossil fuels provide nearly 90% of the energy we use–the cheap, abundant fuel that powers modern farming, manufacturing, construction, transportation, and hospitals. The use of fossil fuels is directly correlated to quality and quantity of life, particularly through the generation of electricity ; in the past two decades, hundreds of millions of people have risen out of poverty because energy production has tripled in Indiaand quadrupled in China, almost exclusively from carbon-based fuels. To drastically restrict carbon-based fuels, countries have conceded in practice, would be an economic disaster.
Now, the IPCC claims that the economics are on the side of drastic CO2 reductions. It recently announced that “Close to 80 percent of the world’s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies…”
This announcement is the latest claim by a growing coalition of environmentalists, businessmen, politicians, journalists, and academics that we can ban our fossil fuels and have cheap energy, too–through the panacea of “clean energy”–energy with minimal carbon emissions or other impacts. Clean energy advocates claim that a “clean energy economy” will be far more prosperous than our current “dirty energy” economy. Coal, oil, and natural gas supplies are finite and therefore bound to get more and more expensive as they run out, they argue. By contrast, we have an essentially unlimited, free, never-ending supply of sun and wind available to use–“free forever,” as Al Gore puts it.
What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don’t cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home? We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses. And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of U.S. electricity demand.
To those who say the costs are still too high: I ask them to consider whether the costs of oil and coal will ever stop increasing if we keep relying on quickly depleting energy sources to feed a rapidly growing demand all around the world.
By contrast, Gore says, there are “renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 per- gallon gasoline.”
To severely cap carbon emissions, then, won’t be an economic disaster but an economic boon. And it’s not just Al Gore saying this: myriad investors (such as venture capitalist Vinod Khosla), businessmen (such as oil-turned-wind magnate T. Boone Pickens), journalists (such as New York Times superstar Thomas L. Friedman), and politicians (including President Barack Obama), are on board.
The president of the Environmentalist Defense Fund sums up the sentiment: “The winners of the race to reinvent energy will not only save the planet, but will also make megafortunes… fixing global warming won’t be a drain on the economy. On the contrary, it will unleash one of the greatest floods of new wealth in history.”
All that is required, he and others say, is for the government to enact the right “clean energy policy.” These policy proposals vary, but all agree on two things: the government must drastically cap carbon emissions (Al Gore wants a ban on carbon-generated electricity by 2018 ) and the government must extensively fund clean energy research and projects to “unleash one of the greatest floods of new wealth in history.”
But before you pull any levers at the voting booth, you should know that there are some dirty secrets about the campaign for “clean energy.”
Dirty Secret #1: If “clean energy” were actually cheaper than fossil fuels, it wouldn’t need a policy.
Al Gore claims that he knows of “renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 per gallon gasoline.” Then why doesn’t he go make a fortune on it by outcompeting gasoline-powered cars?
More broadly, if other sources of energy are so good, why must the government have a policy to support them and cripple their competitors? Wouldn’t the self-interest of utilities, of automakers, of factories make them more than eager to buy such fuels–and wouldn’t the self-interest of investors make them eager to put billions upon billions of dollars into these game-changing technologies? Energy is, after all, a multi-trillion dollar market in America alone. And if carbon-based fuels are as rapidly-depleting as we’re told, wouldn’t participants in the energy futures market be trying to make a killing by buying coal, oil, and gas contracts? And wouldn’t the rising prices of these fuels make it even easier for “clean energy” to compete?
Energy history is replete with examples of genuinely superior technologies outcompeting the status quo. Petroleum surpassed whale oil and several other now-forgotten products once it could provide the best light at the best price. Natural gas surpassed oil as a source of electricity generation for similar reasons. Can’t new sources of energy do the same?
“Clean energy” advocates often intimate that private investors and existing energy companies are too short-sighted to see the wondrous potential of their products. But this is far-fetched. Oil companies invest billions of dollars in research and development that will only pay off decades into the future. Can anyone doubt that with increasing worldwide demand for energy, they wouldn’t jump at the chance to add new sources of profitable energy to their portfolios? Or even if they are myopic, what about the enormous capital-allocating machine that is U.S. financial markets? Is Wall Street going to pass up on “one of the greatest new floods of wealth in history” by failing to make profitable investments?
But aren’t subsidies needed to correct some unfair advantage possessed by coal, oil, and natural gas? No. Solar and wind are the ones given an unfair advantage; per unit of energy produced, they already receive 90X more subsidies than oil and gas. And they have been subsidized for decades.
The one legitimate argument that energy investment in new technologies, including carbon-free ones, is too low is that heavy government taxation and environmental regulations drive many investors out of the energy sector. But “clean energy policies” such as cap-and-trade bills call for more taxes and regulations, not fewer.
The real reason why activists demand “clean energy policy” is simple: the “clean energy” sources they favor–especially solar and wind–are at present too expensive and unreliable to replace carbon-based fuels on a large scale. The only way activists can hope to have them adopted is to shove them down our throats.
Dirty Secret #2: Clean energy advocates want to force us to use solar, wind, and biofuels, even though there is no evidence these can power modern civilization.
For more than three decades, environmentalists have overwhelmingly favored replacing carbon-based fuels with “natural,” “renewable” energy coming directly from the sun–whether through direct sunlight (solar panels or solar thermal), wind (a product of currents created by the sun’s heat) or biofuels (plants nourished by the sun through photosynthesis.) They have generally opposed carbon-free nuclear energy and hydroelectric energy as unnecessary and insufficiently “green.”
They have acquired billions in taxpayer subsidies for solar, wind, and biofuels, in America and in “progressive” European countries. After three decades, the score is in. 86% of the world’s energy–the energy we use to make food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and everything else our livelihoods depend on–is produced by carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, natural gas). 6% is produced by hydroelectric power. 6% is produced by nuclear power. Thus, 98% of the world’s power generation is regarded as unacceptable by environmentalists. All of 2%–an expensive 2%–is produced by solar, wind, and biofuels. And despite incessant claims that carbon-based fuels will run out, the amount of fossil fuel practically accessible to us has increased greatly as we have discovered new sources for fossil fuels (as well as non-fossil sources such as uranium and thorium)–and if businesses are free to keep exploring, there is no evidence this will stop anytime soon.
So why haven’t solar and wind triumphed? After all, isn’t Al Gore right that the sun gives us more energy than we could ever need, “free forever”?
No. The sun certainly gives off a lot of energy–but harnessing it is anything but free. To harness any form of energy requires land, labor, and equipment. And solar, wind, and biofuels require far, far more resources to harness than other methods of power generation.
