Greener Than Thou ... Alan Caruba

Greener Than Thou

By Alan Caruba

The most obnoxious and hypocritical people are those who are always preaching a “greener” way of life, insisting that anything that constitutes our modern lifestyles is destroying the Earth and depleting its natural resources. Never mind that we depend upon oil, natural gas, coal, and a host of minerals and chemicals for that lifestyle, the absence of which caused people in earlier eras to live shorter, far more unpleasant lives.

Oil, other than ust an energy source is also a component in countless products, starting with plastic, and is so vital to modern life that its value goes far beyond just being able to drive our cars to visit grandma.

Greener than thou has replaced holier than thou ever since Rachel Carson penned her pernicious and seriously flawed attack on DDT and other chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides in 1962. The result has been the needless deaths of millions from malaria in Africa and subtropical nations after the U.S. banned DDT and other nations followed suit. If there was a comparable pesticide available today, the U.S. would not be suffering a biblical plague of bed bugs.

A bone fide environmentalist, David Owen, has written a book that quite literally filets environmentalism, “The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse.” ($14.00, Riverhead Press, softcover).

Owen, who has authored 14 previous books, examines the way environmentalism frequently makes no sense at all. This is not to be confused with conservation, the earlier movement that led to the preservation of some of the nation’s natural wonders.

To live an environmentally acceptable way of life is the same as striving to be a saint, avoiding “sin” in order to secure a place in heaven. It is not only virtually impossible, but to be human is to consume what Nature provides. If you think about, all of Earth's creatures are consumers, depending on where they are on the food chain.

For example, when environmentalists convinced Congress to reduce the amount of water in toilet tanks, the only thing they accomplished was to require that the newer, smaller tanks had be flushed twice to rid he toilet of feces and urine, i.e., more use of water, not less. The EPA has just issued a ruling they claim is necessary to reduce mercury emissions despite the fact that your average volcanic eruption puts more into the atmosphere than any human imposed restrictions could ever achieve. Congress, however, passed a law banning 100-watt incandescent light bulbs, thus requiring people to purchase mercury-filled ones that, if broken, require a hazmat team to clean up after.

Environmentalism is essentially irrational.

It believes that humans actually have anything to do with “saving the Earth” when the natural forces of the Earth are so far beyond any “control” that it routinely reminds us of this fact. We have zero impact on the climate and, as for carbon dioxide, the villain of all “global warming” claims, humans exhale about six pounds of it every day. And there are seven billion of us. Even so, it constitutes barely 0.033 percent of the atmosphere.

Owen begins by posing the question, “How do we truly begin to think about less—less fossil fuel, less carbon, less water, less waste, less habitat destruction, less population stress—when our sense of economic, cultural, and personal well-being is based on more?”

The real question at the heart of all environmentalism is what do we do when there are seven billion humans using the resources of the Earth and the real answer for environmentalists is how do we reduce the Earth’s population and how do they grow rich in the process? That is what lies at the heart of all the “solutions” put forth by the United Nations environmental program; an enemy of the human race if there ever was one.

What environmentalists want is “a vast, unprecedented transformation of human behavior in our relationship with energy and consumption.” The next time you hear anyone call for a “transformation” know also that they are a charlatan seeking control over your life.

The environmental assumption is that the Earth is running out of the sources of energy and that consumption is bad. Both are equally wrong because the Earth is not running out of the sources of energy and consumption is what humans and all other species on Earth do every day.

Owen believes that humans are “the world’s main emitter of manmade greenhouse gases” and this is utterly false. The so-called greenhouse gases are the ones in the atmosphere that not only keep the Sun from turning the Earth into a desiccated version of Mars or the Moon, but in the case of carbon dioxide, it is responsible for every single element of vegetation upon which all life depends.

Owen and many environmentalists would prefer that all of humanity live packed side-by-side in crowded cities, using mass transit or bicycling to work to save the Earth, but anyone who gives two thoughts to the amount of energy consumed to maintain a city knows this too is yet another idiotic environmental conceit.

Indeed, Owen notes that “There are many downsides to density, including the fact that squeezing people and their destinations close together makes diseases, wars, and natural disasters more efficient, too.”

That, says Owen, is a conundrum. Indeed, his book is filled with environmental conundrums that he tries to resolve while overtly and inadvertently exposing the idiocy of environmentalism.

