Grassley Calls Trump's Claim that Wind Turbines Cause Cancer 'Idiotic'

BY RICK MORAN

https://pjmedia.com/trending/grassley-calls-trumps-claim-that-wind-turbines-cause-cancer-idiotic/

April 4, 2019

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley was piqued by Donald Trump's comment at a fundraiser that wind turbines cause cancer. He said the president's claim was "idiotic."

The senator took it personally. In 1993, Grassley authored the Wind Energy Incentives Act of 1993, which provided wind energy tax credits. So, as the father of the wind energy industry, he would naturally feel slighted by the president's statement.

CNN:

President Donald Trump's recent  claim that noise from wind turbines causes cancer was "idiotic," Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Wednesday. 

Speaking at a fundraiser for Republicans in Washington Tuesday, Trump took aim at wind turbines -- which he called windmills -- and what he labeled the inadequacy of wind energy, saying at one point that "they say the noise (from wind turbines) causes cancer." Scientific studies have not identified any human health risk from wind turbines.

Well, CNN, that's not entirely accurate either. A study published last year found adverse health effects experienced by those who live near wind farms.

Heartland Institute:

A recent report  by GateHouse Media examines reports of health-related problems by residents and landowners from Oregon to Massachusetts and concludes they are caused by the turbines.

The report, “In the Shadow of Wind Farms,” is an in-depth investigation of the wind industry’s effect on predominantly rural communities where turbines have been erected. During the course of the six-month investigation, the authors interviewed more than 70 families living near three-dozen proposed or current wind installations. They also spoke with 10 state and local lawmakers, examined hundreds of pages of public-service-commission records about wind-energy projects, reviewed court filings in seven wind-related lawsuits, and inspected lease agreements for at least eight wind facilities on private land. 

The authors also combed public documents and media reports to identify 400 families living near industrial wind installations who have publicly complained about shadow flicker, noise, health problems, and misleading statements by wind companies soliciting agreements to place turbines on private land.

Yes, but cancer? Perhaps a better question would be is there anything these days that doesn't cause cancer?

In truth, Grassley is right. It's an idiotic, uninformed, unscientific thing to say. But Grassley is hardly the person to call Trump out for anything. The only reason wind supplies any percentage of energy in the U.S. is that it's subsidized by you and me -- the American taxpayer. Without that subsidy, wind energy couldn't come close to competing with energy from fossil fuels.

There is a real benefit to be had from the turbines in that energy generated from the wind is clean and non-polluting. But in reality, it's just not worth it.

Wind power is a young industry, and there are certain parts of the country where it might make sense to tap into wind power for some of our energy needs. As wind turbines become more efficient, the price of getting energy from them will go down. Perhaps some day it will be cheaper to get our electricity from the wind than oil or gas.

Until that time, stop the subsidies and let the market decide the fate of the industry. We know the 200,000 birds who are mashed up by wind turbine props every year will be grateful.

MACRON ENCOUNTERS THE WRATH OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE

Backlash protests against Macron’s globalist policies

Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272149/macron-encounters-wrath-french-people-joseph-klein

December 5, 2018

Protesters in Paris during the third “Yellow Vest” rally on December 1, 2018.(Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images)

French President Emmanuel Macron is learning the perils of defying the will of his own people to serve a globalist agenda. The French president has made it his mission to lead the globalist assault on fossil fuels to stem further increases in man-made greenhouse emissions. He vowed to “make our planet great again,” after sharply criticizing President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. After convening the first One Planet Summit in Paris in late 2017 and continuing to lecture the world about the need for drastic actions to combat climate change, President Macron showed he was willing to use his own people as sacrificial lambs. He proposed steep fuel-tax increases to take effect this January, with more to come in subsequent years. The purpose was to raise the price of carbon use in France. The French people rose up in protest at a level not seen since the 1960’s. The yellow vest became the symbol of what began as protests by French drivers against higher diesel fuel prices. The protests, at times accompanied by violence, expanded to vent the grievances of ordinary people feeling squeezed by President Macron’s economic agenda. At first, President Macron would not budge. However, as the street protests in Paris and other parts of France showed no signs of abating, the Macron administration decided Tuesday to suspend the planned fuel tax increases for at least 6 months. France’s Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, not the aloof President Macron, announced the suspension decision. “No tax is worth jeopardizing the unity of the nation,” Prime Minister Philippe said in explaining the government’s decision.

President Trump had acted on the belief that the Paris Agreement on Climate Change represented a windfall to many other countries to the detriment of American workers. President Macron, on the other hand, remained oblivious to the economic plight of his own people, who have been plagued by an overall jobless rate of 8.9%. The unemployment rate for French youth (ages 15–24) has been reported to be as high 24.6 percent.

