No one will solve our energy problems for us

From The Washington Post:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, May 16 -- Saudi leaders told President Bush on Friday that they are doing all they can to increase oil production, gently turning aside the president's efforts to bring down prices more rapidly.

After a meeting with Bush and his advisers Friday afternoon, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi announced that the kingdom decided last week to increase production by about 300,000 barrels a day to meet increased demand from customers for June. That would take Saudi production to 9.4 million barrels a day. The kingdom's production capacity is 11.3 million barrels.

The Saudi increase is modest and appears unlikely to have much effect on record crude oil prices. Despite the announcement, crude oil prices in New York climbed $2.17 to $126.29 a barrel.

Bottom line: Why should the Saudis increase their oil production to help us if we are unwilling to increase our own oil production to help ourselves?

The United States has untapped reserves of oil in Alaska, off the West Coast, the East Coast and the Gulf Coast and we are unwilling to drill for them. We also have around 1.5 - 2.6 trillion barrels of oil in oil shale deposits. This gives the United States at least three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

In addition to this there is a process for liquefying coal and turning it into a motor fuel which is interchangeable with petroleum. The Germans developed the process during the Second World
War and South Africa continued development on the process, using it to supplement their own supplies of petroleum. We have more coal than the Saudis have oil.

If the United States had spent the money which it has wasted on impractical technologies like wind and solar power (not to mention the money we've poured down the ethanol rat-hole) on perfecting the liquefaction of coal and the extraction of oil from shale we would not only be energy independent but the world's largest exporter of of oil and oil substitutes.

Besides our failure to utilize our domestic sources of oil and coal we also ceased production of nuclear power plants for reasons which pass well beyond the realm of illogical and enter into the purely idiotic. America stopped building nuclear power plants because of a movie which depicted an accident at a nuclear power plant. This frightened the America public into abandoning the cleanest and safest method of large scale electrical power generation ever developed by man.

Add to all of this the fact that one of the reasons that US gasoline prices are so high is the fact that we have not built a new oil refinery in 30 years and so have to import refined gasoline.

The picture which emerges is stark and bleak. The United States is not serious about solving its energy problems. The Saudis are not stupid. Every fact I have just related is well known to them, as it is to all the other oil producing nations. As long as the people of the United States are unwilling to either reduce our standard of living to 19th century levels or exploit our own resources we will have little choice but to remain the prison yard bitch of OPEC.

We will continue to be treated to the spectacle of our president, whoever he or she is, making periodic trips to Riyad with his hat in his hand to beg the Saudis (who would now be part of the greater Empire of Saddam Hussein if it weren't for us) for relief from ever higher oil prices.

Until the American people put aside their idiotic and infantile obsession with the pseudo-religion of environmentalism and get serious about energy independence we will be chained to the most unstable and dangerous area of the globe. We will continue to send vast quantities of our hard earned wealth to corrupt dictators and monarchs who will use it to export militant Islam, fund terrorists and prop up their brutal regimes. And we will continue having to spend the lives and health of our young soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to protect brutal and corrupt Middle Eastern regimes from even more brutal and corrupt Middle Eastern regimes.

The American people must begin to act in a responsible and adult manner in regard to an energy policy. A policy which supports the continued growth of the American economy and the continued improvement of the American standard of living. We must put away fantasies of powering our "sustainable" society with the perfectly clean, perfectly safe, perfectly free and limitless energy of the sun, wind, tides and ocean currents (where everyone will have their own pair of cruelty-free sandals and a hemp fiber peasant shirt) with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the other illusions of childhood.

It is time for the American people, who have been lulled into a kind of perpetual adolescence by the security granted by our great wealth and power, to grow up and meet the challenges of the new century.

The law of unintended consequences bits 'em in the ass again

We had a moonbat commenter singing the praises of ethanol yesterday so I thought this piece from the Opinion Journal was well timed:

It was a scant two years ago that Georgia's Saxby Chambliss voted with 73 other giddy senators for an energy bill that required the nation to use 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol. Georgia's farmers loved corn-based ethanol; Georgia's agri-businesses loved corn-based ethanol; and all that meant that then-Agriculture Committee Chairman Chambliss loved corn-based ethanol, too.

Earlier this year, Mr. Chambliss introduced a bill calling for even greater ethanol use, though with one striking difference: The bill caps the amount of that fuel that can come from corn. Turns out Georgia's chicken farmers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia's pork producers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia's dairy industry hates corn-based ethanol; Georgia's food producers hate corn-based ethanol; Georgia's hunters hate corn-based ethanol. And all that means Mr. Chambliss has had to find a new biofuels religion.

