How Free Is America's Economy?

From No Sheeples Here:



A few posts ago, I surveyed the state of our economy, considering food, agriculture, energy, housing trade deficits and more. Bottom line, we are moving quickly in the wrong direction across the entire spectrum. The American Dream is not yet dead, but it will soon be on life support if entitlements are not reformed and the insane Obama war on oil, coal and gas is not turned completely around.

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2011: The State Of The Union Economy

In the near future, Obama will be giving his State of the Union address. Here are some deeply troubling facts about our economy that you will not be hearing in that speech.

1. Food Prices At Record Highs & Heading Upwards; Ethanol Mandates & Subsidies Put Fuel In Competition With Food

Food prices are skyrocketing upward, running last month at an annualized rate of 8.7% inflation.

In December, the wholesale price of vegetables rose by 22.8 percent, and fruit was up 15.4 percent. . . . The price of beef rose 2.7 percent in December and was 15 percent higher than a year ago, the Department of Labor said in the PPI report. Pork is up 22.3 percent from a year ago, and fish is up almost as much. Turkey is up 18 percent.

This is a world wide issue. Food prices are at their highest ever. Just today, the chief executive of one of the world's largest food producers warned that the global crisis in food production is reaching "dangerous territory" with demand outstripping supply.

The causes are multiple, but a large portion of it is the insane push to create "bio-fuels" out of food crops and the concomitant misuse of agricultural land:

In the United States, which harvested 416 million tons of grain in 2009, 119 million tons went to ethanol distilleries to produce fuel for cars. That’s enough to feed 350 million people for a year. The massive U.S. investment in ethanol distilleries sets the stage for direct competition between cars and people for the world grain harvest. In Europe, where much of the auto fleet runs on diesel fuel, there is growing demand for plant-based diesel oil, principally from rapeseed and palm oil. This demand for oil-bearing crops is not only reducing the land available to produce food crops in Europe, it is also driving the clearing of rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia for palm oil plantations.

Bio-fuels are the world's greatest boondoggle. The fuel is inefficient, expensive and actually contributes to the growth of CO2 in our atmosphere. Not only does it make no sense to mandate or subsidize ethanol, it is a major contributing factor to poverty and hunger world-wide. Yet it is now a vested interest and thus, seemingly impossible to dislodge.

This particular problem in America has bi-partisan origins. It began under the Bush administration and now being furthered by the Obama administration. Within the past months, Obama's EPA actually increased by 50% the amount of ethanol allowable in gasoline, from 10% to 15% ethanol. Between that and the recent renewal of the ethanol subsidy, this problem of food prices will only get worse.

2. Housing Market

Our housing market has crossed the threshold into uncharted territory - it is now worse than it was during the Great Depression. Home values have declined 26% since their 2006 peak and there is no end in site to the slide. Foreclosures this year are expected to top 2010's record of one million, and over five million people are over two months behind in their mortgage payments.

3. Obama's War On Domestic Oil & Gas

It is impossible to underestimate the cost to our economy of Obama's war on domestic production of oil. An incredible 62% of our entire trade deficit now comes from importing foreign oil.


And the situation is poised to become much worse. Many expect the price of gasoline seems to spiral upwards, beyond the $4 a gallon threshold that caused nationwide discontent two years ago. Gas could well hit $5 a gallon this year. Opening up oil and gas drilling throughout America would add significantly to jobs, fill our declining coffers and significantly increase the supply of oil and gas, thus reducing the cost of gasoline. Yet the Obama administration is taking the opposite tack, warring on our oil and gas infrastructure.

The administration, has shut down all new offshore drilling and is making it ever more difficult to drill for oil on federal lands. Further, the Obama administration is in the midst of massive land and ocean grabs specifically aimed at cutting off ever more of our natural resources from exploitation. Lastly, the administration is expected to introduce even more regulations and increase taxes on our domestic oil industry in response to the report of the deeply partisan Oil Spill Commission, which, while tasked with investigating BP, instead condemned the entire oil industry.

4. Obama Is Killing Coal Mining & The Use Of Coal For Electricity With Deep Ramifications In The Future For The Cost & Availability Of Energy In America

The war on oil and gas pales in comparison to the Obama administration's war on coal - the basis for over 50% of the electrical power generation in our country. The Obama administration is doing all that it can to completely kill our coal industry:

"Coal is a dead man walkin'," says Kevin Parker, global head of asset management and a member of the executive committee at Deutsche Bank. "Banks won't finance them. Insurance companies won't insure them. The EPA is coming after them. . . . And the economics to make it clean don't work." . . .

Not a single new coal power generation plant was built in 2010. And lest there be any question whether investors should put their money into coal mines, the EPA recently took the unprecedented step of withdrawing a Clean Water permit for a mine it had approved three years ago. This from the WSJ, via Bizzy Blog:

The Environmental Protection Agency, in an unusual move, revoked a key permit for one of the largest proposed mountaintop-removal coal-mining projects in Appalachia, drawing cheers from environmentalists and protests from business groups worried their projects could be next.

The decision to revoke the permit for Arch Coal Inc.’s Spruce Mine No. 1 in West Virginia’s rural Logan County marks the first time the EPA has withdrawn a water permit for a mining project that had previously been issued. . . .

A spokeswoman for Arch said the company was “shocked and dismayed” by the agency’s decision, which it said would block an additional $250 million investment that would create 250 jobs. The company said it would appeal to the courts.

… As the EPA stressed that the permit decision had no implications beyond the Spruce mine, business groups outside the coal industry said the government’s action raised questions about whether permits previously issued for other businesses could also be revoked, potentially stranding investments and costing jobs even as the economy continues to heal.

The EPA has just added a significant amount of risk for any investor considering investment in a coal mine. This is killing jobs in the oil and coal industries. This war on coal and oil will soon have major ramifications for the domestic cost and availability of energy.

Update: Obama conducts this war even though his push for "green energy" is falling utterly flat. American Thinker covers the moras Obama has created with solar energy - a black hole for tax dollars and Democratic corruption that will not be replacing coal in our lifetime, if ever.