It is worth noting that Prime Minister Philippe, not President Macron, used the phrase “the unity of the nation” in announcing the suspension decision. That’s likely because Mr. Macron sees himself more as a global citizen than as a citizen of the country he was elected to lead. Unity of the world to address climate change is more important to him than preserving the unity of the French nation by focusing primarily on the economic needs of the French people.

The French president showed his disdain for nationalism in remarks he delivered during a gathering in Paris of world leaders, including President Trump, to observe 100 years since the end of World War I. In a line that only a globalist could mouth, President Macron exclaimed, “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.” Mr. Macron thought he was being clever with his veiled attack on President Trump’s “America First” policies. However, President Trump is having the last laugh. President Trump’s approval rating stands at approximately 46 percent currently. President Macron's approval rating has fallen to 23 percent. The French people, who are suffering under President Macron’s globalist stewardship, presumably prefer a “France First” president.

“Yellow vests” protesters block the road leading to the Frontignan oil depot in the south of France on Dec. 3. (Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images)

Mr. Macron repeats the same globalist tripe that we heard for eight years from former President Barack Obama and one that we hear all the time at the United Nations. It is based on the false premise of multilateralism for its own sake. Globalists make the red herring argument that the only alternative to multilateralism as they define it is what Mr. Macron in his speech to the UN General Assembly last September described as a unilateralist “survival-of-the-fittest approach.” The real choice, however, is between manic multilateralism that globalists believe in, versus rational multilateralism that respects national sovereignty.

Manic multilateralism is an uncritical deference to global norms and consensus, irrespective of the consequences. The late Charles Krauthammer described its ultimate purpose:  to “reduce American freedom of action by making it subservient to, dependent on, constricted by the will–and interests–of other nations. To tie down Gulliver with a thousand strings… the slavish pursuit of ‘international legitimacy’ – and opposition to any American action undertaken without universal foreign blessing.”

Rational multilateralism, on the other hand, strives for cooperation among sovereign nations to address issues of common concern. It seeks to promote possible practical solutions to manageable problems transcending national boundaries that are fair to all concerned. The United States remains among the most dedicated multilateralist countries in the world. Americans generally support international cooperation when effective in fighting a common threat such as global terrorism. The United States has contributed more than any other member state to the United Nations (including its specialized agencies and peacekeeping operations) to keep it in business. We work through NATO in Europe, the Organization of American States in Latin America, and U.S. alliances with Asian countries. We actively support the work of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and legions of multilateral relief agencies. None of that has fundamentally changed under President Trump. What has changed, however, is that President Trump will not tolerate funding arrangements that unfairly burden American taxpayers. He also refuses to go along with UN-endorsed agreements not ratified by the U.S. Senate that he deems to be contrary to the best interests and security of the American people. As President Trump explained in his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 25, 2018, “America will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control, and domination.”

Globalists reject the primacy of national sovereignty. They believe, for example, that by reflecting some sort of international “consensus” in resolutions and other "official" documents the United Nations has conferred special moral, political and even legal legitimacy on the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. They argue that the Trump administration cannot disavow these agreements without threatening to destroy the whole so-called “rules-based international order.”  Nonsense. President Trump saw through the fundamental flaws in both agreements, neither of which are legally binding treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate. He properly decided to act in the interests of the people who elected him.

The Iran nuclear deal provided a cash windfall to the dictatorial Iranian regime, which its leaders are using to fund their ballistic missile program and to fund terrorism. Obama’s deal kicked the Iran nuclear can down the road by not stopping altogether the regime’s ability to develop nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them. The Paris climate agreement allowed China, the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, to do virtually nothing of consequence to reverse the growth of its emissions until 2030. At the same time, Obama pledged further rapid cuts in U.S. emissions with job-destroying new regulations. He also agreed to a redistributionist funding scheme that would have picked American taxpayers’ pockets to the tune of billions of dollars a year starting in 2020. The fact that other nations’ leaders are either too stupid to heed President Trump’s warnings, or have too much a stake in selfishly reaping economic gains for their own countries, does not mean that President Trump must accede to their wishes.

President Trump by word and deed has laid out a vision that lauds international cooperation where warranted but under which he “will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.”  President Macron, in his own speech to the UN General Assembly last September, claimed that he does not believe “in one great globalized people.” He believes deeply, he said, “in the sovereignty of peoples.” Note that he uses the expression “sovereignty of peoples” rather than “national sovereignty.” He said in the same speech that “in no way will I yield the principle of the sovereignty of peoples to nationalists.” The French people rioting in the streets of France against President Macron’s proposed globalist fuel tax increases want a more nationalist president who shows true concern for their well-being as French nationals. Mr. Macron should start taking a lesson from Mr. Trump’s playbook if he wants to remain president of the sovereign French nation.

Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam

Why Wind Power Isn’t the Answer

By Robert Bryce
https://www.city-journal.org/wind-power-is-not-the-answer
October 30, 3018



On October 8, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report warning that nations around the world must cut their greenhouse-gas emissions drastically to reduce the possibility of catastrophic climate change. The report emphasizes “fast deployment of renewables like solar and wind” and largely ignores the essential role nuclear energy must play in any decarbonization effort.

Four days earlier, to much less fanfare, two Harvard researchers published a paper showing that trying to fuel our energy-intensive society solely with renewables would require cartoonish amounts of land. How cartoonish? Consider: meeting America’s current demand for electricity alone—not including gasoline or jet fuel, or the natural gas required for things like space heating and fertilizer production—would require covering a territory twice the size of California with wind turbines.

The IPCC and climate-change activists love solar and wind energy, and far-left politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called for a wartime-style national mobilization to convert to 100 percent renewable-energy usage. But this credo ignores a fundamental truth: energy policy and land-use policy are inextricable.

The renewables-only proponents have no trouble mobilizing against land use for the extraction of hydrocarbons. Consider the battle in Colorado over Proposition 112, which will prohibit oil- and gas-drilling activities within 2,500 feet of homes, hospitals, schools and “vulnerable areas.” Environmental groups including 350.org, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace have endorsed the initiative, which will appear on the November 6 ballot. If it passes, Proposition 112 would effectively ban new oil and gas production in Colorado, the nation’s fifth-largest natural gas producer. Or consider the months-long demonstrations that ended last year in South Dakota over the Dakota Access pipeline. More than 700 climate-change activists and others were arrested during protests claiming that Dakota Access, by crossing the traditional lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, was violating the tribe’s cultural and spiritual rights. These energy- and land-use battles are waged by climate activists and environmental groups whose goal is to shutter the hydrocarbon industry. Most of these groups, including 350.org and Sierra Club, routinely claim that the American economy can run solely on renewables. Further, the Sierra Club has tallied 74 U.S. cities that have pledged to get all of their electricity from renewable energy.

But the new study, published in Environmental Research Letters, shows yet again that wind energy’s Achilles heel is its paltry power density. “We found that the average power density—meaning the rate of energy generation divided by the encompassing area of the wind plant—was up to 100 times lower than estimates by some leading energy experts,” said lead author Lee Miller, a postdoctoral fellow who coauthored the report with Harvard physics professor David Keith. The problem is that most estimates of wind energy’s potential ignore “wind shadow,” an effect that occurs when turbines are placed too closely together: the upwind turbines rob wind speed from others placed downwind.

The study looks at 2016 energy-production data from 1,150 solar projects and 411 onshore wind projects. The combined capacity of the wind projects totaled 43,000 megawatts, or roughly half of all U.S. wind capacity that year. Miller and Keith concluded that solar panels produce about 10 times more energy per unit of land as wind turbines—a significant finding—but their work demands attention for two other reasons: first, it uses real-world data, not models, to reach its conclusions, and second, it shows that wind energy’s power density is far lower than the Department of Energy, the IPCC, and numerous academics have claimed.

Further: “While improved wind turbine design and siting have increased capacity factors (and greatly reduced costs), they have not altered power densities.” In other words, though Big Wind has increased the size and efficiency of turbines—the latest models stand more than 700 feet tall—it hasn’t been able to wring more energy out of the wind. Due to the wind-shadow effect, those taller turbines must be placed farther and farther apart, which means that the giant turbines cover more land. As turbines get taller and sprawl across the landscape, more people see them.

Rural residents are objecting to wind projects because they want to protect their property values and viewsheds. They don’t want to see the red-blinking lights atop those massive turbines, all night, every night, for the rest of their lives. Nor do they want to be subjected to the health-damaging noise—both audible and inaudible—that the turbines produce.

The backlash against Big Wind is coast to coast. In New York, which has mandated 50 percent renewable-energy usage by 2030, the towns of Yates and Somerset are fighting against Lighthouse Wind, a 200-megawatt wind project proposed for the shores of Lake Ontario. In Oklahoma, the tiny town of Hinton continues its battle against NextEra Energy, the world’s biggest wind-energy producer, over the siting of wind projects nearby. In California, which just boosted its renewable-electricity mandate to 60 percent by 2030, wind turbines are so unpopular that the industry has effectively given up trying to site new projects there. Meantime, in deep-blue Vermont, both gubernatorial candidates—incumbent Republican Phil Scott and Democratic challenger Christine Hallquist—favor renewable energy in principle but oppose further wind-energy development in the state.