One reason is energy density. Most practical energy sources pack a high concentration of energy into a small amount of space, meaning a smaller swath of resources is needed to harness it. Oil, for example, is so energy dense that a gallon of it can move a Hummer and a load of passengers over 10 miles. Uranium has one million times the energy density of oil (though it takes far more complex equipment to extract the energy).
By contrast, the sun’s energy is highly diluted by the time it reaches earth, and therefore it requires massive quantities of land, equipment, materials, manpower, and energy (provided by fossil fuels, incidentally) to concentrate into electric power. A solar or wind farm takes on the order of 100 times the land, materials, and assembly energy to produce the same amount of kilowatt-hours as an equivalent nuclear or coal or natural gas plant –while a cornfield for ethanol requires 1,000 times the land to generate the same amount of energy, with so much energy required that the whole process loses energy by some estimates. The cost of such resources is why solar and wind have been expensive, marginal energy sources for so long.
Another major problem with solar and wind is that they produce energy only intermittently–wind is extremely variable, disappearing throughout the day; solar varies with the weather and disappears altogether at night. Our whole modern power system requires reliable energy, energy that can be counted on.
Consequently, any solar or wind installation attempting to generate reliable energy needs a backup source of energy. One hypothetical way to do this is to build additional solar/wind capacity and try to store it. But since this just adds much more cost, and since no compact, cost-effective storage option exists (large, water-pumping hydroelectric facilities are an option in some locations), the default option is to build additional fossil fuel plants to back up solar and wind power.
A typical case is Texas, where Governor Rick Perry has heralded his state as an archetype of renewable wind-power. But according to those managing the power grids, only “8.7% of the installed wind capability can be counted on as dependable capacity during the peak demand period for the next year.” This means that the wind turbines are hardly doing anything constructive; the natural gas “backup” is doing all the work. Some studies say that the wind turbines only add to CO2 emissions, since natural gas plants are far less efficient and use more fuel when they must cycle to compensate for erratic wind power.
But, you might ask, aren’t there other types of carbon-free energy that are more practical? The answer is yes and no–there are promising types of carbon-free energy, but “clean energy policy” and its environmentalist leaders will always stop or slow them for being insufficiently “green.”
Dirty Secret #3: There are promising carbon-free energy sources–hydroelectric and nuclear–but “clean energy” policies oppose them as not “green” enough.
In 1975, a fledgling energy industry reported that its members were producing electricity at a total cost of less than half of what coal plants could. Better yet, this industry’s technology generated virtually no pollution and no CO2. Better yet still, this industry was in its relative infancy; thousands of scientists and engineers were brimming with ideas about how to make power-generation better, cheaper, more efficient.
If the environmentalist movement–the movement leading today’s “clean energy” campaign–was truly interested in maximum human progress, including making our surroundings maximally conducive to human life, it would have celebrated this industry: nuclear power. Instead, environmentalists effectively destroyed it with lies and propaganda–a tactic they are repeating with the earthquake-and-tsunami-stricken nuclear reactors in Japan.
Environmentalists have always claimed that their concern is safety. But the most reliable indication of a technology’s safety is how many deaths it has caused per unit of energy produced. In the capitalist world, nuclear power in its entire history has not led to a single death from meltdowns, radiation, or any of the allegedly intolerable dangers cited by nuclear critics. This does not mean that deaths are impossible, but as scientists have repeatedly shown, the worst-case scenario for a nuclear reactor is far better than, say, the ravages of a dam breaking or of a natural gas explosion.
In reality, all the “safety” objections come down to the Green premise that nuclear power is “unnatural” and therefore must be bad. Nuclear power is radioactive, they say–not mentioning that so is the sun, and that taking a walk, let alone an airplane ride, exposes you to far more radioactivity than does living next to a nuclear power plant. A nuclear plant could be bombed by terrorists, and bring about some sort of Hiroshima 2, they say–not mentioning that the type of uranium used in a nuclear plant and a nuclear bomb are completely different, and that the uranium in a plant can’t explode.
Nuclear power generates waste, they say–not mentioning that the amount of waste is thousands of times smaller than for any other practical source of energy, that it can be safely stored, and that there are many technologies for utilizing the waste to generate even more energy. Still, Greenpeace proclaims: “Greenpeace has always fought — and will continue to fight – vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.”
The practical result of all this hysteria was to make permission to build nuclear power plants nearly impossible to get, to impose an astronomical number of unnecessary “safety” requirements that served only to drive up price, and to make the whole process of building a plant a multi-decade affair.
Today, environmentalists say, with relish, that nuclear power can’t compete on the market–“Nuclear is dying of an incurable attack of market forces,” says solar-peddler Amory Lovins–even though before their intervention, it did compete, and was winning. Who knows how spectacularly it could produce cheap, abundant, carbon-free energy today–were it not for the opposition of those who claim to be concerned about carbon emissions?
Nuclear power is not an isolated target. Environmentalists have spent the last three decades shutting down as many hydroelectric dams as possible, despite hydro’s proven track record as a cheap, reliable source of carbon-free power (albeit one more limited than nuclear since there are only so many suitable river sites for hydropower).
The reason is this: environmentalism isn’t just about minimizing our carbon “footprint”–it’s about reducing any footprint on nature: on land, rivers, swamps, animals, bugs. Hydroelectric power, while it doesn’t emit CO2, dramatically changes the natural flow of the rivers where it is used. Nuclear power, in addition to requiring large industrial structures, deals in “unnatural” high-energy, radioactive materials and processes. Therefore, it is not, says Al Gore, “truly clean energy.”
Dirty Secret #4: The environmentalists behind clean energy policy are anti-energy.
If you think that there might be some form of practical “clean energy” that could appease the environmentalists–say, geothermal–you’re missing the point. The whole environmentalist idea of a minimal “footprint” is fundamentally anti-energy. Mass-energy production requires making a substantial impact on nature–in diverted land, in power lines, in any byproducts or waste–and therefore environmentalists can always find something to object to. And this includes solar and wind.
For all the talk of “being green,” solar and wind require far greater amounts of land and materials-use than practical energy–their land “footprint” and resource usage is far larger. Huge, 400-foot tall wind-turbines with 150-foot blades and noise known to cause unbearable headaches a mile away do not exactly embody the environmentalist ideal of “living in harmony with nature.” Nor are tens or hundreds or thousands of square miles of solar panels. Nor are the enormous transmission lines necessary to bring energy from, say, Nevada to California. And so while environmentalists are happy to wax about solar and wind in the abstract while opposing existing power sources, once the shovels start hitting the ground, in practice they often oppose it.
Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the biggest opponent of Cape Wind , a windmill project off the coast of Nantucket. Environmentalists were the first to object to a giant solar project in the Middle of the Mojave Desert in California.
