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Green’s Moment of Truth?
Steve LeVine, Oil & Glory
Today’s breathtaking surge of oil prices through $120 a barrel and on toward $121 underscores a possible shift in the U.S. — Americans may be finally recovering from their seduction with the road.
An insightful piece by my Business Week colleague Christopher Palmeri details how America’s demand for oil appears to be dropping. They are traveling less, and when they do, doing so in smaller vehicles — they are buying more compact cars, and fewer SUVs.
Caution is in order, since the country is in recession, and these statistics are for a single quarter. Yet the tightness in global oil supplies isn’t likely to lift — Russian production is stuck at about 10 million barrels a day and dropping, and the Saudis are probably at or near their own production peak, according to a piece today by my former Wall Street Journal colleague Neil King. The only big unknown is whether Iraq and Iran come on the market with large new supplies.
(6 May 2008)
Big Oil’s Friends in the Senate
Editorial, New York Times
Listen to almost any politician, President Bush included, and you’ll hear that the fight against global warming cannot be won without cleaner technologies that will ease dependence on fossil fuels. Yet these same politicians are on the verge of allowing modest but vital tax credits to expire that are crucial to the future of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.
These credits are necessary to attract new investment in renewable sources until they become competitive with cheaper, dirtier fuels like coal. When the credits disappear, investments shrivel. The production tax credit for wind energy has been allowed to expire three times. In each case, new investment dropped by more than 70 percent. The credits for wind and solar expire at the end of this year, so action now is important.
Though there is plenty of blame to go around, Mr. Bush and Senate Republicans bear a heavy burden.
(5 May 2008)
$5 gas near, 78% of Americans say
David Goldman, CNN Money
… A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll found that 94% of respondents expect they will have to pay $4 a gallon sometime this year – and 78% said they figure it will hit $5.
The national average for gasoline was $3.61 on Monday, according to motorist group AAA.
Consumers’ fears that they will have to pay more have intensified. A year ago, 79% thought gas would cost $4 by the end of 2007 and only 28% feared $5 gas.
(5 May 2008)
Economic Stimulus Check Burned For Warmth
The Onion
HELENA, MT-Saying the extra bit of kindling material couldn’t have come at a better time, 43-year-old school teacher Tim Donaldson received his $618 rebate check from the Internal Revenue Service Tuesday, and then immediately burned it to provide warmth for his wife and two sons. “It gets pretty cold here at night,” said Donaldson, adding that with 75 percent of his take-home pay going toward car and mortgage payments, his children’s schooling, and his wife’s medical bills, the rare opportunity to sleep in a warm house for a night was much appreciated.
(7 May 2008)
Satire.
Uranium claims spring up along Grand Canyon rim
Judy Pasternak, Los Angeles Times
A rush to extract uranium on public lands pits environmentalists, who worry about the local effect, against mining companies, which point out that nuclear power wouldn’t contribute to global warming.
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GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, ARIZ. — Thanks to renewed interest in nuclear power, the United States is on the verge of a uranium mining boom, and nowhere is the hurry to stake claims more pronounced than in the districts flanking the Grand Canyon’s storied sandstone cliffs.
On public lands within five miles of Grand Canyon National Park, there are now more than 1,100 uranium claims, compared with just 10 in January 2003, according to data from the Department of the Interior.
(4 May 2008)
In West, mining’s return faces resistance
Ben Arnoldy, The Christian Science Monitor
The region’s newcomers, who came for high-tech jobs and scenery, worry about ecological costs.
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… Similar fights are playing out across the West as the high price of metals has brought mining roaring back to the region. Once seen as economic engines, mining companies are now treated more like pariahs in communities that have prospered by attracting wealthy pre-retirees and “knowledge economy” jobs.
“The [economic] imperative decades ago was ‘we have to do the mine, it’s all we can look to,’ ” says Larry Swanson, an economist at the University of Montana’s Center for the Rocky Mountain West. “And now we’ve had this amenity-based growth here and … the reality is now people are living off the scenery. People wouldn’t be coming without it.”
(2 May 2008)