Big Wind has attempted to intimidate some of its rural opponents by filing lawsuits against them. Last year, NextEra sued the town of Hinton in federal and state court after the town passed an ordinance restricting wind-energy development. The wind-energy giant also sued local governments in Michigan, Indiana, and Missouri, all of which had passed measures restricting wind-energy development.

Why the hardball tactics? Simple: rural residents stand between Big Wind and tens of billions of dollars in subsidies available through the Production Tax Credit. In September, Lisa Linowes, cofounder and executive director of the Industrial Wind Action Group, a New Hampshire-based nonprofit that tracks the wind industry, published an article on MasterResource.org. “The US Treasury estimates the PTC will cost taxpayers $40.12 billion in the period from 2018 to 2027,” Linowes wrote, “making it, by far, the most expensive energy subsidy under current tax law.”

The punchline here is obvious: wind energy has been sold as a great source of “clean” energy. The reality is that wind energy’s expansion has been driven by federal subsidies and state-level mandates. Wind energy, cannot, and will not, meet a significant portion of our future energy needs because it requires too much land.

Miller and Keith’s paper shows that the ongoing push for 100-percent renewables, and, in particular, the idea that wind energy is going to be a major contributor to that goal, is not just wrongheaded—it’s an energy dead end.

Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the producer of the forthcoming documentary, Juice: How Electricity Explains the World, which will be released in 2019.

The Fracking Industry Deserves Our Gratitude

It has given America virtual energy independence, freeing it from the leverage of often hostile Middle East regimes.

By Victor Davis Hanson — July 6, 2017

http://www.nationalreview.com/

Less than ten years ago, America’s energy future looked bleak.

World oil prices in 2008 had spiked to more than $100 per barrel of crude.

“Peak oil” — the theory that the world had already extracted more crude oil than was still left in the ground — was America’s supposed bleak fate. Ten years ago, rising gas prices, spiraling trade deficits, and ongoing war in the oil-rich Middle East only underscored America’s precarious dependence on foreign sources of oil.

Despite news of a radically improved but relatively old technology called “fracking” — drilling into shale rock and injecting water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure to hydraulically “fracture” the rock and create seams from which petroleum and natural gas are released — few saw much hope.

In 2012, when gas prices were hitting $4 a gallon in some areas, President Obama admonished the country that we “can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.” That was a putdown of former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s refrain “Drill, baby, drill.”

Obama barred new oil and gas permits on federal lands. Steven Chu, who would become secretary of energy in the Obama administration, had earlier mused that gas prices might ideally rise to European levels (about $10 a gallon), thereby forcing Americans to turn to expensive subsidized alternative green fuels.

But over the last five years, frackers have refined their craft on private properties, finding ever cheaper and more efficient ways to extract huge amounts of crude oil and natural gas from shale rock.

In 2017, despite millions of square miles being off limits to drillers, America is close to reaching 10 million barrels of crude-oil production per day, the highest level in the nation’s history. The U.S. may soon surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest petroleum producer.

When American natural gas (about 20 percent of the world total) and coal (the largest reserves in the world) are factored into the fossil-fuel equation, the U.S. is already the largest producer of energy in the world.

While environmentalists worry about polluting the water table and heightening seismic activity through hydraulic fracturing, fracking seems to become more environmentally sensitive each year.

When OPEC and other overseas producers tried to bankrupt frackers by flooding the world with their supposedly more cheaply produced oil, the effort backfired. American entrepreneurs learned to frack oil and natural gas even more cheaply and undercut the foreign gambit. The result is a windfall for all sectors of the American economy.

From 2014 to 2016, fracking helped cut the price of gasoline by $1.50 a gallon, saving American drivers an average of more than $1,000 per year.

Due to the fracking of natural gas, the United States has reduced its carbon emissions by about 12 percent over the last decade (according to the Energy Information Administration) — at a far greater rate than the environmentally conscious European Union.

Fracking and cheaper gas are allowing a critical breathing space for strapped American consumers, as alternative energy production and transportation slowly become more efficient and competitive.

Fracking has created a national savings of about 5 million barrels of imported oil per day over the last decade. That translates to roughly $100 billion in annual savings by avoiding foreign oil.

Fracking has allowed the U.S. to enjoy some of the lowest electricity rates and gas prices in the industrial world. The result is that cheap energy costs are luring all sorts of energy-intensive industries — from aluminum to plastics to fertilizers — back to the United States, with the potential of creating millions of new, high-paying jobs.

Fracking has given America virtual energy independence, freeing it from the leverage of unstable and often hostile Middle East regimes. The result is less need to interfere in the chronic squabbling in the oil-rich but unstable Persian Gulf.

Fracking has reduced oil prices and radically weakened America’s rivals and enemies. Desperate oil exporters like Iran, Russia, and Venezuela are short about half the oil income that they enjoyed ten years ago.

