Regarding Obama's oil spill speech.
From Hot Air:
Things I learned tonight from watching Keith Olbermann’s and Chris Matthews’s post-speech wrap-up: (1) Obama’s rhetoric is gassy and notably short on specifics; (2) renewable energy is much harder to develop than certain prominent Democrats would have us believe; (3) government bureaucracy may be contributing to the slow federal response in the gulf.
The short answer is: the feds.
Five weeks ago Escambia County officials requested permission from the Mobile Unified Command Center to use a sand skimmer, a device pulled behind a tractor that removes oil and tar from the top three feet of sand, to help clean up Pensacola’s beaches. County officials still haven’t heard anything back. Santa Rosa Island Authority Buck Lee told The Daily Caller why: “Escambia County sends a request to the Mobile, Ala., Unified Command Center. Then, it’s reviewed by BP, the federal government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard. If they don’t like it, they don’t tell us anything.”
Tough to feel sorry for Teh One after he said he would roll back the oceans (or some such bullshit) during the 2008 campaign. Charles Krauthammer's column points out this inconvenient fact, plus the fact that we drill in iffy places because environmentalists won't let us drill anywhere else.
I've been told we had 30 years to get off oil, but practically speaking, there's never been a replacement for all the things we use petroleum for, not the least of which is fuel. The risks vs. rewards has been substantially weighted in oil's favor, and until the renewable sources folks can pony up something comparable, we'll continue seeking oil anywhere we can.
If you were wondering why it took President Obama so long to do anything about the oil spill in the Gulf, look no further than his relationship with BP, the owner of the spewing well. Apparently, Barack Obama has been the biggest recipient of BP money.
BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Donations come from a mix of employees and the company’s political action committees — $2.89 million flowed to campaigns from BP-related PACs and about $638,000 came from individuals.
On top of that, the oil giant has spent millions each year on lobbying — including $15.9 million last year alone — as it has tried to influence energy policy.
During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records.
From Hugh Hewitt. But they sure do want to let you know that BP will be paying for it. That's reassuring. Of course, I'd be more reassured if the feds had been prepared for it.
Can you imagine what would have been in the press had GWB been president when this happened?
The latest Gallup poll shows that, for the first time since Gallup asked the question (2001), Americans think energy production is more important than the environment.
The results could be driven by concerns about jobs and the job killing effect of most environmental protection legislation. Hot Air notes that environmental concerns over energy peaked in 2007, ahead of the economic collapse, so this could just be a matter of Americans pondering priorities and shifting their thoughts. One of the things environmental whackos can't seem to understand is that most Americans like the idea of cleaner energy sources but don't like the idea of being forced to choose them. Or they support green alternatives for reasons other than emotional pablum. In any case, a weak economy and higher fuel prices mean cramming through cap and trade legislation is a bad idea for Democrats.
That's China's recommendation: if you want to help the environment, institute a "one child" policy like China has, complete with forced abortions.
“The [Chinese] policy on family planning proves to be a great success,” Zhao was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying in Copenhagen, where she is one of Beijing’s delegates at the U.N. climate conference.
“It not only contributes to reduction of global emission, but also provides experiences for other countries – developing countries in particular – in their pursuit for a coordinated and sustainable development.”...
A report on Zhao’s comments in the state-run China Daily said she acknowledged that the one-child policy was not without “consequences” – but the only ones she mentioned were the skewed gender balance and a rapidly ageing society.
“I’m not saying that what we have done is 100 percent right, but I’m sure we are going in the right direction and now 1.3 billion people have benefited,” she said.
And that is to piss off liberals. I'm not making this stuff up; she actually said that that is the reason so many people either don't believe in global warming or are skeptical about it and question the science. It can't possibly be that every couple of years scientists change their mind about something and announce that they now believe the exact opposite (example: remember when eggs were the worst food on the planet and nobody was supposed to eat them? Then, scientists changed their minds and decided eggs were great! Now, they're somewhere in between).
No, conservatives aren't just rational people with memories longer than Amanda's convenient memory about politics and logic. They clearly aren't skeptical about drastic changes in the way we are supposed to live, including getting rid of cars, crippling American industries and generally taxing the hell out of everyone and dictating how they will live their lives. No, according to Amanda, there are really just two reasons why conservatives don't believe the climate screamers:
1) They’re in deep denial.
2) They know that global warming is real, but they don’t care.
Josh Marshall unconsciously contradicts his own premise in his analysis of why people think what they think.
Do our beliefs form the basis of our partisan and ideological affiliations? Or is it vice versa?
There's been a lot of recent evidence not only that Republicans disproportionately disbelieve the evidence for man-made global warming but that their skepticism is growing. I think that trend is fairly classed under the general heading of Republican/conservative hostility to science.
That's the human cost of the EPA's push for higher car efficiency standards.
