President Obama and the rabid environmentalists

Note:  You might want to start at the Barack Obama Index Page, especially if you arrived here by using a search engine.

President Barack H. Obama was elected with the help of a number of "special interest groups" such as the labor unions, the teachers' unions, Hollywood celebrities, homosexual activists, immigration activists, and environmentalists.  Their efforts were successful.  Now it's payback time, and President Obama is unleashing the environmental extremists and undertaking a "green" transformation of America.

Environmentalists abhor capitalism, and apparently so does Barack Obama.  Environmentalists say they want to save the earth from the abuses inflicted by mankind, but the bottom line is this:  Environmentalists oppose every practical source of energy.  It is because of the environmentalists that 1.6-gallon toilets are mandatory, ordinary light bulbs have been outlawed, and plastic bags are frowned upon (or unavailable) at some grocery stores.

No sane person wants to intentionally pollute the air, poison the lakes, or throw garbage in the rivers.  But environmental extremism is another matter altogether.  Radical environmentalism is more about expanding and strengthening the federal government than it is about protecting the air and water and plants and animals.  Air and water pollution in the U.S. has been drastically reduced since the 1960's.  For example, between 1980 and 2005, airborne lead was reduced by 96 percent.*  According to EPA figures, six common air pollutants have been reduced by 60% since 1970.*  The poorest countries in the world are the ones with the worst pollution.  For a country with such abundant energy, ours is very clean.  If we can keep the air as clean as it is today, our air pollution problems have been solved.

In the past, environmentalists have issued a number of false alarms about everything from acid rain and chlorine and radon to stratospheric ozone depletion.  The greatest of these false alarms is the global warming hoax.  Environmentalists have been known to push a number of supposedly brilliant ideas that have turned out to be boondoggles.  Examples include solar power, electric cars, windmills, and more recently, "green" jobs.

People who want to endure hardships to "save the earth" should be free to pursue their goals -- provided they do so with their own money.  Unfortunately, they usually prefer to reach into Uncle Sam's pocket, especially when it's obvious that wind and solar power are perpetual money-losers.  That is why the Solyndra collapse is such a scandal.



Related topic:  Obama is a gas-guzzling limousine liberal.


Obama vows no backing down on clean energy.  President Barack Obama on Tuesday [1/24/2012] pledged that he would not back down on efforts to boost clean energy, warning that the United States risked being left behind by China and Germany.  But in a nod to political realities, Obama acknowledged in his annual State of the Union address that the deeply divided Congress would not approve comprehensive legislation to fight climate change.

An Administration's Green Fiascos Pile Up.  The Solyndra fiasco is the highest-profile of the president's many green failures, but it's hardly the only one.  Barely a week goes by but that we learn of yet another government-funded "clean energy" boondoggle.  Let's consider a few examples.

Natural gas sector set up by Obama to be sabotaged?  President Obama spoke of the role natural gas must play in America's energy future during his State of the Union address last week, but industry insiders fear it's merely lip service designed to distract from what they consider the administration's behind-the-scenes plan to sabotage the sector. ... At the same time the president boasts of the nation's vast shale gas deposits, his EPA is poised to make extracting that fuel much more difficult.  The agency will this year release a widely anticipated study on hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," the use of water, sand and chemical mixtures to crack underground rock and release huge quantities of gas.

Obama loves oil! Not!  If the President thinks he won any Greenie Points by kicking the Keystone XL pipeline down the road, he certainly lost them all — and probably then some — with his support for fracking and offshore drilling [in his State of the Union speech].  Radical environmentalists don't want to hear about energy security, objective risks, or practical safety measures:  they want to close down hydrocarbons as the work of the climate devil.

How Green Became Obama's Albatross.  Barack Obama may believe a lot of things, but he probably doesn't believe the Sierra Club is key to his re-election.  His decision to nix the Keystone XL pipeline will cost him votes but he did it anyway.

President Obama reveals who he really is — and this picture isn't pretty.  By rejecting the Keystone XL oil pipeline, President Obama did more than just pander to environmentalists.  He shredded attempts by his handlers to cast him as a pragmatic and reasonable man who can appeal to independent voters.  Instead, he stands naked as an ideologue willing to sacrifice workers on the altar of special-interest politics.

President Obama's job-killing environmental extremism.  The Keystone XL pipeline would have been a 1,700-mile pipeline transporting Canadian tar sands oil to Texas refineries for domestic use and export.  Tens of thousands of jobs for Americans in six U.S. states were expected to be created as part of this project.  The pipeline would have aided in reducing dependence on Middle Eastern oil, provided more oil for U.S. refineries and accelerated free trade with Canada.  But President Obama seems to be too busy pandering for green voters to worry about reducing unemployment.

Let's restore sanity to environmental reviews.  "The score is Job-Killers, two; American workers, zero.  We are completely and totally disappointed.  This is politics at its worst," Laborers International Union of North America President Terry O'Sullivan said last week following President Obama's decision to require more environmental study of the Keystone XL pipeline.  Unions weren't the only ones roundly criticizing Obama's transparent cave-in to environmental activists.  The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle and USA Today all condemned the decision too.

Obama Spends More Time Studying XL Pipeline than He Did Solyndra.  Stalling for time as a means to achieve an end is nothing new to this administration.  In the case of the intermountain west, forcing the energy industry into a holding pattern was a way to appease a vocal and angry environmental lobby.

Obama Administration Says No to Oil, Yes to Biofuels.  Two days after President Barack Obama blocked construction of a major oil pipeline, his administration is touting its efforts to expand domestic production of renewable energy.  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Friday [1/20/2012] that his agency has approved a $25-million conditional loan guarantee to build a 55,000-square-foot biorefinery plant in Iowa.  The Fiberight facility will produce cellulosic ethanol by converting municipal solid waste and other industrial pulps into "advanced biofuels," the news release said.

Rejecting the Keystone pipeline is an act of insanity.  President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity.  It isn't often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and — beyond the symbolism — won't even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it.  All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his reelection that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.

Keystone symbolises what is wrong with US policy.  In his statement, the president complained about the "rushed and arbitrary deadline" for reaching a decision on the permit application imposed by congressional Republicans as part of the Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act at the end of 2011. ... But TransCanada originally applied for a permit in 2008.  The federal government has had three years to consider the pipeline's impact including on health, safety and the environment.

Obama's bogus Keystone talking points.  The Keystone project has already been studied for three full years at a cost to TransCanada of $1.9 billion.  The State Department has already completed one entire Environmental Impact Statement.  Another Environmental Impact Statement will provide zero additional environmental protection to anyone.  But it will delay the project even further.  Another EIS would push construction back somewhere between one and six years at a cost of up to $2 million.

Only Obama and Big Green oppose Keystone pipeline.  All that stands between the start of work and the creation of thousands of good-paying jobs in America is a green light from President Obama.  But Obama fears angering thousands of campaign contributors and workers associated with the Big Green environmental movement, which rabidly opposes Keystone.  So he's waffled and delayed a decision until after the November 2012 election.

Keystone XL Pipeline And Jobs — Put Up Or Shut Up.  The day after the president announces he would reward businesses that bring jobs into the U.S., the Chamber of Commerce asks:  What about the pipeline from Canada that would bring both jobs and energy?

Obama Thanks EPA For 'Historic Progress'.  In an apparent attempt to shore up support from environmentalists ahead of the presidential election, President Barack Obama made a trip to the Environmental Protection Agency to thank employees for what he said was the "historic progress" they've made in protecting the environment.  "You protect the environment not just for our children but their children, and keep us moving toward energy independence," Mr. Obama said in a speech to about 200 employees at the EPA's headquarters in D.C.

Environmentalists battle the coal industry with regulations.  The United States has enormous coal resources and uses them to generate about 45 percent of the nation's electricity.  But environmentalists are attacking coal from both the production and consumption side in conjunction with their allies in the Obama administration.  The administration is only leasing about half as much coal production on federal lands as the Bush administration and is denying coal mining permits.  On private lands in the Eastern United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has curtailed surface mining permits by stating that such mining could undermine the quality of the local water.  EPA has also announced a flurry of new regulations which will result in massive coal unit retirements, expensive retrofitting of equipment needed to meet the new standards, and ultimately, much higher electricity prices from coal units or their replacement units.  Any way you slice it, the Obama administration is trying its best to end coal use in the United States.

Grand Canyon uranium put off-limits.  Interior Secretary Kenneth L. Salazar placed a 20-year moratorium Monday [1/9/2012] on new uranium mining claims in the Grand Canyon region over the objections of Western Republicans, who insisted the ban would deliver an unnecessary blow to the Northern Arizona economy. ... Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and other Republicans immediately denounced the order, saying that it would cripple economic activity and energy production despite evidence that yellowcake uranium had been mined safely in the region for years.

Obama's Keystone XL Indecision Already Costing Jobs.  It didn't take long for President Obama's delaying of the Keystone XL pipeline to start having disastrous economic consequences.  Fox 16 reports from Little Rock, Ark., that 60 employees at a local steel pipe manufacturer are now out of work as a direct result of the President's indecision:  ["]Layoffs and a brief company shutdown is what employees face at Welspun Tubular Company, which makes steel pipes for the oil industry.["]

Obama's Delay On Keystone Carries A Large Cost.  In November, the White House announced it would delay deciding on the project until after next year's election.  Administration officials claim they need more time to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of the $7 billion, 2,100-mile project to transport crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to major American refineries in the Gulf Coast.

Harvard's Deep Green Pockets.  [Scroll down]  At the Think Green event, Harvard Law professor Richard Lazarus lamented that President Obama used the phrase "climate change" or "global warming" in speeches 69 times in 2009, 73 times in 2010 and only once in 2011, leading to what he sees as "a crisis in environmental lawmaking" — his crisis being that nothing is happening.  In other words, climate legislation like Cap and Trade is dead.

Sen. Hatch calls Obama 'scaredy cat'.  Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) accused President Obama of acting like a "scaredy cat" on the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline and says he's getting "pushed around" by environmentalists.

Crony capitalism sinks the Navy.  Move over Solyndra.  You are not the only politically connected alternative-energy company to slop at the public trough thanks to the election of Barack Obama as president.  Over at Hot Air, J.E. Dyer reported that the Navy is forced to pay $16 a gallon for buckets of biofuel from a company named Solazyme — So Lazy Me — I kid you not.

The Volt Administration.  The headline reads like a piece from the Onion:  "U.S. Navy Paying $15/Gallon for Green Fuel." ... "We are doing this for one simple reason," explained Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, "It makes us better war fighters.  Our use of fossil fuels is a very real threat to our national security and to the U.S. Navy's ability to protect America and project power overseas."  Really?  As long as a fuel makes the ships, planes and submarines go, how does using pricey biofuel mixtures improve the war fighting capacity of the Navy?

Navy blue goes green.  Even as the scientific validation of global-warming theory crumbles, adherents in Washington have dragooned the U.S. military into leading the charge toward renewable energy.  The Navy made headlines last week with the revelation that it has been ordered to purchase 450,000 gallons of biofuel to power its jet fighters.  Conventional jet fuel costs about $4 a gallon, but the biofuel made from fermented algae will set back the service about $16 a gallon.

Navy Biofuel Deal is 'Cost Prohibitive,' 'Another Solyndra,' Critics Say.  The Obama administration's deal to buy 450,000 gallons of biofuel for Navy jets comes at a cost of up to nine times higher than regular fuel, a spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said, coming at a time when the U.S. military is already facing deep budget cuts.

Obama Insists He's 'All In' for Domestic Energy Production.  President Barack Obama, who punted a decision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline until after the presidential election, nevertheless insists that his administration has gone "all in" when it comes to domestic energy production.  He also flatly refused any give-and-take with Republicans to speed up the pipeline project.

DHS drafts 'environmental justice strategy'.  President Obama's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) outlined an "environmental justice strategy" that would review how a variety of DHS activities, from interaction with local governments to granting regulatory permits, affect poor and minority populations.  DHS defines environmental justice as "the commitment of the Federal Government ... to avoid placing disproportionately high and adverse effects on the human health and environment of minority populations and low-income populations."

Obama envoy: Green Climate Fund coming 'rapidly'.  President Obama's special envoy to the United Nations Climate Change conference said that a Green Climate Fund, reportedly funded in part through a financial currency tax that would hit Americans hardest, is "rapidly" approaching.  "We are in the international context going to be, hopefully, and I believe that this will be the case, rapidly setting up the Green Fund," Todd Stern, Special Envoy for Climate Change, told reporters at the UN conference.  "We will also be working hard to ramp up the funding that is supposed to reach a 100 billion dollars a year by 2020."

Report: Obama, UN to tax US for Green Climate Fund.  President Obama's team of negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference may agree to a tax on foreign currency transactions, designed to pay for a "Green Climate Fund," that would fall disproportionately on American travellers and businesses, according to a group attending the conference that is skeptical of the UN position on global warming.

The Tentacles of Obama's Green Cronyism Reach beyond the Department of Energy.  Much has already been revealed about the Obama administration's cronyism when it comes to the Department of Energy.  80% of Department of Energy green loans are tied to President Obama's most prolific donors including the now infamous Solyndra solar panel company and the Robert Kennedy Jr connected Brightsource which also deals in solar energy.

Energy in America: No Bridge to Oil.  North of the Arctic Circle, the tiny village of Nuiqsut, Alaska, has become the latest flash point in the struggle between oil drilling and environmentalism.  The town, with a population of 400, nearly all Eskimos, sits on the edge of the Colville River and the National Petroleum Reserve, or NPR.  How isolated is it?  It takes four flights and eight hours to get there from Seattle.  Conoco Phillips wants to build a road bridge and pipeline over the river to connect to the nearby Alpine development, which sits just outside the NPR.  But the Army Corps of Engineers rejected the plan telling, the oil company it had to go under the river.

White House denies pipeline delay was political decision.  The White House is pushing back against fresh GOP claims that the administration had politics in mind when it delayed a decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline until after the 2012 elections.  Senate GOP leaders revived the allegation Wednesday when rolling out new legislation that would force a decision about permitting the proposed Alberta-to-Texas pipeline within 60 days.

Obama's Job-Killing Global-Warming Agenda Continues Under the Radar.  With little attention and fanfare, the United Nations kicked off its latest global-warming conference — this time in Durban, South Africa.  Their mission:  to extend the Kyoto Protocol.  But as Bloomberg reports, Japan, Russia and Canada will not renew their commitments, and, of course, the United States will never sign on without commitments from China and India.  The Kyoto process is essentially dead — and even President Obama is acknowledging it, much to the chagrin of his left-wing environmental base.

A Stupid Energy Policy.  The Department of Energy (DOE) reports that 24 states and the district of Columbia have renewable energy mandates ranging from Maine's high of 40 percent to Pennsylvania's low of 8 percent.  Also known as a "Renewable Portfolio Standard" (RPS), these policies require that energy providers ignore practicality and price in order to obtain a minimum amount of electricity by a specific date from sources that environmental zealots consider "renewable," such as solar and wind.

Fast Trains and Slow, Puny, Expensive Cars.  Because the Obama EPA has declared carbon dioxide a 'pollutant,' and because cars emit CO2, [EPA administrator Lisa] Jackson is citing the Clean Air Act in her bid to commandeer Detroit."  The Journal reports that even the EPA's own (no doubt low-ball) estimates show that the rule will cost $157 billion and raise the price of cars by $3,100 per vehicle.

Obama's Green War Continues.  The Obama Regime has pursued a Green religious crusade on energy policy.  Part of this crusade — the soft option, so to say — has been to lavishly subsidize every kind of so-called "green energy" business (such as solar power, wind power, and ethanol), no matter how inefficient it might be.  The preferred tool the Green Regime employs is the covert subsidy — that is, taxpayer-backed loan guarantees. ... The flip-side of the Green jihad — the hard option — is a sustained regulatory attack on fossil fuel industries (oil, natural gas, and coal).

Obama's Disastrous Energy Record:  The U.S. State Department recently delayed approval of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline until at least early 2013.  This pipeline was to have run from Western Canada's Alberta province all the way down to the U.S. Gulf Coast.  It would have provided for 500,000-700,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada, one of our closest allies.  But the Obama administration cowered to some protests of extremist environmentalists in Nebraska and thus decided to punt the decision until after the 2012 elections.  It's been estimated that the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline would have produced 20,000 jobs across the Midwest and South as well as 118,000 spin-off jobs.

Obama's Car Trouble:  The Fiat 500 is more evidence that — like Solyndra and windmills — Obama's fascination with Europe has little to do with facts and everything to do with ideology.  Obama is determined to convert Americans to the Green Church, but they aren't buying.

How Obama's Alternative-Energy Programs Became Green Graft:
 Obama Campaign Backers and Bundlers Rewarded With Green Grants and Loans.  It would take an entire book to analyze every single grant and government-backed loan doled out since Barack Obama became president.  But an examination of grants and guaranteed loans offered by just one stimulus program run by the Department of Energy, for alternative-energy projects, is stunning.  The so-called 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and the 1603 Grant Program channeled billions of dollars to all sorts of energy companies.  The grants were earmarked for alternative-fuel and green-power projects, so it would not be a surprise to learn that those industries were led by liberals.  Furthermore, these were highly competitive grant and loan programs — not usually a hallmark of cronyism.  Often fewer than 10 percent of applicants were deemed worthy.  Nevertheless, a large proportion of the winners were companies with Obama-campaign connections.

The Pipeline Sellout.  In 2008, the slogan was "Yes We Can."  For 2011-12, it's "We Can't Wait." ... We can't wait while they obstruct.  We can't wait while they dither with my jobs bill.  Write Congress today!  Vote Democrat tomorrow!  We can't wait.  Except for certain exceptions, such as the 1,700-mile trans-U.S. Keystone XL pipeline, carrying Alberta oil to Texas refineries, which would have created thousands of American jobs and increased our energy independence.  For that, we can wait, it seems.  President Obama decreed that any decision must wait 12 to 18 months — postponed, by amazing coincidence, until after next year's election.

U.S. to Delay Decision on Pipeline Until After Election.  The Obama administration, under sharp pressure from officials in Nebraska and restive environmental activists, announced Thursday [11/10/2011] that it would review the route of the disputed Keystone XL oil pipeline, effectively delaying any decision about its fate until after the 2012 election.

Obama delays oil pipeline plan, discards 20,000 jobs.  Roughly 20,000 oil industry construction jobs are being thrown under Obama's 2012 campaign bus, largely because the president needs to pump up his sagging support among the environmentalists.

There simply is no green energy race with China.  No one needs the product.
 Secretary Chu's 'Clean Energy Race' Blather.  China is fueling its development chiefly with coal, oil, and hydro-power, not wind and solar.  Almost 80% of China's electricity comes from coal, and China is investing billions in Canadian tar sands oil production.  If China is both threat and model, won't America fall further behind in the "economic growth race" if we wage political warfare on coal and block the Keystone XL Pipeline?