The late Hugo Chávez’s oil-fed socialist utopia in Venezuela is bankrupt.

What so far constrains Russian president Vladimir Putin is as much a shortage of petrodollars as fear of NATO.

Until recently, the combination of sanctions (lifted by the Obama administration) and crashing oil prices had nearly bankrupted would-be nuclear power Iran.

The once-feared OPEC oil cartel, the longtime bane of the United States, is now nearly impotent.

Friends such as Israel have gained energy independence by fracking. In contrast, some European allies who have banned fracking out of environmental worries are more vulnerable to Russian, Iranian, and Middle Eastern pressure than ever before.

Fracking is not easy. It requires legally protected property and mineral rights, a natural entrepreneurial spirit, environmental concern, and a free-market. In other words, it is an American way of doing business.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, ofThe Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, to appear in October from Basic Books. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. © 2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Outrageous Campaign against Exxon Mobil

By Rich Lowry — April 19, 2016

http://www.nationalreview.com/

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and a coalition of attorneys general, supported by former Vice President Al Gore, vowed on March 29, 2016, to hold fossil fuel companies accountable if their words and deeds on climate change had crossed into illegality. Credit: David Sassoon/InsideClimate News

It’s not easy to make one of the world’s biggest fossil-fuel companies a sympathetic victim, but a collection of state attorneys general, led by Eric Schneiderman of New York, has managed it.

They have launched a campaign against Exxon Mobil that is a transparent — nay, an explicit — attempt to punish dissent on climate change. The members of the self-described “Green 20” are demonstrating a banana-republic-worthy understanding of the law and their responsibilities. They shouldn’t be entrusted with the power of a meter maid, let alone a top position in law enforcement.

Schneiderman subpoenaed Exxon Mobil last year, in what purports to be a fraud investigation. The alleged offense is having less alarmist views on global warming over the years than the green clerisy deems acceptable. How this would constitute fraud is unclear.

Investors would have found Exxon Mobil alluring even if the company had maintained that the planet was in danger of becoming uninhabitable, for no other reason than oil is a miraculously efficient source of energy that we aren’t close to replacing. Consumers would have filled their cars with Exxon Mobil’s product regardless, and surely felt defrauded only if the gasoline didn’t get them to work or to their kids’ soccer practice as advertised.

Usually, officials charged with law enforcement at least try to obscure their political motivations. Not the attorneys general who stood with Schneiderman at a saber-rattling press conference a few weeks ago. Dispensing with any pretense of disinterestedness, they dubbed themselves “AGs United for Clean Power.” Al Gore appeared at the presser, not as a legal expert, but as a totem of the green Left. Schneiderman said that President Barack Obama’s climate agenda has been frustrated, so he and his colleagues would work “creatively” and “aggressively” to advance it.

That is certainly his right — if he resigns and becomes an official at the Sierra Club or runs for Congress. Instead, he is using the powers of his office to harass a company with opinions he finds uncongenial.

The attorney general of the Virgin Islands, of all places, has joined in, even though Exxon Mobil has no assets or staff there. He has subpoenaed the company’s documents going back roughly 40 years under an anti-racketeering statute and, for good measure, also has subpoenaed the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank that once received donations from Exxon.

The conceit of this campaign is that if it weren’t for the likes of Exxon Mobil, the climate debate would be settled by now. This is a view that doesn’t allow for honest disagreement about a hideously complex subject that, even if you accept the premises of the alarmists, isn’t susceptible to a ready solution.

Besides, Exxon Mobil has accepted elements of the climate orthodoxy for years now. It has included statements about the potential risks of warming in official documents going back a decade, and it favors a carbon tax. Even if Exxon Mobil has deliberately tilted toward the side of the climate debate most convenient for it, that’s not a crime. If having a self-serving opinion were against the law, much of the political debate in this country would shut down.

The Green 20 needn’t win a case against Exxon Mobil or any other fossil-fuel company to achieve its ends. Every time that Exxon Mobil has to say that it believes in global warming and no longer funds climate skeptics, it is a moral victory for the AGs. The mere example of Exxon Mobil being forced to expend resources defending itself is a warning to everyone else. And if a settlement can be extorted out of the company and used to fund the green Left, all the better.

All of this is a blatant abuse of power, which is why anyone who values the First Amendment and the rule of law has to side with the massive multinational corporation over AGs who are a disgrace to their offices.

— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. © 2016 King Features Syndicate

RELATED: The Left Is Coming for You Next 

EDITORIAL: An Attack on Us All

RELATED: Yes, Let’s Prosecute Climate-Change Fraud — and Start with the Scare-Mongers

Obama's War on Coal Targets Red States

Stephen Moore | Aug 11, 2015
http://townhall.com/

A coal power plant in West Virginia

Here's today's political quiz question: What do these five states -- Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, California and Maine -- have in common? Yes, they are blue states ruled by Democrats, but that's not all. These are the states that use the least amount of coal -- 2 percent or less -- for electric power.