5. The EPA Poised To Harm Our Economy

Regulation as a whole has been creating an anti-business momentum for decades. But under Obama, and in particular with the EPA, the regulatory bureaucracy has taken wing. While Congress has refused to legislate restrictions on CO2, the EPA, with an assist from the climate scientists sitting on the Supreme Court, has assumed the right to do so under the Clean Air Act, a law ill suited for the task. The first leg of EPA's new regulatory scheme for CO2 went into effect this month. It is initially aimed at the "largest emitters" - i.e., coal fired power plants, cement plants, etc.



It is expected that this power grab will EPA will cost our country a million jobs and drive up significantly the price of energy.

6. Environmental Groups & The Courts Driving Energy Policy

Unfortunately, it is not just the regulatory bureaucracy that is implicated in this ever greater assault on our economy. Each of the regulatory laws passed by Congress decades ago contain a provision giving the keys to the courthouse to environmentalists. Because of that, a major driver of our nation's environmental policy is being dictated by the Courts - with drastic consequences. For example, a Federal Court decision to protect the Delta Smelt has turned one of our nation's prime agricultural areas into "Zimbawbwe." For another example, enterprising lawyers are now filing nuisance suits to sue U.S. manufacturers and power plants for their contribution to global warming. Our Supreme Court recently opted to allow such cases to proceed. It is time for Congress to end standing for all private suits under our environmental laws as well as clarifying that the regulation of green house gasses are policy questions for our elected representatives and thus cannot be heard by state or federal Courts.

7. More Regulatory Overreach & The Looming Explosion In Regulations

Before leaving the question of the regulatory bureaucracy, it is of course not just the EPA that has engaged in power grabs of very dubious constitutionality. The FCC's recent decision to assume control over regulation of the internet is yet another shining example of regulatory agencies gone wild. And we see similar overreach by HHS as Kathleen Sebilius is in the process of taking control over health insurance pricing in the U.S. Meanwhile, hundreds of new bureaucracies remain to be staffed and reams of new regulations remain to be written for Obamacare and the Financial Regulatory bill.

The regulatory bureaucracy is clearly out of control, bastardizing our form of government. We are beginning to resemble the EU - a government run by unelected bureaucrats. That is far from the vision of our Founders. As George Will notes in a column today, reasserting Congressional authority and oversight over the regulatory bureaucracy should be at the top of the agenda for the 112th Congress. Indeed, I believe that Congress should immediately pass a law holding that no regulation will become binding and enforcable unless and until approved by Congress.

8. Obamacare's Looming Taxes & Costs

As to Obamacare, its first effects are just now being felt. What we as a nation have to look forward to in the offing - higher health insurance premiums as well as hundreds of billions in new taxes, all on top of the costs of compliance:

- Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals (2010)
- Tax on Innovator Drug Companies (2010)
- Tax on Indoor Tanning Services (2010)
- Medicine Cabinet Tax (Jan 2011)
- HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike (Jan 2011)
- Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting (Jan 2012):
- Surtax on Investment Income (Jan. 2013)
- Flexible Spending Account Cap aka “Special Needs Kids Tax” (Jan 2013)
- Hike in Medicare Payroll Tax (Jan 2013)
- Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers (Jan 2013)
- Raise "Haircut" for Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI (Jan. 2013)
- Elimination of tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D (Jan 2013)
- $500,000 Annual Executive Compensation Limit for Health Insurance Executives (Jan 2013)
- Individual Mandate Excise Tax (Jan 2014)
- Employer Mandate Tax (Jan 2014)
- Tax on Health Insurers (Jan 2014)
- Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans (Jan 2018)

9. The National Debt & The Road To Becoming A Banana Republic

Our national debt is expected to balloon over the next decade, particularly in light of massive entitlement obligations. Obama and the left have us on track to have debt rise to $20 trillion, 90% of GDP, by 2020, the consequences of which will be calamitous. It means we will soon be facing massive increase in taxes, inflation, and the need for draconian cuts in spending - or default on our sovereign debt, with unimaginable consequences not just for us, but also for the world economy.

10. Unemployment

Since Obama assumed the Presidency, we have hemorrhaged millions of jobs and remain mired above 9% unemployment. For two years, Obama has concentrated on everything but the economy and jobs for Americans, apparently assuming that the economy would bounce back of its own accord while he focused on paying off labor unions and forcing through Obamacare. We are world's away from the Bush years, during which unemployment averaged 5.2%.

The December unemployment report showed that the jobless number dropped to 9.4%. That seemingly small piece of good news is illusory. This from Morning Bell via Bizzyblog:

You are going to hear a lot of noise from the White House about how this drop from a 9.8% unemployment rate to 9.4% means the economy is in a strong recovery. This is false. The reality is that the only reason the unemployment rate dropped is because the U.S. labor force decreased by 434,000. More importantly 260,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force entirely. This means that the Obama economy is now driving Americans out of the labor force faster than it is bringing them in.

Unemployment will remain an intractable problem under this deeply incompetent administration. Indeed, it will take a major change to all of the conditions dicussed above if we are to turn our country around, lower unemployment and grow our way out of this fiscal crisis.

11. Conclusion

Obama inherited a bad economy that he has made worse. Instead of changing tack, he is on the cusp of making our economy infinitely worse. True, he has finally appointed a token capitalist with business experience to his administration - William Daley. But unless this means Obama is willing to do an economic u-turn on gas, oil, Obamacare, the EPA, the FCC, ethanol and deficit spending, nothing is going to pull us out of our downward trajectory between now and 2012. The best we can hope for is for the House to slow the slide. But don't expect to hear any of that at the State of the Union.

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Mr. President, About You're Energy Policy . . .?

It's not that Obama and his administration doesn't have an energy policy, its that what inchoate policy he does have is designed to drive us back to the days of horse and buggies for transport and campfires for heat. Obama's energy policy is concerned with making energy vastly more expensive for Americans and, indeed, to drive coal, our primary source of electricity generation, from the market.

Gas prices have skyrocketed 55% under the first two years of the Obama administration, yet that is nowhere near the goal of Obama's Energy Secretary, which is to:

. . . “figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” At the time he made the statement, gas cost $7 – $8 a gallon in Europe.

Such prices would destroy America, where people and commerce normally traverse far greater distances daily than their typical European counterpart. Indeed, such prices would have deep ramifications for all aspects of our economy since virtually everything we do is dependent on energy. Moreover, the rise in gas and energy prices falls hardest on the poorest in our country. But that is a left wing goal that the Obama administration seems determined to achieve, in part at least by destroying our domestic oil production. This from the Heritage Foundation, describing acts by the Obama administration:

•Immediately after taking office in 2009, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah.