Simply put, farmers are the world’s natural environmentalists, relying on the weather—which they cannot control—and the stewardship of their land to feed themselves and others. They must, however, have a means to move their crops to places where other humans can acquire them and that requires a massive system of transportation which, in turn, requires the affordable use of energy.

Environmentalism’s goals, clean air and water, are laudable, but a massive governmental bureaucracy to require that people use less energy and consume less is not.

Time and time again we see examples of environmentalism that only manage to kill people, whether it is the banning of beneficial chemicals or the use of the least efficient forms of electrical power, wind and solar energy.

The least reported story out of Europe these days is the extreme cold that is literally killing people because it puts the lie to all the environmental “solutions” advanced since the 1960s. Environmentalism has been decried as a religion and, for those who want to deny a greater power, Nature or God, it remains their holy grail.

© Alan Caruba, 2012.
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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. 

Another Recession Keyed By High Oil Prices?

Another Recession Keyed By High Oil Prices?
America Afloat On An Ocean Of Domestic Oil!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet


If you are old enough, and wise enough, to remember the Jimmy Carter years then you remember the fiasco that was his administration. But mostly, you will remember the so-called gas shortage or oil crisis with vehicles lined up for blocks waiting to buy gas. Remember the days when you could buy gas and the days you could not buy gas?

Back in those days, I was a credentialed broadcast news reporter. And something did not “smell” right. After a few weeks of snooping, nobody was able to convince me the gas shortage was real.

I spoke to a propane gas dealer who told me, off the record, (when I asked about the shortage) that all his storage tanks were filled to capacity and he had rail cars sitting on the local tracks filled with propane and he had just been notified that more was on the way.

Around 5 AM, one morning, I, personally, pumped gasoline from a gas pump with a hand-lettered sign on it stating the station was “out of gas.” I knew the owner and had obtained the keys the evening before.

I heard of oil dealers renting storage space from farmers, in the tanks that would normally store the farmer’s fuel for his farm equipment. I was not able to verify that story, but I knew a number of dealers and I did not doubt it then -- and I do not doubt it today.

I also heard, and saw, tankers pumping gasoline into abandoned underground tanks at old, rural, (closed) filling stations in order to store their overflow of gasoline.

An area TV station filmed tanker ships lying low in the water and anchored just over the horizon from the near-by port. It was reported they were ordered to do so while the companies waited for gasoline prices to increase… then they would sail into port and off-load their precious cargo.

I was convinced then, and I am convinced today, that THAT gas shortage – THAT oil crisis – was manufactured. We were drowning in oil and gasoline. I saw too much, I heard too much, and I experienced too much to believe otherwise.

I have come to believe it was the first attempt, by the government, to force Americans to cut back on oil consumption -- to learn to do with less. See, America’s President was the DEMOCRAT, Jimmy Carter -- you know, another one who believes we must all learn to suffer equally, just like the current democrat in the White House, Obama.

The price of gasoline and other oil products is skyrocketing -- even as I write. The American consumer is being taken to the cleaners.

I don’t blame the oil companies for our current oil crisis.

Look. America is awash in oil. We’ve got more oil than the Arabs! But – our government won’t let us get to it -- and use it -- and flip the bird to the Middle Eastern Oil princes.

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. To our knowledge -- none has been extracted. With this mother load of oil why are we still fighting over offshore drilling?

Now. Consider this: The U. S. Geological Service issued a revised report in April of 2008 (It hadn't been updated since 1995) on how much oil was in the area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota, western South Dakota, and extreme eastern Montana. Take a look for yourself. http://bakkenshale.net/bakkenshalemap.html

“The Bakken,” as it is referred to, is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay, and it has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates the Bakken deposit at 503 billion barrels. This is light, sweet, oil that would be far, far, less costly to Americans than the oil we are importing today.

We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. We are talking more than 2 TRILLION barrels of untapped oil. Here are the official estimates: - 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia - 18-times as much oil as Iraq - 21-times as much oil as Kuwait - 22-times as much oil as Iran - 500-times as much oil as Yemen - and it's all right here in America -- in the Western United States.

Estimates tell us that that oil could satisfy America’s need for fuel for up to for 2,041 years!

You can read about this, yourself, at the US Geological Survey website HERE.

So what the deuce is going on? I mean, why the heck are we Americans sitting on our hands and not DEMANDING that our government “cut the cr*p” and allow the oil companies to dig, and drill, for all this oil? WHY is the US continuing to ship our treasure and our blood to the Middle East -- and to our unfriendly southern neighbors -- for oil?