But where are we supposed to get our energy? “Conservation,” environmentalists answer, which is code for “deprivation.” When pushed, the leaders of the movement admit that they think that humans need to live far more modestly, with perhaps a few solar panels on top of our homes (Amory Lovins attempts this, and has acknowledged agonizing over whether he could accommodate a dog for his daughter), that we need to do with a lot less, and that we need to reduce the world’s population.
As climate-change star Paul Ehrlich says: “Whatever problem you’re interested in, you’re not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem. Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause without population control.”
The Sierra Club advocates “development of adequate national and global policies to curb energy over-use and unnecessary economic growth.” This was written in 1974, when the energy-hungry computer revolution was brand-new. Had we listened to them, it wouldn’t have had the power to get off the ground. And they are no exception to this anti-development mentality: “Giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point,” says climate change star Paul Ehrlich, “would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” Or, Amory Lovins: “If you ask me, it’d be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won’t give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other.”
This is the mentality wielding influence over our energy future. Can one imagine any sort of energy that it would find favorable? Consider the prospect of geothermal energy, which would use heat from the inside of the earth’s crust. Al Gore claims to support this. To be used en masse, such energy (as yet unproven) would require drilling tens of thousands of feet deep. Given environmentalists’ opposition to offshore drilling, can anyone imagine they will actually support geothermal energy in practice?
Anyone who genuinely desires even better energy in the future than we enjoy today must cut all ties with the anti-development environmentalist movement and embrace industrial development.
Instead, the entire “clean energy” movement embraces environmentalists as allies. The Sierra Club, Ehrlich, and Lovins are all regular advisors to government on energy policy. While President Obama isn’t as extreme as they are, we can see their anti-nuclear agenda in his energy plan–which is focused on solar and wind, and includes a couple billion in loan guarantees to a single nuclear plant (this is notable only because the 2008 Democratic platform contained zero references to nuclear energy).
The same is true for “clean energy” advocates such as Thomas L. Friedman andBill Gates; they advocate nuclear, but only half-heartedly, with infinite regulation. So, in practice “clean energy policy” will mean preserving the draconian controls on nuclear power, stunting its growth, while subsidizing the impractical fuels that environmentalists least object to.
The end result of this is pure destruction. This includes destruction of what “clean energy” is supposed to ensure: a livable climate. The number one precondition of a livable climate is industrial-scale energy. Loose talk of a “climate change catastrophe” evades the fact that industrial energy makes catastrophes non-catastrophic. In Africa, a drought can wipe out hundreds of thousands of lives thanks to that continent’s lack of capitalism and resultant lack of industrial energy. In America, we irrigate so well that deserts have become among the most desirable places to live (Southern California, Las Vegas).
Left free to discover and harness energy, human beings can adapt to changes in weather. Anyone who cares about the plight of the poor must recognize that what they desperately need is not a stagnant average global temperature but capitalism, including cheap, affordable fossil fuels now, and the freedom to find even better fuels later, unhampered by environmental hysteria.
If we want more, better, energy, we should be considering, not policies to control the energy economy, but policies to allow free markets and true competition (not government-rigged stuff). And let the best fuel win.
Alex Epstein is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, focusing on business issues. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”
Ten Reasons why People who Support Wind Farms Are Deluded, Criminal or Insane.
Which One Are You, Vince Cable?
Breitbart.com
James Delingpole
8 October 2014
Opposing wind farms is “irrational”, claimed Liberal Democrat MP Vince Cable at his party conference yesterday.
Actually, no. Here are some reasons why anyone who doesn’t oppose wind farms is most probably either deluded, criminal or insane.
1. Wind turbines kill bats on an industrial scale – nearly 30 million a year in the US alone, according to some estimates. This is somewhat ironic since most of those pushing for more wind are ardent greenies, who presumably understand that the reason bats are such a heavily protected species is that their breeding cycle is so slow and their life cycle so long – making them especially vulnerable when a breeding pair is killed.
2. Wind turbines kill birds on an industrial scale. Between 110 and 330 birds per turbine per year, according to the Spanish conservation charity SEO/Birdlife – though other research puts the mortality rate as high as 895. In the US, they have killed tens of thousands of raptors including golden eagles and America’s national bird, the bald eagle. In Spain, they threaten the Egyptian and Griffon vulture. In Australia, they have driven the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle close to extinction. Yet bizarrely wind farms are supported by bird charities including the RSPB, because their ideological commitment to “clean energy” trumps the interests of birds, apparently.
3. Wind turbines produce Low Frequency Noise and infrasound, which can cause those who live nearby a range of health problems including insomnia, raised cortisol levels, headaches, panic attacks, tachycardia, nausea, mood swings, palpitations, depression. The corrupt wind industry has known about this for years – with the complicity of certain tame acousticians – contrived to cover up the problem, recognising that if ever the word gets into the public domain the lawsuits are going to be immense.
4. Wind turbines have terrible impacts on animals besides birds and bats. They have caused stillbirth and deformations in livestock; they can turn healthy, responsive dogs into nervous wrecks. In Denmark they caused the premature births of 1600 mink at a fur farm. In Canada they caused the closure of an emu farm popular with tourists, because the turbines made the docile birds (which cost $3,000 a pair) aggressive.
5. Wind turbines kill jobs. According to research by Gabriel Calzada Alvarez of the Rey Carlos university in Madrid, they destroy 2.2 jobs in the real economy for every Potemkin job (“green job”) created by government malinvestment. Separate research suggests that the damage in the UK may be even higher: 3.7 real jobs lost for every fake green one created.
6. Wind turbines are like a reverse Robin Hood, lining the pockets of the rent-seeking rich – such as Prime Minister David Cameron’s father-in-law,Sir Reginald Sheffield, Bt, who makes a £1000 a day just for sitting on his arse while the eight turbines on his Leicestershire estate turn idly in the breeze – at the expense of the ordinary energy user. If this were free market capitalism, fine. But it’s not: it’s the exact opposite – crony capitalism in which economic favours are handed out not by the market but by government fiat. This is the kind of state-endorsed social injustice of which bloody revolutions are made.
7. Wind turbines – as any rural community which has tried fighting the heavily-rigged planning system will know – are disruptive, divisive and unjust. They turn neighbour against neighbour. They force country folk who really would have preferred to do other things with their lives to expend vast quantities of money, time and energy trying desperately to preserve the character and charm of their neighbourhood by fighting wind projects with all their might. Often – that rigged planning system – they fail. So one local person gets rich, earning perhaps £30,000 a year per turbine on his land. But everyone else suffers in the form of blighted views, reduced property values, noise disturbance etc.
