Re: THE DEMS ARE OUT OF GAS, AND COAL, AND WOOD

Why 'unsatisfying'?


-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Peter Chattaway
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 12:57 AM
To: Daniel Amos off-topic listserver
Subject: [DADL-OT] THE DEMS ARE OUT OF GAS, AND COAL, AND WOOD

Can't recall if this article was posted to the list when it first ran 10
years ago ...

Personally, I find the last sentence a bit ... unsatisfying ... and I found
it thus before I came across his recent article on the ills of
"entitlements"!

- - -

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/4048/30/

Ten Years Ago
Sunday, 15 May 2011

This Sunday Telegraph column from a decade ago reads oddly topical at a time
of $4-per-gallon gas, and a president who flies to Brazil to congratulate
the natives on energy initiatives he won't license at home:

-

George W. Bush announced his "national energy policy" on Thursday, and it
turns out those Europeans who've denounced him as an oil industry stooge
have underestimated the man: he's also a coal industry stooge and a nuclear
industry stooge. The Republican President's energy policy is to have more
oil wells, more gas pipelines, more electric grids, more nuclear plants. Oh,
and don't forget opening up the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for
drilling. At this point in US network news reports, it's customary to pause
for lyrical footage of the world's largest caribou herd gambolling across
the tundra on their annual migration. If Bush has his way, they'll just have
to vacation in Florida like the rest of us.

The reason for the President's new policy is the "crisis" facing America.
"If we fail to act," he says, "this great country could face a darker
future, a future that is unfortunately being previewed in rising prices at
the gas pump and rolling blackouts in the great state of California." But
the Grand Old Party's plans have not met with approval. Bush's energy policy
is "a cesspool of polluter giveaways", huffs the Sierra Club, North
America's leading association of yuppie conservationists. "GOP seems to
stand for Gas, Oil and Plutonium," says Senate Democratic leader Tom
Daschle.

Which prompts the obvious question: what exactly do environmentalist
Democrats stand for?
After all, the environmentalist Left is opposed to oil exploration in the
Arctic because it thinks we should give up our gas-guzzling Jeep Cherokees
for rinky-dink electric cars. Okay. In that case, with all these electric
cars, we'll need more electricity, so we should build some nuclear power
plants. No, sorry, say the environmentalists, we can't risk another Three
Mile Island. Okay. Well, how about coal-fired plants? No can do. Coal's too
dirty. Greenhouse gas emissions. Okay. You guys are in favour of mass
transit so let's go back to wood-fired steam trains. A bit cumbersome. No,
sorry, say the environmentalists. We're opposed to logging. We want a ban on
forestry work in environmentally sensitive areas such as forests.

This is the genius of the Bush approach. By being in favour of everything,
he's brilliantly exposed the fact that the other side's in favour of
nothing. No nukes. No wells. No refineries. No exploration. No nothing, no
matter how safe, clean and efficient the energy industry gets. Thus, the
no-policy policy of the Clinton Administration these last eight years.

Between 1990 and 2000 the US economy grew by more than 30 per cent. It was
absurd to expect the country to be able to absorb that growth without any
increase in its energy supply, and in California the contradictions finally
caught up. Which state has the most rigorous conservation programme?
California. Which state has the lowest per capita electricity consumption?
California. And which state is sitting in the dark waiting for its air
conditioning to be switched back on? Californians have learned the hard way
that conservation is not a viable policy for a non-stagnant economy. In
fact, environmentalism isn't even good for the environment. Feel-good
California-style "conservation" is utterly wasteful. Recycling? You could
fit a whole century's worth of America's garbage in one big square landfill,
about 10 miles by 10 miles. Think of all the man-hours lost to the economy
by obliging the populace to serve as unpaid municipal garbage operatives by
rinsing every container and putting their shampoo bottles into the box for
HDPE2 plastic and their peanut butter jars into the box for PETE1 plastic.
If all that time and money had been devoted to genuine environmental
advance, who knows what might have been achieved?

Even at its least destructive, "conservation" is mostly trivial posturing.
You like solar power? At the moment, it accounts for 0.1 per cent of US
energy production, almost all of which is for devices which heat swimming
pools. So if there was a tenfold increase in swimming pool construction you
might be able to get it up to 1 per cent, but the only way all those
homeowners would have the money to build their new pools is through the
kinds of economic activity which depend on oil, gas and electricity.

The President made a few soothing noises about conservation: if you want to
drive an electric car, he won't stop you and he'll even give you a tax break
on it. But the Administration's real views were expressed more caustically
in the Vice-President's speech in Toronto last month. As Thomas Friedman
wrote in The New York Times, "Judging from his sneering remarks about
conservation, Mr Cheney believes that conservation should be a misdemeanour,
akin to smoking marijuana. Real men drill wells."

Yes, they do. Because a better word for "energy" is "power", in every sense.
Without coal to make coke, the 13 colonies wouldn't have been able to cast
the cannon that helped them win the Revolutionary War. Conversely, the
President who hectored the American people most about conservation came to
symbolise a more profound lack of power. Last week Jimmy Carter re-emerged
to pat himself on the back and complain that "it has been more than 20 years
since our country developed a comprehensive energy policy". It's true that
in 1980 most Americans were agreed on a comprehensive multi-stage approach
to the country's energy situation. Stage 1: Drive to polling station. Stage
2: Vote Jimmy Carter out of office.

Bush and Cheney have no intention of going the same way. You can look on
America's use of 97 quadrillion BTU in 1999 as a "cesspool of pollution" or
as the small cost of running the engine of the world's economy. Each of
those BTUs is generating about twice as much GDP as it did 50 years earlier,
a tribute to increased energy efficiency. But Bill Clinton sat by as
petroleum imports overtook domestic production for the first time in
American history. The Department of Energy switched off the lights and went
to sleep. For eight years, the only exploration and drilling rights were
those the President exercised on female subordinates. And with each passing
day the consequences of Clinton's narcissism become clearer. Not content
with lobbying a rotten egg at John Prescott's beloved Kyoto Accord, Bush has
gone further and landed a solid punch on the entire concept of guilt-trip
conservationism, shoving it over the wall into the landfill of history. He
has come up with a plan that starts from a radical proposition: the people
are entitled to live their lives the way they do and it's time to ensure the
energy supply needed to support them.

from The Sunday Telegraph, May 20th 2001


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