The Department of Energy Should Not Be the Green Banker.  The Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) proposed in the Clean Energy Financing Act would act as a "green bank" to provide loan guarantees to energy and automotive projects that Washington deems worthy.  Similar to President Obama's proposed infrastructure bank, in effect, CEDA would distort the energy market by redirecting capital inefficiently and create unlimited taxpayer liability.  As demonstrated in several European countries and by the Solyndra scandal, subsidies for green energy programs ensure that the public pays for the failures while the private sector reaps the benefits of any successes.

Obama Banks on Disappointed Environmentalists Returning in 2012.  From alternative fuels to clean air, President Barack Obama's record is a disappointment to environmentalists, who helped get him elected and now are threatening to sit out his re-election bid in 2012.

Obama to Be Involved in Keystone XL Pipeline Decision.  President Obama says he will be closely involved in the decision on whether to approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline that has pitted two of his key constituencies, labor unions and environmental groups, against each other.

EPA IG Finds Serious Flaws in Centerpiece of Obama Global Warming Agenda.  Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, today [9/28/2011] announced that a new government report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reveals that the scientific assessment underpinning the Obama EPA's endangerment finding for greenhouse gasses was inadequate and in violation of the Agency's own peer review procedures.

Obama, Liberals, And Destructive Energy "Policies".  President Barack Obama seems to have determined that our problem isn't so much "foreign oil," but oil itself.  His Administration has sought to force the nation away from consuming all types of oil — both foreign and domestic — and to move us in the direction of his environmentally preferred "green" energy sources.  Unfortunately, the President has approached energy policy just as he approaches most everything else — with the naïve assumption that as long as lots of government programs and mandates are established, the agenda will be accomplished and all will go well.

Obama Administration Pushing for Solar Projects on Public Lands.  The President and his team of green, leftist, big-government zealots learned absolutely nothing from the Solyndra debacle, and they're not even a little bit ashamed of it.  They are going to unabashedly continue to distribute other people's money where they see fit and create the new green society of the future even if they have to tank the entire economy to do it.

Obama's Regulatory Excess and Abuse.  Shortly after Obama took office, his Interior Secretary Ken Salazar "canceled land leases for energy development on 77 parcels of land in Utah.  Then he canceled a pending oil-shale lease sale based on his expert judgment that it 'didn't meet the smell test.'"  Kerpen adds, "Overall there has been a steep drop-off in leasing on federal lands....  2010 saw a 79 percent drop in leasing in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming from 2005.  Total onshore royalties dropped 33 percent in just two years."  Even more virulent is the Obama Administration's attack on coal, which the President seems to have targeted for quick phaseout, even though we have the world's most expansive coal reserves, offering 200 years of inexpensive energy.

Your Cash for Their Clunkers.  Here's some investment advice:  When looking for tips on green technology plays, steer clear of the stock pickers located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  They've made a habit of investing your cash in their clunkers.  Following on Solyndra's great success comes Ener1 Inc., a lithium-ion battery maker also promoted by the White House. ... Ener1 was founded in 2002, went public in 2008 and has never turned a profit.  In August, it restated its earnings for fiscal 2010 at a $165 million loss — nearly $100 million more than previously reported.

A Disastrous Presidency.  The entire green agenda, which the president has been pushing since day one, is flawed policy.  Alternative energy sources such as wind and solar are too expensive to be price-competitive with coal, natural gas, and oil.  Yet Obama's plan is not to find a way to get the cost of alternative energy down; it is to make the price of fossil fuel energy "skyrocket" until alternative energy is cheap by comparison.

Solyndra: A bad bet Obama should regret.  Once the Obama administration's paragon of a clean-energy future, Solyndra has gone bankrupt, taking a $527 million Energy Department-guaranteed loan with it.  President Obama, however, has no regrets.

Did someone mention Solyndra?

Obama's Commerce Nominee Wants to Limit Energy Consumption and Redistribute Wealth.  The wise man smiled and proclaimed that government should use "regulatory steps" as well as market forces to intervene in the power generation sector.  The man also told his UC Berkeley audience that government should set higher targets for non-fossil-fuel-based energy production and penalize producers that don't comply.  The issuer of these decrees was John Bryson, who at the time just happened to be CEO of Edison International, a company whose fortunes would increase under alternative energy mandates.  Bryson now happens to be President Obama's nominee to head the Commerce Department.

White House Defends Green Loans to Bankrupt Companies.  What's more foolish than using taxpayers' money to build a bridge to nowhere?  That's easy, handing out a major federal government loan to a company that is bankrupt.  But that's what President Barack Obama is doing with his green initiative stimulus program.

Nevada Geothermal Power:
 The Next Solyndra?  The New York Times reports on another "politically connected clean energy start-up that has relied heavily on an Obama administration loan guarantee and is now facing financial turmoil."

Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns.  Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly?  Well, it seems that the Obama administration would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer.

Now the government is recommending against the use of concrete and steel.
 USDA Sees Wood, Even From Diseased Trees, As 'Preferred Green Building Material'.  A new study by the U.S. Forest Service says wood — including that from diseased trees — should be considered a "primary" material in green building because it is more environmentally friendly than materials such as concrete and steel.

This article is loaded with leftist bias, as you might expect from the New York Times.
 Industry, States Blast Obama Admin Stream Proposal.  "These standards could make longwall mines impossible to permit and operate," said Katherine Frederiksen, an environment and regulatory affairs executive at CONSOL Energy Inc.  She worries that tougher stream protection standards could prevent the company from mining more than 1 billion tons of coal, resulting in major losses.

Obama Administration Still Sold on Solar Power.  Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in an AP interview on September 21 that the Obama administration will continue to support solar power.  He made the statement despite the growing scandal over $528 million in loan guarantees to the now-bankrupt California solar power company Solyndra and the practical failure of myriad "alternative energy sources" such as wind and solar power."

Top 10 Green Job Fiascos.  President Obama pledged he would start a clean-energy revolution that would create 5 million green jobs over 10 years.  Of course, when the government tries to intrude in the marketplace, bad things happen.  Such as these...

President Solyndra.  The green energy lobby is probably hoping that Solyndra's failure can be portrayed as an isolated case of illegal influence, lest it cast a shadow over the entire edifice of massive subsidies that green energy requires to survive.  But Solyndra is merely the most spectacular of several recent green energy failures.

Green Twilight.  "Obamanomics," as James Pethokoukis recently put it, "is about the top-down redistribution of wealth and income.  Government spending on various 'green' subsidies and programs, along with a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions, would enrich key Democrat constituencies:  lawyers, public sector unions, academia and non-profits."  Pure communism is no longer the goal — it's the environmentalist state that lies closest to the heart of the modern social democrat.  Obama is unquestionably an authoritarian, an autocrat, whatever you wish to call him, but his hue is as much green as it is red.

Blinded By Green Light.  The administration is separated from the real world on two levels.  On one, the White House is operating as if there were no Solyndra scandal.  On the other, the White House acts as if its ideas are so brilliant that the laws of economics don't apply them.

More about Solyndra.

President Obama's green losing streak.  President Barack Obama is racking up an impressive losing streak when it comes to energy.  Under pressure from Republicans, he embraced offshore drilling — just weeks before the BP oil spill.  He offered support for nuclear power, only to watch a disaster unfold in Japan.  Gas price hikes in the spring disrupted his economic message.  Feeling the heat from Republicans again, he infuriated his green base by bailing out on a long-promised ozone standard.

President Obama and the EPA's War on Jobs.  For some time now, I and others have been documenting the relentless assault on economic growth by the EPA under President Barack Obama.  I feel like a broken record at times trying to beat this drum and get people to realize that while Obama doesn't keep all of his campaign promises, destroying the coal industry is one that he has done everything he can to stay true to.  For anyone that paid attention during the 2008 presidential cycle, Obama made it clear that it was his intention to bankrupt the coal industry through regulation and legislation.

Obama's Big Green Boondoggles.  With the scandalous bankruptcy of Solyndra (a shady California solar power company that received $535 million in stimulus funds and is now under investigation by the FBI) hanging overhead, President Obama wisely whitewashed any mention of "green jobs" out of his latest address to Congress.  But buried in the details of his latest government jobs bill released this week ... are yet more big green boondoggles that will reward cronies, waste taxpayer dollars and make no dent in the jobless rate.

Solyndra, the logical endpoint of Obamanomics.  Obama claimed his election would mark "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."  But that was just the cover story.  At its core, Obamanomics is about the top-down redistribution of wealth and income.  Government spending on various "green" subsidies and programs, along with a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions, would enrich key Democrat constituencies:  lawyers, public sector unions, academia and non-profits.

Blue Angels to fly on biofuels.  When the six F/A-18 Hornets in the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels flight demonstration team thrill the crowds at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River Air Expo in Maryland this weekend, they'll be soaring on biofuel.  Each of the six Hornets will be powered by a 50/50-blend of jet fuel and camelina-based biofuel, according to a Navy press release.

A reptile messes with Texas.  A five-inch reptile has enough power in its tiny claws to hurl thousands of Americans into unemployment lines.  It shows how the greenie Obama administration places a higher value on sand-dune lizards than it does on domestic energy production and jobs.  Federal bureaucrats with the Fish and Wildlife Service want to put this critter, also known as the dunes sagebrush lizard, on the Endangered Species List.

America is Under Attack.  The EPA, wielding these laws like battle axes aimed at our heads, has been unleashed by the Obama-Soetoro administration with orders to attack our last source of affordable power.  That the Marxist fraud who would be King is doing this should surprise no one.  On November 2, 2008, he told the nation that he intended to bankrupt the coal industry and the coal-fired producers of electricity.

Behind the green curtain.  Can this country survive the next 14 months of bureaucratic tyranny led by this Administration?  We now have new fuel economy standards in place that will eventually add over $11,000 to the retail price of an average motor vehicle.  When we look behind the green curtain that hides this governmental mugging of America, we can see that the $11,000 is another large-scale redistribution of income from the producers in the society, to the government and the ever-expanding dependent/victim class.

Sun Sets On The President's Policies.  It's bad enough we lavish and often waste huge subsidies on green companies like the now-bankrupt Evergreen Solar, based in Marlborough, Mass., trying to promote an energy source that would not be able to compete in the marketplace without them.  We're even promoting such failures abroad.  The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an independent agency of the federal government, has announced $500 million in loans for new solar energy projects in India.  This is on top of about $75 million already approved for similar projects in fiscal 2011.

Obama's New Fuel Economy Standards Will Increase Cost of a Car More Than $11,000.  The Obama Administration's new fuel economy standards will cause the retail price of average motor vehicles to increase over $11,000, according to a study conducted by the Center for Automotive Research.  "A fuel economy standard of 37.6 mpg is associated with a price increase of $5,244, 18.1 percent higher than the 2009 National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) average price of $28,966.

Federal Subsidies to Solar Up 626%, Subsidies to Wind Up 946%.  While President Barack Obama wants to end subsidies that go to oil and natural gas companies, a new Department of Energy report shows that federal subsidies to clean energy are way up, with solar seeing a subsidy increase of 626 percent between FY 2007 and 2010 and wind getting a 946 percent increase.

Obama the biofool.  Leftists see the military more as a playground for kooky ideas than as the primary responsibility of the federal government.  Consider the scheme President Obama announced Tuesday that will have the armed forces devote a great deal of time, money and energy to switch to so-called advanced biofuels.  Underneath the trendy "green" label, however, is a classic example of pork-barrel politics.

Into the ozone with the O Force.  Whether it's ozone or carbon dioxide, the cost of overregulating the air around us is more than the nation can afford.  Even the Obama administration may be taking a breather, as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday [8/12/2011] held off on issuing proposed new ozone standards.  The agency claims more regulations are necessary because the conveniences of modern industrial society are making the planet toasty, but the pause has raised alarm in radical environmental circles.

NOAA's Climate Office: Precursor to Cap and Trade?  Cap and trade remains a key element in President Obama's vow of a "fundamental transformation of America," despite legislative branch setbacks.  Now he may have found a way around the Constitution's checks and balances.  Obama knows the consequences of cap and trade; he promised skyrocketing electricity costs when he was elected in 2008.  To date, however, we have lucked out:  Obama tried and tried and tried again to get his cap-and-trade bill through Congress, but so far, he has failed.

Federal Judge Throws Out Obama Drilling Rules.  A judge on Friday [8/12/2011] threw out Obama administration rules that sought to slow down expedited environmental review of oil and gas drilling on federal land.

GOP rips plan for climate office.  House Republicans charged Wednesday [6/22/2011] that the Obama administration is aiming to establish a "propaganda office" for Democratic initiatives on global warming through a proposal to consolidate operations in a new "climate service" office within the Commerce Department.  Tensions boiled over at a congressional hearing as officials of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defended the consolidation plan contained in President Obama's fiscal 2012 budget and denied having any ulterior motive.

Promises, Promises: White House solar panels are no-shows.  Spring has come and gone, and the promised panels have yet to see the light of day.

'Sensitivities' Bar DOE From Discussing Progress on WH Solar-Power Plan.  The Obama administration told CNSNews.com Thursday [6/16/2011] that it is currently in the process of procuring solar panels to place on the White House roof but it cannot discuss the progress on the project because of "sensitivities."

Cost of Obama's Green-Car Mandate: 260,000 jobs.  The purpose of federal fuel-economy mandates is to keep the agenda of green pols hidden lest the public awaken to their enormous costs.  Want to make cars fuel efficient?  Tax gas.  And commit political suicide.  So instead we get the stealthy Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) laws, which forces automakers to compromise cars to government standards, not those of customers.  But sometimes those costs still leak out.

More about CAFE standards.

Obama Backs EPA War on Coal, While Networks Ignore Harm to Industry.  It is no longer a secret that President Obama's administration is willing to allow electricity prices to "necessarily skyrocket," in order to accomplish his green energy agenda.

Huge increase in electric bills seen in the next few years.  [A recent] Chicago Tribune article pretty much confirms what President Obama promised; that our electric bills would "necessarily skyrocket" as a result of new environmental regulations that will make coal-fired electric plants virtually a thing of the past. ... Has there ever been a great nation that committed economic suicide for no real reason?

Lucrative subsidies for renewables amount to crony capitalism.  The moral stature and effectiveness of free-market capitalism depends on its structure of rules that apply to large firms as well as small, to the politically connected as well as those lacking political pull.  In contrast, the treatment of "green" and "renewable" energy constitutes the essence of crony capitalism, with its unelected czars and its unequal treatment of those industries or firms that are politically favored and those that are not.  A case in point is the issue of "subsidies" for energy producers.

Crony Capitalism and Obama's Anti-Coal Crusade.  Barack Obama has long sought to bankrupt the coal industry.  But, Cook County politician that he is and always will be, the relevant question is:  who benefits from his plans wreck a major portion of our economy while also boosting electricity prices across America?  A clue:  he and his pals from Chicago have incestuous ties to the one company whose prospects will be boosted by Obama's policies.

Environmental Protection (Or Propaganda?) Agency.  EPA's immediate target is older electrical generating units (EGUs), most of which have substantially reduced emissions to safe levels but still release more pollutants than modern plants.  However, its broader agenda is to use air pollution and carbon dioxide restrictions to impose President Obama's goals of requiring "zero" emissions, "bankrupting" coal companies, causing electricity rates to "skyrocket" and effecting a "fundamental transformation" of the U.S. energy system and economy — regardless of what Congress may do or the American economy may require.  This raises vital questions that thus far have received scant attention.

More about the EPA.

Targeted by the EPA.  A three-inch lizard scuttled into the spotlight in December after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed moving it onto the Endangered Species List.  The dunes sagebrush lizard's habitat covers just eight counties on the Texas-New Mexico border, right in the heart of the Permian Basin, a major oil-producing region.  Particularly in Texas, industry leaders and local businesses see the action as hostile — another Obama administration environmental policy targeting their successful, energy-sparked economy.

Obama issues new directive for federal vehicles.  President Barack Obama on Tuesday [5/24/2011] directed federal agencies to buy more hybrid and electric cars under a plan that will require the government to purchase only alternative fuel vehicles by 2015.  In tandem with the president's memorandum, the General Services Administration announced a pilot program to buy more than 100 alternative fuel vehicles to be distributed to federal agencies across the country.

President Obama announces new efficiency standards for federal fleet.  In a memorandum [5/24/2011], Obama ordered federal agencies to streamline their fleets.  By 2015, he said agencies should only be purchasing or leasing light-duty vehicles that are hybrids or run on electricity, compressed natural gas or biofuels.

Obama the Desperate.  Energy prices affect all economic activity and threaten to put a crimp in our stilted recovery.  The administration's policies of rationing scarcity are largely to blame.  We are not drilling offshore for new oil.  We are only now taking advantage of new oil and gas deposits in the U.S., and the Environmental Protection Agency is hardly leading the way.  We are not exploiting our vast reserves of coal and natural gas.  The administration's resistance to increasing supply is born of a soggy leftist intellectual resistance to hydrocarbon fuels in favor of a wishful reliance on "green" energy sources — that won't be economically viable for decades.

Obamanomics and High Gas Prices.  [Scroll down]  At present, manufacturers cannot sell "green energy" on the market, at least not on any wide scale, because there's little or no profit to be made from it.  But if gas prices go through the roof, that will change.  By curbing and (best case, to Obama) destroying the market for gasoline and oil by making it too expensive for most people to afford, Obama thinks he can make people opt for things like wind, solar and other alternative forms of energy.

Green Energy Fantasy.  The hope is that these government sticks and carrots will turn today's pitiful "green energy" industry, which produces an insignificant fraction of American energy, into a source of abundant, affordable energy that can replace today's fossil-fuel-dominated industry.  This view is a fantasy — one that could devastate America's economy.  The reality is that "green energy" is at best a sophisticated make-work program.

The EPA's War on Energy Producer Range Resources.  Even before America slit its wrists by electing him, Barack Hussein Obama gave us a preview of his energy policy by promising to use deliberately excessive regulation to bankrupt coal plants.  The objective in destroying the energy sector is twofold:  1) devastate our still quasi-capitalist economy, creating enough hardship to pave the way for true socialism; and 2) pander to gullible morons in the Democrat base who actually believe that using energy makes it be too hot out for the polar bears.  For the most part, this malignant agenda is carried out by what is emerging as the most pernicious and the most powerful agency in the entire federal behemoth:  the EPA.

'Change' via executive power grab.  The Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that Shell Oil Co. may not drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Circle off Alaska, where an estimated 27 billion barrels of domestic oil are waiting to be extracted.  Never mind that Shell's already spent nearly $4 billion on the project, including $2.2 billion to Uncle Sam for the leases.  No, the EPA's appeals board said the oil giant had failed to include possible greenhouse-gas emissions from an icebreaking vessel in its calculations and that the project might somehow threaten the health of the 245 people in an Eskimo village 70 miles away.