Tired of having to drive safe, affordable vehicles? Can’t make a decision at the car lot and want the government to narrow down the decisions for you? Well then you’re in luck. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a great new regulation in store for you.
The agency is intending to use the Clean Air Act to improve the fuel efficiency to 35.5 miles per gallon fleetwide by 2016 - four years ahead of schedule when President Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
Sounds like a good deal. Most everyone wants his or her vehicle to get more miles to the gallon. It’s one of the things people first inquire about when buying a car. But there are many other reasons people choose certain vehicles: safety, reliability, horsepower, style, price, comfort, handling, and environmental impact. For instance, Americans use larger vehicles for practical reasons: to take their kids to practice, to tow their boat to the shore, or on small farms to haul equipment or produce. Of course, to meet these new standards, cars and trucks will need to be lighter, making them less safe. The National Academy of Sciences study pegs the cost of downsizing at 1,300 to 2,600 lives per year.
But we’re saving the planet, right? Touted as a measure to curb global warming, fuel efficiency standards have very little environmental impact. Newer vehicles with better efficiency standards may emit less carbon dioxide per mile, but increased fuel efficiency often leads to more driving and new cars “constitute a miniscule source of overall carbon dioxide emissions.” Our friends at the Institute for Energy Research note that “the rule will lead to global mean temperature being 16 thousandths of a degree Celsius lower (0.016°C) in 2100.”
Jonathan Adler has a post up on this New York Times story on the differing approaches to renewable energy by Texas and California.
the oil-and-gas state has nonetheless emerged as the nation’s top producer of a commodity prized by environmentalists: wind power. Eager developers are covering its desolate western mesas with giant turbines. The world’s largest wind farm began operations in Texas this month, and the state now has close to three times as much wind capacity as Iowa, the second-ranked state.
This achievement puts Mr. Perry’s state in odd company. The race for clean-energy leadership is on — and big red Texas is going head-to-head with the gung-ho greens of California. That state has thrown itself into solar power and now leads the nation by a huge margin; it has also aggressively pursued energy efficiency...
Texas’s secret, besides strong winds and lots of land, is its lack of regulation. Wind developers rave about the fact that, in essence, they need few state permits to build a turbine farm. They deal mainly with local officials, who are generally permissive (energy, after all, is a well-loved commodity in Texas).
The comparison illustrates how regulatory policy can have a large effect renewable energy development. Mandates can certainly force investment into renewable energy sources, but regulations can also stifle otherwise productive investments as well. Indeed, as I’ve discussed before, some companies seeking to advance renewable energy sources have found environmental regulations to be among their greatest obstacles.
Most of us grew up with parents and don't really want the U.S. government taking their place.
“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” Dr. Chu said. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.”
This is nothing more than a slightly more honest look at the attitude of the Left when it comes to governance. It’s all about paternalism and condescension, and the belief that a group of elites should be appointed to rule over the unwashed and unschooled masses for their own good. That has never been consonant with the American experience, which allows the individual to make his own choices and live with the consequences. Chu gives us a good look at the liberal soul, and most Americans will not like what they see.
Didn't know you all earn $250k per year, did you? Now we know President Obama knew cap and trade would affect average Americans big time.
As Erick Erickson notes, President Obama knew this back in November, yet chose to propose the legislation anyway. And he knew it would bite far worse during an economic downturn. What do we call those who pursue radical goals despite the harsh results for citizens? Fanatics.
Many have been chastized for calling Teh One "radical," but the more we learn about his policies and ideas, it becomes inescapable to conclude that he truly is a radical, hellbent on achieving his goals regardless of the will of those who elected him. The President of All of Us is looking suspiciously like a guy who believes in the Divine Right of the POTUS these days.
That's from Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, who died at the age of 95.
In the late 1960s, most experts were speaking of imminent global famines in which billions would perish. "The battle to feed all of humanity is over," biologist Paul Ehrlich famously wrote in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. "In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich also said, "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971." He insisted that "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."
But Borlaug and his team were already engaged in the kind of crash program that Ehrlich declared wouldn't work. Their dwarf wheat varieties resisted a wide spectrum of plant pests and diseases and produced two to three times more grain than the traditional varieties. In 1965, they had begun a massive campaign to ship the miracle wheat to Pakistan and India and teach local farmers how to cultivate it properly. By 1968, when Ehrlich's book appeared, the U.S. Agency for International Development had already hailed Borlaug's achievement as a "Green Revolution."
According to Friday's Washington Times, the legislation includes language that provides, should it become law, that people who lose their jobs because of it "could get a weekly paycheck for up to three years, subsidies to find new work and other generous benefits—courtesy of Uncle Sam."
How generous are these benefits? Well, according to the Times, "Adversely affected employees in oil, coal and other fossil-fuel sector jobs would qualify for a weekly check worth 70 percent of their current salary for up to three years. In addition, they would get $1,500 for job-search assistance and $1,500 for moving expenses from the bill's 'climate change worker adjustment assistance' program, which is expected to cost $4.2 billion from 2011 to 2019."