In fact, almost all the states that are politically liberal and vote unfailingly Democratic are low coal use states. For instance, Washington, New York, Oregon and New Jersey are also in the top 10 states least reliant on coal. Only conservative Idaho is a red state with low coal consumption.

Meanwhile, the heavy coal using states bleed red. West Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming all get about 90 percent of their electric power from coal. Missouri, Utah, Indiana and North Dakota also get 75 percent of their electricity from coal.

Obama announced last week the toughest environmental regulations ever against coal. This is part of the president's war on coal that he announced when he was running for president in 2008. He has long admitted these policies, which aim to reduce emissions from coal burning electric power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, will "bankrupt" the coal industry. It's working. Coal towns are being vaporized across America and coal companies are going out of business.

But the pain from the new Environmental Protection Agency rules won't be evenly distributed across America. Far from it. The liberal coastal states will feel relatively modest jobs losses because they rely less on manufacturing. On the other hand, coal-producing states, such as West Virginia and Wyoming, will see massive job losses and increases in electric utility costs. A 2014 study by the Heritage Foundation finds the nationwide costs will be about $100 billion a year eventually, or a reduction in GDP by about one-half a percentage point; additionally, a family of four's annual income will drop by $1,200. Obama's policies that have had such a crushing effect on middle-income family finances are about to get a whole lot worse.

Would Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island, two of the biggest cheerleaders for the new regulations, be so euphoric if their voters were paying these massive costs for their green agenda? But the East- and West-Coast environmentalists can live with raising costs and unemployment in "flyover country."

It's time to label the Obama green policies what they truly are: steep taxes on red state America. By the way, many purple states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia also get hammered by Obama's climate change agenda.

The de facto tax that Obama wants to impose on American coal is doubly dastardly because its impact will be felt hardest in relatively poorer states. And because Census Bureau data confirms that poor households spend four times more of their income on energy than rich families, the Obama policy will make income inequality much worse. But of course the upper crust Manhattan liberals, who fund the Sierra Club and Obama and profess to care so much about the poor, can live with that. So much for "environmental justice."

Maybe all of this pain would arguably be worth it if somehow these policies were going to reduce global carbon emissions and stop global warming as Obama assures us they will. They won't. New data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other sources tells the opposite tale. China and India are adding coal plants on a massive scale. At least 1,000 new coal plants are planned worldwide.

According to data from the EIA, for every unit of reduction in U.S. coal power capacity from 2011-2040, China and India alone will add more than 14 units. Even if the U.S. cut coal use to zero over the next 25 years, global emissions from coal will rise sharply. By 2040, China's coal power capacity alone will be nearly 4 times the current U.S. capacity. So the Obama plan is all pain and no gain. It would be like trying to reduce unwanted pregnancies in the third world by having Americans use more birth control. Stupid.

But back to the Obama assault on red and purple states. Let's hope the voters get the message that Obama's green energy policies are directed at their jobs and their paychecks. Most people in blue states and the workers around the rest of the world won't feel a thing. This is fair?

Take Daylight Saving Time. Please

Jeff Jacoby | Mar 11, 2015
http://townhall.com/

As a card-carrying American exceptionalist, I don't share the presumption that a US policy should be changed just because it puts America at odds with the prevailing world view. From ultra-free speech to capital punishment to birthright citizenship, America frequently marches to the beat of its own drummer — and that's OK with me.

But that doesn't mean we never err, or that there aren't times when good sense requires pulling the plug on an obsolete practice, and admitting that other nations may have a better approach.

Take Daylight Saving Time. Please.

Last weekend most Americans set their clocks forward, losing an hour and groggily perpetuating a tradition that dates back to the Woodrow Wilson administration — a tradition that should have gone the way of spats and silent movies. Far from a universal custom, Daylight Saving Time is unknown in most of the world. It isn't even observed throughout the United States: Residents of Arizona and Hawaii don't mess with their clocks; neither do inhabitants of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands. A bill moving through the Alaska legislature would liberate the nation's largest state from Daylight Saving Time beginning in 2017.

The primary justification for shifting the clock has always been to save energy. Benjamin Franklin floated the first germ of the idea in 1784, in a humorous essaywritten when he was an ambassador to France. Force people out of bed earlier, he wrote, and what "an immense sum … the city of Paris might save every year, by the economy of using sunshine instead of candles." The first countries to actually adopt the practice were World War I allies Germany and Austria, which enacted a "summer time" law in 1916 to conserve coal. America followed suit in 1918.