8. Wind turbines are economically pointless. Because the “energy” they produce is unreliable, unpredictable and intermittent (sometimes the wind blows; sometimes it doesn’t; sometimes it blows so hard that the turbines have to be switched off) it has no genuine market value. Electricity users want electricity as and when they need it, not when the wind deigns to blow. That’s why it has to be so heavily subsidised by the taxpayer – because without bribes no developer would risk the capital outlay on something so unproductive. And it’s why wind energy has constantly to be backed up by more conventional power like coal, gas and oil. One 25 hectare fracking site and one medium sized fossil fuel power station can produce the same amount of energy as ALL the wind turbines in Britain.
9. Wind farms are partly responsible for the thousands of people who die every year of fuel poverty. (Plus, of course, all those people who’ve been fatally injured in turbine fires, air crashes, or by flying blades – for full details see here.) This is because, being so disproportionately expensive – between roughly twice and three times the cost of conventional fossil fuel power, depending on whether we’re talking onshore or offshore wind – and being, by government order, a compulsory part of our “energy mix”, they drive up energy to artificially high levels. The carbon saving benefits of wind farms are largely imaginary; the effects on “global warming” marginal to illusory; but the people who actually die each year, unable to afford their rising fuel bills, are very, very real.
10. Wind farms are a blot on the landscape. They just are. And don’t give me any of that “Well I think they’re rather handsome actually” crap. Your warped personal aesthetics ought not to be anyone’s problem but your own.
Breitbart.com
Not a bad start there, James. STT is sure our followers can easily tack a few more to your solid little list.
Photo: Ingram/Getty Images
Click on image to go to Sun News video interview with Parker Gallant.
We in Texas are proud of our economic successes over the past several years. One topic that keeps popping up is our energy sector. Texas consumes a great deal of electricity because of its energy-intensive industries. And of course, we have hot summers.
Regular consumers pay the price tag for their air conditioning and these taxpayers hope that there is a rational basis for their energy costs. But when government puts its thumb on the scale and tips the balance toward one energy source over another, things can go awry. Remember Solyndra? The federal government put more than their thumb on the scales on that one – they put $536 million on the scales to support a solar panel maker and the taxpayers had to foot the bill when it went belly up.
With the population and economy growing, and the demand thereby increasing in Texas, it is critical that taxpayers and consumers not be disadvantaged by government policy. My office just issued Texas Power Challenge, a report that looks at the various energy sources used for electricity in Texas. When it comes to the rich subsidies they receive from the state and federal governments, wind generators and their turbines tower above other sources of electricity generation – this is particularly troubling considering the actual electricity they generate, especially during the times when Texans really needs the power.
Texas made a bet on wind nearly 15 years ago by mandating that power companies provide a certain amount of power from wind. The challenge for wind is that it is well, windy, only sometimes. When it is not, it needs a more reliable partner. That is most often natural gas. Nonetheless, we doubled our bet for wind by mandating extensive and very expensive transmission lines that are primarily for wind. When the wind is not blowing, the lines are not being used to their capacity.
The lines, built to provide transmission infrastructure from the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones in West Texas, were projected to cost about $5 billion, but instead spiked to nearly $7 billion (a 40 percent increase in cost to consumers). And consumers are going to be paying these costs for 15 to 20 years. Adding insult to injury, the bulk of wind farms here are least productive at the time of highest demand, in the middle of hot summer days. The Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages system reliability for most of the state’s customers, says that summer capacity of wind is about 11,000 megawatts (MW), but it only counts on 963 MW because summer wind generation is so weak.
Subsidies and financial encouragement by states or federal agencies often look to fledgling industries that need a bit of help. With the wind capacity Texas now has, I would argue that market forces would produce a more efficient outcome and that the time for subsidies has passed. Texas has more than twice the amount of wind it originally mandated, and now has more subsidized wind power than any other state.
Because subsidies undoubtedly distort the market, caution should be used in their application. Texas has an economic development program that the wind industry has used extensively to limit property tax value on wind farms. For example, my office estimated in 2011 that wind projects qualified at that time under the property tax value limitation statute would receive nearly $850 million in total tax savings. Those wind projects were expected to create 480 jobs, which equates to about a $1.7 million tax benefit per job. That contrasts sharply with non-energy projects in the same program where the tax benefit per job was $195,565 — for 5,552 jobs. So instead of generating jobs and providing a reliable and consistent energy source, wind projects just generate higher costs. And there are increasing concerns about subsidies being used to encourage wind turbines close to homes, airports, military bases and migratory bird routes.
As the comptroller and chief financial officer of Texas, I worry about choices by policymakers that can have significant and adverse consequences. It seems to me that it is time for wind energy to stand on its own towers.
Susan Combs is the comptroller and chief financial officer of the state of Texas.
This is a stunningly good letter that was presented to the Hearing of the Texas House on the latest EPA insanity–the Clean Power Plan. Wanna know what’s wrong with the EPA, read Minick’s letter for a place to start.
Minick takes the EPA big plan apart and shows it to be a empty portfolio of nonsense and bad policy making.
Minick is an important voice for Business in Texas–an eloquent and knowledgeable man.
I highlighted some of the important stuff.
September 29, 2014
The Honorable Patricia Harless, Chairman
Committee on Environmental Regulation
Texas House of Representatives
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, Texas 78768-2910
RE: Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan under Clean Air Act Section 111(d)
Chairman Harless:
The Texas Association of Business (TAB) appreciates the opportunity to discuss the Speaker’s charge to the committee to study the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed Clean Power Plan. TAB is a broad-based, bipartisan organization representing more than 4,000 Texas employers and over 200 local chambers of commerce. As Texas’ leading employer organization for more than 90 years, TAB represents some of the largest multi-national corporations as well as small businesses in almost every community in the state. Our business members and local chambers of commerce have a vital interest in the outcome of any decision by EPA to fundamentally alter the management and operation of the state’s electric power system and the effects such a proposal represents for the reliability and cost of critical electric supply in Texas.
EPA’s proposal to impose existing source performance standards for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under Clean Air Act §111(d) is yet another in a series of rulemakings from EPA that regrettably departs even further from the cooperative partnership between EPA and the states that Congress envisioned in the passage of the Clean Air Act. The Act states clearly that air pollution prevention at its source is the primary responsibility of States and local governments. In addition to being inconsistent with the fundamental principle of cooperative federalism, the proposed Clean Power Plan is equally inconsistent with other specific provisions of the Clean Air Act. Beyond its questionable legal basis, however, the Committee should also be made aware that this rule, if enacted, will impose significant costs on Texas businesses and consumers, severely test our electric grid and reliability of electric service and effectively relinquish control of our power system to the federal government. Incredibly, even EPA’s own analysis shows plainly that this rule, intended to address climate change by reducing emissions of GHGs, will have no measureable effect on climate change.