Adventures in the Climate Trade.  Global warming, now called climate change, is a big industry with academic and commercial branches.  One way or another the government provides the money to keep it in business.  The academic side supports thousands of scientific workers churning out some good science larded with lots of junk science.  The commercial side is busy turning out tank cars filled with corn ethanol and covering the landscape with windmills.  Nobody would be doing any of this without government subsidies and mandates.

Listing of lizard may shut down Texas oil.  You can't make this up.  First, a Spotted Owl destroyed the timber industry of the Pacific Northwest, then a minnow turned the most productive agricultural land in the world into a dustbowl, and now, as energy prices spike and the economy sputters, they're going after Texas with a scurrilous reptile.  Specifically, the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard.

Will A Lizard Stop West Texas Oil?  After the harm done by the spotted owl and delta smelt, the listing of a tiny reptile as endangered may be the latest salvo in the war on domestic energy.

Meet the sand dune lizard.  He's also known as the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard; this endearing little critter is native to the American Southwest.  Specifically, eastern New Mexico and West Texas. ... You see, the favored habitat of the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard also happens to be a favored habitat of the Domestic Production Crude Oil Rig:  the US Fish and Wildlife Service plans to declare the former to be an endangered species, and you know just how this story ends, right?

Despite $4 gas, Obama boots Shell from Arctic drill site.
 EPA Rules Force Shell to Abandon Oil Drilling Plans.  Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska.  The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits. ... The closest village to where Shell proposed to drill is Kaktovik, Alaska.  It is one of the most remote places in the United States.  According to the latest census, the population is 245 and nearly all of the residents are Alaska natives.  The village, which is one square mile, sits right along the shores of the Beaufort Sea, 70 miles away from the proposed off-shore drill site.

High Gas Prices Catching Up to Obama?  Boy Obama's deep thinking on energy can get confusing, with yet another 'green electricity' plant, in Reno, for some reason serving as today's backdrop for him to defend high gas prices.  And, presumably, his continued wasting of your money on unsustainable, phony, if politically selected enterprises existing not for any reasons of their own merits but to satisfy politicians' edicts.  This from a guy who previously talked about how now's not the time to go to Vegas.  The better analogy for what he's doing with your money is going to a ring toss game.  Run by Carnies.

Trying to Avoid Regulations? The Department of Energy is Not Amused.  Last month, the Department of Energy issued a "Showerhead Enforcement Guidance" related to flow standards through consumer showerheads.  You see, it turns out that "efficiency standards" tend to upset people, as it usually leads to products being outlawed that people really like.  What happened was that certain showerhead manufacturers were taking a bit of creative license in interpreting the definition of a "showerhead," and selling showerheads that (by the DOE's standards) exceeded the maximum allowable 2.5 gallons per minute.

Obama meets with greens at White House.  President Barack Obama met with a dozen environmental activists at the White House Friday [4/15/2011] as his energy agenda continues to come under fire from all sides.  Obama dropped in on a meeting between White House staffers and Energy Action Coalition activists in town for the Power Shift 2011 conference — a gathering of some 10,000 people, almost entirely college students, organizing to promote clean energy and the environment.

Boondoggle in tax code: Subsidies for green energy.  President Obama said last week he wants to trim "spending in the tax code," but he has firmly defended the provision that best fits that odd phrase:  a renewable energy "tax credit" doled out in the form of grants from the U.S. Treasury.  The grant program — created by the stimulus bill and extended through 2011 by last year's tax-extender bill — is a corporate welfare boondoggle whose biggest beneficiaries include huge foreign companies.

Renewable-energy standards are unconstitutional.  For a long time, free-market organizations have argued that "renewable-energy standards" (RES) — those mandates that force electricity customers (almost everyone) to pay higher prices for the privilege of having wind- or solar-generated power — are uneconomical and accomplish no worthwhile public-policy goals.  Now we will prove they are illegal, too.

Now Obama's EPA is going after your soap.  Under the Obama administration, the EPA has been transformed into a job-killing machine. ... While many are aware of the fight against cap and trade and the EPA's regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, the totality of their smaller actions, which often go unnoticed, is starting to add up.  They already tell us what kinds of light bulbs we can use and how much water we are allowed to have in our toilets.  Now, they have their sights set on our soap.

Pump And Circumstance.  In a Georgetown University address that echoed President Jimmy Carter's "moral equivalent of war" speech in 1977, the president on Wednesday outlined his plan to reduce oil imports by one-third over the next decade.  Carter, too, set the goal of reducing oil imports by a third through conservation, increased fuel efficiency, more use of ethanol and other alternative energy sources, and the wearing of more sweaters.  There was nothing new in Obama's version.  It didn't work then.  It won't work now.

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."

— Steven Chu, United States Secretary of Energy.    
Sources:  [1] [2] [3] [4]    

The One Campaign Promise Obama Has Kept:  That is, his promise to increase the price of gasoline. ... Barack Obama took office as a naive leftist with essentially no knowledge of how our economy works or how wealth is created.  He subscribed to the leftist view that America is too rich and too powerful.  He therefore took office intending to make America poorer and weaker.  The single easiest way to accomplish this goal is by making energy more expensive.  Obama said that he would increase gasoline prices gradually and cause the cost of electricity to "skyrocket."  I'm not sure he has fulfilled any other campaign promise, but he has certainly made good on that one.

None of the Above on Energy.  In terms of energy policy, as in so much else, the Obama administration is in leaderless disarray.  The only thing it seems capable of doing is delaying and shutting down energy production.  As soon as some promising new supply pops up, like the shale gas capable of fueling America for the next century, the Obama EPA is there launching an environmental study designed to regulate and restrict it.  At the moment when new energy supplies are most needed, there are no plans to increase supplies — only plans to reduce them.  One would almost think that this President wants to bring America to its knees.

Energy in the Executive.  Anyone who's been to a gas station recently knows the feeling.  There you are, about to refuel, when you see the price of regular gasoline:  about $3.52 per gallon, up 77 cents since 2010.  Your pulse quickens.  Your stomach sinks.  Because this is not a dream.  The days of $4.00-a-gallon gas are about to return.  How we got here is no mystery. ... [President Obama] doesn't grasp that supply must increase by a lot more, and a lot more quickly, if Americans are to enjoy affordable fuel.

The Green Dream Is an Economic Nightmare.  A rush of recent reports on energy has much to say about the fundamental foolishness of the green vision of energy production — the vision long regnant in academia and the one that informs the Obama regime. ... The first report is the happy news that the number of new American oil wells is increasing at a pace not seen in over three decades.  According to the major oil drilling company Baker Hughes, the number of new oil rigs it has installed is over 800 last year — over twice last year's total, and a tenfold increase over the yearly average during the late 1990s.

High Energy Prices Are Obama's 'Explicit Policy Goal,' Inhofe Says.  A prominent GOP senator on energy issues accused President Barack Obama Thursday morning [3/10/2011] of having set an "explicit policy goal" of making energy prices more costly for Americans.  "My message today is simply this:  higher gas prices — indeed, higher prices for the energy we use — are an explicit policy goal of the Obama administration," said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla), ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  "Let me put it another way:  the Obama administration is attacking affordable energy."

War On The Poor.  Those on the left who say they care most for the least fortunate see the soaring price of gasoline as positive — despite the fact that those with the lowest incomes are hurt the worst.  Since January 2009, when President Obama was sworn in, the average price of a gallon of regular-grade gas has rocketed from less than $2 to $3.53.  During this period, Obama's administration has placed an illegal ban on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, refused to permit deeper exploration into our rich fossil fuel reserves and pushed $2.3 billion in a useless green energy initiative.

Our Man-Made Energy Crisis.  [Scroll down]  What's missing is a coherent U.S. energy policy.  At best, the Obama administration's approach to U.S. domestic oil and gas production can be characterized as a strategy of ambivalence, an uneasy equilibrium between desire to lessen the role of fossil fuels and the reality of their necessity in a functioning U.S. economy.  Last year's Deepwater Horizon tragedy in the Gulf tilted the current administration's policies to an even more punitive posture vis-a-vis domestic energy production. ... The time to rethink and redesign our entire energy strategy is now.

Obama's Green-Jobs Fantasies.  In judging any government initiative, such as Obama's green-jobs plan, you can't look just at the credit side of ledger because the government is unable to give without first taking away.  Worse than that:  Inevitably, more is taken away — destroyed — than is given because the government substitutes force and taxation for consent and free exchange.  Instead of a process driven by consumer preferences, we get one imposed by politicians' grand social designs.  It's what F.A. Hayek called "the fatal conceit."

Global Warming By Another Name.  Even in this age of deficits and debt, the president's budget is chock full of global warming items — except he wraps them around a new cause:  clean energy.  And that may be enough to get Republicans to sign on.  That "clean energy" is code for "anti-warming" is obvious, given that even Environmental Protection Agency numbers show that virtually all emissions have dropped dramatically in recent decades — except for greenhouse gases.  To cut those, Obama's budget aims to hike Department of Energy spending by 12 percent from 2010 levels.  He proposes $8 billion more for various clean-energy programs — on top of the $30 billion "invested" via the 2009 stimulus. Even that's only the tip of the iceberg.  To pay for it all, Obama would stick it to Big Oil.

Tea Party senator says White House is 'hell-bent' on 'suicidal' energy policy.  Sen. Mike Lee and other Republicans say Obama has placed too many restrictions on oil production as gas prices rise.  Freshman Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who won office with Tea Party backing, is adding his voice to the chorus of Republicans alleging the Obama administration is placing too many restrictions on domestic oil production.

The counteroffensive to President Obama's war on fossil fuels begins.  At long last, Congress is launching a counteroffensive to President Obama's war on fossil fuels. ... Obama has been undeniably consistent in his unrelenting and unapologetic attack on our nation's traditional forms of energy — coal, oil and natural gas.  While running for president, Obama famously said he sought to make electricity prices "necessarily skyrocket" through cap-and-trade legislation and "bankrupt" power plants committing the progressive crime of using coal as an energy source.

Obama's energy transformation.  President Obama has intentionally hamstrung domestic energy production under the delusional theory that the U.S. economy can thrive on so-called green power.

Fearing EPA's Carbon Tax.  The EPA is moving to impose tough limits on carbon emissions from the big power plants across the country — and then plans to screw the new carbon limits down tighter and tighter.  Farmers' fuel and electricity costs would go through the roof, along with everybody else's.  The goal, after all, is to make the coal, oil, and natural gas that power most of our power plants too expensive to use.  They need to make all our electricity at least slightly more expensive than the ultra-costly solar panels and wind turbines that have failed to produce "Green power" in Europe and, thus far, fail to provide much energy here at home.

Green boondoggles.  President Obama hasn't abandoned his jobs-killing global-warming agenda, just wrapped it in the rhetoric of "clean energy."  And that may be enough to get Republicans to sign on.  That "clean energy" is code for "anti-warming" is obvious, given that even Environmental Protection Agency numbers show that virtually all emissions have dropped dramatically in recent decades — except for greenhouse gases.

Interior Secretary Says Drilling in Arctic Will Not Lead to Energy Independence.  When asked why the Obama administration opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) given the rising cost of gasoline, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told CNSNews.com that the "drill, baby, drill program" is not going to lead the United States to energy independence.

Barbour says Obama cheers for higher gas prices.  Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential presidential contender, accused the Obama administration Wednesday [3/2/2011] of favoring a run-up in gas prices to prod consumers to buy more fuel-efficient cars.

Obama is AWOL in Oil Crisis.  We have a major oil crisis unfolding now and where's Obama? ... We now, this week, have oil prices busting through $100 a barrel.  This will create major havoc to our already anemic economy.  How did we get here?  Our president has a moratorium on nearly all domestic oil production:  we can't drill off our coasts, nor Alaska and certainly not the gulf.  We can't build nuclear power plants, dam rivers, explore for natural gas or mine coal.  We're stuck with windmills and failing solar power companies — companies that can't even stay in business after billions in taxpayer subsidies.  This is an energy policy written by hippies.

Deliberately making Americans poorer.  The Obama administration has a hatred of fossil fuels and is determined to reduce their use despite the economic damage.  So-called green energy often is not very green and cannot possibly serve as a substitute for most fossil fuels.  Windmills and solar panels are far more expensive than coal and gas; their production is intermittent, unreliable and largely unstorable.

Now Can We Drill In Alaska?  The Energy Department produces no energy and seems tirelessly dedicated through the efforts of its secretary, Steven Chu, to lock up our energy resources.  With more than 100,000 federal and contract employees and a budget of $23 billion, it would be a good place to look for spending cuts.

Obama's deprivation nation.  As President Obama hurries to catch up to Europe in the conversion to so-called green energy, our trans-Atlantic neighbors are finding that they can no longer afford to support their "sustainable" power schemes.  Mr. Obama's fiscal 2012 budget, released Feb. 14, takes a page from the global-warming believer's hymn book.  It calls for a 4.2 percent boost in the Department of Energy's budget to $29.5 billion.  It also pours $8 billion into solar panels, windmills and batteries, blowing the country in the wrong direction.

Now is the perfect time to scrap Obama's green dream.  Every time there is a political hiccup in the Middle East, a national conversation about the possibility of higher oil prices ensues.  But a cursory look at recent footage from that volatile region suggests that the revolutions happening in Tunisia, Iran, Egypt and Libya are serious geopolitical events that will have equally serious ramifications for America's energy policy.  There were reports Wednesday [2/23/2011] that Libya's dictator, Moammar Khadafy, has ordered security services to start sabotaging oil facilities.  Allegedly, they will blow up several oil pipelines, cutting off flow to Mediterranean ports.

The left's drive toward $8 gas.  Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats have blocked drilling in places like Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in millions of acres of federal lands and in offshore locations.  Mr. Obama even took advantage of the BP oil disaster to shut down operations in the Gulf of Mexico.  Mr. Obama points to the small amount of oil currently produced at home to conclude, "We can't drill our way out of the problem."  That's only a true statement as long as the current policies place 67 percent of America's reserves off-limits.

Obama's amazing futureworld.  [Obama's] plan is devoted to propping up an allegedly emerging industry.  Mr. Obama has pushed programs for green energy, green technology and green jobs, all of which end up in the red.  Mr. Obama's vision of the future is filled with super magnets, everlasting batteries, carbon-fiber windmills and shiny solar panels.  These items share several common features.  They tend not to be profitable, they don't live up to the promises of the corporate-insider proponents and in many cases are not really green at all.  They simply trade one set of environmental challenges for another.

Obama's green power builds China's red power.  Increasing the United States' reliance on "clean" energy, as touted by President Obama yet again in this week's budget proposal, would leave Americans just as dependent on unreliable foreign suppliers as we are now on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' stranglehold on oil.  Instead of a handful of mostly Middle Eastern states, we would be dependent on a single nation for critical energy supplies — China.  The threat to both national security and the U.S. economy is obvious to anyone who isn't blinded by environmentalist dogma.

Defining "Clean" is the Energy Challenge.  Clearly no sane person would be in favor of "dirty" energy standards, but there are many problems with the impossible goal the administration has set out to reach.  First among them:  the administration itself cannot agree on what it means by "clean energy."  The remarks the president made in his State of the Union address to the nation last week are a case in point.  President Obama posed the challenge that "by 2035, 80 percent of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources."  There is an easy part of this pledge.  Oil, the "dirtiest" of all among his environmentalist friends, already accounts for virtually nothing in electric power generation.  The market saw to that over the past 20 years.

Another Liberal Ponzi Scheme.  Sure, U.S. emissions might well be falling significantly after this new next government intrusion into the marketplace comes crashing down, taking the economy even further down with it.  Just as certainly as low income mortgages were bound to fail en masse, so too will the many unviable "green" technologies eventually fall.

President Stupid.  You have to be stupid to openly declare that you want to drive the coal industry out of business when it provides half of all the electricity the nation uses every day, but that is precisely what President Stupid's administration is doing.  You have to be stupid to declare a moratorium on drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico after courts have twice told you to remove it.

Misrule by the Unelected.  Save us from reformers so fervent to do good that they seek to right us from wrongs that do not exist.  Moreover, even if there are problems, it is not appropriate for these busybodies to impose themselves on us.  Worse yet are those reformers who would rule by federal regulation.  That, however, seems to be where we are headed, this year in particular, with an arrogant bureaucracy and overweening executive branch trying to impose its agenda through edicts.

More 'green' subsidies — er, investments — from Obama.  Hidden among the news hype of the Super Bowl last week was an announcement [Thursday, 2/3/2011] by the Obama administration of a new spending program titled the Better Building Initiative (BBI).  The purpose of the program is "improving energy efficiency in our buildings [to] create jobs, save money, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and make our air cleaner."  It really amounts to one more subsidy in the service of President Obama's energy preferences.

On Energy, Obama's Full of Hot Air.  President Obama's State of the Union address last week left a lot to be desired.  Lisa Fritsch summed it up well on [PajamasMedia®], writing, "Obama's speech [...] was focused far too much on lofty goals than the nitty-gritty we need to refloat our ailing ship of state."  In fact, in two specific areas his soaring rhetoric belied reality and misrepresented our nation's future security.  First, in calling for the "reinvention" of our domestic energy policy, the president issued a challenge rooted in ideology rather than grounded in a clear understanding of America's current and future energy needs.  This is especially troubling because his goal flies in the face of science and the free market.

Judge holds Interior in contempt over drilling ban.  A Louisiana federal judge on Wednesday held the Interior Department in contempt for re-imposing a deepwater oil-drilling ban last year after the judge had struck down an earlier version of the moratorium.  The contempt finding provides political ammunition for Republicans and pro-drilling Democrats who say Interior is blocking offshore development.

Obama Administration Plans Second Front in War on Appalachian Coal.  [Scroll down]  The AP story pertained to a controversial rule derivative of the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), known as the "100 feet buffer rule.["]  As its name would suggest, it basically prohibits mining waste from being deposited within 100 feet of intermittent or perennial streams.  According to the AP article, the Obama Administration's preferred interpretation of this rule would cost 7,000 mining jobs, almost exclusively in Appalachia.  And that's the Department of the Interior's own estimate, which is likely a lowball.

Obama Refuses To Learn Government's Clean Energy Failures.  It would have been nice if, prior to giving his SOTU, the president had checked out a paper by Professor Peter Grossman entitled, "The History of U.S. Alternative Energy Development Programs:  A Study of Government Failure."  He traces the numerous efforts our government has made at investing in alternative energy, from nuclear power in the 1950s to the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles in the 1990s, and found that none of them have worked.

More warmist alarmism debunked.  President Obama and the Democrats still believe that addressing "climate change" is an imperative in setting national energy policy.  There seems to be a significant lag in the ability of Democrats to process new information that proves the theory of AGW is a fraud.