Instead of being a the source of millions of new jobs of "green jobs"—as House Democrats are fond of saying over and over again—the provision is a hidden admission that their effort is a job killer, not just a massive new tax on energy.
While everybody's been slobbering over the Mark Sanford affair and wringing their hands over Obamacare (myself included), Democrats have been busy using this cover to bring cap and trade, the uber tax for carbon emissions that will jack up the price of everything, up for a vote. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is talking about a vote on Friday.
There are lots of deceptions about what cap and trade is and who is affected, but it's safe to say that basically everyone will be affected and you will be crushed if you live in most of the country. (see chart)
From the Wall Street Journal:
The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.
EPA to issue carbon dioxide rule.
President Barack Obama's climate czar said Sunday the Environmental Protection Agency would soon issue a rule on regulation of carbon dioxide, finding that it represents a danger to the public.
The White House is pressing Congress to draft and pass legislation that would cut greenhouse gases by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, threatening to use authorities under the Clean Air Act if legislators don't move fast enough or create strong enough provisions...
Officially recognizing that carbon dioxide is a danger to the public sets would trigger regulation of the greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, refineries, chemical plants, cement firms, vehicles and any other emitting sectors across the economy.
Industry fears it could shut down the economy, not only preventing plants to operate and a drastic retooling of the energy sector but also pushing costs up uncompetitively, while environmentalists say that Administration action is required by law and to pressure lawmakers to act.
Basically, because his policies are destined to prolong the downturn.
Now today's Obamacrats are apparently going to try and Hooverize President Bush in an effort to shield themselves from the potential political fallout of a prolonged recession. It will take years to fix the American economy, Obama says, and years of trillion-dollar budget deficits to do it. And everyday it seems that Team Obama tries to lower economic expectations, such as bearishly predicting that unemployment would hit double-digits.
The not-so-subtle message in the middle of all these pessimistic prognostications: When ya'll go to vote in 2010 and 2012 and a) unemployment is still as high as it's been in decades, b) income growth is sluggish at best, c) the budget deficit is running at a trillion bucks a year, and d) stock prices remain stubbornly low -- hey, don't blame us, you can't rebuild Rome in a day or even in a first term. Remember, Bush really left us a mess.
And, really, how can Obama avoid taking responsibility when he will be so actively meddling in the economy? It will be his decision to forego deep and permanent new tax cuts, his decision to not extend the Bush tax cuts, his decision on how to spend the remaining $350 billion in TARP money, his decision to quasi-nationalize healthcare, his decision to push a cap-and-trade carbon emission program and his decision to spend hundreds of billions on a "green" industrial policy. It might even be his decision to try and reunionize the American laborforce. Obama will "own" the battered economy, perhaps almost literally, given Uncle Sam's bailout binge.
Admittedly, Barack Obama has not promised to wreck the economy, but judging from his plans to overturn many Bush policies, it's the only conclusion we can come to.
Not only is he planning to rescind the Mexico City Policy, which prevents taxpayer-funded doctors from talking about abortion to women in other countries, but also the ban on embryonic stem cell research, a process that has become more obviously brutal, barbaric and unnecessary in light of new research on the use of adult stem cells. But if Obama never saw a baby that shouldn't be killed if Mom decided she didn't want him/her, why should he get squeamish about using embryos? Pro-abortion types don't even acknowledge the humanity of embryos, so this is no surprise.
Even more than the life issues Obama will trample on, his hard left environmentalist bent will criple American industries, particularly the auto industry.
The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration’s decision in December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars.
California had sought permission to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 mpg within eight years. Seventeen other states had promised to adopt California’s rules, representing in total 45 percent of the nation’s automobile market. Environmentalists cheered the California initiative because it would stoke innovation that could benefit the entire country.
“An early move by the Obama administration to sign the California waiver would signal the seriousness of intent to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and build a future for the domestic auto market,” said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Before the election, Obama told others that he favors declaring that carbon emissions are endangering human welfare, following an EPA task force recommendation in December that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries.
Some related reforms embraced by Obama’s transition advisers would alter procedures for decision-making on climate issues. A book titled “Change for America,” being published next week by the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal think tank, will recommend, for example, that Obama rapidly create a National Energy Council to coordinate all policy-making related to global climate change.
The center’s influence with Obama is substantial: It was created by John Podesta, co-chairman of the transition effort, and much of its staff has been swept into planning for Obama’s first 100 days in office.
The center’s new book will also urge Obama to sign an executive order requiring that greenhouse gas emissions be considered whenever the federal government examines the environmental impact of its actions under the existing National Environmental Policy Act. Several key members of Obama’s transition team have embraced the idea.