To this day, Daylight Saving Time true believers trumpet the supposed energy savings. In a press release last week, Senator Ed Markey hailed a 2008 Department of Energy report that put the impact of the clock change at "$498 million in electricity savings and reduced oil usage of 2.9 million barrels of oil." Markey, who co-authored legislation moving the start of Daylight Saving Time from April to March, is nothing if not consistent: He has cited the same report, and the same statistics, in nearly identical press releases every year since 2009.

But the savings are illusory. Whatever energy is gained from less artificial lighting during the daylight saving months is more than lost by the increase in evening air-conditioner use, and by the boost in driving as motorists take advantage of post-work daylight to go out. When Indiana adopted statewide Daylight Saving Time in 2006, Yale economist Matthew Kotchen found that the "spring forward" hikedelectricity consumption by as much as 4 percent in late summer/early fall. The cost to Indiana ratepayers: an additional $9 million a year.

"A growing body of evidence reveals that Daylight Saving Time increases rather than decreases energy consumption," writes Kotchen, who served in 2013 as deputy assistant secretary for environment and energy at the Treasury Department. Whatever the benefits, "energy savings is not one of them."

Meanwhile, the more scientists learn about sleep disruption, the clearer it becomes that clock-shifting is bad for people's health and well-being. There are higher rates of workplace injuries, cluster headaches,heart attacks, and evensuicides in the week following the onset of Daylight Saving Time. One lost hour of sleep may seem trivial, but the sluggishness it causes comes with a price tag: In 2013, the health effects and lost productivity were estimated to have cost the economy $434 million.

Enough already: Let's join the majority of countries that don't monkey with their clocks. Dump daylight saving! We'd all be better off. And Ed Markey could finally retire that press release.

Lower Gas Prices? Thank ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’

The laws of supply and demand have brought relief to regular Americans. 

By Rich Lowry

http://www.nationalreview.com/

December 9, 2014

The old Republican rallying cry “drill, baby, drill” was supposed to be simplistic sloganeering masquerading as policy.

It turns out that it represented transformative wisdom. The fall in the price of oil — about 40 percent in the past several months, down to less than $70 a barrel — is largely the result of the U.S. drilling, and then drilling some more, baby.

Big drops in the price of oil usually accompany recessions and are caused by declining demand. Not this one. Lackluster demand from Europe and China is a factor, but the driver is the American shale boom that is perhaps the most wondrous national achievement of the past decade.

No one would have predicted it. To the contrary, experts predicted the opposite. In 2008, the International Energy Agency was projecting U.S. production would decline or remain flat for decades. Prior to the recession, the price of oil peaked at nearly $150 a barrel, and with global demand rising, it looked like it would remain at an elevated level forevermore.

But now the U.S. is producing over 3 million barrels a day more than it did several years ago. As Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute points out, this is like adding another Kuwait to world oil production. The Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania alone, he writes, has added another Iran to world natural-gas production.

Perhaps President Barack Obama can be forgiven for not understanding the consequence of this, given his attenuated understanding of complex market forces — like supply and demand. As recently as 2012, he was confidently asserting that “we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.” Drivers enjoying the $1 drop in the price of gas since May might beg to differ.

The lower price of oil is an almost unalloyed good. A recent Wall Street Journal story was headlined “Tumble in Oil Prices Spurs New Bets on Global Growth.” Who can quibble with higher projections of global growth, including in the United States?

The drop in the price of oil, and the resulting reduction in the price of energy, is a boon to American consumers. The fall in gas prices puts tens of billions more dollars in their wallets.

It is a boon to the working class. Households making less than $50,000 a year, according to the Wall Street Journal, were spending more than 20 percent of their after-tax income on energy in 2012. The number had been only 12 percent in 2001.

It is a boon to industry. It reduces the costs of manufacturing and transport.

It is a boon to automakers. Lower gas prices are helping drive a surge in sales of trucks and SUVs that are more profitable for Detroit than small cars.

It is a boon to agriculture. It reduces the price of plowing and harvesting, and makes fertilizer cheaper.

All of this is in keeping with the great truth that cheap, abundant energy has always contributed immeasurably to American prosperity. That makes it all the more perverse that the Left wants to make energy more expensive in its war on fossil fuels, its push for ever more stringent environmental regulations, and its quixotic campaign against global warming. Environmentalists rue that the decline in energy prices makes alternative energy even more uneconomical.

According to the Institute for Energy Research, “Nearly every barrel of new U.S. oil production can be attributed to the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies.” The Left hates fracking and would love, if it could, to hamstring it.

The Obama administration is pushing new regulations on everything from coal-fired power plants to, perhaps soon, methane. If it had its way, it would impose a tax on carbon, and it wants to lead the world in restricting the use of fossil fuels in the name of combating climate change.