•The EPA announced new rules mandating the use of 36 billion gallons worth of renewable fuels (like ethanol) by 2020. [Note that ethanol actually increases green house gas emissions, increases food prices (which are now at world record highs, driving millions below the poverty line), and is a less efficient fuel than gasoline. In a word, it is the penultimate boondoggle.]

•This summer President Obama needlessly instituted, not one, but two outright drilling bans in the Gulf of Mexico.

•After rescinding his outright offshore drilling ban, President Obama has refused to issue any new drilling permits in the Gulf, a policy that the Energy Information Administration estimates will cut domestic offshore oil production by 13% this year.

•Interior Secretary Salazar announced that the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast, and the Pacific coast will not be developed, effectively banning drilling in those areas for the next seven years;

•The Environmental Protection Agency has announced new global warming regulations for oil refineries;

•Interior Secretary Salazar announced new rules making it more difficult to develop energy resources on federal land.

Of course, that is not all for this administration. They are also conducting a war on coal. Coal provides nearly 50% of all the electricity generation in the U.S.:

The headline news for the coal industry in 2010 was what didn't happen: Construction did not begin on a single new coal-fired power plant in the United States for the second straight year.

This in a nation where a fleet of coal-fired plants generates nearly half the electricity used.

But a combination of low natural gas prices, shale gas discoveries, the economic slowdown and litigation by environmental groups has stopped - at least for now - groundbreaking on new ones.

"Coal is a dead man walkin'," says Kevin Parker, global head of asset management and a member of the executive committee at Deutsche Bank. "Banks won't finance them. Insurance companies won't insure them. The EPA is coming after them. . . . And the economics to make it clean don't work." . . .

Central to the left's war on coal and oil are the countless green organizations to whom we have turned over the keys to the courthouse, and with it, our energy and environmental policy. So at any rate, we aren't using our massive deposits of coal to provide affordable electricity for our citizens - ostensibly because doing so would contribute to greenhouse gasses. Instead, we are exporting ever increasing amounts of our coal to China so they can enjoy affordable electricity and contribute to greenhouse gasses. And then there is the EU, the entity that has done the most to promote the canard of global warming, is seeing a big increase in the building of new coal fired power plants, primarily in Germany.

The reality is that this destruction of our energy infrastructure will be felt for years to come, as energy prices continuously rise. It is insanity. The American Petroleum Institute recently pointed out, in an plea to alter Obama's destructive policies:

Increased access to domestic oil and natural gas—rather than increased taxes on the U.S. oil and natural gas industry—is the best strategy for increasing government revenue, jobs and energy production, a new study by Wood Mackenzie concludes.

“U.S. oil and natural gas companies are a major force in our economy and, with the right policies in place, could drive even greater economic benefits,” said API President and CEO Jack Gerard, during a “State of American Energy” address in Washington today. “These companies produce most of the nation’s energy, put millions of people to work and deliver billions in taxes and royalties to our government. The study shows increased access to areas currently off-limits would create jobs, grow the economy and dramatically increase revenues to the Treasury, at a time when the U.S. deficit is of national concern.

“We urge the Congress and the administration to promote energy policies that will aid our economic recovery and reduce our debt. This study shows increased taxes would take us backwards.”

Increased access could (by 2025) create 530,000 jobs, deliver $150 billion more in tax, royalty and other revenue to the government, and boost domestic production by four million barrels of oil equivalent a day, according to the Wood Mackenzie study, “Energy Policy at a Crossroads: An Assessment of the Impacts of Increased Access versus Higher Taxes on U.S. Oil and Natural Gas Production, Government Revenue and Employment.” Raising taxes on the industry with no increase in access could reduce domestic production by 700,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day (in 2020), sacrifice as many as 170,000 jobs (in 2014), and reduce revenue to the government by billions of dollars annually. An additional 1.7 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in potential production that is currently of marginal economic feasibility would be at greater risk of not being developed under the modeled tax increase. . . .

Obama's destruction of our economy is far from over, and indeed, his "energy policy" may, in the long run, may prove, in the near and mid-term, more destructive than Obamacare.

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Links For Sunday

Germany goes solar coal for cheap energy.

U.S. exports coal to China for their cheap energy - while at the same time Obama and the EPA conduct their own war on coal and our energy infrastructure. We do not have an energy policy in this country, and it is very shortly going to bite us in the ass - hard. As usual, those who suffer most will be those on the low end of the economic scale, the people the left supposedly represent.

At Nature, they are discussing what to expect in 2011. Among the hot topics:

. . . The North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project reached bedrock in July 2010, at a depth of more than 2,500 metres. The fruits of that effort should soon be seen, now that researchers are analysing gas and particles trapped inside the ice core to reveal details of the climate of the Eemian interglacial period (130,000–115,000 years ago), when the average global temperature was about 5°C warmer than today.

That is a whopping 9 deg. Far. hotter then today. Nine degrees when there was no appreciable human contribution to carbon dioxide. And NASA's resident nut, Jim Hansen, is trying to convince us that 2010 is the "hottest year on record." Talk about requiring a willful suspension of disbelief.

Sage advice to the new Congress from Prof. Glen Reynolds:

. . . [R]emember that fortune favors the bold. It's true that ordinarily in politics, most progress occurs at the margins. But it's also true that these are not ordinary times. Big money-saving and government-shrinking proposals in the House, even if they're shot down by the Democrat-controlled Senate, will nonetheless establish a tone.

They're trying to hide it, but the Inside-the-Beltway permanent-government political class is currently scared. Keep them that way, while showing the public at large that you're serious. . . .

The NYT notes that the public is waking up to the toxic scam of public sector unions. Let us hope that the debacle in NYC, where lives were lost while the public union slow rolled clearing snow, becomes the icon for ending the pox of public sector unions on America. It is a fifty year old exercise in corrupt Dem. politics that needs to end before it buries us. As John at Powerline notes:

Enough is enough. Legalization of public employee unions has been a disaster. It is time to end the experiment and make them illegal once again, at both the federal and state levels. I expect that this will become one of the great political issues of the next decade.