Obama's War On Coal.  Keeping a campaign vow to bankrupt the industry, the administration revokes the permit for an approved, working coal mine in West Virginia.  Guess those electric cars will have to get their energy elsewhere.

Obama's war on the private sector continues.  On Dec. 14, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that the dunes sagebrush lizard "faces immediate and significant threats due to oil and gas activities and herbicide treatments."  As a result, it proposes that the lizard be listed as "endangered" — under the Endangered Species Act — which starts the clock for a 60-day public comment period.  Hoping no one would notice, the FWS announced the proposal during the throes of the holiday season.  We the public need to take notice.

Obama's Solar Nightmare:  The Obama administration has tried to kill off the oil industry. Offshore moratoriums have been unilaterally imposed by executive orders and justified using scientific panel studies that were misrepresented — if not distorted — by the administration.  The drilling permitting process has been afflicted with sclerosis.  Federal lands are becoming less and less available for development.  Obama does not like carbon; he boasted during the campaign that he would bankrupt coal power plants and that his policies would necessarily boost the price of power.  Those words were ignored by much of the media, in thrall to the man they so wanted to win.

Going Broke by Going Green.  The administration's green policies are being thrust into a precarious American economy.  Every "green scenario" shows raised energy costs across the board.  Not only will the average person pay more for energy; many will lose their jobs as the forced transition to alternative power sources rocks the stability of current energy-producing and energy-using companies.

EPA Blasted as It Revokes Mine's Permit.  The Environmental Protection Agency, in an unusual move, revoked a key permit for one of the largest proposed mountaintop-removal coal-mining projects in Appalachia, drawing cheers from environmentalists and protests from business groups worried their projects could be next.  The decision to revoke the permit for Arch Coal Inc.'s Spruce Mine No. 1 in West Virginia's rural Logan County marks the first time the EPA has withdrawn a water permit for a mining project that had previously been issued.

Media Excuse Obama's Power Grab.  Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post reported on Friday [12/31/2010] that "the Obama administration is prepared to push its environmental agenda through regulation where it has failed on Capitol Hill..."  There was no hint that this approach is illegal or unconstitutional.  The account simply assumes that the Obama Administration can do what it wants, no matter what Congress or the law says.  This kind of matter-of-fact reporting about lawlessness by the federal government is typical of the decline, if not death, of adversary journalism in the nation's capital.

Newest member of Obama's National Economic Council is an ardent supporter of cap and trade.  On Monday [1/3/2011], the Obama administration announced it had hired an environmental economist from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to join the National Economic Council.  Replacing member Joe Aldy, Nat Keohane, a long-time advocate of cap and trade, will now be advising President Obama on the economics of energy and environmental issues.  With Keohane's addition, it now looks like the Obama administration is preparing to go to battle against congressional Republicans who balk at the prospect of any environmental legislation.  But Keohane's hire also represents something else — the continuation of Obama placing global warming alarmists in positions to have major influence on environmental policy.

The Administration's Administrative Tyranny Marches On.  [Scroll down]  The Heritage Foundation notes that gas prices decreased 9 percent during Dubya's eight-year tenure, but they've been on a steady rise under Obama.  The EPA emission rules will clearly make it more expensive to convert fossil fuels into energy, putting even more upward pressure on gas prices.  That's not all.  Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has decreed that the Bureau of Land Management will establish new rules to make it more difficult to develop natural resources on government-owned land, which will also drive up the cost of gas and electricity and increase our dependency on foreign energy sources.

Driving US Families Into Poverty.  The Obama Administration still hasn't gotten the message voters sent Washington on November 2.  The lame duck session and 111th Congress finally ended, without the White House getting key items on its wish list.  So now, the Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department intend to impose costly, job-killing, economy-strangling new rules for power plants and refineries, and implement more land-grabs that will lock up additional millions of acres and more billions of dollars of American energy.  Their goal is to end the hydrocarbon and nuclear era in America — and force us to convert to "renewable" energy.

Bush Policy on Lands Is Reversed.  The Interior Department reversed a Bush-era policy on wilderness on Thursday [12/23/2010], restoring the authority of its Bureau of Land Management to identify and recommend new areas for protection.

The Editor says...
 The article above is loaded with leftist bias, but what else would you expect from the New York Times?  Here's the rest of the story:  There is only one reason the government wants to "protect" additional areas of land:  It is an effort to prevent oil and gas exploration and production.

EPA announces it won't wait for Congress on carbon regulation.  Stymied in Congress, the Obama administration is moving unilaterally to clamp down on power plant and oil refinery greenhouse emissions, announcing plans for developing new standards over the next year.  In a statement posted on the agency's website late Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson said the aim was to better cope with pollution contributing to climate change.

Obama to regulate carbon from power plants.  US President Barack Obama's administration said Thursday [12/23/2010] it will regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, after legislation on climate change died in Congress.

Is America's Energy Policy Perverse?  The U.S. is the only country in the world that, as a matter of policy, does not develop its own energy reserves.  It is hard to see a rational basis for that policy.

Oil Drilling Moratorium is an Act of Treason.  If you had any doubt that Barack Obama's agenda is to destroy the United States of America, but still want more proof, I offer you the announcement that his administration will not provide any offshore oil leases in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, Pacific, or Atlantic coasts — for at least seven years!

Memo to House GOP: Get a grip on the EPA.  Getting a grip on the Environmental Protection Agency must be at the top of the upcoming Republican-controlled House's "To Do" list.  Of immediate concern are the EPA rules for regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  Unless stopped by a federal court, the Obama EPA will implement on Jan. 2 a flagrantly illegal scheme to regulate emissions from power plants and other large emitters.  This enactment will kill jobs and raise the prices of energy, and thus of all good and services.

More evidence that economy is stalled because of Washington, Big Green policies.  A new analysis of government data by the Western Energy Alliance shows a 79 percent drop in the number of energy development leases offered by the federal government on public lands in the Rocky Mountain region states of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, New Mexico and Utah.  The U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the activities of energy firms seeking to find and develop oil and natural gas under public lands, has issued only 531 new leases in 2010, compared to 2,499 in 2005, according to WEA.

Eco-Insanity and ANWR.  The abject desperation and evil intentions of so-called environmentalists can be seen in the call to turn the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) into a national monument on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its designation.  This would provide ANWR with the same status as the Statue of Liberty — only there aren't billion of barrels of oil under the Statue, nor at George Washington's birthplace in Virginia.  The idea of conferring national monument status on ANWR is so stupid that it should be laughed out of existence, but unfortunately we have a President who is so intent on denying Americans access to the vast treasure trove of energy resources — oil, coal, and natural gas — that common sense has nothing to do with his decisions.

Supreme Court to Hear Global Warming Case Against Power Companies.  The Supreme Court announced Monday [12/6/2010] it will give further consideration to a closely-watched lawsuit filed by environmentalists, eight states and New York City blaming the problems associated with global warming on the carbon dioxide output of five major power companies.  An ultimate judgment against the energy providers could lead to dramatic changes in the energy marketplace and ripple into other industries.

Auditing the President's Oil Spill Commission.  The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (the Oil Spill Commission OSC) just finished its last set of public meetings as it prepares to submit its report to the president, due January 12, 2011.  There is good news and bad news.  The good news is that its report will be released after the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in January.  The bad news is that left to its own devices and predispositions, the administration will likely do to the offshore oil industry what the Carter administration did to the nuclear power industry in the wake of the Three-Mile Island accident:  effectively destroy a critical energy industry in which America is the world technology leader.

Eco-Diplomacy, The Chicago Way.  Confronted with a demonstrably cooling planet and a corrupt and fraudulent global climate-change bureaucracy, our government is reduced to bribes and coercion to cobble together a new agreement.  In the absence of sound science and a rationale for committing global economic suicide, we are quite simply trying to make the world an offer it can't refuse.

Offshore Drilling Curbed Again.  The Obama administration reversed course Wednesday [12/1/2010] and said it wouldn't allow drilling off the Atlantic coast and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico near Florida, citing safety concerns after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The Nuclear Power Solution.  Barack Obama has tirelessly read from the teleprompter about America's urgent need to reduce its reliance on foreign oil and the growing demand for alternative renewable energy sources, green jobs, and such.  Surprisingly, nuclear energy — the one technology that could help the country meet all of his energy objectives — had until recently received only political footnotes in the president's agenda.  Sadly, when he mentions the word "nuclear" it is usually followed by the words "non-proliferation" rather than "clean energy."

Chu's Guessing Game.  The secretary of energy says the U.S. doesn't need to be 100% certain humans are heating the planet to enact policies to mitigate climate change.  Apparently just a hunch will do.

Job-Killing Environmentalists.  What's happened is that Obama has given the environmental extremists the power to make some of their wish list come true.  Modern measurement techniques allow scientists to measure tiny parts per million; much of the technology did not exist when the Clean Air Act was first legislated in 1990.  Using these new techniques environmentalists are able to impose their fantasies upon American business and labor.  For industry, removing the last parts per million is prohibitively costly.  For instance, technology which could have removed the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was prohibited by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because the discharged ocean water would still contain more than 15 parts per million of oil.

Is Green Socialism EPA's Real Goal?  The EPA is looking for someone with "knowledge of the theories and principles of environmental protection, especially as they relate to issues of environmental justice and the impacts of environmental laws, policies, legislation and regulation on minority and/or low-income groups and communities."  The job, located in New York City, pays up to $84,000.  No college degree is required — just a hatred of industry, development and fossil fuels, and a belief that minorities are the deliberate victims of capitalist exploitation.

Obama's 'Green' Energy Plan Infringes on Liberty.  Since the 2008 campaign trail, Obama has been claiming that his overall "green" plan would create 5 million green jobs over the next 10 years.  However, Obama's "green" agenda will kill more jobs than it aims to create.  According to the U.S Chamber of Commerce, the House passed "green" cap and trade bill will cost a net loss of 3.2 million jobs by 2030.  The intention behind the misguided bill is to reduce carbon emissions by taxing some energy sources.  While the Cap and Trade bill will create some new jobs, the "green" bill will take away $22 billion annually from the private sector.  Consequently, cap and trade will destroy more jobs in the energy sector while preventing the creation of new jobs in other private industries.

Designing Obamacar.  It's not enough for the Obama administration to take over America's largest automaker.  The O Force is pushing to redesign every car on the road to reflect the bland, lifeless vision of an activist base committed to undoing the Industrial Revolution.  Proposed rules floated Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation would raise the existing corporate average fuel economy mandate of 35.5 mpg by 2016 to 60 mpg by 2025.

Climate Science Corruption:  Practiced And Perpetuated By Scientific Societies.  People pushing or accepting the false science of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are reacting.  Responses reveal agendas are political not science.  Obama's White House leads the charge, but all governments continue to pursue policies that make them appear green, while ignoring the facts.  The policies are unnecessary, extremely expensive, and economically destructive.  The real motive is increased taxation and government control.  For some, like Obama, it's about total government control and destruction of the industrial based economy.

Facts oiled up.  James Hansen, the head of one of President Barack Obama's NASA labs, came to Canada last week to tell us not to allow a French company called Total to proceed with its Canadian oilsands project.  Even for Obama, that's quite a foreign policy accomplishment:  Interfering with two allies at once.

Style Over Substance.  President Obama made a big show this week of installing solar panels at the White House, calling it a "commitment to lead."  It's not.  It's feel-good political symbolism masquerading as a real energy policy.

Obama's Sunshine Scam.  It's hard to sufficiently mock President Obama's decision to install solar panels on the White House.  But I'll try.  The cost of the panels at this point is unknown.  But the White House has assured the public that the installation job will be offered through a competitive bidding process.  Given that Jimmy Carter spent about $30,000 in the 1970s installing solar panels on White House (removed in 1986 by President Reagan), you can bank on President Obama's folly blowing that price tag away, especially when you consider all the federal employee staff time, and security and public relations efforts that will go into the project.

Obama's Job-Killing Regulations.  Many Americans thought Henry Waxman's Cap and Trade nightmare was dead.  While Team Obama may no longer be able to push through another 2000+ page piece of job-destroying legislation, the Administration can use Executive Orders to implement many of the specifics of the legislation via changes in the regulatory policies.

Obamachine pulls the plug on appliances.  Regulation-weary Americans had better brace themselves for another load of government-knows-best activism as President Obama's green czarina claims she has a mandate to pick what household appliances we can use in the future.  Cathy Zoi, assistant energy secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, recently outlined the administration's so-called clean-energy strategy, under which new government standards will force market transformation for products such as small electric motors, water heaters, pool heaters, space heaters and commercial clothes washers.

The Green Agenda.  In keeping with President Obama's promise to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet, the Energy Department has set new efficiency standards for 26 appliances and household products.  The list ranges from microwaves, to washing machines and dryers, to residential water heaters and dishwashers.  The department reportedly claims the new standards will save consumers from $250 billion to $300 billion on their energy costs through 2030.  But that's what Democrats always say about their green schemes:  "We're doing this to clean up the Earth, and we're going to save you money while we do it."  Don't believe it.

Your Insane U.S. Energy Department.  In mid-September, Cathy Zoi, an Assistant Secretary of Energy, said that the U.S. Department of Energy has a "mandate" to issue regulations about what household appliances should be available to Americans in the future. ... The DOE intends to "set efficiency standards for energy-consuming products."  These will include commercial clothes washers, small electric motors, water heaters, direct heating equipment and pool heaters, among the countless products consumers use on a daily basis.

Inhofe Says EPA's New Boiler Rule Could Kill Nearly 800,000 Manufacturing Jobs.  The top Republican on a Senate environmental panel released a scathing report Tuesday [9/28/2010] that he contends shows that the Environmental Protection Agency's new proposed rule on cleaning up boilers nationwide could devastate America's manufacturing base and imperil hundreds of thousands of jobs without providing any real public health or environmental benefits.

More about the JournoList scandal.

Administration releases climate strategy for plants, wildlife.  The Obama administration Monday [9/27/2010] released a strategy for assessing the effects of climate change on at-risk plants and wildlife.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service strategy sets out a plan for prioritizing research and its response to climate change, calling for a coordinated effort by federal agencies, states and conservation groups to identify the most vulnerable species.

Why Barack Obama Hates America.  Addressing the nation on the [Gulf oil] spill on June 15, 2010, Obama stressed that Americans "consume more than 20 percent of the world's oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world's resources." ... But ask yourself, what does any of this have to do with the oil spill?  Would the oil spill have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10 percent of the world's resources?  Of course not.  The point is that for Obama the energy and environmental issues reduce to a simple proposition:  America is a neocolonial giant eating up more than its share of the world's resources, and in doing so America is exploiting the scarce fuel of the globe; consequently, this gluttonous consumption must be stopped.  This is the heart of Obama's energy and environmental agenda:  not cleaning up the Gulf or saving the environment in general, but redressing the inequitable system where the neocolonial West — and neocolonial companies like BP — dominates the use of global energy resources.

'Sustainable' Poverty:  The Real Face of the Leftist Environmental Agenda.  Paying homage to a long legacy of radical environmentalism, President Obama's faithful followers have advanced the Livable Communities Act to attack nonexistent problems like sprawl and overpopulation, as well as sub-issues like pollution.  Humans will be punished for seeking to improve their quality of life, with new limits on mobility and Orwellian guidelines dictating where citizens will be allowed to live and work, with the justification of ushering in "sustainable growth."  The facts do not matter to Obama and the left.

Save a mountain, build a windmill, freeze in the dark.  Big Green environmentalists are pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to ban "mountaintop removal" coal mining.  To that end, the enviros have organized a vintage politically correct national PR campaign dubbed "Music Saves Mountaintops" featuring part country music and part the usual Natural Resources Defense Council agitprop.  The slogan of the campaign is "Save a Mountain, build a wind mill," referring to the contention of President Obama and his Big Green allies that alternative energy sources like wind can replace energy generated by fossil fuels.

Democrats party while nation suffers.  The team at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has more interest in redecorating the Oval Office than in feeling your pain.  In fact, it is downright excited to take advantage of the economic downturn to push the stuff that otherwise could never be done. ... Chief among such schemes is the administration's multibillion-dollar effort to kill the internal-combustion engine.

How Obama Is Locking Up Our Land.  Have you heard of the "Great Outdoors Initiative"?  Chances are, you haven't.  But across the country, White House officials have been meeting quietly with environmental groups to map out government plans for acquiring untold millions of acres of both public and private land.  It's another stealthy power grab through executive order that promises to radically transform the American way of life.

Obama's Solar Energy Fantasy.  This is more than a repeat of the 19th century's error of subsidizing railroad construction. ... Here, though, the situation is even worse than simple crony capitalism, given its unique 21st century twist.  The wrinkle is that at least in the 1860s it was possible to deploy a technology that could conceivably fulfill its purpose.  Trains could potentially deliver freight and passengers from point A to B in a cost-effective way.  No such claim can be made for large-scale solar power technology, at present.

War Vs. Big Oil Goes Beyond Drilling Ban.  The White House, along with certain members of Congress, has declared war on Big Oil.  This animosity is evidenced not only by the current ban on offshore drilling, which may well force the industry to relocate to other parts of the world, it is also reflected in the myriad of proposals to hike the industry's taxes and use the additional revenues to pursue the administration's green agenda.

The Anti-Drilling Commission.  The commission appointed by President Obama to investigate the Gulf oil spill (the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling) does not include a single member with specialized knowledge of petroleum engineering.  This is akin to performing a heart transplant with a surgical team that has never set foot in an operating room.  Of the seven members appointed to the commission, not one is a petroleum engineer, and all have long-standing ties to the environmental movement.

Obama Adviser's Green Manifesto.  [Scroll down]  "In the longer term, it may be that the solution to the employment problem will require a reduction in the amount of work done by each worker in order to create more jobs," wrote [John P.] Holdren and his co-authors.  "Gradually shortening the work week (ultimately to 20 hours or less) or decreasing the number of work weeks per year (companies could have different spring-summer and fall-winter shifts) would accomplish this," they wrote.

New Age Marxism Determining Obama's Agenda.  The "redistribution of wealth" progressives, wealthy and powerful globalization advocates and the "deep green" environmentalists are working hard together for the creation of a new New Age Marxist global society.  Although each group may have their own area of emphasis, the big picture is the same. ... Their ideal society is based on feminist Goddess/Gaia/Earth worshipping theory.  That is not to say that all progressives are Gaia worshippers; some may have political aspirations, some may see monetary profit in this movement, and others see it as a spiritual transformation.

Obama's Gulf Oil Spill Commission and the Missing Experts.  Instead of an oil spill commission staffed with experts, as promised in his Oval Office address, the president has announced a panel with membership that reads like a Who's Who of radical environmentalism.  Former Senator Graham of Florida, for example, has consistently pushed for a ban on oil drilling, and Frances Beinecke of the National Resources Defense Council has argued for the global warming agenda — including linking "global poverty" to global warming, an argument used at the Copenhagen conference to support reparations to be paid to nations such as Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe for our supposed global crimes.

