Against All Energy Anywhere ... Alan Caruba

Against All Energy Anywhere

By Alan Caruba

One of the great afflictions of the environmentalists—Greens—everywhere is a profound lack of understanding of the role that energy plays in whether a nation prospers or just limps along, barely keeping the lights on.

A classic case is the communist paradise of North Korea that is almost completely dark at night while just across the 38th parallel, South Korea is ablaze with light, energy, and a thriving economy.

Dedicated Greens don’t really like any kind of energy whether it is nuclear, provided by burning coal, from natural gas, oil or from hydropower. They think that wind power is trouble-free and cost effective when it is neither. They feel the same way about solar power. Both are deemed acceptable because they don’t "emit" anything. This viewpoint is not merely naïve, it is profoundly stupid.

Before we go further, let’s examine the basic facts of U.S. power, give or take a percentage point or two, coal provides over 50% of electrical power. Nuclear provides around 20%, natural gas is just over 20%, hydroelectric is close to 7%, and so-called "renewables" like wind and solar are credited with about 3%. Petroleum generated electricity is 1% and "other sources", whatever they may be, come in at around 0.3%.

These are figures from 2009 and, suffice to say, are subject to change, but not much. Friends of the Earth, an international Green organization, (FOE) is no friend to humanity. Hardcore Greens think Earth’s problems would be solved if human beings were not part of its ecology.

Following the Japan earthquake, FOE sent an email to its members and fellow travelers saying, "We must learn from this disaster. Tell your members of Congress that nuclear power should not be part of our energy future." Ironically, FOE is very unhappy with President Obama and his administration which has been very inclined toward nuclear energy.

The Sierra Club, another ultra-Green organization, put out a newsletter reminding its members that it is "unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy" and has been "for more than three decades." The same newsletter warned that "politicians who owe their primary allegiance to the fossil-fuel industry (coal, natural gas, and oil) are quick to promote domestic drilling and deregulation, as if that would make the gauge on the gas pump start to run backward." In point of fact, it would. U.S. domestic oil is always cheaper than imported oil.

The Sierra Club just conjured up a petition "to tell the Obama administration to protect the Arctic Refuge" because "We cannot allow these oil companies to destroy the pristine wilderness of the Arctic Refuge." Every time you hear the words "pristine wilderness" think of a place no human would ever want to live, let alone visit. And no one is really addressing the economic devastation the Obama administration has visited on the Gulf States because of its refusal to allow oil drilling to resume.

FOE recently was fulminating against the use of coal to light up the homes, businesses and streets of South Africa and was equally unhappy about the effort to install a pipeline from Canada to the U.S. to transmit oil derived from its tar sands. A lot of our "imported" oil comes from Canada. That’s because it has been government policy for decades to make it difficult, if not impossible, to drill, extract, and refine oil here in America.

The March 21-27 edition of Bloomberg Business Week has an article by Brendan Greeley that is a good analysis titled "Facing Up to Nuclear Risk." When nuclear plants have been built as many safety factors as possible have been built into them, but it is impossible to calculate the impact of an earthquake. The U.S. has its own tectonic fault lines, all well known, but the fact remains nuclear plants have been built near or on them.

"David Okrent, who advised the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on reactor safety for 20 years, points out that reactors are designed for only a set of defined events. ‘The early nuclear reactors weren’t designed for tornadoes,’ he says, ‘until one came along in Arkansas, and then we thought, ‘we gotta design for tornadoes.’ It’s not easy to be all-knowing."

Were it not for Green propaganda, the U.S. would not be wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on idiotic wind and solar farms that are utterly dependent on government subsidies and mandates that require utilities to use the pitifully small amounts of electricity they produce.

The same can be said of the equally idiotic regulatory mandates for ethanol that drive up the cost of every gallon of gas pumped while, at the same time, reducing the mileage and damaging to your car’s engine. Even Al Gore thinks ethanol is a bad idea.

Ironically, more people have died from wind turbines than nuclear plants. In 2008, there were 41 recorded deaths. The carnage on birds and bats is rarely mentioned by the media. Despite all the blather about Three Mile Island not one person has died from radiation since nuclear plants were first introduced.