The assumption of the administration has always been that fossil fuels represent the past, when they are, in reality, powering the American economy into the future. “Drill, baby, drill” indeed.

— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. © 2014 King Features Syndicate

Obama’s Bogus Climate Deal with China

Economic factors will make the Chinese ignore it, and should do the same for the U.S. 

By Jillian Kay Melchior

http://www.nationalreview.com/

November 12, 2014

U.S. President Barack Obama (L) poses for photographs with China's President Xi Jinping (C) and Xi's wife Peng Liyuan during the APEC Welcome Banquet at Beijing National Aquatics Center, or the Water Cube, in Beijing, November 10, 2014.

CREDIT: REUTERS/KIM KYUNG-HOON

When the United States and China announced a surprise carbon-emissions deal, the environmental Left squealed in delight. Al Gore declared it “groundbreaking progress from the world’s largest polluter” (i.e., China), while John Kerry patted himself on the back in the New York Times, gushing about how “the world’s most consequential relationship has just produced something of great consequence in the fight against climate change.”

Despite the extraordinary fanfare, there’s abundant reason for skepticism. Though the announcement is politically expedient for both Barack Obama and Xi Jinping, China almost certainly won’t take significant steps to reduce carbon emissions.

That’s because the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist party’s government rests squarely on economic development. Energy — often produced by dirty coal — allows that economic development to occur, lifting millions out of hand-to-mouth poverty.

But China remains a developing country, and it will stay that way for quite some time. In 2010, the World Bank estimated that more than one Chinese person in five survives on less than $2 a day, using 2005 international prices. And just a few months ago, Chinese premier Li Keqiang estimated that 200 million Chinese continue to live on $1.25 a day or less.

“The biggest difficulty is that the demand [for energy] will still be there,” Wang Yi, a climate-change expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the New York Times. “Urbanization won’t be completed, industrialization won’t be over and there will still be these large regional disparities. The eastern regions will be quite developed, but there will still be poverty in the center and west.”

Also consider 2012 estimates from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences suggesting that the number of “mass incidents” — CCP-speak for protests — regularly exceeds 100,000 a year. Much of the unrest centers on economic dissatisfaction. And many of the most noteworthy incidents, including a knifing at the Kunming train station and a car explosion at Tiananmen Square, occurred or originated in the impoverished central and western regions.

China’s ruling class cares far less about carbon emissions — or about the international community’s opinion, for that matter — than it does about maintaining its chokehold on power. So don’t expect it to gamble economic progress on lofty environmental goals.

At the same time, Chinese frustration with constant smog, heavy pollution, and environmental recklessness is also growing, so Beijing benefits politically from agreeing to far-off carbon-emissions reductions. The announcement gives the illusion that China’s official environmental policy is gradually improving.

In reality, Beijing hasn’t actually agreed to much: It will try to “stop increasing” carbon emissions by 2030 — which is a slanted way of saying its emissions will continue to grow for another 16 years — and derive 20 percent of its energy from renewables by then, up from about 10 percent now. Though these goals may be codified into Chinese law, the CCP does not have a reputation for respecting the rule of law. And the United States and the international community won’t have any way of enforcing these goals. No wonder Reuters called it a “largely symbolic plan.”

The Obama administration and its allies in Congress surely know all of this, but they don’t care. The deal, realistic or not, offers a valuable talking point for ramming through radical environmental policy.

Critics of the president’s environmental policies have noted that even the most stringent emissions reductions from the First World won’t have much of an impact unless the developing world also cuts back. The environmental Left is marketing the new U.S.–China deal as a way to eliminate that objection and plow forward with the president’s hardline proposals for carbon regulations.

“Now there is no longer an excuse for Congress to block action on climate change,” Senator Barbara Boxer said in today’s New York Times. “The biggest carbon polluter on our planet, China, has agreed to cut back on dangerous emissions, and now we should make sure all countries do their part because this is a threat to the people that we all represent.”

Boxer ignores the myriad other valid objections to the Obama administration’s proposed regulations, which seek to cut carbon emissions 30 percent from their 2005 levels by 2030. In reality, it’s bad policy because, despite enormous economic cost, it would yield very few environmental benefits.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has estimated that these rules would cost $51 billion, as well as 224,000 jobs, every year between now and 2030. And a recent NERA Economic Consulting study puts the cost even higher — as much as $73 billion a year — while also predicting double-digit price hikes on utility bills in all but seven states. Notably, the EPA failed to mention what such stringent policies would accomplish: They’d cut global temperatures by less than two-hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit.

In other words, these costly regulations are largely symbolic — as is the U.S.–China emissions deal. Both underscore how fundamentally divorced from reality the president’s climate-change aspirations really are.

— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for National Review as a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow for the Franklin Center. She is also a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.