We are on the cusp of back-to-back recessions with the second dip looming today. The cost to Americans for oil is threatening to push us over that brink and into a recession that will, most likely, become a depression even worse than the one or parents and grandparents experienced in the 1930’s.

Who’s to blame? First we blame the environmentalists and others (including the US government) who have blocked all efforts to aid America in becoming independent of foreign oil! And second: If we are truthful, we must blame ourselves, as well, for allowing those people so much power and influence in the first place!

I must ask: Why are we allowing a small group of people to dictate our lives and our economy, indeed, our future as a viable nation?

It is past time to fight back America. Demand that the US Congress defund the Environmental protection Agency right off the bat. Get rid of it.

Just as important is the necessity to elect a President with the cajones to override the environmentalist and open up America to drilling and digging for our own vast reserves of oil sloshing beneath our feet and just offshore and under the tundra.

Understand this: The fantasy of wind turbines and solar panels is just that – a fantasy. The hard truth is – America needs OIL, and lots of it, to sustain our economy -- and us.

The time is exceedingly short. America is facing ruin in a depression, which lies just over the horizon. We have to act now just to insure our survival as a viable nation. Even now, we may have waited too long.

J. D. Longstreet

Two Crazy Greens ... Alan Caruba

Two Crazy Greens

By Alan Caruba

For a few hours on Wednesday the nation’s attention was on James J. Lee who took hostages at the Discovery Communications headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Negotiations failed to sway him from his mission or free his hostages. Lee was a Green zealot and police were left with no alternative than to shoot Lee dead.

Every movement has its crazies, but not every movement is as crazy as the one that calls itself “environmental.” Almost entirely devoid of any real scientific justification, the Greens have devoted decades to literally inventing one bogus crisis after another, culminating with “global warming.”

At the heart of the Green philosophy is the belief that the Earth’s problems are all caused by human beings. “Humanity are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture,” Lee wrote in an eleven-point Internet communiqué. “Saving the Planet means…decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies”, said Lee. “The planet does not need humans.”

We can dismiss Lee as a lunatic, but what are we to do regarding Dr. John P. Holdren, the top science advisor to President Obama?

In a new book, “Control Freaks”, Terence P. Jeffrey, the Editor-in-Chief of CNSnews.com, devotes several pages to Dr. Holdren, along with his colleague, Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich, the author of the 1968 bestseller “The Population Bomb.” Both academics have collaborated over the years and both share a contempt for humanity that can only come from fevered, delusional minds devoted to intellectual theories.

In a paper published in 1973 by the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Holdren asked “Is even the present U.S. population of 210 million too large? Should there be zero economic growth as well as zero population growth?” Together with Dr. Ehrlich, he later wrote, “Halting population growth must be done, but that alone would not be enough. Stabilizing or reducing the per capita resources in the United States is necessary, but not sufficient.”

The famous six degrees of separation between James J. Lee and Dr. Holdren is glaringly obvious. Lee’s manifesto said that finding “solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy” was the only way to save the planet.

Tell me that there is a whit of difference between Dr. Holdren’s and Lee’s “solutions”. Tell me there's any difference between Dr. Holdren’s and Dr. Ehrlich’s view that “What is actually required is nothing less than a transformation of human society” and the transformation that Obama has been imposing on the United States of America?

Jeffrey reports that “This transformation would start with population control, which might eventually require involuntary measures if voluntary ones failed.” Dr. Holdren recommended that “Several coercive proposals deserve discussion, mainly because societies may ultimately have to resort to them unless current trends in birth rates are rapidly reversed by other means.” “Political pressure must be applied immediately to induce the United States government to assume its responsibility to hold the growth of the American population,” wrote Dr. Holdren.

Dr. Holdren is no fan of the human race in general and those enjoying citizenship in the United States in particular, given his lack of regard for free speech. Both he and Dr. Ehrlich at one point advocated making it “illegal for any utility to advertise in such a way as to promote greater demand for power.” What better way to reduce available electrical power than to advocate switching to wind and solar energy which together barely represent one percent of the electricity generated daily? Neither is dependable and neither can ever meet the needs of the nation. What better way than to oppose the use of coal for plants that generate just over fifty percent of the nation’s electrical power or to keep a multi-billion dollar repository for spent nuclear waste closed?