And while we are waiting for that sea change, the next big step is to pass the legislation proposed by California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes (he's a lonely guy) that will require states to account for the degree to which their public sector pension funds are undercapitalized while also establishing a ban on federal bailouts of public pension programs.

The AP finally comes around to the position that the entitlement state is a disaster.

At the American, a fascinating article on how the government caused the Great Recession. In particular, they point to "a potent mix of six major government policies that together rewarded short-sighted collective risk-taking and penalized long-term business leadership." As an aside, it is worth noting that Obama's "bipartisan" Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is finally set to release its fictional report in January, 2011. The Commission refused to consider the role of Fannie and Freddie in the crisis. Indeed, so useless is the report that Obama felt no need to wait on it before passing new financial regulations ostensibly intended to fix the causes of or financial meltdown.

Commenting on the MSNBC interview with GOPROUD chairman, Chris Barron, shown below, John at Powerline remarks: "[L]iberalism is all about screwing certain people so that others can enjoy a windfall, and trying to cobble together an electoral majority out of that corruption. Conservatism, on the other hand, is all about building a better society for everyone." Amen. And that indeed is a point that needs to be hammered home to each of the victim constituencies that the far left relies on for their power base. We want them to emerge from victimhood, the left, to survive, needs to keep them there.



And on this day in history, in 1492, the Reconquista of Spain was complete when the last Muslim ruler of Granada, Muhammad XII, surrendered his kingdom to Isabella I of Castile.

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Green Fantasy, Energy Reality & Blood In The Streets

Two years ago I pointed out at this blog that all of the non-nuclear green energy Obama and the left were pushing as substitutes for coal and oil were not merely economically uncompetitive, but that they were untested at scale. Shannon Love, in a brilliant essay at Chicago Boyz not long ago expounded on why alternative forms of energy could not be relied upon to substitute for coal and oil at scale.

None of that has mattered thus far to the radical greens. Obama is deconstructing our energy infrastructure and warring on both coal and oil. Obama and the far left have legislated that increasing amounts of highly subsidized green energy must be used in our energy production. All well and good - until reality strikes. This from Alex Salkever writing at Daily Finance:

Boy, that was fast. Only five years into the world's renewable energy push, many utility companies are so concerned about grid instability that they're saying they can't accept any more electricity from intermittent sources of power. Translation: Solar power only runs in the day time and can't re relied on for so called "baseload" capacity. Wind power primarily produces current at night and, likewise, can't be relied upon for baseload capacity. Geothermal, meanwhile, is perfect for providing baseload. But geothermal projects take an excruciatingly long time to build out. And then there have been the recent spate of earthquake scares around geothermal sites.
The upshot: Utilities such as Hawaiian Electric in President Obama's home state are voicing concerns about plans to integrate more solar and wind power into the grid until they develop methods to more effectively absorb intermittent sources of power without destabilizing the whole shebang. In Europe, Czech utility companies are concerned that "feed-in tariffs," which require power companies to repurchase all home- and business-generated renewable power at elevated rates, might wreak havoc on the Central European grid.

This growing push-back from utilities could prove to be shock to energy project developers, lawmakers and homeowners. In the U.S., project developers and state lawmakers have assumed that the ambitious laws mandating as much as 40% of some states' power come from renewable sources within the next few decades would ensure huge demand for green power as utilities scaled up their use of such resources from low single-digit levels. Likewise, homeowners have tended to assume that if they could put a panel on their roof (or a windmill on their property), they would be guaranteed a market for the extra power produced. . . .

This is only a shock if you haven't been paying any attention to the issue beyond listening to the green propaganda machine. But expect the left to do absolutely nothing about this while our existing coal and fossil fuel infrastructure declines, leading to much higher energy prices in the medium term.

So now lets pivot to something else in the news - the revolution in Kyrgyzstan that occurred the other day. Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked Islamic majority nation that sits on the border of China and to the north of Afghanistan. It was annexed by the Soviet Union around 1920, then gained its independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell. It became a democracy, but the government has been unable to stem rampant corruption. Given that short history and its location, one could well imagine a host of reasons for the violent coup that occurred the other day, from Islamic radicalism to Russian or Chinese involvement. Nope, none of that. The reason for the violent overthrow of the government - rising energy prices attibutable to government intervention. This from Dr. North at EU Referendum:

Covered widely by the media, the reports of the rioting in Kyrgyzstan yesterday vary widely in tone and content. But, even if you have to drill down into the piece, not even The Guardian can conceal the reason for the unrest, which has seen protestors beat a Cabinet minister to death.

"The violent rolling protests appeared to be largely spontaneous rather than a premeditated coup," it says, eventually telling us that a "leading expert" has said the government had triggered the protests by imposing punitive increases on tariffs for water and gas. . . .

There is much more to it than that, as The Daily Mail indicates, but even on 23 February the Institute for War & Peace Reporting had Timur Toktonaliev in Bishkek writing: "Soaring energy costs anger Kyrgyz", with prices for electricity having risen 100 percent and the cost of central heating shooting up by 500 percent. Clearly, energy prices have been the primary trigger of current events.

And therein is a lesson. For a country with a violent past, not too much can be read into it, but every society has its limits of tolerance and, where we have our own government determined to drive up energy costs, this could become a factor in triggering open dissent in this country as well.

Here, the crucial issue in Kyrgyzstan was that the prices were driven up by government fiat, albeit following a decision to remove subsidies which had enabled energy to be sold at less than the cost of production. It can be assumed, from this, that where government action is directly responsible for price hikes, governments will take the flak.

It is far too extreme to suppose that we will any time soon see a Cabinet minister beaten to death on the streets of London, although there are not a few who would leap at such an opportunity if it was presented. But it is not a happy or a stable government which relies only on constant police protection to keep its members alive and safe.

Ministers, therefore, would do well to note the events in Kyrgyzstan. Even remote possibilities are still possibilities and, the way our politicians are behaving, they could yet become probabilities and then certainties.

As I pointed out here, we are not quite a decade behind Britain in the mad push into alternative energy. Britain has already seen vast spikes in energy prices and is expecting much more. We are set on the same path now with Obama's war on our fossil fuel powered energy infrastructure and our own mad push towards alternative energy to replace them. For us, the real economic effects of this madness are several years out, when our own costs spike. And while I don't expect blood in the streets over it at this point, I do expect very substantial unrest indeed.

