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Dumb as We Wanna Be
Thomas L. Friedman
… The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”
Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.
But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage – gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars – and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage – new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.
Are you sitting down?
Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.
These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again – which often happens – investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That’s how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.
(30 April 2008)
Lawmakers being forced to give up gas-guzzling cars
Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times
A little-noticed amendment to last year’s energy bill requires House members who lease vehicles to select those that emit low levels of greenhouse gases.
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Rep. Elton Gallegly of Simi Valley likes his taxpayer-funded Ford Expedition. He isn’t worried that it’s not the most fuel-efficient car. It’s reliable, suits his mountainous district and is cheaper to lease than many other vehicles.
“It’s not a Cadillac. It’s not a Lincoln. It’s a Ford,” the Republican congressman said with exasperation.
But like it or not, Gallegly and other lawmakers will have to give up gas-hungry SUVs and luxury sedans for leased vehicles that are more eco-correct, such as Toyota’s Prius.
And some are in a high-octane fit about it.
(1 May 2008)
Poor babies!
Related from New York Times: What Would You Drive, if the Taxpayers Paid?
And in the Los Angeles Times: Democrats give the Capitol a touch of green.
-BA
National Security Requires Pragmatic Oil Security Plan
Anthony L. Kimery, Homeland Security Today
… Rather than discharging their partisan notions and start working together on a real-world pragmatic national security-focused oil security agenda, the Bush administration and Democrats – and even some Grand Old Party members themselves – are instead bickering over insignificant things like whether recent purchases for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve have driven up oil prices by as much as 10 percent. The reserve is crucial to national security and the relative small purchases historically have had little impact on world oil prices.
Meanwhile, US refining capacity is an aging, maintenance-ridden 40 percent less than what it was almost 30 years ago. The transportation infrastructure for crude and petro products needs updating and vital infrastructure needs better protection.
Ironically, the increased price of oil has resulted in increased drilling for oil and natural gas in the US. Today there’s more drilling occurring than there was at the height of the last production boom in the late 70’s and early 80’s. But much of this activity is in places that would have been produced had the last boom not collapsed.
New fields still aren’t being tapped, like the more than 100 billion barrels of oil that’s estimated under the Outer Continental Shelf, other potential offshore locations and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. While producing these areas probably wouldn’t have much of an impact on oil or gas prices in the near term, this production would aid national petro-security, as would opening other areas to exploration and production.
… But until the US comes up with an actionable oil security game plan, it will continue to be a hair trigger away from a debilitating shortage and cost.
(30 April 2008)
Omits any discussion of oil depletion – not a good start for an energy strategy. -BA
Canada: Ethanol to get green light
Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service
Conservatives, Liberals say they’re not concerned about food-based biofuel
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OTTAWA — The House of Commons is expected to give the green light in coming days to legislation that could boost Canadian production of ethanol.
… Liberal environment critic David McGuinty said he is open to reviewing the policies on a regular basis, but he disagrees with critics who believe ethanol production is causing a global food crisis.
“It’s overly simplistic to draw a causal connection directly between the production of biofuels, chiefly ethanol, and food shortages. There are a number of factors at play here,” McGuinty said. “This notion that Canadian ethanol production is leading to world starvation and food shortages, I just think it’s leftist rhetoric and not productive.”
Baird said the existing federal policies and programs could result in about five per cent of agricultural land being used to produce fuel instead of food. But New Democrat environment critic Nathan Cullen said the growing food crisis is a sign that it’s time to rethink government policies. “We hope that the overwhelming evidence that’s coming in and … the moral implications, as well as environmental, will start to sway the Liberals and Conservatives to rethink their policies,” Cullen said.
He said his party has promoted biofuels in the past and still supports renewable fuels which reduce the environmental impact of energy consumption. But he said he was troubled by the prospect of using food for fuel.
(1 May 2008)
BC’s Liberals Deserve Prize for Climate of Secrecy
Sean Holman, The Tyee
Shred of transparency, please?
Give Campbell’s global warming team a Code of Silence Award!
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Later this month, the Canadian Association of Journalists will announce the winner of its annual Code of Silence Award — recognizing the most secretive government department in Canada. And, this year, 24 Hours, The Tyee and Public Eye are proud to nominate British Columbia’s climate action secretariat for that award.
We know the competition is going to be tough. After all, since taking office, the Harper administration has been repeatedly criticized as “unnecessarily secretive.”
But the Campbell administration was elected in 2001 with the promise of running the most open and accountable government in the country. And nowhere has the breaking of that promise been more apparent than at the climate action secretariat — which reports directly to the premier’s office and is responsible for achieving the province’s greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Indeed, according to The Vancouver Sun’s Vaughn Palmer “no quality has been more lacking in the Campbell approach to fighting climate change” than transparency. Let us count the ways …
(1 May 2008)