Obama Is Wrong; Alternative Energy is Not an Alternative.  Obama is using the oil spill in the Gulf as an emotional lever to push his cap and trade policy.  The spill is a disaster, but exploiting it is truly despicable.  It is made far worse when the alternative energies solutions don't work.  Increased costs will damage the economy and negatively impact the people he claims to represent.

Liberal groups growing frustrated over Obama role in climate debate.  Major environmental and liberal groups are pressing President Barack Obama to play a stronger role in crafting climate change legislation and shepherding it through the Senate, claiming their members are "deeply frustrated" by inaction to date.

Capitalizing on the Latest Crisis.  The tragic Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been incompetently handled by a White House, EPA and Corps of Engineers unable even to make timely decisions about constructing sand berms to keep oil out of fragile estuaries.  But the crisis is being exploited brilliantly to justify policy initiatives like cap-tax-and-trade, EPA's "endangerment" decree, more bans on drilling, and mandatory fuel switching to higher priced options, most notably wind and solar power.

More about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

What's Fran Beinecke Doing On Obama's Sham Oil Commission?  President Obama has announced the creation of yet another federal commission.  This time, it will examine the spill in the Gulf and make sure it never happens again.  But there are a lot of question marks surrounding President Obama's latest blue ribbon bunch of greenies.  First, the panel is comprised mostly of academics and enviros with zero experience dealing with the oil industry.  That's right.  Not one of the seven people named could actually drill a well.  Second, they all espouse a similar ideology — one that is opposed to drilling and oil.

Bam's climate Rx: All pain, no gain.  The cap-and-trade bill that the House passed last summer aims to force Americans to reduce those dreaded carbon emissions by 83 percent in less than four decades — to the same per-capita level as 1867.  Yet, even under the Al Gore-approved climate-science models, the bill would do nothing to stop global warming.

Obama administration spends $1.2 billion on cycling and walking initiatives.  The Obama administration more than doubled spending on cycling and walking initiatives to $1.2 billion (£810 million) last year as it seeks to coax Americans out of their cars.

Obama's Affordable Energy Policy:  Safe, Legal and Rare.  Undermining access to abundant conventional energy sources has proved to be a key component of Barack Obama's promised "fundamental transformation" of America.  To be fair, he was uniquely candid when vowing that "under my plan of a cap-and-trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."  This interview received limited coverage despite also revealing plans to "bankrupt" politically disfavored industry while also raising "billions of dollars."

Paralyzing American Power.  The decision to elevate climate change to the threat level of jihadist terrorism amounts to a mockery of reason.  First off, climate change is not an immediate threat — it is a cyclical process that can only be measured in terms of centuries. ... And second, while concerns over climate change may excite a number of progressive politicians that have dedicated their public service careers to punishing capitalists for having the audacity to establish a profitable job-creating enterprise, the Obama Administration's decision to push the Copenhagen agenda in the National Security Strategy amounts to nothing less than fear mongering.

How Obama's Green Policies Will Bankrupt America.  Obama's policies prop up energy production that's inefficient and costly while shutting down other energy resources, like nuclear power, that could be both effective and affordable.  It's all about creating scarcity — and a heightened dependence on the government.  The optimistic news is that the public is increasingly skeptical of Obama's illogical promises, but that only means the administration is ratcheting up the fear-mongering to squeeze in as much changed as possible within the next three years.

Signs Point to Administration Plan to Lock Up 13M Acres of Federal Land.  A leaked partial document produced by the Bureau of Land Management and obtained by Fox News suggests the Obama administration is considering a plan to lock up 13 million acres of land — and the Department of Interior is refusing to answer questions.  First, a little background: The federal government owns about one-third of the land in the United States — most of it in western states. For example, 84 percent of Nevada is owned by Uncle Sam.

Obama administration extends roadless moratorium.  The Obama administration Friday [5/28/2010] extended for another year the moratorium on most logging and mining in millions of acres of remote and rugged backcountry sections of national forests.

Obama biggest recipient of BP cash.  While the BP oil geyser pumps millions of gallons of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama and members of Congress may have to answer for the millions in campaign contributions they've taken from the oil and gas giant over the years.  BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Taking Advantage of an Oil Crisis. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," [Rahm] Emanuel said.  And why should we think this administration isn't letting the Gulf of Mexico oil crisis go to waste?  Don't be fooled for a moment.  History proves that the Gulf leak is a messy dream come true for hardcore environmentalists — many of whom surround Mr. Obama.

Why is Ken Salazar hiding memo on new monuments, wilderness areas?  Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was asked in a Feb. 26, 2010, letter from Western Caucus Chairman Rep. Rob Bishop, R-UT, and other representatives from western states for the missing pages from a leaked government memo that "contained detailed information about the administration's plans to designate as many as 14 new national monuments and lock up as much as 13 million acres in states throughout the West."

US Navy to launch Great Green Fleet.  The US navy is set to be both green and mean with the dawning of an new eco-friendly assault force that will mind its carbon footprint as it destroys its enemy.  It is to launch "the Great Green Fleet", a fighting force of ships, submarines and planes powered entirely by biofuels.

Backdoor Energy Tax.  From cars to coal mines, the imposition of economy-killing restrictions is under way.  Are the new EPA regulations on auto emissions the precursor to regulating carbon dioxide by executive order?

Getting Gas Wrong:  In an economy full of problems there are still a few high points.  One of them, as you may have noticed if you pay attention to your utility bills, is that natural gas prices are relatively low. ... We shouldn't have to worry about this sector of the economy, but there is a dark cloud looming on the horizon in the form of yet another environmental initiative that the Obama administration is pushing forward, one that has the potential to cut domestic natural gas production, cost us jobs and revenue and force energy prices upward.

Going green the Chicago way.  Under the American Antiquities Act, huge expanses of public lands can be designated national monuments by stroke of the presidential pen.  Utahans suddenly were reminded of this with President Clinton's 1996 election-eve proclamation of the massive Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. ... Mr. Clinton's proclamation removed 1.7 million acres of Utah land, an expanse the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, from productive uses. ... In many respects, events are repeating themselves.

Federal review of Arctic refuge could lead to more drilling limits.  For the first time in two decades, federal wildlife managers will take a look at how they administer the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, including the possibility of asking Congress to make 1.5 million acres of the long-disputed coastal plain off limits to oil and gas development by designating it as wilderness.

Did someone mention ANWR?

Empty rhetoric, empty gas tanks.  The Army Corps of Engineers recently denied ConocoPhillips' permit to construct a drill pad in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, threatening 400 construction and 100 operating jobs and new production that could extend the life of the trans-Alaska pipeline.  If this shameful abuse of regulatory power could be used to stop routine oil and gas development of leases already granted by the federal government — in an area already designated a National Petroleum Reserve — then how optimistic could anyone be about this administration's new energy policy?

Environmental Extremists Making Regulatory Policies?  Although they were released on April Fools Day, new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations covering vehicle efficiency and water quality standards near mines are no joke.  Instead, they are the inevitable outcome when government puts environmental radicals in charge of writing regulations.  These unelected bureaucrats, headed by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, have no regard for or understanding of property rights, free markets, or our economy.  It's all about worshiping at the altar of "climate change" and offering penance for America's high standard of living by attacking industry in the name of "justice".

Our National No-Energy Policy:  Thomas Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, recently offered a chilling description of our national energy focus.  "When it comes to paving the way for the responsible development of homegrown, job-creating energy resources, no administration in history has done more to ensure producers do less."

Obama's budget reveals true agenda on energy.  The budget shows that revenues collected from new offshore leasing will decline over the next five years — from $1.5 billion in 2009, to only $413 million in fiscal 2015.  If the president planned on expanding offshore drilling, revenues would be increasing, not decreasing.

Here's what Obama's 'necessarily skyrocket' plan looks like.  Remember when President Obama said his anti-global warming program meant "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket"?  Well, he wasn't kidding one bit.  He and his environmental extremist friends want to force the rest of us to use less energy and to get what energy we do use from "green" or "renewable" sources.  Want to see that approach applied on the local level?  How about a 37 percent increase in your monthly light bill?

It's Always "Earth Hour" in North Korea.  [Electricity] is the difference between the Dark Age and the present age... but not for everyone.  Much of Africa is in darkness. too.  People who hate civilization and the humans who created it are welcome to live out in the wilderness or in some primitive backward country where they burn dung to cook their meals.  If America doesn't start building more coal-fired plants, nuclear plants, and other generators of electricity, we too shall live in darkness when the sun goes down.  Be warned, the present administration is doing everything possible to make that future happen.

Obama Considers 'Zoning the Oceans'.  In requiring industries to disclose financial risks related to global warming and assessing national security concerns from rising sea levels, the administration has made an end run around Congress to ensure climate change is part of the national agenda.  One of the more insidious endeavors to implement climate change regulations without congressional action has been the administration's recent effort to regulate the oceans.  With very little fanfare, President Barack Obama quietly issued a memorandum last summer establishing an Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force charged with developing recommendations for a national policy for oceans and coasts and the Great Lakes.

How to spell Obama energy policy: 'D-e-l-a-y'.  The need to develop America's bountiful fossil fuel resources will only intensify as our economy grows and those of emerging world economic powers like China and India similarly expand.  But President Obama is moving national energy policy in exactly the opposite direction.  Instead of aiding exploration and development of available fossil fuel resources, the administration appears to be doing everything possible to slow or even stop it.

'This Is the End of Favoring Motorized Transportation at the Expense of Non-Motorized'.  Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced that federal transportation policies will no longer favor "motorized" transportation, such as cars and trucks, over "non-motorized" transportation, such as walking and bicycling.  LaHood signed the new policy directive on March 11, the same day he attended a congressional reception for the National Bike Summit, a convention sponsored by a bicycling advocacy group, the League of American Bicyclists.

Transportation Secretary Explains 'Sea Change' He Envisions for U.S. Transportation.  Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Friday [4/30/2010] that Americans are "tired" of the congestion caused by motorized transportation, and instead are looking for other options such as bicycle lanes and walking paths, which the government will add to its infrastructure.

The Editor says...
 Yeah, Secretary LaHood is right — I'm tired of driving to work.  Maybe I should walk instead.  It would only take about five hours in each direction, unless I get mugged on the way, which would be inevitable.  Nine hours of wasted time every day would be like taking on a second job — but it would save $7.50 per day, which in my case is the price of gas and downtown parking.  But then my grocery bill would go up because of all the calories I'd burn.  Brilliant idea, Mr. Secretary.  I'm sure you'd feel right at home in Cuba, or China, or North Korea.

The Obama Moratorium:  No offshore drilling while he's in office.  The Obama administration's six-month delay in approving new offshore drilling leases in federal waters will become a new three-year ban, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quietly told reporters last Friday [3/5/2010].  Which means that no new oil and gas leases will be approved during President Obama's term even though two-thirds of the American public supports such activity, according to a December 2009 Rasmussen poll.

Chortling At Chu.  Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban.  This is a policy for economic suicide.

Obama turns off homegrown energy.  The Interior Department has collected only one-tenth as much revenue from oil and gas lease sales in 2009 as it did in 2008.  Revenue from such lease sales produced a return for the taxpayer of $942 per acre in the last year of the Bush administration, compared with only $254 per acre in the first year of the Obama administration.  Presently, not quite 3 percent of the 2.46 million available [acres of public land] are leased and that percentage is headed down.  Under Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, fewer acres on- and off-shore were leased in 2009 than in any previous year.

Government outlines Great Lakes fixup plan.  The Obama administration has developed a five-year blueprint for rescuing the Great Lakes, a sprawling ecosystem plagued by toxic contamination, shrinking wildlife habitat and invasive species.

Drillgate:  Secretary Salazar's Cover-Up.  The administration asked for public comments on a plan to expand offshore drilling.  When they came in 2-to-1 in favor, the Interior Department sat on the news.

More about offshore oil drilling.

White House Easter Egg Roll to Be Environmentally Friendly.  A White House announcement Monday [3/8/2010] said the eggs at this year's April 5 roll will be made from paperboard that contains no wood fibers from endangered forests, is recyclable and features vegetable-oil based inks and a water-based coating.

The Editor asks...
 If you were determined to buy "wood fibers from endangered forests", where would you order such a product?

Our King of Big Government Suggests We Need Another New Agency.  What is the matter with that man in our White House?  Will he ever stop trying to spend every nickel and dime that Americans have, including our savings that we worked hard for to ease our retirement years?  He acts like a poor kid that suddenly comes into some money and it is burning a hole in his pocket to get spent.

New federal office for global warming.  Amid the growing fight over the accuracy of climate data, President Obama is seeking to have the federal government put its imprimatur on the science by calling for the creation of a new federal office to study and report on global warming.

NOAA's Ministry Of Propaganda.  Despite failures at Copenhagen, the fraud of the IPCC and the farce of Climate-gate, the administration wants an agency to monitor climate change.  Why must we fund one-stop shopping for climate charlatans?

Obama's National Climate Disservice:  Under the pretext that "Americans are witnessing the impacts of climate change in their own backyards," and that they "increasingly are asking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for information about climate change in order to make the best choices for their families, communities and businesses," this week the Obama administration unveiled its National Climate Service (NCS).  Though we can't rely on a weather forecast that extend more than a few days, the National Climate Service is going to help us plan for micro-changes in climate decades and more into the future.

The President's Tax Hike on Drilling.  One well-publicized element of President Obama's proposed budget is the elimination of "subsidies" for fossil fuels.  But, in large part, these are not subsidies at all. ... Obama, in proposing to eliminate expensing of these drilling costs, is not abolishing a tax subsidy, but is imposing a tax penalty.  And, given his often-articulated disdain for fossil fuels, he is probably quite aware of this fact.

Time to re-examine that 'settled' science.  New scientific evidence and political realities demand rethinking California's plan to impose economy-stifling rules and congressional and Obama administration plans for even more potentially devastating interventions to curb manmade greenhouse gases.  Clearly, the science is not settled, as claimed, and the politics even less so.

Obama's Progressive Goose and Our Conservative Gander:  The president has been trying to convert the country's energy sector to the "green" creed, which is sure to take the wrecking ball to the American way of life and dramatically reduce our standard of living.  Obama's energy policy goes to the heart of the entire progressive agenda.  After the downfall of communism, the left almost immediately embraced the next millenarian project — environmentalism — and concentrated its prodigious energies on a giant undertaking:  to stampede the world and put the progressives in power, wielding the global warming scare as its latest cataclysm.

An Inconvenient Democracy.  President Obama isn't about to let a trifle like democratic consent impede his climate agenda.  With cap and trade blown apart in the Senate, the White House has chosen to impose taxes and regulation across the entire economy under clean-air laws that were written decades ago and were never meant to apply to carbon.  With this doomsday machine activated, Mr. Obama hopes to accomplish what persuasion and debate among his own party manifestly cannot.

The Obama doctrine:  govern by decree.  As you exhale while reading this article, you are contributing to the coming world catastrophe caused by global warming.  So says the Environmental Protection Agency in its recent decree that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant, among those gases that "endanger" public health.  In response to this sense of crisis stirred by the likes of Al Gore, President Obama pushes for mandates that significantly reduce carbon usage, and which, by all accounts, will cripple the U.S. economy.

No Substitute For Fossil Fuels.  Earlier this year, Congress approved a scheme to pour $80 billion — on top of the tens of billions already spent — into renewables.  A government report released last week indicates the money will be wasted.  Renewable energy is the shiny gem that everyone wants but no one can have.

For Obama, Global Warming Trumps National Security.  On Christmas Day, a Nigerian-born terrorist named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger airplane. ... [President Obama] blamed the CIA for the foul-up.  There is no doubt that the CIA should have done something more to prevent this attack.  But, then again, President Obama has been keeping them busy.  With global warming.

Spying On Icebergs?  We can't stop terrorists from boarding planes with explosive undies, but the CIA has assets sufficient to monitor Arctic ice and look for signs of global warming?  Is al-Qaida recruiting polar bears? ... At the urging of Al Gore, the administration is signing on to a plan to task vital intelligence assets to protect not the people of the United States, but the environment.

The High Costs of Copenhagen.  When President Obama goes to the Copenhagen climate change summit next week, he is expected to once again declare that the U.S. will reduce its carbon emissions 83% by 2050.  Even though no legally binding agreement is expected, what Mr. Obama says in Denmark will define the U.S. position in subsequent international negotiations.  He will not say how the cuts will be accomplished.

The Surprise at Copenhagen.  Obama believes in AGW (anthropogenic or man-made global warming) theory.  He believes in "economic and social justice," and that logically leads to "climate justice."  He may believe that the U.S. owes a "climate debt" to the rest of the world.  What better way to lead the charge than to carry the ultimate banner of the radical left — wealth redistribution — under the auspices of the "crises of climate change."

Economic suicide.  When Air Force One jets off to Copenhagen next week, clouds of greenhouse gases billowing in its wake, the president would be wise to recall why the US Senate voted 95-0 against the Kyoto Protocol in 1997:  It required huge economic sacrifice from America — and virtually none from other countries.  A Copenhagen pact may wind up with similar requirements — as India's environmental minister, Jairam Ramesh, made clear yesterday [12/3/2009].

Obama offers $33 billion per year in climate reparations.  As the UN Climate Control Conference comes to an end today, many issues remain to be negotiated, including the size of the emissions cuts and the future of the Kyoto treaty.  But one issue has already been settled:  the size of the reparations that the developed countries (United States, Europe, Japan, etc.) would pay to the developing countries (China, India, Africa, etc.) if the agreement is negotiated.

Did someone mention Copenhagen?

The real fat cat party.  The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, led by GE, includes many other Fortune 500 companies, including Goldman Sachs — the company that has profited mightily from Obama's brand of hope and change.  CAP is an aggressive supporter of the Democrats' climate change scheme.  Why?  Because GE and company stand to make billions from carbon pricing, thanks largely to investments in technologies that cannot survive in a free market without massive subsidies from Uncle Sam.

Skeptics press Obama on climate summit.  Climate-change skeptics, fired up by the controversy over a series of British scientists' e-mails, are putting President Obama on notice:  Don't commit the United States to any long-term goals at next week's climate summit in Copenhagen.  One of the strongest such warnings has come from a member of the president's own party, Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia.

Obama Ignores 'Climate-Gate' in Revising Copenhagen Plans.  The controversy swirling around the leaked e-mails of climate scientists apparently trying to downplay data and exclude dissenting opinions has led to calls for President Obama to skip this month's climate summit in Denmark until the e-mails can be investigated.  Instead, the White House announced Friday [12/4/2009] that Obama was doubling down on his commitment to the summit's goals and moving his visit later in the month, hoping it will secure a "meaningful" agreement.