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Alternative Energy Fictions

Over a year ago, I posted here on the insane push to scrap our existing energy infrastructure and replace it with a variety of "alternative energy" sources that, other than nuclear power, are deeply cost ineffective and not proven to scale. Two recent articles highlight those realities.

The first from Shannon Love is an exceptionally articulate primer on why replacing our reliance on coal and other fossil fuels with non-nuclear alternative energy is pure fantasy:

Here’s a fact you won’t see mentioned in the public policy debate over “alternative” energy:

There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology.

Nada.
Zero.
Zilch.

Yet many want to make this group of functionally useless technologies the primary energy sources for our entire civilization.

Most discussions of alternative energy talk only about the cost and reliability of the electricity when it leaves the grounds of the alternative-energy installation. This is called the Point of Generation (POG). However, energy is useless unless you have it where you need it, when you need it. It does no good to have plenty of power in Arizona when your work and home are in Michigan. It does no good to have a roaring fire in July when you’re freezing in January. Therefore, the only real factors that count are the cost and reliability at the Point of Consumption (POC).

All current and forecast alternative energy sources fail miserably at POC. When you look at all the hurdles, redundancies and hypothetical/theoretical technologies you have to invoke to make alternative energy reliable at POC, you see they can’t even come close to matching the 80-year-old coal plant.

An obsolete coal plant using 80-year-old technology can provide power where and when you need it. It can be positioned almost anywhere from the equator to the tundra. . . . It can be positioned immediately adjacent to the point of consumption. It works around the clock and in all types of weather. It can easily store weeks or months of coal reserves in a big pile outside. 99% of its offline time is scheduled and it is trivial to build in redundancy to compensate for both scheduled and unscheduled offline time. For the last 80 years, this type of technology has chugged out the electricity all over the world without pause.

“Alternative” energy sources have none of these attributes. They can only be built in specific locations, and those locations are wholly unrelated to the points of consumption. They can only operate under specific weather/environmental conditions, so they cannot fulfill the when of the point of consumption need.

They operate on nature’s schedule not ours. If we could easily operate on mother nature’s schedule, we wouldn’t need the energy in the first place, because we primarily use the energy to alter natural environmental conditions to keep ourselves alive. . . .

Do read the entire article.

The UK is much further along in the green madness than we - though Obama seems determined to catch us up, whatever the economic cost. As I posted here and as discussed by Dr. North of EU Referendum, Brits have seen their energy prices double in the past five years and are staring at exponential rises in energy costs in the future. As discussed in those posts, the things driving up their energy costs are a variety of charges aimed at reducing carbon dioxide. And today there is yet another charge added - "feed in" tariffs to encourage Brits to start generating their own alternative energy through installation of such things as solar panels. This from George Monbiot on just how insane and costly this idea is for the Brits:

Those who hate environmentalism have spent years looking for the definitive example of a great green rip-off. Finally it arrives, and nobody notices. The government is about to shift £8.6bn from the poor to the middle classes. It expects a loss on this scheme of £8.2bn, or 95%. . . .

On 1 April the government introduces its feed-in tariffs. These oblige electricity companies to pay people for the power they produce at home. The money will come from their customers in the form of higher bills. It would make sense, if we didn't know that the technologies the scheme will reward are comically inefficient.

The people who sell solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and micro wind turbines in the UK insist they represent a good investment. . . . The government wants everyone to get the same rate of return. So while the electricity you might generate from large wind turbines and hydro plants will earn you 4.5p per kilowatt hour, mini wind turbines get 34p, and solar panels 41p. In other words, the government acknowledges that micro wind and solar PV in the UK are between seven and nine times less cost-effective than the alternatives.

It expects this scheme to save 7m tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020. Assuming – generously – that the rate of installation keeps accelerating, this suggests a saving of about 20m tonnes of CO2 by 2030. The estimated price by then is £8.6bn. This means it will cost about £430 to save one tonne of CO2.

Last year the consultancy company McKinsey published a table of cost comparisons. It found that you could save a tonne of CO2 for £3 by investing in geothermal energy, or for £8 by building a nuclear power plant. Insulating commercial buildings costs nothing; in fact it saves £60 for every tonne of CO2 you reduce; replacing incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs saves £80 per tonne. The government predicts that the tradeable value of the carbon saved by its £8.6bn scheme will be £420m. That's some return on investment. . . .

Solar PV is a great technology – if you live in southern California. But the further from the equator you travel, the less sense it makes. It's not just that the amount of power PV panels produce at this latitude is risible, they also produce it at the wrong time. In hot countries, where air conditioning guzzles electricity, peak demand coincides with peak solar radiation. In the UK, peak demand takes place between 5pm and 7pm on winter evenings. Do I need to spell out the implications? . . .

We don't need to guess the results: the German government made the same mistake 10 years ago. By 2006 its generous feed-in tariffs had stimulated 230,000 solar roofs, at a cost of €1.2bn. Their total contribution to the country's electricity supply was 0.4%. Their total contribution to carbon savings, as a paper in the journal Energy Policy points out, is zero. This is because Germany, like the UK, belongs to the European emissions trading scheme. Any savings made by feed-in tariffs permit other industries to raise their emissions. Either the trading scheme works, in which case the tariffs are pointless, or it doesn't, in which case it needs to be overhauled. The government can't have it both ways. . . .

(H/T EU Referendum)

There are significant opportunity costs for engaging in this alternative energy madness. While there are current costs to each person for having to subsidize this push to alternatives, we are also neglecting both our existing infrastructure and our future supplies of coal and oil. Obama's war on coal today may only be making the back pages of the newspaper, but its real effect will be in a decade or so out, when we are paying skyrocketing costs for energy that may well not be be there when we want to flip the switch.

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Trans-Atlantic Green Economic Suicide

It seems a bit of insanity to be writing a post on global warming as the world suffers record low temperatures and snow fall. Indeed, I had to put an extra piece of coal on the fire to keep my extremities warm enough to type this post. But the AGW crowd will not be slowed by reality or revelations of highly politicized science. [And indeed, MSNBC posts an AP report today warning us not to be fooled, all of the experts say "despite" the "cold snap," earth "still warming." I find it somewhat mystifying that they couldn't find a dissenting expert, since we have had a decade of slight cooling, followed now by some significant cooling indeed.]