What better way to kill millions of people who fall victim to a disease like Malaria than to ban DDT, the most effective way of eliminating mosquitoes from transmitting it? What better way to embolden a nuclear attack on the nation, killing millions, than to advocate treaties to reduce our nuclear deterrent? There are no environmental solutions except those similar to the Nazi “final solution” that killed six million of Europe’s Jews and five million other presumed enemies of the state in Germany. Those in charge of Germany in the 1930s were dedicated environmentalists.

So, James J. Lee is one less environmentalist thanks to a SWAT team, but what are we to do about Dr. John P. Holdren and the host of other environmental crazies seeking to eliminate humans from planet Earth?

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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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.

Big Green Lies are Imploding ... Alan Caruba

Big Green Lies are Imploding
By Alan Caruba

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As World War Two wound down, in 1945 Italian partisans found Benito Mussolini and his girlfriend trying to flee to Switzerland. They shot both of them and then hung them by their heels in the Piazza Loreto in Milan. He had led the National Fascist Party and had been the 40th prime minister from 1922 until being deposed, jailed, and rescued by his pal Adolf Hitler.

I was reminded of this when I read a list of 1970 Earth Day predictions because, sooner or later, lies implode and the liars must be held accountable.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something”, said Kenneth Watt, an ecologist, when asked about global warming.

“Civilizations will end within 15 to 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” said George Wald, a Harvard biologist.

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” said Barry Commoner, a Washington University biologist.

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years,” predicted Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and author, none of whose predictions ever came true.

It’s been 40 years since the first Earth Day.

This, of course, brings us to the greatest serial liar of our era, former vice president Al Gore, author of “Earth in the Balance”, the star of “An Inconvenient Truth”, Nobel Prize winner, Oscar winner, and surely worthy of being metaphorically hung by his heels for general repudiation, disdain, and ignominy.

Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com and the GreenHellBlog, reported that Al Gore told a conference call of supporters that the battle to enact a Cap-and-Trade bill, imposing limits on so-called greenhouse gases, and creating “carbon credits” to be bought like medieval indulgences for the remission of sin, that “The federal government has failed us.”

No, what failed was the long, relentless and utterly mendacious campaign to convince people that global warming was an actual event and a genuine threat to the Earth. It never was because it was utter fiction. Well, the part about massive increases in the Earth’s overall temperature was. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and has gone through a succession of ice ages and warming periods since it began.

To demonstrate how deranged Gore is, he actually blamed a “biased right-wing media…bolstered by professional deniers.” There is The Wall Street Journal and Fox News whose reporting reflects a conservative philosophy and outlook, but the rest of the mainstream media has been so demonstrably left-wing there was little else available to the public until the advent of cable television and the Internet. And they all lied about global warming.

In November 2009 the release of thousands of emails between the small band of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “scientists” revealed they were a cabal of data fabricators who were by then increasingly alarmed that global warming wasn’t happening despite their best efforts to deceive the entire world. The event was dubbed “Climategate.”

Now we learn that a U.S. funded agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has become mired in a new scandal involving numbers for the Great Lakes region that misrepresent average temperatures there. The latest word as of Wednesday, August 11, is that NOAA has removed an entire NOAA-16 satellite data set from its website--leading some to wonder if a decade’s worth of North American data will be discredited.

In sum, do not trust NOAA and most definitely, do not trust the Environmental Protection Agency that is desperately trying to get authorization to regulate carbon dioxide on the grounds that it is causing global warming. This isn’t just a rogue agency. The EPA has the look of a criminal enterprise bent on destroying the U.S. economy.

There is NO global warming and hasn’t been any for a decade as the Earth has been cooling thanks to a predictable lack of sunspot activity known to affect the overall planetary temperatures.

The Green lies are imploding. In the midst of a very ugly recession, the nation’s governors can do us all a favor by ending all funding to the various “environmental” programs tied to the global warming fraud.

The next Congress, if power is transferred to the Republican Party, should begin to trim the budget of billions of bogus “climate” and related “environmental” related programs.

It’s time to send the liars packing. It’s time to regain our fiscal and environmental sanity.

Alan Caruba

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© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Blowing Wind Up Your Skirt ... by Alan Caruba

Blowing Wind Up Your Skirt
By Alan Caruba

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One of the keystones of the Obama administration’s energy policies has been a very expensive emphasis on “clean energy”, sometimes called “renewable energy”, allocating billions to the wind and solar energy producers. Like much of the “stimulus” bill that money is a waste.

The wind power trade group, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has been pouring big bucks into a public relations effort to convince Americans that wind is the energy source of the future and that acres of wind turbines should be installed to replace the proven sources, primarily coal-fired, natural gas, and nuclear plants currently providing more than 80% of the nation’s electricity needs.