Obama and the CRUddites of Britain.  Back in Chicago, Obama was closely associated with the people who run the Chicago Climate Exchange, a stock market scheme that depends on artificial, government-created scarcities of carbon-based fuels.  Note that except for nuclear and geothermal, all our fuels are carbon-based.  It's the whole ball of wax. No sane person is expecting "novel sources of green energy" to actually add anything soon, or even ever.  So Obama is in this up to his crew cut.

Did someone mention ClimateGate?

Highest Cost Generating Plant Comes On Line in Florida to Obama Fanfare.  Florida Power & Light (FPL) has built a 25 megawatt photovoltaic power plant in Southern Florida that will supply power to 3000 homes and businesses — a small fraction of the company's over 4 million customers. ... FPL spent $152 million building the plant, which amounts to $6,080 per kilowatt — a figure substantiated by the Energy Information Administration, who ranks photovoltaic solar the highest cost technology of a potential slate of 20 possible future generating technologies.

Obama's Tonya Harding energy policy:  Politicians would have us believe there's a Brave New World of renewable energy out there.  But like the book, the reality of our current energy policy is more of a dystopia.  Case in point:  With great fanfare last October, President Obama took a trip to Florida to celebrate raising the electricity bills of Sunshine State residents.  Well, not really.  But that is in effect what happened.

Environmental Swine.  So the problem is complex.  But the solution begins with a call for the White House to take the lead on reversing federally mandated use of corn to produce ethanol fuel.  Imagine how many jobs we could save if we turned away from ethanol mandates and towards drilling in ANWR.  But don't hold your breath waiting for help from this White House.  Out in California, water has been diverted from the San Joaquin Valley in order to save the two-inch hypomesus transpacificus fish — also known as the delta smelt.  This has caused a severe drought in the area with some farming towns like Mendota seeing unemployment numbers of 40%.

Too much, too soon, too far left.  Death by a thousand cuts. Or in the case of the efficiency of the U.S. economy, by at least four:  Energy policy, health care policy, trade union resurgence, and fiscal madness.  Start with energy.  Barack Obama says our entire energy sector needs a makeover.  Never mind that we are fortunate to live in a country in which inexpensive energy has produced the world's most productive agriculture, a population capable of navigating America's huge spaces in air-conditioned comfort, and permitted the substitution of energy-plus-brain-power for back-breaking labor.  Obama is going to fix it with wind that sometimes blows, solar power where the sun sometimes shines, and perhaps even nuclear power.  Cost is no object.

Climate assumptions from another planet.  As the 821-page Kerry-Boxer climate bill gets fast-tracked in the Senate, as a companion to the 1427-page House bill, it is critical that we reexamine the assumptions behind cap-tax-and-trade legislation.  The Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Information Administration and other optimistic analysts claim America can limit and tax hydrocarbon use, and switch to "ecologically friendly" renewable energy, with minimal harm to families, businesses and jobs.  Their low-ball cost estimates are based on assumptions that can only have come from another planet.

Climate Change Will Be Its Highest Priority, Says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Over the next five years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) plans to make climate change its "highest priority."  According to its new "Action Plan" released last month, the branch of the U.S. Department of Interior charged with protecting fish, wildlife and plants will focus first and foremost on the global weather.

Foolishly Choosing Bears Over Barrels.  [Al] Gore is just plain wrong.  Yet the myth he perpetuates has dealt a critical blow to our hopes for true energy independence.  Despite ever-increasing numbers and demonstrated adaptability, the famous Knut the polar bear and his kind are still said to be endangered.  That in turn has prompted the federal government to designate 200,541 square miles off the coast of Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears, effectively killing hopes to exploit the vast energy riches of the American Arctic.  The world polar bear population is at a modern high and growing.

All Falling Down...  [Scroll down]  While Obama was right to stiffen efficiency standards and promote alternate energies, he is neglecting the only mechanisms that can tide us over for the next 20 years — more natural gas, domestic oil, shale, tar sands, clean coal, and nuclear energy.  We should be on a dash to build nuclear plants for the coming demand from plug in hybrids and spikes in electricity usage.  We should be leasing as much natural gas lands as possible, to gain the supplies to run energy plants and to power vehicles.  There is plenty of oil in the Dakotas, California, Texas and in the Gulf and we should be drilling there like mad.  Sorry, even Santa Barbara should either ban SUVs or have oil derricks on the horizon.

The EPA is choking democracy.  One of the most important events of our lifetimes may have just transpired.  A federal agency has decided that it has the power to regulate everything, including the air you breathe.

Green world government.  Environmental alarmism is being exploited to chip away at national sovereignty.  The latest threat to American liberties may be found in the innocuous sounding Copenhagen Climate Treaty, which will be discussed at the United Nations climate-change conference in mid-December. ... The treaty's text is not yet finalized but its principles are aimed at regulating all economic activity in the name of climate security, with a side effect that billions of dollars would be transferred from productive countries to the unproductive.

A Secret White House Power Grab Is In Full Swing.  It's one thing for President Obama to surround himself with the advisers he'd like to have, but it's another to bestow on them sweeping powers to broker secret negotiations and push forward vast new regulations that could cost American families thousands of dollars. ... Driving the push for this massive power grab and circumvention of the elected branches is a key White House official who avoided Senate confirmation by being installed not as EPA director, but instead as White House Climate Czar:  Carol Browner.

Energy Sec. Chu claims he knows 'what the future will be 100 years from now'.  President Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu is at it again.  Fresh off his declarations in May claiming computer model predictions as evidence of a certain climate catastrophe, he has now gotten more bold, confidently predicting a certain climate catastrophe by the year 2109.  (When he and everyone who hears his warning today will be unable to verify his predictions because they will be conveniently DEAD!)

Bypassing all elected officials...
 E.P.A. Moves to Curtail Greenhouse Gas Emissions.  Unwilling to wait for Congress to act, the Obama administration announced on Wednesday [9/30/2009] that it was moving forward on new rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from hundreds of power plants and large industrial facilities.

EPA Overreach.  President Obama has promised the world the United States will take definitive action on carbon emissions and he needs to have something to show for this promise at the looming global climate conference in Copenhagen.  One problem, the American people hate greenhouse gas regulations and they've been talking to their representatives in Congress — that's why cap-and-trade is stalled in the Senate.  That's where the Environmental Protection Agency comes in.  The Obama administration is so desperate to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that they are willing to illegally rewrite statutes without authorization from Congress.

Energy Czar Raises Possibility Of EPA Implementing Cap-And-Trade.  There's more than one way to get cap-and-trade, President Obama's energy czar said today [10/2/2009].  Carol Browner, the former Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) administrator who now serves in the Obama administration's newly created role of energy czar, floated the possibility today of the EPA implementing cap-and-trade energy policies, during an interview at The Atlantic's First Draft of History symposium in Washington, DC.

Will Obama bypass Congress on climate rules?  If Congress won't get the job done on climate change, President Obama has a way to do it himself.  But is he strong-arming the legislative branch?  It certainly looks that way as a series of new environmental regulations, released over the past two weeks by the EPA, are putting legislators on notice and executives on edge.

Overheated White House Environmental Campaigns.  [President Obama] has said on global warming, "The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.  Sea levels are rising.  Coastlines are shrinking.  We've seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."  Fortunately for the world, not a single one of those claims is accurate.

After Global Warming:  [Scroll down]  The current administration is risking America's economic future on "green" energy in an effort to solve an unproven crisis.  The cap and trade legislation is moving ahead in spite of the fact that the United States is already one of the leading nations in curtailing CO2 output.  Other countries, which are rapidly expanding their manufacturing base, are doing exactly the opposite.  China, for example, now uses more coal for producing power than the US, Europe, and Japan combined.  President Obama, on the other hand, has openly called for the destruction of the coal industry in the United States.

EPA Suppresses Internal Global Warming Study, CEI Says.  Scientific findings at odds with the Obama Administration's views on carbon dioxide and climate change are being suppressed as a result of political pressure, officials at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) charge.  "This suppression of valid science for political reasons is beyond belief," said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.  "EPA's conduct is even more outlandish because it flies in the face of the president's widely-touted claim that 'the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.'"

US nuclear recycling faces the axe.  Earlier this week, the administration of President Barack Obama quietly cancelled plans for a large-scale facility to recycle nuclear fuel.  The move may prove a fatal blow to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) set up by previous president George W. Bush.

Obama's Green Snake Oil:  As he did during his campaign, Obama presented his plan to ameliorate global warming as a way of stimulating the economy, with the first steps — money for weatherizing buildings, boosting alternative energy production and improving power transmission — incorporated into his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.  Thus he continues to ignore the enormous cost of dramatically reducing carbon dioxide emissions, falsely portraying the economic burden as a boon.

Millions in Stimulus Spending Being Doled Out for Questionable Jobs.  [Scroll down]  The Obama administration is spending $5 billion to weatherize homes.  But one Texas county spent $4 million to weatherize just 47 homes.  That's $78,000 per house.  Each retrofit is supposed to save homeowners $500 a year in energy costs.  That means taxpayers will recoup their investment in 156 years, long after the home is probably torn down.

Obama blocks some of Bush's last-minute environmental decisions.  With a short memo on Inauguration Day, President Obama blocked plans to loosen some air quality standards and to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list.  But he did not stop several other controversial, late-term environmental regulations issued by the Bush administration — at least not yet.

Barack Obama promises to lead world on climate change.  A week after taking office, the new Democratic president drew another sharp contrast with his predecessor George W Bush, who only thought that man had a limited effect on climate change.  In the course of a ten-minute announcement at the White House, Mr Obama became the first American president to put cleaner energy at the heart of his domestic agenda and to envision environmentalism as a creator of jobs on a large scale and as a boon to the nation's defence.

The Editor says...
 But if Bush was right, then Obama is throwing money into a pit for no reason.

Another Tale of Two Headlines!  Combating an illusory beast like Manmade Global Warming™ is a perfect task for this administration:  it produces the necessary Green Vibrations to soothe liberal anxieties and — the really important thing — it is incredibly expensive.  Indeed, Manmade Global Warming™ is the ultimate Democratic boondoggle, potentially even more costly than nationalized health care.

Mileage Standards:  Not the Way to Energy Independence.  Fuel economy mandates to save gas?  That's like fighting obesity by requiring clothing manufacturers to make only slender sizes.

Environmentalist dreams collide with economic reality.  During the campaign and the transition Joe Biden promised that there would be no more coal plants built in the United States; greener-than-green Henry Waxman wrested the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee from the sensible John Dingell; Carol Browner, "an acolyte of former Vice President Al Gore", according to the New York Times, was named White House coordinator of energy and climate policy (aka "czar"); ... There are others, all of this green persuasion, all able, all darlings of the environmental movement, all expected to favor sun and wind over nuclear and coal.  So far, so green.

'Santa' Klaus Takes on Global Warming.  [Scroll down]  Enter the Barack Obama administration.  Between new "Climate Czar" Carole Browner and Science Advisor John Holdren, the True Believers are now taking over Federal policy on energy and the weather.  (The weather?  Yes!  We are now blessed with an official bureaucracy tasked to change the weather.  It includes NASA Goddard Space Center's James Hanson, who believes that CEOs of energy companies "should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature" if they spread foul skepticism about global warming.)

Obama's newest energy focus:  appliances.  Eager to show action on energy savings for consumers and reduced warming emissions for the planet, President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered quicker, and in some cases new, efforts to make many appliances much more energy efficient.

The Editor says...
 This means higher prices, fewer choices, and less freedom for the consumer, all in the name of "saving the planet" from a problem it doesn't really have.

Environmentalists Press Democrats With 'Non-Negotiable Demands'.  Environmentalists want Congress to cap greenhouse-gas emissions, a proposal meeting resistance from companies such as General Motors Corp. because of its cost.  They're pushing for laws to force public utilities to buy 15 percent of their power from renewable energy sources, an idea opposed by Southern Co. and American Electric Power Co.  And they want tougher energy- efficiency standards for cars, buildings and appliances.

War On Fossil Fuels.  The new administration has wasted no time in reversing a decision by the Bush White House that let gas and oil companies explore for new resources.  Keep this in mind the next time pump prices take off.

Obama's 'Extreme Team' On Energy.  One of them wanted to see Americans paying $8 a gallon for gasoline.  Another tried to block access to domestic oil reserves that could one day exceed those in Saudi Arabia.  Another thinks global warming is a dire crisis justifying a massive crackdown on energy — decades after saying the same thing about global cooling.  Yet another had a position in the one of the world's top socialist organizations.  Meet the Obama administration's energy team.

President Obama Taps Anti-Hunting, Animal Rights Extremist for Regulatory Czar.  President Obama has appointed his old friend and colleague, University of Chicago Professor Cass Sunstein, to run the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  Sunstein is a rabid enemy of Americans' Second Amendment freedom, and harbors radical ideas about animal rights that only the most ardent PETA activist would love.  Now he will run the federal office that oversees all government regulations.

This article reeks with pro-Obama bias:
 Why Obama's Energy Savings Estimate May Be Skewed.  When he ordered the Energy Department on Thursday to set new, mandatory efficiency standards for a variety of household appliances, President Obama projected how much electricity would be saved.  "We'll save through these simple steps over the next 30 years the amount of energy produced over a two-year period by all the coal-fired power plants in America," Mr. Obama said.  But two audits of a prominent 17-year-old program to conserve electricity used in consumer goods, a voluntary effort called Energy Star, have found that such estimates, however rosy, are not completely reliable.

Two federal agencies settle global warming lawsuit.  The federal government on Friday settled a lawsuit that accused two U.S. agencies of financing energy projects overseas without considering their impacts on global warming.

Obama package focuses mainly on alternative power sources.  "There's not a lot of oil and gas" money in the stimulus bill, said Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston.  Instead, President Barack Obama's package focuses most of its attention, and an expected $54 billion or more in energy spending, on renewable and alternative power sources, not on the fossil fuel production of Houston's major oil companies.

Dr. Doom.  Thursday afternoon I received an e-mail from someone up on the Hill regarding the confirmation hearing for environmental activist and longtime (spectacularly failed) prognosticator of disaster, Dr. John Holdren. ... The email I received noted that Louisiana Senator David Vitter had a difficult time simply rolling over for the notion that this guy should stroll into regular access to the president without having to remind everyone, for the record, of just what a Moonbat he really is.  Per my correspondent:  "Vitter got Holdren to admit (three times) that he thinks 1 billion people will die from Global Warming by 2020."

A global warming scam:  Years of improved engine efficiencies have reduced emissions per ton-mile, but now the only practical way to further reduce carbon dioxide emissions is to push motorists into ever smaller vehicles that use less fuel per mile, or expensive hybrids and other exotic vehicles powered by fuel cells, compressed air, or batteries. ... [This] will mean that about six years from now many Vermonters registering a new car will have to pay more — probably a lot more — for an exotic upscale hybrid, or cram themselves into a smaller and less crashworthy car, van or truck.

War Over The Climate Heats Up Even As Climate Itself Cools Down.  Get ready for a three-ring circus.  In one corner you find those concerned with the recovery of the economy, in the second corner those concerned about threats to national security and in the third corner global warmers who agonize about catastrophic climate change. ... The global warmers will be led by energy-climate czarina Carol Browner, EPA chief during the Clinton years, and by science adviser John Holdren, who testified that a billion people might die by 2020 unless greenhouse-gas emissions are sharply reduced.

Is the Obama Administration Marching to the Tune of the Animal-Agenda Army?  When the Humane Society of the United States endorsed then-nominee Barack Obama for president, those analysts who track the animal-liberation lobby were put on high alert.  Despite now-president Obama's claim that his policies will be driven by science, not politics, recent events have only reinforced the fear that sound wildlife management and progress in human health and medical research will be thrown under the bus as payback to his radical animal-rights supporters.

EPA Expected to Regulate Carbon Dioxide for First Time.  The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, The New York Times reported on Wednesday [2/18/2009], citing senior Obama administration officials.  EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has asked her staff to review the latest scientific evidence and prepare documentation for a finding that greenhouse gas pollution endangers public health and welfare, the newspaper said.  There is wide expectation that Jackson will act by April 2, the second anniversary of a Supreme Court decision that found that EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse pollution under the U.S. Clean Air Act.

Please note that Carbon Dioxide is Not a Pollutant.

Truth and Reality Exiting Stage Left.  Ignoring the environment, especially climate change, is not only sensible at first glance, it is completely sensible because CO2 is not a problem.  Obama must know if he doesn't fix the economy anything else he does becomes madness.  So hopefully he will have sanity about climate change forced upon him.

Politics in the Guise of Pure Science.  Why, since President Obama promised to "restore science to its rightful place" in Washington, do some things feel not quite right?  First there was Steven Chu, the physicist and new energy secretary, warning The Los Angeles Times that climate change could make water so scarce by century's end that "there's no more agriculture in California" and no way to keep the state's cities going, either.  Then there was the hearing in the Senate to confirm another physicist, John Holdren, to be the president's science adviser.  Dr. Holdren was asked about some of his gloomy neo-Malthusian warnings in the past, like his calculation in the 1980s that famines due to climate change could leave a billion people dead by 2020.

The Doomsday Bias:  In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama took a dig at his backward predecessor by promising to "restore science to its rightful place" in America.  So why, days before he was sworn in, did Obama choose a failed prophet of the apocalypse to become his most influential scientist? ... [Dr. John P.] Holdren's particular brand of science is infected by what we can only call a doomsday bias.  Over the past 40 years, he has warned of population-growth induced "ecocide," "global cooling," global warming due to heat dissipation from power plants, nuclear Armageddon, and — this week — "climate disruption" caused by increased concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Obama's Biggest Radical.  When Barack Obama nominated John P. Holdren as his Science Adviser last December 20, the president-elect stated "promoting science isn't just about providing resources" but "ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology."  In nominating John Holdren, his words could scarcely have taken a more Orwellian ring.  Some critics have noted Holdren's penchant for making apocalyptic predictions that never come to pass, and categorizing all criticism of his alarmist views as not only wrong but dangerous.

Obama lied; the economy died.  Our president shares a fascinating idea about energy with most of what used to be known as the "small is beautiful" crowd.  It is a curious phenomenon that one needs a very big government to enforce the beauty of small.  As Mr. Obama's energy secretary, Steven Chu, said last year:  The price of electricity in America is "anomalously low."  You see how much smarter that Nobel prize winner is than you.  You probably thought you were already spending enough on electricity and fuel.

Update on the "Chu Effect".  One month ago, Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu warned of apocalyptic drought in California.  "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California."  And, he added, "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going" either."  USA today warned:  "Calif. facing worst drought in modern history"[.]  Almost immediately after Dr. Chu's pronouncement, the rain and snow started in earnest.  As of today, all California Snowtel stations report normal snow depth and water content, as do all stations in Colorado where California gets much of their water from.