It is surely worth noting that coal-burning plants in a nation that is the Saudi Arabia of coal do not have meltdowns causing radiation that can make large areas uninhabitable. That "smoke" you see coming from the smokestacks of such plants is steam. Water vapor. Clouds are made of water vapor.

If we were really serious about safety and the provision of more electrical power, the U.S. would be building a hell of a lot more coal-burning plants right now and into the future.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Taxes By The Mile In The USA?

Taxes By The Mile In The USA?

The Proposed Vehicle Mile Tax

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

They are testing the waters again in Washington. Always looking for an opportunity to take advantage of a crisis to squeeze even more money from the taxpayers of America. There is a proposal being floated about in “Foggy Bottom” to tax US drivers for every mile they drive in their cars, trucks, vans, SUV’s, or whatever. The Congressional Budget Office is referring to it as the “Vehicle Mile Tax” or VMT. Here’s what has happened: Due to the high per gallon price of gasoline many drivers have greatly reduced the use of their cars and trucks. My truck, for instance, is virtually parked. I drive it one or twice a week and then only on short hops -- all within the city limits. My truck is ten years old but has only about 50,000 miles on it. But it uses more gasoline than the family Buick. So it remains parked. It would seem that most American families are doing the same thing or something very much akin to it. A huge portion of the per gallon price of gasoline is state and federal taxes. So, you can imagine that when Americans began driving less and using less gasoline, the tax stream from gasoline into the tax coffers of the states and the federal government went from a roaring stream to a trickle. And THAT got the attention of the “taxaholics” in Washington, DC and in the states. Thus the proposal to tax American drivers for every mile they drive -- and that is on top of the taxes we are already paying on every gallon of gasoline we purchase. I must tell you that my state, North Carolina, has one of the highest taxes on gasoline of any state in the Union. So, when I heard about the “mileage tax” proposal, it got my attention. Just so we are clear: I HATE the idea! In 2008, here in North Carolina, something called the 21st Century Transportation Committee recommended the state adopt a “taxes by the mile” plan. As I understood the proposal, the state would carefully record the miles each Tar Heel driver drove, over the preceding twelve months, and the vehicle’s owner would be charged the appropriate amount in taxes for each mile driven. As North Carolinians take their cars in each year for the mandated annual state inspection (which by itself is a gigantic tax scheme!) The mileage on the odometer would have been recorded. This was to be the source of the mileage figures used to tax NC drivers. Transportation experts told us then that sometime later the state could switch to GPS tracking of NC Drivers. This scheme was called the “Road Use Tax.” It is interesting to note that NC had a Democratic Party controlled legislature in 2008. So what happened? The NC voters told the Democrats in the NC Legislature to hit the very road they wanted to tax -- and replaced them with a Republican controlled legislature. Oregon and California have also considered imposing such road taxes on their citizens, as well. The fact that driver’s pockets would be picked by a “tax by the mile” (Vehicle Mile Tax) road tax was just too much for the North Carolina voters to stomach. There is another disturbing aspect of these mileage tax rip-offs; the device attached to our cars would also emit a signal, much as a GPS device does, that would allow the government to know where we are, in our car, at all times. Sounds incredible, does it not? THAT HAS been suggested. More than likely, it would be continuous tracking of our road miles. Either way, it is just more big brother government intrusion into our lives. Look: US drivers pay approximately 35 billion dollars in federal gasoline taxes annually. You’d think our highways would be paved in gold rather than asphalt! This whole thing smacks of another trick by the liberal-socialists to herd Americans into mass transit. It is all a part of the “green agenda” to deprive Americans of their celebration of freedom – the automobile – in favor of bicycles, trolleys, and commuter trains, etc. There is an editorial at the Washington Times we urge you to read. It is entitled: CBO’s toll-road fib. You will find it HERE. “Motorists are one of the most overtaxed groups in America, and the automobile has done more to enable this country’s economic success than any other invention.”(Read the entire article in the Washington Times HERE.) I am inclined to believe this is more of the leftist agenda to dismantle America until it becomes just another third-world country. J. D. Longstreet