Background and Description of the Clean Power Plan
EPA’s proposal to impose existing source performance standards for GHGs follows directly the failure of the current administration to move cap and trade legislation through Congress and is a well-recognized step in EPA’s long range plan to remove coal as a source of fuel for power generation in this country. An earlier step in that plan is the imposition of GHG performance standards for new sources. That rule, which will ensure that no new coal-fired power plants are built, was proposed in September 2013. This next step, proposed in June of 2014, will ensure the closure of many of the existing coal-fired plants. President Obama, in speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008 outlined without any confusion his plan for coal power:
“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Coal-powered plants…would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”
The Clean Power Plan bears a resemblance to another increasingly familiar aspect of rulemaking under the Clean Air Act – obscuring any technical justification or analysis of a proposed rule in more pages of background than can reasonably be read and understood by the average interested party, certainly any affected party with limited time and resources. In this case, the rule itself only occupies some 38 pages of text, but that is then followed by over 600 pages of preamble with references to some 350 footnotes. Then comes a lengthy regulatory impact analysis and multiple technical support documents and then references to some 620 supporting documents.
While those affected by the rule might hope to find at least clarity in the rule’s purpose and effect in this massive production, even many of those who are supportive of the rule have expressed concern and uncertainty as to what it means, how it will affect their jurisdictions and, perhaps most importantly, how it can possibly be implemented.
Basis of the Clean Power Plan Rule
Under the Clean Power Plan EPA proposes to impose performance standards for existing power plants for GHG emissions under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. In the previous 40 years EPA has used this authority in approximately five cases, and arguably never for any major source of emissions. Section 111(d) allows EPA to establish performance standards for existing sources of emissions and requires that any standards imposed reflect emission limitations achievable through what is defined as a Best System of Emission Reductions (BSER). But in this proposed rule, EPA abandons any rational definition of both source and system in the context of what Section 111(d) actually authorizes. Under the Clean Power Plan, emission reductions would apply not to a source of emissions (a power plant) but conceivably to every element of the state’s entire electric power system.
Further stretching the authority of 111(d), EPA does not propose any system of emission reduction technology, but instead, argues that each state can reach emission reduction targets through a variety of measures, including:
1. Improving efficiency of coal-fired electric generators by 6%;
2. Increasing the operation of natural gas-fired electric generators to 70% of current capacity;
3. Increasing the contribution of renewable energy sources up to 25%; and
4. Increasing the reductions in power consumption through demand response by 9-12%
An obvious observation of these “suggested” paths to compliance with GHG emission limitations is that, while they may indirectly affect emissions, none of them is actually a “system” of emission reductions applied to a “source” of emissions. In other words, EPA proposes to limit GHG emissions by not requiring any direct control of the emission of GHGs at their source. Put another way, the agency is proposing a rule under Section 111(d) that imposes requirements in no way authorized under Section 111(d). Within very specific conditions, EPA has authority to limit emissions by determining an appropriate system of controls for those emissions at their source.EPA does not have the authority to re-design our entire system for the generation, transmission, use or conservation of electric power to indirectly impact the production of GHGs.
Target Emission Rates
The key to the Clean Power Plan is target emission rates that EPA has determined for each affected state. Again, these are not targets applicable to actual sources of emissions (electric power plants) but overall targets applicable on a state-wide basis. In fact, it is accurate to acknowledge that under a statutory provision that authorizes control of sources of pollution, EPA is proposing a target for emission rates that is simply applied to an entire state, and not to any one source of pollution.
Beyond the obvious concern with the underlying statutory authority being cited, a major concern with the states’ emission targets is that the massive submission and supporting documentation still do not reveal any apparent rationale for the emission rates that are proposed. The rates assigned to individual states vary substantially and for reasons that are very difficult to comprehend. Somehow, under a rule presumably intended to reduce the emissions of a pollutant that we are told has serious negative implications for public welfare, some states are allowed to actually increase emissions of GHGs. Some observations of EPA’s proposed emission reduction targets may help to illustrate the difficulty in understanding a valid technical basis:
1. GHG emission reduction targets for the states range from an 83% reduction (for Washington) to a 37% increase (for Rhode Island).
2. Washington must reduce GHG emissions by 83%, Oregon by 42% and California by 7%.
3. Texas must reduce emissions by 42% and Oklahoma 41%, while Kansas and Nebraska can increase emissions by 10%.
4. South Dakota must decrease emissions by 4% but North Dakota can increase emissions by 1%.
5. Idaho has a reduction target of 49%, Wyoming 31%; Montana can increase emissions 8%.
6. Mississippi faces a target reduction of 62%, but Alabama 32%.
7. 3%.Virginia must reduce GHG emissions by 35%, West Virginia 0%.
8. Tennessee must reduce GHG emissions by 20%; Kentucky can increase emissions by 3%.
These examples are only some of the observations that clearly raise far more questions than EPA’s proposal provides answers. The rationale of EPA appears to be an acknowledgment that each state is different and faces different challenges and opportunities for reducing GHG emissions. But in no provision of the Clean Air Act is EPA authorized to invent a plan for reducing emissions from existing sources without actually imposing requirements on existing sources and then allocate obligations to each of the states based on what in some opinion of EPA each state is capable of accomplishing. Beyond EPA’s questionable authority to impose such emission targets, it must also be recognized that the states on which fall the obligations to comply may lack much of the statutory authority to do what EPA outlines in its suggested “system” of emission reductions.
It must also be recognized that Texas is singled out for special treatment under this proposed rule. While Texas’ required percentage reduction in GHG emissions is not as large as some states (42%), when applied to the actual magnitude of Texas’ electric generation capacity the figures become very revealing of the real impact of the rule. Texas is clearly the largest producer and consumer of power in the U.S, but that status is merely a reflection of Texas’ position as a producer of fuel, manufactured goods and other products that meet the needs of the other states and our global trading partners. Under the Clean Power Plan, Texas is far and away the most significantly affected state:
• By 2030, Texas must reduce coal-fired electric generation by over 72 million megawatt hours (MWH), Florida is a distant second at just over 40 million MWH.
• Texas’ required GHG reductions by 2030 are almost three times greater than those required of second place Florida and dwarf the requirements for any other state.
• To comply, Texas must reduce its coal-fired electric generation by over 53%; Indiana and Kentucky, the two closest states to Texas in terms of coal-fired generation, must reduce their generation from coal by 4.8% and 1%, respectively.
• Texas leads the nation in the production of renewable energy. But by 2030, Texas must increase its use of renewable energy almost five times as much as the state closest to Texas in renewable energy capacity, California.