One would think that the implications and ramifications of Climategate for the theory of anthropogenic global warming would slow down Obama's push to reduce carbon emissions through a variety of taxes and a carbon trading market. But that Climategate hasn't caused Obama or the left to so much as blink is proof that this isn't about science. Its about power and money.

To see where Obama would lead us, just look at the UK. They are a decade into the push towards a green nirvana and five years into the carbon trading market. Their energy prices have doubled in five years and portend to grow exponentially over the next decade. This from the Daily Mail:

Household gas and electricity bills are expected to rocket fourfold to nearly £5,000 [$8,000 at the current exchange rate] a year by the end of the decade to meet Government-imposed green targets.

And the price heavy industry will have to pay by 2020 is so high that energy-dependent firms could be wiped out, causing thousands of job losses, said an industry spokesman." . . .

Already energy bills are loaded up by five separate charges to help fund the battle to combat climate change and become greener. They are the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target, the Renewables Obligation, the Community Energy Saving Programme and shortly there will be a levy on investing in clean coal projects.

Although householders will be badly hit, the damage to industrial energy users will be even more dramatic. These companies, which range from steel and chemical plants to industrial gas companies, are dependent on reasonable energy prices that can, in some cases, account for 70 per cent of their entire costs.

Jeremy Nicholson, spokesman for the Energy Intensive Users' Group, said the Government's own figures showed that the price of electricity would go up by up to 70 per cent and the price of gas by a further 50 per cent as a direct result of meeting its renewable energy targets.

And there are, as I have pointed out many times, a whole host of secondary costs to the economy that ripple out from these acts of insanity. As Dr. North points out at EU Referendum in commenting on this article:

But, if the £5,000 figure shocks, it is only part of the equation. Higher energy costs feed through into the price of every home-produced commodity and service, while the added costs of benefits paid to redundant workers, the loss of tax income as firms close down, and the fall-off in economic activity will impose their own substantial costs.

Tied in with the way we are miss-managing our energy supplies and we are looking at a slow-motion economic catastrophe far greater than the economic crisis we are weathering, the overall costs of which are set to exceed the entire tax bill for the average household.

We are only on the edge of imposing the extremely burdensome taxes that will come with EPA regulation or the insane Waxman Markey climate change legislation. But we are already well underway to miss-managing our energy supplies.

Coal fired plants account for over half of all electricity production in the U.S. It is estimated that we have over 25% of the world's coal. Yet Obama, for once true to his word, has declared war on coal. His EPA is refusing mining and plant creation permits at every turn, and even in some cases revoking previously issued permits. What he will have us replace it with - and how much more it will cost - is very much an unknown at this point. Given the centrality of coal to U.S. energy production, it will most certainly be steep indeed.

But that's not Obama's only war on our energy supplies. You will recall his promise during the campaign to open up our coasts for oil exploration and to allow for more drilling. That didn't survive his swearing in. We now import 57% of our oil. It is not because we don't have huge oil/natural gas reserves - we do. It is just that the far left, from Obama on down, is bound and determined that we won't touch them. And today brings news from the WSJ that the Obama administration is about to make it even tougher to drill:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to announce Wednesday that his agency will require oil and natural-gas companies to clear more regulatory hurdles before they are allowed to drill on federal lands.

Mr. Salazar's action is likely to make it more difficult for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to fast-track the permitting of oil and gas projects on federal land. BLM field staffers would be required to seek additional approvals from their supervisors and to undertake more visits to areas where energy companies are seeking access, according to people familiar with the matter.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, shown in December, is expected to make it more difficult to speed oil and gas projects on federal land. The BLM manages more than 260 million acres of federal land, and with it, a significant chunk of U.S. energy supplies. Domestic production from federal onshore oil and gas wells accounts for 11% of U.S. natural-gas supplies and 5% of the nation's oil.

The Obama administration is already locked in a bitter fight with the oil and gas industry over proposals to raise billions of dollars in additional taxes from energy companies, and to cap the emissions of gases caused by burning fossil fuels, which have been linked to global warming. . . .

This is just so wrong. One, oil is a national security issue. We could be moving towards self sufficiency from domestic supplies over the coming decades if the left did not oppose every new well, every new mine, every new energy plant. Instead, the left has us moving to ever more dependence on oil with many of the oil production centers being in countries who are not America's friends.

And of equal importance is the cost of oil and how that will effect our economy. The massive rise in fuel prices from 2006 to 2008 was hardly an anomaly. It came about because of world demand - a demand we can expect to see return if and when we come out of the Frank-Dodd-Clinton caused depression. If we do nothing else, T. Boone Pickens estimates we will see $300 a barrel oil in a decade. If that happens, it will be a dagger in the heart of our economy. Something must be done, but on both sides of the Atlantic, the left is bound and determined to head down the path to economic Armageddon.

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The Price Of Oil - NYT Mystified By Cause & Effect

The price of oil is swinging violently and trending ever upwards. The NYT is at a loss to explain it:

The extreme volatility that has gripped oil markets for the last 18 months has shown no signs of slowing down, with oil prices more than doubling since the beginning of the year despite an exceptionally weak economy.

The instability of oil and gas prices is puzzling government officials and policy analysts, who fear it could jeopardize a global recovery. . . .

A wild run on the oil markets has occurred in the last 12 months. Last summer, prices surged to a record high above $145 a barrel, driving up gasoline prices to well over $4 a gallon. As the global economy faltered, oil tumbled to $33 a barrel in December. But oil has risen 55 percent since the beginning of the year, to $70 a barrel . . .

Read the entire article. The NYT goes on to quote speculation that the instability in Nigeria and Iran are playing a significant role in the rise in oil prices, but both of those are of recent vintage and do not account for the steady upward rise in oil prices since the beginning of the year.

Anyone who couldn't see this coming is not paying attention. I wrote a month ago, in the post "The Looming Crisis In Energy Costs," that we would soon face another energy crisis. None of the causes in demand that gave rise to $145 a barrel oil have disappeared permanently. Obama has refused to live up to his promise to allow expanded exploitation and exploration of our domestic oil resources - perhaps the only thing in the near and mid-term that could actually stabilize world oil prices. And on top of that, he has, with the cap and trade bill, declared war on our energy industry, particularly on coal which provides almost 50% of our energy. This is bound to increase demand for oil. Lastly, oil is priced in dollars. A weak dollar causes higher prices for oil - and Obama is in the process of destroying the value of the dollar.