Thanks to Freedom of Information requests, the Chicago Tribune revealed significant collusion among Department of Energy officials and AWEA, as well as other third-party special interest groups such as the Center for American Progress, a think tank that pushes Green and other liberal agendas.

The Tribune reported that an Assistant Secretary of Energy, Cathy Zoi, who formerly held top positions at Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, was charged with crafting renewable energy policy for the Obama administration and emails obtained revealed that she was working closely with AWEA to rebut and discredit a ground-breaking study by Dr. Gabriel Calzada of Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University.

Dr. Calzada’s research concluded that, for every “green job” the Spanish government created, 2.2 jobs were destroyed and that nine out of ten government-created “green jobs” were temporary at a time when Spain’s unemployment rate is at an all-time high, not unlike the situation in the U.S.

At the time that Dr. Calzada’s study was reported, the Obama administration was pushing “Cap-and-Trade” legislation through the House. This legislation would set up a system for the sale, auction, and trade of “carbon credits” based on the totally discredited assertion that “greenhouse gases”, primarily carbon dioxide, were “causing” global warming. The bill remains in the Senate awaiting a vote.

Back in January AWEA was ecstatic over an Obama administration award of $2.3 billion in “clean energy manufacturing tax credits and the President’s call for an additional $5 billion.” There is no economic or scientific justification for the waste of taxpayer dollars in this fashion.

Also in January, a Boston Herald article by Jay Fitzgerald revealed that “National Grid customers will experience sticker shock after the giant utility negotiates a long-term electric contract with Cape Wind developers, energy experts warn.”

“The Rhode Island deal calls for National Grid to pay an eye-popping 24 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity from Deepwater Wind’s proposed wind farm off Block Island for 20 years. That’s three times higher than the current price of natural-gas generated electricity—and the Rhode Island deal includes a 3.5 percent annual increase over the life of the contract.”

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, in February eleven wind turbines froze because their hydraulic fluid had turned to gel and oil lubricants were rendered sluggish. These kinds of problems do not occur in other sources of electricity. In Oregon, General Electric had announced a big wind project involving 338 wind turbines that it claimed would power 235,000 homes. Naturally, it was applying for federal subsidies.

In Great Britain, in January, its wind turbines representing six percent of total generating capacity and billions invested, supplied virtually no power most days because, as Dennis T. Avery, a former senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department noted “The wind tends not to blow when and where it’s already cold.”

Avery pointed out that neither Denmark, nor Germany, leaders in wind energy projects, has decommissioned any fossil fuel plants. “The fossil generators are kept in ‘spinning reserve’ to keep the lights on in the schools, factories, and hospitals when the wind dies.”

The wind and solar energy industries, as well as the biofuels industry, continue to depend on government subsidies to exist, as opposed to private enterprises that have a long track record of providing affordable electricity.

First the government gives the wind energy producers your money and then you end up paying higher energy bills as a result. Both wind and solar energy depend on government mandates for their use.

These are facts you need to keep in mind every time President Obama speaks of “clean energy” and “green jobs.” Like so much else one hears from the TelePrompter-in-Chief, it has no relation to the truth.

Editor’s Note: For more information about wind power, visit http://windpowerfacts.info/.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

My State of the Union ... by Alan Caruba

My State of the Union
By Alan Caruba
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Each one of us has their own “state of the union” so far as the economy is concerned. Much of the workforce receives a paycheck, but many of those jobs have ceased to exist. Other jobs involve contract services. A reported 10% of the workforce is unemployed and the likelihood is that the actual percentage is much higher.


Small business, one of the largest components of the economy, is hurting because consumers are cutting back on spending. It is no surprise either that the banking community, under direct attack by the President, is reluctant to stick its neck out. The result is an understandable reluctance to extend credit and loans, and a loss of investor confidence. On Wednesday, the President will give his first State of the Union (SOTU) speech, but if it looks and sounds familiar, it is because it will be the third time in the past year he has addressed a joint session of Congress. That has to be some kind of record, but he has set records for more than 400 speeches in the past year.


When the President reads yet another speech written for him by other people, keep in mind that he has surrounded himself with a cabinet and advisors composed primarily of lawyers like himself. Most have no experience in private enterprise. They have not managed a business, nor met a payroll. Less than ten percent of them have experience in the business sector. And these are the people charged with solving the current financial crisis!