The significant variation and seemingly random allocation of emission targets to the different states, and certainly the significantly greater impact of the rule on Texas, are clearly impacts that demand a far more detailed and reasoned explanation before this rule receives any further consideration by EPA.
Costs and Benefits of the Clean Air Plan
There is no question that implementation of the Clean Air Plan will significantly affect the electric generation industry and consumers of power, from the largest industrial user to individual residential customers. The U. S. Chamber of Commerce has estimated compliance costs at approximately $50 billion. Other estimates of industry compliance costs are as “low” as $28 billion. These compliance costs to the electric industry are distinct from the actual costs to consumers which has been estimated to be a loss in disposable income of over $585 billion through 2030. Cost to manufacturers and others who use natural gas for purposes other than electric generation will also increase significantly as natural gas prices are projected to increase up to $50 billion. In addition to dollar impacts, the rule will result in some 178,000 lost jobs per year. Less easily quantified, but equally important, is the potential impact of a rule that will significantly put at risk the reliability of Texas’ electric grid, the failure of which can have extremely dramatic financial impacts, as well as public health and safety impacts.
One would assume that such a rule, with the potential for significant, negative economic consequences, would have to clearly provide benefits to public health and welfare at least as great, or even greater than the costs to justify serious consideration and certainly formal proposal. Quite surprisingly, the dramatic economic costs and potential risks to our electric power system will provide virtually no benefit whatsoever. EPA’s own analysis shows that the proposed rule will affect no more than .18 percent of global GHG emissions and offset the huge costs of its implementation by reducing global temperatures by between .01-.02 degrees C. and preventing a projected sea level rise of .016 inches.
EPA attempts to make up for the almost absurd lack of simple economic justification for the rule by suggesting that reducing operations and emissions from coal-fired power plants will have ancillary public health benefits. Even if such an unsupported position were rational, it is beyond reason to suggest that sufficient public health benefits could accrue to offset the significant costs of this rule. But the reality is that for several years and throughout EPA’s pursuit of its current air quality and energy policy agenda, the agency has continued time and again to cite ancillary benefits from reductions in emissions (e.g., PM2.5) where no public health benefit from the direct effect of the rule in question can be cited. The Clean Air Plan is simply the latest in a long line of air quality rulemaking where no public health benefit can be directly attributed to the pollutant the rule is intended to address.
Perhaps even more significant as a critique of EPA’s cost analysis is the fact that the cost/benefit equation ignores (as it does for essentially all such rules) the negative public health impacts of reducing the disposable income of those who are affected by the rule.This rule if implemented will significantly impact the costs of electricity. That cost, particularly when borne by lower income ratepayers, will reduce the ability of those ratepayers to afford other essential goods and services that directly affect their health and welfare, including medical care, medicine, adequate food and housing and the expenses required to be sufficiently educated and prepared to acquire and maintain employment. The strongly positive correlation between income and public welfare and longevity has been well established and any cost/benefit analysis that ignores it cannot be considered to be valid or credible.
Other Impacts on Texas
It has been suggested by many in support of this rule that Texas should share that support due to the positive impact the rule will have on demand for natural gas, particularly as the prices for natural gas have declined and the incentives for more production have weakened. There is also at least the implication that Texas can benefit from this rule by simply building more gas-fired electric generation and easily mitigate the loss of any coal-fired facilities, while simultaneously benefiting from the economic effects of increased gas production. Missing from this presumptive analysis is the proper recognition of the role Texas’ competitive deregulated retail electric market plays in any theoretical scenario of how this state would attempt to implement EPA’s suggested methods of compliance. In Texas the Public Utility Commission, perhaps unlike in most other states, cannot simply set a price for electricity that will provide an incentive to build new gas-fired power plants to replace coal-fired plants. It is entirely uncertain that Texas’ electric market structure will be able to react as EPA assumes it can under any requirement to replace coal-fired with gas-fired generation.
The assumption that Texas can increase natural gas electric generation while benefiting from increased natural gas production also ignores the potential impact of other air quality rules being promulgated by EPA. The proposed reduction in the ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) can potentially bring large areas of Texas, including the major oil and gas production areas, into nonattainment status for ozone. Without a clearer picture of what a revised ozone NAAQS will be, what areas will be determined to be nonattainment and how such designation and subsequent ozone control measures will affect natural gas exploration and production, availability and price, it is impossible at this time to make assumptions that can dispel the many legitimate concerns about the loss of coal-fired electric capacity in Texas.
Conclusions
EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan is poorly supported by current law and suffers from a thorough lack of technical and financial justification. It truly is a rule that on its face will have enormous costs and virtually zero benefit. It fulfills the administration’s goals for a cap and trade program by making cap and trade the only viable option for some states who simply cannot reengineer their electric power systems. In fact, the proposal will conceivably reward those states that have some type of cap and trade program by enabling those states with marketable credits to sell to other states, essentially establishing a wealth transfer from coal states to non-coal states. The proposal further supports the anti-coal agenda by imposing de facto federal renewable energy standards and federal energy efficiency standards – all in one rule.
It is appropriate to question EPA’s motives in proposing a rule that has such significant questions as to its legal foundation and for which the cost/benefit analysis so clearly shows that there are no benefits. Even the EPA leadership appears somewhat uncertain as to exactly what this rule is intended to do. In testimony before the Senate Public Works Committee, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy stated:
“The great thing about this [111(d)] proposal is that it really is an investment opportunity. This is not about pollution control. It’s about increased efficiency at our plants, no matter where you want to invest. It’s about investments in renewables and clean energy.”
However, Acting Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, Janet McCabe, before the House Energy and Power Subcommittee described the same rule quite differently:
“Chairman Upton, this is not an energy plan. This is a rule done within the four corners of 111(d) that looks to the best system of emission reduction to reduce emission… The rule is a pollution control rule, as EPA has traditionally done under section 111(d).”
If EPA admits that a rule to benefit climate change has no effect on climate and is yet still unclear as to what the rule is for, it would appear prudent to postpone any further consideration at this time.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee and share our thoughts on this subject. Please contact me at 512.637.7707 or sminick@txbiz.org if you have questions or need additional information.
Respectfully,
Stephen Minick
Vice President for Governmental Affairs
Texas Association of Business
I posed some simple questions a number of articles back and I’d like to begin this piece by asking them again, because they’re fundamental.
Don’t they know how many of our own poor can no longer afford to heat their homes? Don’t they know how many millions die in the developing world from malaria because we won’t allow them access to DDT? Don’t they know that a million children a year die or are simply blinded for life by withholding the distribution golden rice? Don’t they know how many lives could be saved by supplying the poor with drought and disease resistant GM seeds? Don’t they know that switching from growing food staples to growing biofuel crops for cars only the rich can afford has more than doubled prices of basic foods? Don’t they know about the people killed in the food riots? Do they actually know anything? Do they care anyway?