As I wrote in the above referenced post, all of these factors are clear indicators that we can expect a real crisis in oil costs. There is no reason for the NYT to be mystified by the rise in prices over the past six months. Cause and effect are clear. The NYT just needs to start some honest reporting.

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Cap, Trade & Calculations

To repeat that which bears repeating ad infinitum, cap and trade is the single most ill advised piece of legislation quite likely ever in our nation's history. Cap and trade is not a "green" bill. It will do nothing to reduce global temperatures - though the sun has taken care of that for us these past seven years. Cap and trade is a massive regressive tax, it is an attack on business, and it is a vehicle for a massive power grab by the left side of our government.

Today, Robert Zubrin at Roll Call does some 'back of the envelope' calculations on the real costs of the cap and trade bill. It is a must read. As he notes, the cap and trade bill portends to be "a massive and highly regressive tax on the U.S. economy, and could potentially cause not only extensive business failures, unemployment and privation within our borders, but starvation among poorer populations elsewhere."

This from Mr. Zubrin:

. . . According to a report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in April, by 2015 the price of carbon emission indulgences required by the bill for industries to operate could be expected to run between $13 and $17 per ton of CO2 emitted. . . . That said, let’s stipulate the $15/ton midrange of the EPA estimate, and see what it implies.

The United States emits about 9 billion tons of CO2 per year. Therefore, at a rate of $15/ton fee for emission indulgences, the bill would impose a tax of $135 billion per year on the nation. Divided by the U.S. population of 300 million, that works out to a cost of $450 per year levied on every American man, woman or child, or $1,800 for a family of four. While for wealthy individuals like Al Gore such an impost might represent a mere pittance, for working families struggling hard to make ends meet it would be a very significant burden.

But that is not even the worst part of it. As a result of the markup of carbon costs, a lot of those working families will be out of work and unable to pay their existing bills, let alone new ones. Consider: Burning one ton of coal produces about three tons of CO2. So a tax of $15 per ton of CO2 emitted is equivalent to a tax of $45/ton on coal. The price of Eastern anthracite coal runs in the neighborhood of $45/ton, so under the proposed system, such coal would be taxed at a rate of about 100 percent. The price of Western bituminous coal is currently about $12/ton. This coal would therefore be taxed at a rate of almost 400 percent. Coal provides half of America’s electricity, so such extraordinary imposts could easily double the electric bills paid by consumers and businesses across half the nation. In addition, many businesses, such as the metals and chemical industries, use a great deal of coal directly. By doubling or potentially even quadrupling the cost of their most basic feedstock, the cap-and-trade system’s indulgence fees could make many such businesses uncompetitive and ultimately throw millions of working men and women onto the unemployment lines.

A gallon of petroleum-derived liquid fuel produces about 20 pounds, or 1 percent of a ton, of CO2 when burned. But it takes about 1.5 gallons of oil to produce one gallon of refined liquid fuel. So a $15/ton tax on CO2 emissions will also cause an increase in the price of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel on the order of $0.22/gallon. This will not only hit consumers’ pockets, but increase transport costs throughout the economy, thereby disabling businesses and increasing unemployment levels still more. While harming the economy, such a gas tax will do nothing material toward the truly essential goal of decreasing America’s dependence on foreign oil. Indeed, the bill’s dramatic hikes in electricity costs will have the opposite effect, since only 3 percent of America’s electricity is derived from oil, and by forcefully increasing electric power costs, the bill will actually discourage adoption of electric means of transport, . . .

But all these bad aspects of the Waxman-Markey bill pale before its potential impact on the world’s food supply. America’s agricultural sector is one of the greatest success stories in human history. In 1930, hunger still stalked the entire globe. Not just in Africa, India and China, but even in Europe and America, the struggle to simply get enough food to live on still preoccupied billions of people. Since 1930, the world population has tripled. But instead of going hungrier, people nearly everywhere are now eating much better. This miracle is the work of American farmers, who have not only produced huge surpluses to feed the world, but used the income gained from such good work to pioneer ever more advanced techniques that have enabled farmers everywhere to grow more. . . . But this miracle depends upon the availability of cheap fertilizer and pesticides, which in turn require carbon-based process energy to produce. If you tax carbon, you tax fertilizer and pesticides. If you tax these things, you tax food, and by no small amount. A $15/ton CO2 tax would increase fertilizer production costs directly by about $60/ton, with the cap-and-trade bill’s increased transport costs inflating the burden still more. That’s enough to make many farmers use less fertilizer, and less fertilizer means less food.

To get a sense of what it would mean for farmers to abandon fertilizer, it is only necessary to go to the supermarket and compare the price of the “organic” produce, grown without chemical fertilizer, to the regular produce, which, while just as nutritious, typically costs less than half as much. . . .

In the 220 years of our republic, there may have been worse pieces of legislation enacted by Congress than the Waxman-Markey bill, but none readily comes to mind. The Senate needs to take a stand and stop this disastrous act from passing into law.

Read the entire article. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

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Update: See also this from Forbes, Waxman-Markey Flunks Math:

In the U.S., electricity is produced from . . .:

48.9% -- Coal
20% -- Natural Gas
19.3% -- Nuclear
1.6% -- Petroleum

Got that? A tick over 88% of U.S. electricity comes from three sources: coal, gas and nuclear. Petroleum brings the contribution of so-called "evil" energy--that is, energy that is carbon- or uranium-based--to almost 90%.

The remaining sources of U.S. electricity, the renewables, are, by comparison, tiny players:

7.1% -- Hydroelectric
2.4% -- Other Renewables
0.7% -- Other

Hydroelectric accounts for 70% of renewable energy in America. But, of course, hydro is mostly tapped out. Almost every dam that could be built has been built. Ironically enough, political opposition to building more dams comes from the same crowd of tree huggers who oppose coal, gas and uranium.

Do you see where I'm going?

The Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House on Friday by a 219-212 margin will punitively tax energy sources that contribute 90% of current U.S. electricity (or 71% if you want to leave out nuclear). The taxes will be used to subsidize the 10% renewable contributors (but really just 3% after you leave out hydro).

In other words, Waxman-Markey is betting the future of U.S. electricity production on sources that now contribute 3% . . .