I do not need to wait until Wednesday to hear President Obama’s State of the Union speech. I already know he cannot be trusted to respond honestly and candidly about any issue. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) gained fame by calling out “You Lie!” in an earlier speech and he was right. He did, however, apologize for the breach of etiquette, but I am pretty sure other Republicans in the chamber will feel the same impulse.


After fifty years of earning a good living as a public relations counselor and a provider of editorial skills, the market for my skills has contracted in response to the economy. That’s my SOTU. I am confident that, when the economy improves, there will be individuals, corporations, trade associations and others who will rev up their efforts to influence consumers and issues, but until then, while the President lives off the fat of the land, I am pretty much living off my “fat.”


A recent issue of U.S News & World Report devoted an entire issue to my generation and those closely gaining on it. It concluded that many either do not want to retire, nor can afford to. I have a cousin, also in his 70s, who’s in his Wall Street office every day. According to the magazine, both of us have a good chance of making it to age 100! Many investments intended to provide a retirement nest egg have been reduced in value, interest on savings is miniscule, and the rising cost of living has left those in their seventies and older often unable to opt out of the work force if they are fortunate to be employed or considering re-employment if a job can be found. We make excellent workers because we come equipped with a good work ethic and attitudes. Meanwhile, a legion of Baby Boomers is beginning to join our ranks, lining up for their Social Security and other benefits.


Tampering with Medicare this year, a huge distraction from the task of encouraging job growth, was possibly the dumbest thing the White House and Democrat Congress could have done. There will be a senior citizen payback at the ballot box in November.


I have a younger member of my family who, like thousands of Americans these days, owns a home whose value is less than his mortgage. Like all homes, it is a money pit. And worse for him, it is in New Jersey, a state with the highest property and other taxes in the nation. At the height of the housing bubble, I sold the home in which I had lived for more than sixty years and moved to a luxury apartment complex. I miss my former home, but it didn’t come with a pool, a fitness center, and a charming concierge staff.


Having been born during the Great Depression of the 1930s, I have now lived long enough to be in a new Depression. The irony is that both had their roots in government policies and, in both cases, were prolonged by government hostility to corporations, banks, and other generators of income and growth. The present administration is maniacally opposed to Wall Street. They oppose the engines of energy in America, oil, coal, and natural gas. They waste billions on so-called “renewable” energy or “biofuels”, all of which are incapable of producing sufficient energy for even a moderate-sized city or town. Biofuels just drive up the cost of crops like corn for no sensible reason.


Those “shovel-ready” construction projects have not yet materialized while the nation’s infrastructure continues to be neglected. Not one single new nuclear plant or refinery has been built since the 1970s.


Over the years, the auto industry has been destroyed by increasing congressional interference in the form of mileage mandates, by requirements for ethanol use, and, internally, by the auto unions that demanded and received huge medical and retirement plans that ate profits. Two of the largest American auto manufacturers are essentially owned by the taxpayers due to massive, multi-billion bailouts, and controlled by the unions that destroyed them.


So my SOTU is to find a market for my editorial and other skills. I don’t give a rat’s patoot what the President will say Wednesday evening. He’s not the solution. He is the problem.


Alan Caruba

Demography Decides Everything ... Alan Caruba

Demography Decides Everything
By Alan Caruba

When I listen to politicians arguing the merits of some piece of legislation, I am usually 99% sure they have no idea how demography—population—will effect the outcome of their grand schemes.

This is particularly true of advocates of fixed and often flawed ideas about the environment. Most “save the Earth” true believers want to see huge reductions in the population of the planet. They don’t much care for human beings.

Demography is the study of population; focusing on things like fertility rates, aging, ethnic identity, and immigration. Knowing the accurate demographics of a nation is central to its governance and this is particularly true for a democracy. It is no accident that both words have the same root, demos as in people.

Knowing the size and distribution of the U.S. population was a serious concern for the Founders and it is part of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution which states that "[An] Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct." Congress first met in 1789, and the first national census was held in 1790.

For the world in general, fertility rates have been falling as more women receive education and become part of the workplace. Higher standards of living and education reduce birth rates. It makes it easier for women to be part of the workforce and households have more money for savings as well as the consumption of goods. As nations like India and China improve their economic status, their populations will stabilize and population growth will slow. The odious one-child policy in China will, in time, pass into history.

Thus, industrialization, the increased spread of electrical power, a global economy with fewer trade restrictions, all will favorably impact population growth by slowing it. In contrast, the objectives of the environmental movement such as the reduction of energy use based on the false assertion that it produces carbon dioxide that, in turn, will heat the Earth, are in direct conflict with population stabilization and reduction.