There’s no oily sophistry about those questions, no sophistication, no tricky debating traps, no guile, no hidden agenda but always an essential inhumanity to the silence or uneasy evasiveness with which they’re met. I’ve raised an impolite subject. The truth is people are not dying, they’re being killed and we’re the ones through inaction doing the killing. I make no apology for being so blunt because they’re needed questions, simple questions, brutal even, and yet there’s always that awkward silence in response to them.
There really isn’t a party line on the moral dilemmas which are at the very heart of those questions, because morality is no longer about people or ones behaviour towards them, but simply about what’s good for the Earth or not. All else is secondary to that consideration. In a deeper sense though, any wider altruistic morality is now about nothing more than projecting a good image of oneself rather than any notion of common humanity.
What we’re talking about are the lives of the most vulnerable being needlessly sacrificed atop a green altar, because of an almost automatic obeisance to a new and terrible earth goddess called Gaia.
You might think those questions were addressed at the real climate fanatics, those who’re absolutely determined to save the Earth even if that means over the megadeath, rigour-mortised and stacked-high burning corpses of humanity, but you’d be wrong because as must be obvious by now, those zealots simply don’t care about such collateral damage. After all, a smaller, more “sustainable” number of people on the Earth is one of their oft expressed aspirations. Humanity is a plague on the Earth, to quote David Attenborough.
Those questions were originally directed at the religious bodies of our rich developed world but with the sure and certain expectation of nothing in reply, not only because they were rhetorical but because the churches are by now in denial or wilfully blind to the moral issues presented by those questions.
They’ve fallen so far down into the abyss of the governing elite’s unquestioned dogma, which puts the Earth before the human cost of protecting it, that they now effectively worship a graven but green image in their desert of moral desolation. They’ve lost touch with that most basic imperative of all religions – the duty of care we all have towards the poor and vulnerable. Common decency, if you will.
Those questions, like this article, are now being addressed to the footsoldier clergy of those churches; the priests and the pastors, the imams and the rabbis, the holy men, the human beings representing their respective faiths and trying to make a difference in the lives of their local congregations.
This issue is not about science, since climate science has long ago allowed itself to become a compliant and willing harlot to politics. It sucks greedily on the teat of notoriety and all integrity has long since fled. Political sentiment can be changed because it’s driven by the fickle beast of popular opinion, which you still have a measure of influence over. What can’t be changed is that this is at heart a basic moral issue and morality is an invariant which should never be subject to the passing vicissitudes of fashion or alarmed public opinion.
The killing of the innocents is wrong, standing idly by when that’s done for nothing better than a mistaken idea grown into a well-intentioned but homicidal monster or for a quick buck, is wrong. Don’t delude yourself, the moneylenders are busy at work in your temples, doing brisk business under the righteous cloak of that false goddess Gaia but in reality serving nothing other than their own god Mammon. Your silence is helping them.
I’ll pose some new questions just for you, but I’m going to help you out by giving you the answers to them.
Will you ever read this article? Probably not. Will you ever read past the first page of Google’s reassuring results from various well-heeled green NGOs about any of the above questions? No. Will you ever stop to wonder how we eradicated malaria in the developed world using DDT and still have plenty of birds and the bees? No. Will you ever try to calculate how many lives have been saved by us being malaria-free for over half a century? No. Will you think about why we’ve spent 800 billion dollars to fight global warming when the Earth’s temperature hasn’t risen in nearly two decades? No. Will you consider the effect that amount of money could have had on poverty relief around the world? No.
Will you at least admit that standing idly by and not speaking out means there’s some blood on your hands? Just a touch, a smidgen even? No.
You are this very day in the midst of a silent ongoing genocide, a slowmo invisible annihilation, a new shoah of such dimensions as to put the Nazis to shame and yet you will not acknowledge it or speak out about it. You do nothing. Nothing, nada, nada and nada every time. It’s Hemingway’s prayer and that’s the prayer of those who not only believe they’ve been abandoned by God, but have ceased to believe there can even be such an entity.
“Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”
Can there actually be a god? What sort of god could countenance such needless cruelty, suffering and callous waste of innocent lives? Deus irae? An angry god? Is there a reason? Do you have a reason? An excuse? Anything?
All those millions of preventable deaths are the direct result of political policies driven by nothing more than fashionable ideas about what our relationship with the Earth should be. In the midst of it all, you ignore the pressing issues, preferring instead to hotly debate schismatic irrelevances like female or gay priests. It’s no wonder that whole sections of churches in the developing word are considering decoupling themselves from what they consider to be out of touch mother churches in the developed nations, who simply won’t engage with real problems.
You plant saplings in leafy suburbs doing your bit to save the Earth while the poor in the developing countries are running out of shrubs to burn to keep themselves alive. You talk about living in harmony with God’s good green Earth while the poor can do nothing more than lay damp towels over their dying children and hope for the fucking best. Who needs God’s forgiveness there? All my tears outside the walls of Babylon have long ago been wept; there’s nothing left in me now but an abiding anger at you.
You are a part of the problem when you should by any decent notion of religious conviction be a major part of fixing it.
I am nothing and nobody, a small man with a small voice who long ago despaired of any faith in some sort of god. And yet I beseech you in the name of whatever god you follow to do something, or at least speak out. Like the Nazarene, you will not be rewarded for telling the simple truth.
Don’t tell me why god allows such things because there can be no reason, don’t bother debating god’s existence with me or his mysterious ways, just tell me why as a human being and a supposed man of god with some influence, you aren’t standing in your pulpit at every opportunity, raging and thundering to your congregation against such an obscene and preventable waste of human life and worse still, allowing that inhumanity to grind on day after pitiless day without doing a single thing about it.
Tell me why.
By
View Photo In this July 28, 2014 photo, the home of Tammy and Rick Huffstutlar is surrounded …
View Photo In this July 28, 2014 photo, Rick Huffstutlar walks through a pasture at his home …
View Photo In this July 28, 2014 photo, a horse grazes in a field in front of wind turbines …
View Photo-In this July 28, 2014 photo, wind turbines can be seen just beyond the property of …
View PhotoIn this July 28, 2014 photo, two donkeys run through a pasture at the home of Tammy …
View PhotoIn this July 28, 2014 photo, a house and out-buildings are surrounded by wind turbines …
View PhotoFILE – In this Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2012 file photo, a house is dwarfed by the wind …CALUMET, Okla. (AP) — A decade ago, states offered wind-energy developers an open-armed embrace, envisioning a bright future for an industry that would offer cheap electricity, new jobs and steady income for large landowners, especially in rural areas with few other economic prospects.