Cap-and-trade plan will sink Michigan.  President Barack Obama's proposed cap-and-trade system on greenhouse gas emissions is a giant economic dagger aimed at the nation's heartland — particularly Michigan.  It is a multibillion-dollar tax hike on everything that Michigan does, including making things, driving cars and burning coal.  The president is asking for a system of government limits on carbon emissions.  The right to emit carbon would be auctioned off to generate revenue for more government spending programs.

Dems' Climate Change Power Grab Hidden in Spending Bill.  Using a massive $410 billion spending bill as a cloak, Democrat leaders in Congress have been caught attempting to create almost limitless new federal powers to regulate climate change without any public notice, public comment, or public debate.  The provision slipped into this bill would allow the Department of Interior to regulate all greenhouse gas emissions across the entire country based on the listing of the polar bear as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Obama's energy policy will increase dependence on foreign oil.  Ethanol subsidies began in 1979.  Ethanol has had 30 years of taxpayer-assisted experience.  Ethanol is the only "feasible" alternative renewable biofuel in the competition.  All other biofuels lack the production potential that ethanol has.  According to the latest data from the Renewable Fuels Association, ethanol production is currently averaging 0.60 million barrels per day.  At the subsidy of 51¢ per gallon, this amount of ethanol production costs taxpayers over $4 Billion in 2008.  The ethanol future looks much worse.  The "Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007" required maximum ethanol production of 2.35 million barrels per day by 2022.  But, this amount of ethanol production will require the entire corn crop in the US, every kernel of corn.

Obama climate plan could cost $2 trillion.  President Obama's climate plan could cost industry close to $2 trillion, nearly three times the White House's initial estimate of the so-called "cap-and-trade" legislation, according to Senate staffers who were briefed by the White House.

Kerry, Boxer:  U.S. 'Needs' Cap-and-Trade on Carbon Emissions Even if Energy Costs Rise.  Democratic Sens. John Kerry and Barbara Boxer told CNSNews.com that the nation must adopt the Obama administration's cap-and-trade proposal to reduce carbon emissions, even if it results in massive increases in gasoline and electricity prices.

Did someone mention cap and trade?

Obama's science adviser starts job.  [Scroll down]  The Senate also confirmed former Oregon State University marine biologist Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees ocean and atmospheric research and the National Weather Service.  Lubchenco, who specialized in overfishing and climate change at Oregon State University, is the first woman to head NOAA.  A member of the Pew Oceans Commission, Lubchenco has recommended steps to overcome crippling damage to the world's oceans from overfishing and pollution and had expressed optimism for change after George W. Bush's presidency.

An obvious power grab:
 EPA:  Global Warming Threatens Public Health, Welfare.  The Environmental Protection Agency sent a proposal to the White House on Friday [3/20/2009] finding that global warming is endangering the public's health and welfare, according to several sources, a move that could have far-reaching implications for the nation's economy and environment.

EPA moving toward carbon regulation.  Taking another step toward regulating emissions of greenhouse gases, the Obama administration's Environmental Protection Agency is declaring that global warming poses a threat to public health.

Consensus or censorship?  The Environmental Protection Agency has submitted a "finding" to the White House Office of Management and Budget that will force the Obama administration to decide whether to limit greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.  If adopted, new laws and regulations will likely follow that have the potential to change our lifestyles and limit our freedoms.  None of these laws and regulations will be preceded by debate.  They will be imposed on us by fundamentalist politicians and scientists who have swallowed the Kool-Aid and declared global warming as fact — end of discussion.

The article above was also posted under "Silencing the Skeptics in the Global Warming Debate."

Government Should Compel Consumers to Use Alternative Energy, Congressman Says.  Government policy should be crafted to raise the price of carbon-emitting energy sources so consumers are compelled to choose alternative energy, House Democratic Conference Chairman John Larson (D-Conn.) told CNSNews.com on Thursday.  Larson agreed that such a policy would likely result in higher electricity prices for consumers but said this is needed to protect the environment from the possible "catastrophic results" of not implementing a pro-green energy policy.

The Editor says...
 What exactly are the "catastrophic results" which we must pay to prevent?  Where is the proof that catastrophe will result, and that it can be prevented, and that the government has any goal other than expansion of government?

The Greens Hate Energy, America, and You.  "There's nothing like a fresh start. On his first day in office, President Obama could make four decisions that would start 2009 with a 'clean slate' of energy policies," said Friends of the Earth[.  A]t the same time, the Sierra Club announced its own "Clean Slate Energy Agenda" that — surprise — was the same.  The focus of both is on energy use and accessibility.  Both want a lot LESS energy use.  Along with all other environmental organizations both use the bogeyman of "global warming" to demand huge reductions in "emissions." ... This is the objective of one of President Obama's earliest executive orders.  Driving up the cost of owning and operating a car directly strikes at the ability of Americans to be mobile and independent.  Justifying it as necessary to reduce global warming is just a big fat lie.

A Cooling Trend Toward Global Warming.  Over the past several years, it appeared that our society was doomed to succumb to what Weather Channel founder John Coleman has described as "the greatest scam in history":  anthropogenic (human caused) global warming (AGW).  For two decades there has been an incessant drumbeat of propaganda attributing every weather-related event to an increase in carbon dioxide caused by the burning of fossil fuels.  With the election of a president who is solidly in the global-warming-alarmist camp ... the passage of legislation causing some form of economy-crippling energy taxation seemed to be a foregone conclusion.

Going to Cuba is okay but...
 US wants limits on Antarctic tourism.  The Obama administration is pushing to protect Antarctica's fragile environment by imposing mandatory limits on the size of cruise ships sailing there and the number of passengers they bring ashore.

Climate bill could trigger lawsuit landslide.  Self-proclaimed victims of global warming or those who "expect to suffer" from it — from beachfront property owners to asthmatics — for the first time would be able to sue the federal government or private businesses over greenhouse gas emissions under a little-noticed provision slipped into the House climate bill.  Environmentalists say the measure was narrowly crafted to give citizens the unusual standing to sue the U.S. government as a way to force action on curbing emissions.  But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sees a new cottage industry for lawyers.

Instead of drilling for oil, Obama tilts at windmills.  [Interior Secretary Ken] Salazar claims wind turbines off the Atlantic can produce enough electricity to replace the 1 million megawatts currently being generated by coal, natural gas, nuclear, biomass and other energy sources.  "Secretary Salazar is living in fantasy land," Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, told The Examiner.  The wind currently generates less than 1 percent of our electricity needs, he said, adding that "we would need to install 309,587 giant turbines — about 172 turbines per mile of coast — and hope the wind blows 24 hours a day, seven days a week," while paying twice as much for electricity as we do now.  This is the road to economic ruin.

Messing with Mother Nature:  [Scroll down]  So, today I am reading my local paper and see an article where the President's science advisor, John Holdren, has an idea about getting the temperature back down.  He says we should shoot a bunch of dirt into the upper atmosphere.  I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea, I am not anti-science.  I like science.  But I like my science to have been field tested and verified by the scientific method.

Deeper In Red From Going Green.  The administration tells the country it can revive the economy with a "green" stimulus.  But, like government-provided universal health care, where it's been tried in another nation, it hasn't worked.

Obama administration declares greenhouse gases a threat to public health.  Environmentalists are celebrating the so-called "endangerment finding" as the biggest statement yet that the federal government, after years of downplaying the dangers of climate change under the Bush administration, is now preparing to act boldly to combat it.  This is a "landmark moment in environmental history," Frank O'Donnell, president of the environmental group Clean Air Watch, said in a press release anticipating the decision.

Obama's Energy Policy Driven by Ideology, not Reason.  What Obama lacks in leadership, substance and management skills, he more than makes up for with rhetoric and ideological zeal.  Time and again Obama shows he will use his power to drive the left-wing agenda without regard to economic consequences or loss of liberty.  Moreover, with the liberal holy grail of penalizing fossil fuel use in his grasp, it's doubtful Obama will shy away.

Obama Says High-Speed Rail Will Foster Energy Independence.  President Barack Obama called Thursday for the country to move swiftly to a system of high-speed rail travel, saying it will relieve congestion, help clean the air and save on energy.

Energy Secretary Offers Dire Global Warming Prediction.  Caribbean nations face "very, very scary" rises in sea level and intensifying hurricanes, and Florida, Louisiana and even northern California could be overrun with rising water levels due to global warming triggered by carbon-based greenhouse gases, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Saturday [4/18/2009].  Chu's comments followed meetings with environmental ministers attending the fifth Summit of the Americas.  He did not shy away from the most perilous predictions about the potential effects of global warming.

Obama flunks Global Warming 101 on Fargo.  President Obama used recent flooding in Fargo, North Dakota to push his misguided belief in global warming.  His comment, "If you look at the flooding that's going on right now in North Dakota and you say to yourself, 'If you see an increase of two degrees, what does that do, in terms of the situation there?'" is speculative and completely wrong.

Global Warming Overreach.  Cap and trade was already going to be a brawl, but the two [Waxman and Pelosi] upped the ante by including tougher targets and restrictions.  If that weren't enough, they rolled in every other item on the green wish list:  a renewable electricity standard; a low-carbon fuel standard; a broader renewable fuels policy; new efficiency standards.  Any one of these is a monumental fight on its own.  Put together they risk an intra-party committee mutiny.

On Earth Day, Obama pushes ambitious climate agenda.  President Bill Clinton marked Earth Day in 1994 by promising to "green" the White House from its landscaping to its copy machines.  But President Barack Obama and his supporters pledged themselves to a far more ambitious goal on Tuesday — combating climate change all over the world.

Energy Sec. now admits he was 'Silly' to call for $8 per gallon gas in U.S..  REP. STEARNS:  No.  But somehow, your statement, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the ($8 a gallon) levels in Europe," doesn't that sound a little bit silly in retrospect for you to say that?  SEC. STEVEN CHU:  Yes.

'Green' Obama wants us to pay.  For all Barack Obama's talk about rejecting new trade barriers, there is an increasing awareness around the world that the United States is planning to introduce climate-change legislation that amounts to little more than green protectionism.

It's Not Easy Being Green.  In Barack Obama's America, there are no costs and benefits.  There are only "false choices" that must be avoided lest we fall into the dangerous trap of old thinking.  We can increase deficit spending and improve budgetary discipline, expand health care funding and reduce costs, and pay for social programs unimagined by LBJ with the tax rates of Bill Clinton. ... Unfortunately, the laws of economics cannot simply be repealed and benefits still do come at a cost.

The Great Government CO2 Power Grab.  The inevitable has happened.  The Obama government has declared CO2 — a nutrient required by plants to live, and a gas exhaled with your every breath — a pollutant.  Let there be rejoicing in the ranks of activists.  Do what we say!  Now, when I say that what occurred was "inevitable" it means that there was nothing anybody could have done to stop the government from doing what it lusted to do.  No facts would have stopped them, no arguments, no evidence, no sober quantifications of uncertainty.  This was going to happen as soon as Obama was elected.  Control is what was wanted and control is what was had.

Obama wants to make America more like Europe.  Top of the president's change list is the way we consume energy.  He believes our use of carbon-based fuels is causing the globe to heat up, with all the dire consequences conjured up by Al Gore as he sits in the library of his home, probably the largest single consumer of energy of any private residence in America.  By one means or another, the president will make the use of oil, natural gas and especially coal so expensive that consumers will be forced to use less energy, and rely more for the energy we do use on costly wind and solar power, paid for with tax-funded subsidies or higher utility bills.

Obama sounds death knell for nuclear power.  Under the guise of cutting wasteful spending, President Obama is terminating support for the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository in Nevada.  While not unexpected, this development means that there will be no place to store nuclear waste, probably for decades, other than at temporary storage locations at each of the nation's nuclear power plants.

Obama nukes nuclear storage.  For more than two decades, the Congress, the president and the sprawling federal bureaucracy have worked to find a safe place to store the waste of nuclear reactors.  Yucca Mountain, a remote formation in the deserts of Nevada, was the chosen site.  Now President Obama, bowing to the demands of a fraction of anti-nuclear activists, has thrown 22 years of hard work up in the air.

Penny-Wise And Megawatt Foolish.  Among the Lilliputian cuts in the budget is the termination of the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.  Thus, a "shovel ready" renewable resource that emits no greenhouse gases is shoved aside.

Keep Yucca Mountain project alive.  While President Barack Obama's newly proposed budget would finally allow Nevada to rid itself of a nuclear waste dump planned to be buried in tunnels deep under Yucca Mountain, it would leave Illinois with the shaft.  Obama's decision to zero out the Nevada nuclear waste repository is a betrayal of his Illinois constituents, forcing nuclear power plants here to continue to "temporarily" store more than 7,000 tons of dangerous, radioactive waste — more than any other state — in cooling ponds near rivers and Lake Michigan.

Yucca Mountain Decision Ignores Science.  Seldom in history has such a small piece of real estate been subjected to such thorough and comprehensive [study].  And yet the selection of this site has been mired in political controversy from the very beginning.  What has been ignored in the controversy are the extensive scientific analyses conducted in support of a proposed repository, along with both national and international peer reviews.  The site has been studied exhaustively for 30 years now, and as much as $10 billion has been expended in scientific research.

Barack's Bi-Polar Nuclear Policy:  President Barack Obama recently took drastic steps forward to carry through on his campaign promise to close the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility before it ever opens for business.  His Department of Energy (DOE) successfully petitioned judges hearing license requests for the dump site to cancel the hearings.  The final step in Obama's effort to kill the project for good will be to completely withdraw the DOE application for Yucca Mountain.

Malice in Obamaland.  The [nuclear energy] industry has been hampered by reams of regulatory red tape demanded by environmentalists in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island incident, which effectively ended new plant construction. ... Mr. Obama's budget proposal also zeroed out funding for Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, leaving America with no long-term solution for storing spent nuclear fuel.  Without a storage solution, there is no way forward for nuclear power.  Weighing these two contradictory moves, the president appears to be urging the industry onward along the familiar path to nowhere.

More about Yucca Mountain.

Global Warming Scam To Cost Americans Trillions.  This proposed global warming tax-and-spend scam would be one of the biggest financial assaults ever perpetrated against a free people.  Forgetting for a moment that the whole anthropogenic global warming myth is the biggest fraud ever sold to a free people, the plans the Obama Administration has to lighten the pockets of the American people is truly staggering.

Obama budget rescinds oil, gas industry tax breaks.  The oil and gas industry is taking a hard hit in President Barack Obama's proposed budget.  According to details released Thursday about the 2010 budget, the plan would rescind tax breaks at a cost to the industry of $52.4 billion over the next 10 years.

Obama and the Alternative Energy Fiasco:  It's only a matter of time before President Barack Obama's vast popularity runs aground on his energy policies.  In the name of saving the planet from global warming, he has delayed new oil drilling, an action that will have major political repercussions once the world economy recovers.  Instead of using some the stimulus billions to produce more gas and oil, Obama's wild-eyed supporters dream of "renewable" energy derived from corn, wind, sunshine, and even grass.  With the appointment of extremists like climate czar Carol Browner and science adviser John Holdren, Obama has placed his administration's environmental policy in the hands of radicals.

Cracks in the Facade:  Obama is ignoring the potential of coal, nuclear, gas, and oil, intent on cap-and-trade, and pie-in-the-sky present-day Gore-ish wind and solar.  The result will be that our energy bills will skyrocket.  Our vulnerability will increase.  Our overt enemies will gain leverage, and covert ones will keep using coal and nuclear for economic advantage.  This is a disastrous energy policy and apparently has been outsourced to the Al Gore cadres.  We have a rendezvous with real trouble when the global economy rebounds and demands more oil and gas.

The Green Wind Of Destruction.  To say we're skeptical of the administration's claim that green jobs will bolster economic recovery is putting it mildly.  It's much easier to believe that needless environmental rules will cause widespread job losses.

Environmentalists happy with Obama; industry less so.  In the nearly four months since taking office, the Obama administration has moved quickly, relentlessly and without apology to roll back the natural resource and public lands policies of its predecessor.  Though they have yet to lay out their own vision in detail, Salazar and other administration officials have left no doubt that they consider the Bush approach misguided and unfairly weighted toward timber, mining, oil and other interests.

Obama administration trying to make unequal things equal.  Human production of CO2 causing global warming or climate change is the biggest deception in history.  Previously this statement met with incredulity.  How could the entire world or a majority of scientists be fooled?  Now after the almost complete collapse of the global financial system people understand.  The Obama government is fooled because it doesn't want to understand and it suits their political agenda.  They ignore facts and abandon logic to produce policies guaranteed to continue US economic decline.

Yucca Mountain, Though on Hold, Would Be Very Safe.  President Barack Obama has proposed a budget that would eliminate funding for the nearly completed Yucca Mountain storage facility for spent nuclear fuel.  Proponents vow not to abandon the plan, and they have strong scientific reasons to support it.  Yucca Mountain was selected as the nation's first repository for high-level nuclear waste because of its many natural barriers preventing the escape of radioactive particles.  These include the mountain's surface soils, its overall physical shape, the thick rock layers above and below the levels used for storage, and the very impermeable materials located below the area's deep water table.

Obama Budget Abandons Yucca Mountain.  In a significant energy policy redirection, the Obama administration appears poised to pull the plug on funds for permanent nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.  President Barack Obama's recently unveiled budget eliminates funding for the Yucca Mountain geologic repository, in spite of years of planning and almost $8 billion invested in the project.

Obama's European Energy Vacation.  Obama is absolutely right that we can learn a lot from the European approach to energy.  But he is dead wrong on what those lessons are. We should study what the Europeans are doing with regard to energy and the environment, and then generally do the opposite.

Save the Planet — Paint the Roof.  The other day, the current Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu was speaking at the "St James's Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium" in London which, if it is not the most pretentiously named meeting on the planet, it must be among the top five, told his laureateal colleagues that we should paint much of the world white to reflect heat back up into space and, thus, cure global warming.  I am not making this up.

Greens Want Black and White.  Energy Secretary Steven Chu appeared at noted climatologist Prince Charles' symposium in London today [5/26/2009], and expressed the Obama administration's support for painting roofs white and cars black in order to reflect energy and fight global warming. ... This is the kind of dictatorial looniness that might awaken the general public to the fact that greens are stark-raving mad.  In fact, the public is already awake in California.

You Will Wear White and You Will Like It.  If we would just inflate our tires and get regular tune-ups, drilling for oil would be unnecessary.  Now one of the many czars of the Oz-bama Regime has blithely suggested we should all be ordered to paint the roofs of our houses white — that doing so would equal taking every car on the planet off the roads for eleven years.  I wonder if whatever he's smoking is negatively affecting climate change.  But why stop there?  If white roofs are such an energy conservation miracle, surely making all cars white would help a lot too, and since we are soon to have only Oz-bama Motors achieving the impossible 35-miles-per-gallon average, it'll be easy to issue the little eggs with wheels in one color.