In the United States, government policies have been in direct contradiction of what native-born and naturalized citizens want. If the latter had there way, there would not have been a sharp increase in the population. Instead, the government has pursued policies that increase, largely through legal and illegal immigration, the number of people in the nation.

In 1970, the U.S. population was about 203 million. This followed the unprecedented “Baby Boom” years,1946-1964. Today the population has surpassed 293 million. These numbers come from the Census Bureau. At no other time in U.S. history have recent immigrants and their children dominated population growth.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s official estimate is that there are eight million illegal immigrants currently in the nation. Most observers of illegal immigrant believe that the actual number range from twelve to seventeen million.

So, since 1970, each Congress and each President has adopted policies not only allowing, but encouraging, legal, and in particular, illegal immigration far above traditional levels and setting the stage for increasing economic and social problems.

As reported by USA Today, the U.S. population is expected to “soar to 438 million by 2050 and the Hispanic population will triple according to projections…by the Pew Reseafch Center.

Moreover, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that “the future age structure of the population will be older than it is now. Very nearly 40% will be senior citizens, over 65, by 2050. In 2011, the last members of the Baby Boom will reach 65 by 2029. All will be eligible for Social Security and Medicare if, in fact, these two entitlement programs have not become insolvent by then.

Here, again, we see government policy ignoring or just ignorant of population changes as the Congress moves toward passing a healthcare reform package that 80% of the voters disapprove; one that will slash a trillion dollars from Medicare funds and institute rationing of care as the number of older Americans increase. The harm to the current healthcare system is incalculable.

In addition, yet another amnesty bill has been introduced in Congress at a time when it is obvious that a growth in the genera population will only exacerbate and increase the costs of educating the children of the newly enfranchised, formerly illegal immigrants, along with the cost providing medical care to those who cannot afford it, and incarcerating those who break the law. These costs will add billions at all levels of society.

So, demographics do matter, even if politicians and other special interests ignore them. They have local, national, and international ramifications as populations either stabilize or increase worldwide.

A lesson for the United States can be drawn from the decline of the Roman Empire. It was a combination of the cost of far-flung military commitments and the invasions of populations from outside of the empire that ultimately caused its collapse through an inability to impose Pax Romana or stop the depredations of northern European tribes and threats from the Huns.

Policies that deliberately deny the benefits of the provision of widespread energy availability and of education to increase literary; policies that deny protection against the scurge of malaria and other diseases; discourage the use of genetically modified crops to avoid deforestation and to provide ample food supplies; policies that impose foolish mandates such as ethanol or even attempt to regulate carbon dioxide with the false claim that it is a harmful gas, all contribute to the waste of the Earth’s greatest resource, its human population.

There are, of course, events beyond our imagination, though not necessarily our control. As the great physicist Albert Einstein warned, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Forests of Concrete and Steel

Forests of Concrete and Steel
By Paul Driessen
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“Many words could describe wind energy and green jobs. “Sustainable” is not one of them.”
Paul Driessen
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Boone Pickens, Nacel Energy, Vestas Iberia and others have been issuing statements and running ads, extolling the virtues of wind as an affordable, sustainable energy resource. Renewable energy reality is slowly taking hold, however.

Spain did increase its installed wind power capacity to 10% of its total electricity, although actual energy output is 10-30% of this, or 1-3% of total electricity, because the wind is intermittent and unreliable. However, Spain spent $3.7 billion on the program in 2007 alone, King Juan Carlos University economics professor Gabriel Calzada determined.

It created 50,000 jobs, mostly installing wind turbines, at $73,000 in annual subsidies per job – and 10,000 of these jobs have already been terminated. The subsidies have been slashed, due to Spain’s growing economic problems, putting the remaining 40,000 jobs at risk.

Meanwhile, the cost of subsidized wind energy and carbon dioxide emission permits sent electricity prices soaring for other businesses – causing 2.2 jobs to be lost for every “green” job created, says Calzada. Spain’s unemployment rate is now 17% and rising. That’s hardly the “success” story so often cited by Congress and the Obama Administration.

Across the Channel, Britain’s biggest wind-energy projects are in trouble. Just as the UK government announced its goal of creating 400,000 eco-jobs by 2015, major green energy employer Vestas UK is ending production. All 7,000 turbines that Downing Street just committed to installing over the next decade will be manufactured – not in Britain, but in Germany, Denmark and China.