To ensure the opportunity didn’t slip away, lawmakers promised little or no regulation and generous tax breaks.
But now that wind turbines stand tall across many parts of the nation’s windy heartland, some leaders in Oklahoma and other states fear their efforts succeeded too well, attracting an industry that gobbles up huge subsidies, draws frequent complaints and uses its powerful lobby to resist any reforms. The tension could have broad implications for the expansion of wind power in other parts of the country.
“What we’ve got in this state is a time bomb just waiting to go off,” said Frank Robson, a real estate developer from Claremore in northeast Oklahoma. “And the fuse is burning, and nobody is paying any attention to it.”
Today, many of the same political leaders who initially welcomed the wind industry want to regulate it more tightly, even in red states like Oklahoma, where candidates regularly rail against government interference. The change of heart is happening as wind farms creep closer to more heavily populated areas.
Opposition is also mounting about the loss of scenic views, the noise from spinning blades, the flashing lights that dot the horizon at night and a lack of public notice about where the turbines will be erected.
Robson said the industry is turning the landscape into a “giant industrial complex,” and the growing cost of the subsidies could decimate state funding for schools, highways and prisons.
Oklahoma went from three farms with 113 turbines a decade ago to more than 30 projects and 1,700 active turbines today.
With the rapid expansion came political clout. The industry now has nearly a dozen registered lobbyists working to stop new regulations and preserve generous subsidies that are expected to top $40 million this year.
Evidence of that influence can be seen at the Statehouse. A bill by the Senate president pro tem to ban any new wind farms in the eastern half of the state was quickly scuttled in the House. When state Rep. Earl Sears tried to amend the proposal to include some basic regulations for the industry, lobbyists killed that idea, too.
“I personally believe that wind power has a place in Oklahoma, but I’m frustrated,” Sears said. “I think they should have more regulations.”
Wind developers say they’re just protecting their investment — more than $6 billion spent on construction of wind farms in Oklahoma over a decade, according to a study commissioned by the industry. In addition to royalties paid to landowners, the giant turbines themselves are valued at as much as $3 million each.
Monte Tucker, a farmer and rancher from Sweetwater in far western Oklahoma, said his family has received annual payments of more than $30,000 for the four wind turbines placed on their ranch two years ago.
“We’re generating money out of thin air,” Tucker said. “And if the landowners don’t want them, the developers have to go somewhere else.”
Tucker says the turbines take only about 5 acres of his property out of production, and they have not affected the deer, turkey and quail hunting on the land. On a recent 101-degree day, he found about 40 of his cows lined up in a single row in the turbine’s shadow.
Meanwhile, a formal inquiry into how the industry operates in Oklahoma is being launched by a state regulatory agency at lawmakers’ request. The fact-finding mission could lead to legislation targeting the industry.
The turbines are subject to local property taxes after a five-year exemption for which the state reimburses local counties and schools. The exemption for wind producers was designed to offset a lifetime property tax exemption in neighboring Kansas.
In addition, the state offers wind developers tax credits based on per-kilowatt production that can be applied to any corporate income tax liability and then sold back to the state for 85 cents on the dollar. Those cash subsidies are expected to total $80 million over the next four years, according to estimates from the Oklahoma Tax Commission.
Oklahoma is one of at least six states competing for wind industry development, which often breathes life into communities that have lost manufacturing jobs and family farms.
Over the last decade, the number of wind-generated megawatts has grown from 6,000 in 2003 to 61,000 last year, which equates to roughly 30,000 turbines.
The biggest wind industry boom is taking place in Texas. Iowa and Oklahoma are close behind. Other states that have announced major projects include Kansas, North Dakota and New Mexico, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group.
In Kansas, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is trying to balance his state’s embrace of wind with opposition to a 2009 state energy law that requires utilities to use more wind and other renewable sources of power. Brownback supports wind energy, but his political base includes free-market GOP conservatives who oppose such mandates.
Texas Comptroller Susan Combs released a report last week urging an end to state subsidies for wind power, saying that tax credits and property tax limits helped grow the industry but today give it an unfair advantage.
“It’s time,” Combs said, “for wind to stand on its own two feet.”
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One of the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturers let loose a bit of truth and self-admission to the Financial Times: We still need help, and that help must come from taxpayers.
The wind production tax credit, a generous $23 per-megawatt-hour tax credit the producer receives for 10 years, expired last year. At that rate, taxpayers are effectively covering half the wholesale price of electricity and, in some areas of the country, the entire wholesale price. The PTC expired at the end of 2013, but several policymakers are pushing for an extension.
Lisa Davis, who leads the global energy business at Siemens, told the Financial Times the wind industry was close to grid parity with conventional sources of electricity such as coal and natural gas, but “we’re not there yet.”
“We’ve not yet got to the point where it’s truly self-sustaining,” she said. “We’ve got to focus on cost competitiveness.”
So the way to become self-sustaining and cost-competitive is to plead for extended reliance on the taxpayer? That is exactly why Congress needs to cut the cord on wind energy subsidies from the federal government. The wind industry cannot focus on lowering costs while it is so heavily subsidized because subsidies enable them to ignore costs. So, rather than trying to achieve the true price point necessary for cost-competitiveness, the wind industry concentrates on securing more subsidies. Eliminating the PTC for good will allow wind producers to become self-sustaining if the technology truly can compete with other sources of energy.
If wind cannot compete, then it doesn’t belong in our energy mix. America has a robust and diverse supply of electricity generation where our energy demands are met through coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydropower and other renewable sources. We don’t need the federal government to create artificial diversity that wastes taxpayer dollars and promotes stagnation. This holds true for all energy sources.
The reality is startups and new ideas and technologies succeed and fail all of the time. Failure should not be a signal for the federal government to come to the rescue; it’s a signal those resources can be put to more productive use in the economy. But the wind industry is no start-up. It’s been more than 22 years since Matthew Wald of the New York Times wrote, “Because of striking improvements in technology, the commercial use of these windmills, or wind turbines as the builders call them, has shown that in addition to being pollution free, they can now compete with fossil fuels in the cost of producing electricity.”
There is no justification for propping up established companies, either. If Chi Chi’s pleaded for handouts to stay competitive with the likes of Applebees, or Microsoft told America it needed support from the taxpayer to sell more Zunes, policymakers rightfully would scoff. Those companies didn’t fail because they weren’t cost competitive; they simply offered a product consumers didn’t want to buy.
Rather than creating a sustainable industry, the PTC artificially propped up an industry, advanced special interests and allocated labor and capital away from more competitive uses in the marketplace. Extending the credit would only exacerbate those problems and complicate opportunities for real tax reform. Congress should hold its ground and keep the sun set on the wind PTC.