Green Scare: Its About The Money, Not The Earth

Now that the Obama administration is serious about cap and trade, and all of the side benefits for campaign contributors who will broker the carbon credits, who really stands to gain from Earth saving green coal technology? No one. And that's why just about all the major green enviro groups are out there protesting a modern, capture and sequester plat in New Jersey.

Just think of all the poor brokers on Wall Street without a carbon credit to trade in the future. If green coal has a future, then these guys stand to lose billions of dollars in fees. No politician ever made a living with a solved problem.

To whit:

Clean Coal? Not Here, Thanks [William Tucker]

There’s another article in yesterday’s New York Times worth noting. On the Metropolitan page, Peter Applebome recounts a bitter public debate going on now in Linden, N.J.

It seems a farsighted power company named PurGen wants to build a 750-megawatt coal plant with complete carbon capture and storage, commonly cited as one of the major breakthroughs needed to fend off global warming. The plant, on an old DuPont site, would capture 90 percent of its carbon-dioxide exhaust, liquefy it, and pump it through 70 miles of pipeline to an offshore rock formation near Atlantic City, where it would be permanently sequestered. Almost any environmental group you can name lists “carbon capture and storage” as one of its highest priorities in reducing carbon emissions.

So who is opposing the plant? The Sierra Club of New Jersey, the New Jersey Environmental Federation, the Edison Wetlands Association, the Arthur Kill Watershed Alliance, and every other environmental organization within driving distance. They’re not being nice about it, either. The Sierra Club calls the project “A $5 billion Ponzi scheme that not only won’t work but will lead to environmental disaster.” Edison Wetlands says it’s “A recipe for another Exxon Valdez toxic catastrophe.” The Environmental Federation is telling local residents, “The worst polluters continue to put Linden in their crosshairs, but this time the stakes are even higher.”

“Support globally, oppose locally.” That should be the motto of the environmental movement.

Look, the political establishment already has plans for the hundreds of billions of dollars in carbon tax credits. From the campaign contributions to the earmarks back home, there are a lot of people invested in the non-solution solution.

This kind of problem solving will not be appreciated by anyone in Washington and will be punished summarily. Of course, this is not a shock to anyone paying attention...if this was about carbon and saving the earth, Obama would have started a "Manhattan Project" for nuclear power plants. But he didn't and I don't know of any of the environmental groups pushing for Nuclear Now.

This whole carbon thing is starting to feel like one of those Soprano episodes at the construction site in New Jersey, complete with fat guys in lawn chairs.

It's Official, EPA Declares Air Is Bad For You

How you get trillions of dollars of taxes (cap and trade) without having a congressional debate? Easy, have a bureaucracy promulgate a regulation.

From Fox News.

...the Obama administration's release on Friday of an EPA proposed finding that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare.

The EPA also will say tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles contribute to climate change.

Here's the comedy. After praising the proposal, Sen. Barbara Boxer added,

...the best and most flexible way to deal with this serious problem is to enact a market-based cap and trade system, which will help us make the transition to clean energy and will bring us innovation and strong economic growth.

So we are going to have a market based government mandate.

What Sen. Boxer is really saying is, "let's destroy the source of 85% of American energy consumption capacity without a solution and a magic bullet will come along when prices skyrocket."

That's like saying let's hold someones head under water until they grow gills.

Here a little bit of info from the DOE that Ms. Boxer might want to grasp before taxing the shit out of everyone.

Fossil Fuels

Fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas -- currently provide more than 85% of all the energy consumed in the United States, nearly two-thirds of our electricity, and virtually all of our transportation fuels. Moreover, it is likely that the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels to power an expanding economy will actually increase over at least the next two decades even with aggressive development and deployment of new renewable and nuclear technologies.

Because our economic health depends on the continued availability of reliable and affordable fossil fuels, the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy oversees two major fossil fuel efforts:

1) Emergency stockpiles of crude oil and heating oil

The Department is responsible for maintaining the readiness of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve. In the event of a major supply interruption, the President could order emergency stocks from either of these two reserves to be released into the market.

2) Research and Development of future fossil energy technologies

My 2 cents. You better have a workable alternative for that 85% of energy you are about to make too expensive for average Americans.