For businesses, existing global warming policies have added 21% to industrial electricity bills since 2001, and this will rise to 55% by 2020, the UK government admits. Its latest renewable energy strategy will add another 15% – meaning the total impact on British industry will likely be a prohibitive 70% cost increase over two decades. This is the result of the government’s plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions 34% below 1990 levels by 2020, and increase the share of renewables, especially wind, from 6% to 31% of Britain’s electricity.

These cost hikes could make British manufacturers uncompetitive, and send thousands more jobs overseas, the Energy Intensive Users Group reports. English steel mills could become “unable to compete globally, even at current domestic energy prices,” says British journalist Dominic Lawson; “but deliberately to make them uncompetitive is industrial vandalism – and even madness … a futile gesture ... and immoral.”

On this side of the pond, President Obama and anti-hydrocarbon members of Congress are promoting “green” energy and jobs, via new mandates, standards, tax breaks and subsidies. However, the United States would need 180,000 1.5-megawatt wind turbines by 2020, just to generate the 600 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity that compliance with the narrowly passed Waxman-Markey global warming bill would necessitate, retired energy and nuclear engineering professor James Rust calculates.
This would require millions of acres of scenic, habitat and agricultural lands, and 126 million tons of concrete, steel, fiberglass and “rare earth” minerals for the turbines, at 700 tons per turbine; prodigious quantities of concrete, steel, copper and land for new transmission lines; and still more land, fuel and raw materials for backup gas-fired generators. America’s new national forests will apparently be made of concrete and steel.

Those miners and drillers would likely be reclassified as “green” workers, based on the intended purpose of their output. However, the raw materials will probably not be produced in the States, because so many lands, prospects and deposits are off limits – and NIMBY litigation will further hamper resource extraction.

Air quality laws and skyrocketing energy costs (due to carbon taxes and expensive renewable energy mandates) will make wind turbine (and solar panel) manufacturing in the USA equally improbable. Thus, manufacturing could well be in China or India, and most “green” jobs could be for installers, as Spain and Britain discovered.
Posturing has already collided with reality in Texas, the nation’s wind energy capital. Austin’s GreenChoice program cannot find buyers for electricity generated entirely from wind and solar power. Its latest sales scheme has been a massive flop: after seven months, 99% of its recent electricity offering remains unsold.

Austin officials admit that “times have changed,” and the recession and falling energy prices may make it impossible for the city to meet its lofty goals. The company’s renewable electricity now costs almost three times more than standard electricity, and even eco-conscious consumers care more about the color of their money than the hue of their purported ideology.

Even worse for global warming alarmists and renewable energy advocates and rent seekers, global warming patterns have reversed during the past decade. Satellite data reveal that the planet is cooling, despite steadily rising carbon dioxide levels, and summertime low temperature records are being broken all over the United States.
“You'd better hope global warming is caused by manmade CO2 if you're investing in [renewable] sectors,” says Daniel Rice, the past decade’s best-performing US equity fund manager (BlackRock Energy and Resources Fund). But evidence for manmade catastrophic global warming is dissipating faster than carbon dioxide from an open soda bottle on a hot summer day.

The crucial fact remains: wind and solar are simply not economical without major government subsidies or monstrous carbon taxes. Moreover, cap-and-tax legislation currently being promoted in the House and Senate is “not enough to do anything” about supposed global warming disasters notes Rice.

“All it does is provide Obama a pass to Copenhagen,” where the UN will host a climate change conference in December, Rice says. And those subsidies and taxes would drive energy prices still higher, killing jobs and skyrocketing the cost of everything we eat, drive, heat, cool, grow, make and do.

Congress and the Administration are dragging their feet on nuclear power, closing off access to more resource-rich lands, and imposing layers of new regulations on oil, gas and coal energy – denying Americans these vast stores of energy and hundreds of billions in revenue that developing them would generate. Meanwhile, slick wind turbine ad campaigns promote expensive, heavily subsidized, unreliable technologies that only climate activists and company lobbyists would describe as sustainable, affordable, eco-friendly or socially responsible.

The ads and lobbyists seek more mandates, tax breaks and subsidies. Wind promoters want to quiet opponents long enough to get energy and climate legislation enacted – before Americans realize how it would drive the price of energy still higher, kill jobs, curtail living standards and liberties, and raise the cost of everything we eat, drive, heat, cool, grow, make and do.

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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power • Black Death.
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