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If passed, I have no doubt that cap and trade will ultimately be repealed, but not before doing untold damage to our economy that might take decades to repair. And the people who ultimately will pay the highest price for this epic boondoggle will be the poor and the lower middle class. The intelligentsia of the left speak of populism and concern for the poor, but the reality is that they value power above all, irrespective of who suffers as a result of their acts. Controlling carbon allows the left to expand their power into every aspect of our economy and our life. If you doubt Speaker Pelosi's honesty when she said that, to control carbon, the left had to examine "every aspect of our lives," then just look at what else is in the cap and trade bill. This from Doug Ross, discussing some of the ancillary provisions in the House Cap and Trade bill:

It creates hundreds of new bureaucracies that benefit Obama's contributors; for example, it creates a "Development Corporation for Renewable Power Borrowing Authority" that issues "Community Building Code Administration Grants" under a "Low Income Community Sustainable Development Capacity Grant Program". This scam serves two purposes: it rewards failed housing programs like those run by Presidential Adviser Valerie Jarrett; it also provides yet another spigot of funds -- in blocks of $1,000,000 -- for groups like ACORN.

• It creates and regulates every building code in the country and will purposefully overrule any "city, county, parish, city and county authority, or city and parish authority having local authority to enforce building codes and regulations and to collect fees for building permits."

• It reaches into every neighborhood by eradicating "any private covenant, contract provision, lease provision, homeowners' association rule or bylaw, or similar restriction" to force localities to accept "green technologies" whether it fits in the neighorhood or not.

• It touches every aspect of water and sewer systems by regulating every "residential water efficient product or service"; ensuring those offerings are rated and forcing state government, local or county government, tribal government, wastewater or sewerage utility, municipal water authority, energy utility, water utility, or nonprofit organization to comply. . . .

• It defines "energy-efficient mortgages" (with our favorite GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so what could possibly go wrong?) that artificially boosts the income of the borrower based upon how much "green technology" is employed. In other words, the Democrats are socially engineering mortgage underwriting standards again, just as they did in the nineties, which will lead to yet another financial disaster. . . .

Read the entire post. God help us if the Senate now passes this utter abortion.

(Cartoon H/T - No Oil For Pacifists)

Welcome, EU Referendum readers.

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What Was Voted On By The House Today

Obama was voted in to fix the economy. Instead, he is warring against it. He has done nothing to fix the original causes of our economic problems. Instead, in the midst of the deepest recession our economy has faced since the Great Depression, Obama and Speaker Pelosi have skirted the democratic process to force through possibly the most ill conceived attack on our economy in the history of our nation.



What the vote on Cap and Trade today actually was:

- A vote to enact perhaps the largest and most regressive tax in our nations history. It will hit hardest on our nation's poor and lower middle class.

- A rushed bill that Pelosi pushed through in a way that cynically circumvented our democratic process.

- A bill that not a single representative read cover to cover. Update: See this from the Strata-sphere discussing John Boehner's identification of some of the last minute changes put into this massive leftist power grab.

- A vote to creates a massive new bureaucracy.



- A vote to create a massive windfall for rent seekers such as Al Gore and his ilk who will grow fabulously wealth off this legislation while producing nothing of value.

- A vote to vastly expand the reach of federal government into every aspect of our economy and private lives.

- A vote to drive jobs overseas.

- A vote that will harm our infrastructure.

- A vote that will drive the cost of virtually every good and service in America skyward.

- A bill that will bring to a halt the building of new fossil fuel plants that our country requires to meet growing energy needs and to replace aging plants.

- A vote for a bill that requires tarrifs on countries that do not impose carbon regulation, thus making a trade war all but inevitable. Consider this the Obama/Pelosi version of the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tarrif that greatly exacerbated the Depression.

- A vote for a bill that punishes traditional sources of energy at a point in time when not a single form of alternative energy has been proven cost effective or workable at scale.

- A vote that virtually insures that we will become ever more vulnerable to a true energy crisis that is all but inevitable.

- A vote for a bill based on highly politicized science falsely portrayed as settled.

- A vote to control carbon even as the last seven years have proven the falsity of the proposition that global temperatures rise with the increase of carbon.

- A vote to do all of this just as we are in the middle of the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Indeed, all major economic indicators are actually worse today than they were at the same point in time after the start of the Great Depression.

And For What:



This piece of economic sepuku passed the House 219 to 212. Eight Republicans voted for this abortion. They are:

Mary Bono, 45th Dist, Calif.
Michael Castle, Del.
Mark Kirk, 10th Dist, Ill.
Leonard Lance, 7th Dist, NJ
Frank LoBiondo, 2nd Dist., NJ
John McHugh, 23rd Dist, NY
David Reichert, 8th Dist., Wash.
Christopher Smith, 4th Dist., NJ

They deserve to be drummed out of the Republican Party.

Update: Michelle Malkin provides a "Wanted" poster for the eight individuals and wonders what they could have been promised in terms of earmarks to get their vote. R.S. McCain says something entirely appropriate - until these eight are gone, "not one red cent" to the N.R.C.C.

Update: EU Referendum notes the vote as a sign that "insanity rules" on this side of the pond as well as their own.

This is a dark day indeed. I am almost tempted to say that the Republicans should cease all opposition to this bill. Letting it into law will do more to spell the death knell for the far left than a thousand floor speeches will do.

Prior Posts:

25 June 09: What Was Voted On By The House Today
22 June 09: Making Pravda Blush
18 June 09: Depression (& Depressing) News
11 June 09: The Looming Crisis In Energy Costs
9 June 2009: Fiddling While Rome Freezes . . . And Crops Fail
8 June 2009: Of Villians, The Economy & On-Rushing Trains
3 June 2009: Road To Ruin
28 May 2009: A Bit Of Honest From Speaker Pelosi
22 May 2009: Beware The Climate Change Industrial Complex
16 May 2009: Cap, Trade & Theft
14 May 2009: Heading Towards A Self-Inflicted Depression
13 May 2009: EPA's Latest On CO2 - Bizarre, But Hardly Unwelcome
13 May 2009: Internal Dissent On Regulation Of Carbon Dioxide
12 May 2009: Cap & Trade - Back To The Future
29 April 2009: More Green Blasphemy
25 April 2009: Our Drive To A Green Nirvana
19 April 2009: Throwing Green Fuel On An Economic Fire

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