Levelized Cost of New Electricity Generating Technologies.  Analysis shows wind and solar power are ridiculously expensive, compared to natural gas, coal and nuclear power.

No Energy from this Executive.  "As I've often said, in the short term, as we transition to renewable energy," President Obama stated in April, "we can and should increase our domestic production of oil and natural gas. ... We still need more oil, we still need more gas.  If we've got some here in the United States that we can use, we should find it and do so in an environmentally sustainable way."  Does anyone believe Obama was serious about this? Given his practice of misdirection — saying one thing, doing another — no one should have.  Now, nearly five months into the Obama presidency, it's clear he didn't mean a word of it.  His administration is impeding, not promoting, increased production of oil and gas, as it is of coal and nuclear power.

America's Nuclear Power Lag:  While President Barack Obama welcomed the "peaceful development" of nuclear power plants in Iran and other countries which do not see themselves as friends of the United States, he and his liberal Democratic colleagues seem intent on killing off the remnants of the nuclear power industry in the United States.  Although candidate Obama said he would consider nuclear power use if a reasonable solution can be found to storing nuclear waste, President Obama has taken absolutely no action in developing civilian nuclear power.  The comprehensive energy program of the Democratic Congress, the Waxman-Markey bill does not even mention nuclear power.

FutureGen 'Clean Coal' Project Scaled Back by Obama.  The scope of the stalled FutureGen "clean coal" project in central Illinois is being scaled back by the Obama administration in an effort to revive the plans for a coal-fired power plant that spews fewer gases into the air.  The U.S. Energy Department said today [6/12/2009] it will support a modified version of the proposal, seeking to build a plant in Mattoon, Illinois, that can capture and bury 60 percent of its carbon emissions.  The Bush administration had crafted the original idea for a plant that could trap almost 100 percent of emissions, and then canceled it after costs exceeded estimates.

What Europeanization Will Really Mean:  Since Mr. Obama and his friends would like us to be more like Europeans, my wife and I recently went on a great explore to find out what life is really like in Europe and what changes we should expect.  Get out your bike because you will soon be riding it everywhere.  That means you too, Grandma — no exceptions.  The best way to cut down on that nasty CO2 is to chuck your cars and get on a two-wheeler.  Of course, after a couple years with the government running two of our three major car companies, a bicycle may become an attractive alternative.

White House Sounds Alarm On Climate Change.  Harmful effects from global warming are already here and worsening, warns the first climate report from Barack Obama's presidency in the strongest language on climate change ever to come out of the White House.

Watermelon Environmentalism, Green on the Outside, Red on the Inside.  President Obama, who wants to emphasize science, has chosen Carol Browner for his "Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change," a new post being dubbed the "Climate Czar."  Browner's recent career will be of interest to Americans struggling with a weak economy and cold weather.  Carol Browner is not a climate scientist but an attorney and bureaucrat who ran the EPA during both terms of the Clinton Administration, so she does not exactly represent "change."  She also put in a stint with the Socialist International, "the worldwide organization of social democratic, socialist and labour parties.

Obama Budget Abandons Yucca Mountain.  In a significant energy policy redirection, the Obama administration appears poised to pull the plug on funds for permanent nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.  President Barack Obama's recently unveiled budget eliminates funding for the Yucca Mountain geologic repository, in spite of years of planning and almost $8 billion invested in the project.  Yucca Mountain may be in limbo, but it is not the only option available for dealing with spent nuclear fuel.

Strong words on climate change.  Global warming has already caused more heavy downpours, the rise of temperatures and sea levels, rapidly retreating glaciers, and altered river flows, according to the document released yesterday by the White House science adviser and other top officials.

Government Study Warns of Climate Change Effects.  The impact of a changing climate is already being felt across the United States, like shifting migration patterns of butterflies in the West and heavier downpours in the Midwest and East, according to a government study to be released on Tuesday [6/16/2009].  Even if the nation takes significant steps to slow emissions of heat-trapping gases, the impact of global warming is expected to become more severe in coming years, the report says, affecting farms and forests, coastlines and floodplains, water and energy supplies, transportation and human health.

Here's the rebuttal:
 U.S. Climate Report Assailed.  The new federal report on climate change gets a withering critique from Roger Pielke Jr., who says that it misrepresents his own research and that it wrongly concludes that climate change is already responsible for an increase in damages from natural disasters.

Time to Laugh at Obama and Company.  How many Americans does it take to screw in a light bulb?  According to President-elect Barack Obama, 2.5 million.  Obama has a new plan, he says, to save or create at least 2.5 million jobs.  "We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs," Obama said.  "That won't just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year.  It will put people back to work."  This is inherently hilarious.  The president-elect of the United States actually believes that screwing in energy-efficient light bulbs will save or create millions of jobs.

Did someone mention fluorescent bulbs?

Obama's Mine Shaft:  Barack Obama's plan to bankrupt anyone building a new coal plant prioritizes global warming myths over U.S. energy independence.  It also wields government power punitively and will hurt the economy.

Obama's anti-oil team.  The president-elect is poised to hand environmental policy to people who want to punish petroleum.

NASA's Hansen to Obama:  Use Global Warming to Redistribute Wealth.  Climate realists around the world have contended for years that the real goal of alarmists such as Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his followers is to use the fear of man-made global warming to redistribute wealth.

NASA's James Hansen to the Rescue!  NASA's James Hansen has written a personal letter to President-elect Obama outlining his plans for saving the planet from global warming.  Hansen has been wrong so many times about the "inevitability" of global warming that most of us have lost count.  But it is hard to be wrong — when it feels so right.

NASA tells Barack Obama Australia is destroying earth with coal emissions.  Australia's use of coal and carbon emissions policies are guaranteeing the "destruction of much of the life on the planet", a leading NASA scientist has written in a letter to Barack Obama.  The head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Professor James Hansen, has written an open letter to Barack Obama calling for a moratorium on coal-fired power stations and the use of next-generation nuclear power.

Bailing Out Wind.  Obama announces his energy team without mentioning a green source of renewable energy that could create jobs, reduce carbon emissions and reinvigorate a vital manufacturing sector — nuclear power.

Energy squad to wean US off oil addiction.  Barack Obama intends to round out his environmental and natural resources team with a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and three former Environmental Protection Agency officials from the Clinton administration.  The president-elect's energy policy team will be responsible for implementing a far-reaching plan to wean the US off Middle Eastern oil and bolster the economy by increasing energy efficiency and building renewable energy plants.

The Editor says...
 If you like paying $8 a gallon for gasoline, you should be in hog heaven by the time Obama implements his harebrained schemes.  He will appease the environmentalists, but no one else.

Environmentalists draft bold roadmap for Obama.  The [environmental] groups call for cutting funding for nuclear energy, reinstating a moratorium on drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and reconsidering recent oil and gas leases in some parts of Alaska.  The bold outline from groups working to protect oceans, increase park space and reduce pollution shows that the environmental community is going on the offensive, after eight years of playing defense.

Obama Pledges to 'Skyrocket' Electricity Prices.  President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to force electricity prices to "skyrocket" and to "bankrupt" any new coal-fired power plants in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that surfaced November 2.  With the planned imposition of strict limits on carbon dioxide emissions, electricity providers would have to purchase prohibitively expensive alternative power from sources such as wind and solar.  Obama pledged he would not allow electricity providers to use less-expensive nuclear power or clean coal technology any time in the near future.

The Warm Turns.  In a speech at Harvard last November, Harvard physicist John Holden, President-elect Obama's choice to be his science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, presented a "top 10" list of warming solutions.  Topping the list was "limiting population," as if man was a plague upon the earth.  This is a major tenet of green dogma that bemoans the fact that the pestilence called mankind comes with cars, factories and overconsumption of fossil fuels and other resources.

'Santa' Klaus Takes on Global Warming.  [Scroll down]  Enter the Barack Obama administration.  Between new "Climate Czar" Carole Browner and Science Advisor John Holdren, the True Believers are now taking over Federal policy on energy and the weather.  (The weather?  Yes!  We are now blessed with an official bureaucracy tasked to change the weather.  It includes NASA Goddard Space Center's James Hanson, who believes that CEOs of energy companies "should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature" if they spread foul skepticism about global warming.)

Advocates for Action on Global Warming Chosen as Obama's Top Science Advisers.  President-elect Barack Obama has selected two of the nation's most prominent scientific advocates for a vigorous response to climate change to serve in his administration's top ranks, according to sources, sending the strongest signal yet that he will reverse Bush administration policies on energy and global warming.

NOAA's Ark.  President-elect Obama chooses as his science adviser and head of our weather research agency two global warming activists who believe your SUV is driving us over a climate cliff. ... He nominated Harvard physicist John Holden to be his science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, and marine biologist Jane Lubchenco to head to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  Both are global warming true believers.

Climate czar left no electronic trail.  Don't bother looking for any electronic records of Carol Browner's first stint as a federal government executive.  The soon-to-be Obama administration climate czar intentionally didn't keep many.  In sworn testimony obtained by The Washington Times, Ms. Browner disclosed that she refused to use e-mail when she served as President Clinton's Environmental Protection Agency chief in the 1990s for fear of leaving a digital trail.

Hot air from Obama:  In one of his first public policy statements as America's president-elect, Barack Obama focused on climate change, and clearly stated both his priorities and the facts on which these priorities rest.  Unfortunately, both are weak, or even wrong. ... Obama went on to say why he wants to prioritise global warming policies:  "The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.  Sea levels are rising.  Coastlines are shrinking.  We've seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season." ... These statements are — however eloquent — seriously wrong or misleading.  Sea levels are rising, but they have been rising at least since the early 1800s.

Less Power To Him.  Barack Obama's apparent choice for Energy secretary is physicist Steven Chu. ... He has criticized "free market forces" for not cutting carbon dioxide emissions and supports "a combination of fiscal policies and downright regulations" for controlling CO2.  He claims coal — which today fuels hundreds of power plants — is an "obstacle to progress," and has said "coal is my worst nightmare."  And he shows an alarmist's fear of global warming.  Chu is also a zealous advocate of alternative energy, using his position as director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California to push policymakers to remake the facility into a center for researching biofuels and solar energy.  An opponent of coal who happens to be a global warming reactionary is not suitable to be in charge of the nation's energy policy.

Global Warming's Poor, Huddled Masses.  Barack Obama doesn't have a mandate for his global warming policies.  He doesn't even have a mandate from his most fervent supporters. ... Obama's America wouldn't just welcome your tired, your poor, your huddled masses:  It would create them.  It's highly doubtful Americans are willing to make this sacrifice.

Obama's Carbon Busters.  After the selection of a largely centrist economic team, liberals have been asking when President-elect Obama would give them a seat at the table.  Well, now we know, and Americans should strap themselves in.  Mr. Obama is stocking his energy shop with the greenest of greens who want to move fast on a very aggressive climate agenda.  Here come the carbon busters.

Obama's Energy Policy:  Al Gore's Pipe Dream.  Obama also pledges to put a million "plug-in hybrid cars" on the road by 2015 — by offering a $7,000 tax credit to anyone who buys one.  Of course, Obama's energy proposals haven't won him friends in the coal industry, which he has essentially vowed to shut down.

Obama climate pledge "very positive" — UN official.  Barack Obama's pledge to work to reduce emissions sharply by 2020 is a "huge signal" of encouragement to countries negotiating a new climate pact, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat said on Wednesday [11/19/2008].  The U.S. president-elect said on Tuesday the United States would engage vigorously in climate change talks when he is president, and he pledged to work to reduce emissions sharply by 2020, despite the financial crisis.

The New Landlord.  Get ready for national park access by mass transit in order to minimize automobile usage.  Yosemite, Zion, and Grand Canyon have already instituted shuttle bus services, with Yosemite boasting nine routes.  Nothing scares the Chambers of Commerce of "Gateway communities" around Yellowstone more than the idea of having to tell tourists they can't drive on the Park's extensive highway system.  But the green dream calls for car-free national parks.  [No snowmobiles, RVs, or motorcycles.]

Climate first for Obama transition team.  After eight years out in the cold, Democrats in Washington DC are rushing to warm themselves by the White House fireplace.  And although research advocates may have to wait to see major science-policy positions in the new administration filled, a sense of the next president's priorities and style of governance is starting to emerge.

What can we expect from the Obama Administration?  [#5] [Expect an] end to almost all new drilling, new nuclear power stations, and a vast slowdown if not a stop on coal-fired power stations.  Expect California-style blackouts within two or three years, rolling across the nation, to be used as the excuse for rationing of energy, including fuel and electricity.

Obama's First 100 Days.  World peace will probably be first on the agenda.  Obama, as president, will give all those dictators a good talking to. ... Once Obama has shown these bad boys the error of their ways, he'll be ready to tackle his next big job  — saving the earth from melting.  Of course, this will require a temporary halt to capitalism but hey, ya gotta break a few eggs, right?  The bright side is, Obama will actually be able to deliver on a campaign promise — the promise to bankrupt the coal industry.

Green herring.  Mr. Obama wants to "implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050."  That is even more ambitious than the goal of a cap-and-trade bill that the Department of Energy estimates would cost between $444 billion and $1.3 trillion in reduced economic growth over two decades. ... Like a carbon tax, which achieves the same result more explicitly, a cap-and-trade system works only if it makes energy use (and the emissions associated with it) more expensive.

Second thoughts on warming:  President-elect Barack Obama wants to phase out coal-based electricity generation, switch to renewable energy and follow Europe's lead on climate change.  That could prove difficult.  Coal generates half of all U.S. electricity.  Wind provides less than 2 percent of all electricity and cannot be relied on when it's needed.  Europe's lead can't even be defined, much less followed.

Obama's Grand Experiment: Global Warming Cap-and-Trade Policy.  The prospect that President-elect Barack Obama may keep the Bush tax cuts until 2011 has some clinging to hope he will postpone his liberal ideas for the economy's sake.  There's little chance of that when it comes to global warming, however, an issue on which Obama puts his ideology first and the nation's economic growth second.

An Explosion of Green Lies.  As the Obama administration makes ready to assume power, the Greens are going crazy with campaigns denouncing coal as "dirty" and demanding an end to the use of all plastic bottles, claiming that a life-threatening component exists.  If this is so, don't you think we would know about it by now?  Plastic, of course, is made from oil and that too has been stigmatized for decades by the Greens.

Obama is the star pupil in the School of Climate Change.  Bernard Baruch said, "Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing."  Barack Obama promised a great deal.  He was rarely specific, but his generalities were interpreted to mean he would deal with each voter's specific concerns.  His promise of change was nothing new, but people believed it was different than any thing seen before in Washington.  He is not President yet, but already he has demonstrated an inability to satisfy the expectations raised by his eloquence and vagueness.

President-elect Barack Obama proposes economic suicide for US.  [Obama] talks blithely of allowing only "clean" coal-fired power plants, using "carbon capture" — burying the CO2 in holes in the ground — which would double the price of electricity, but the technology for which hasn't even yet been developed.  He then babbles on about "generating five million new green jobs".  This will presumably consist of hiring millions of Americans to generate power by running around on treadmills, to replace all those "dirty" coal-fired power stations which currently supply the US with half its electricity.  If this sounds like an elaborate economic suicide note, for what is still the earth's richest nation, it is still not enough for many environmentalists.

Obama to Declare Carbon Dioxide Dangerous Pollutant.  Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated should he win the presidential election on Nov. 4, opening the way for new rules on greenhouse gas emissions.  The Democratic senator from Illinois will tell the Environmental Protection Agency that it may use the 1990 Clean Air Act to set emissions limits on power plants and manufacturers, his energy adviser, Jason Grumet, said in an interview.

Hey kids! Let's create an International Court for the Environment!  Obama's election is really bringing them out of the woodwork, isn't it?  Every liberal kook in the world now feels enabled to advance any cockamamie idea they can come up with.  Try this one; a court to try nation's and companies that contribute too much to global warming.

Obama Out-Gores Gore at Climate Summit'.  The President-elect appeared to the green faithful on Tuesday [11/18/2008] in the form of a mammoth video image, and opened his pre-recorded pledge to "take the lead" in addressing global warming with these eerily familiar words:  "Few challenges facing America — and the world — are more urgent than combating climate change.  The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.  Sea levels are rising.  Coastlines are shrinking.  We've seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."

[The article goes on to pick Obama's argument apart, point by point, and show how each claim is false.]

Obama Embraces 'Green Path' in Economic Stimulus Plan.  President-elect Barack Obama is considering a stimulus package that will include a heavy dose of spending on environmentally friendly projects aimed at creating "green-collar jobs" and saving energy.

Economists raise doubts about alternative-energy spending.  Prompted by public concern over the economy and energy costs, President-elect Barack Obama and Democrats in control of Congress are touting a two-for-one solution:  spending billions of dollars on alternative-energy programs to create jobs and help lift the nation out of recession.

The Editor says...
 Note to Mr. Obama:  The economy doesn't work that way.  Government is parasitic — it does not create jobs or anything else.  It does not have money of its own to spend on half-baked ideas like yours.  The old Democrat tax-and-spend cycle never has lifted the nation out of anything.

Radical environmentalism is not just a hobby for tree-hugging Earth-worshiping hippies, as you can learn from this page.

Do you like paying $5.00 a gallon for gasoline?  The Democrat-controlled Congress has been obstructing the flow of oil for years.

Waxman to Push Global Warming Bill.  Comprehensive global warming legislation will be sent to the House floor by Memorial Day, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) announced Thursday [1/15/2009].  "Our committee will be acting quickly and decisively to reduce global warming and end our dependence on foreign oil," Waxman said.

The Editor says...
 First of all, neither Mr. Waxman nor anyone else can affect global temperatures, since he would be competing with sunspots, volcanoes and other natural forces that are far more powerful than he.  Secondly, the only way to "end our dependence on foreign oil" would be to eliminate the internal combustion engine and build dozens of new nuclear power plants.  The Democrat Party is practically owned by environmental lobbyists who consistently oppose nuclear power, so that's out.  And considering how Mr. Waxman and the other Democrats have been so protective of the auto industry lately — or at least the UAW — I'd say the internal combustion engine is safe for now.  Therefore Mr. Waxman appears to be wasting his breath on shallow and meaningless rhetoric.

Shovel-Ready Nukes.  Amazingly, with all the talk of shoveling money into infrastructure projects, no mention has been made of our energy needs, the jobs that can be created by expanding our energy infrastructure and the jobs that can be created with the additional energy provided.  To be sure, vast sums are planned for alternative energy sources such as wind farms and solar plants, but like the current stimulus packages they will take too long to affect the economy in any significant way.  Nuclear energy is a different matter.


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