The shine is off corn ethanol, and oh, what a comedown it has been. It was only in January that President Bush was calling for a yet a bijillion more gallons of the wonder-stuff in his State of the Union address, and Iowa's Chuck Grassley was practically doing the Macarena in his seat. And why shouldn't Mr. Grassley and fellow ethanol handmaidens have boogied? They'd forced their first mandate through Congress, corn farmers were rolling in dough, billions in taxpayer dollars were spurring dozens of new ethanol plants--and here was the commander-in-chief calling for yet more yellow dollars. All in the name of national security, too!

Corn ethanol seemed unstoppable, but a remarkable thing happened on the road from Des Moines. Just as the smart people warned, the government's decision to play energy market God and forcibly divert huge amounts of corn stocks into ethanol has played havoc with key sectors of the economy. Corn prices have nearly doubled, which means livestock owners can't afford to feed their animals, and food and drink manufacturers are struggling to buy corn and corn syrup. Environmentalists are sour over new stresses on farmland; international aid groups are moaning that the U.S. is cutting back its charitable food giving, and many of these folks are taking out their anger on Congress.

Call it a case study in how a powerful lobby can overplay its hand. While many members are still publicly touting corn ethanol, privately they are quietly backing away from another round of corn-mania. The most extraordinary sign was the Senate Energy Committee's recent ethanol bill, hailed by Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici as "bipartisan" legislation for more "homegrown fuels." What the committee didn't mention in its press release was that it had built the legislation around Mr. Chambliss's cap on corn ethanol (at 15 billion gallons), and that the rest of the 32 billion-gallon-a-year mandate would have to come from other (still imaginary) sources, say switchgrass. The bill passed 20-3.

It's taken politicians a while to catch on to these anti-ethanol vibes, but they've now got the picture. At an agriculture conference in Indianapolis last fall, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson spoke, delivering their usual fare about how ethanol was the greatest thing since sliced corn bread. They expected warm applause; in the past the entire ag community united around helping their brother corn farmers make a buck. But now that ethanol is literally taking food from their beasts' mouths, much of that community has grown less friendly. According to one attendee, Messrs. Daniels, Johanns and Johnson were later slammed with snippy ethanol questions from angry livestock owners, much to their dazed surprise. Word is that even the presidential candidates--who usually can say no wrong about ethanol while touring the Midwest--are having to be more selective about where they make their remarks.

Things are even hotter in Washington, where lobbying groups are firming up their positions against corn ethanol. The hugely influential National Cattlemen's Beef Association has gone so far as to outline a series of public demands, including an end to any government tax credits (subsidies) for ethanol and an axe to the import tariff on foreign ethanol. Put another way, the cattlemen are so angry that they are demanding free markets and free trade--a first. Maybe ethanol really is a miracle fuel. In any event, expect the ethanol call to get harder for Plains state senators such as Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and Byron Dorgan.

The National Turkey Federation estimates its feed costs have gone up nearly $600 million annually and is surely letting loose on members from turkey states such as Minnesota and Missouri. The National Chicken Council, which represents companies that produce, process and market chickens, has been hitting the southern political caucus, putting pressure on senators from big poultry states such as Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama. Chicken giant Tyson's, the second largest employer in Arkansas (after Wal-Mart), even felt the need to warn about the effect of rising corn prices on its business in its first quarter earnings statement. Food and drink manufacturers, which rely heavily on corn and corn syrup for their products, are also making the Washington rounds. The Grocery Manufacturers Association this week called for Congress to undertake a study before it imposed a bigger ethanol mandate. Soft-drink companies such as Coca-Cola (of Mr. Chambliss's Georgia) are also up in arms.

From the other side, green groups are grousing about the environmental consequences of intensive corn farming. International aid organizations are complaining that ethanol is raising the overall cost of food and diverting grain from poor countries. Ducks Unlimited, part of Washington's "hooks and bullets" conservation lobby, sported a recent article in its magazine complaining that farmers are taking idle land out of conservation programs--land currently home to ducks--and using it for corn farming again.

All this pressure is beginning to hit home. Ethanol isn't going away anytime soon; you can't unring a bill. But senators are said to be readying amendments to offer to the new ethanol bill that would use triggers or waivers to further water down the corn element. Turns out there are huge economic consequences to Congress micromanaging energy policy, and all to aid its campaign donors in agribusiness. A lesson the U.S. is now learning the hard way.

Like I said, when the government involves itself in decisions which should only be made by the market the results will always be bad. If the only effect of politicians' blundering was to harm the politicians themselves, say by inflicting unendurable physical torment on the bodies of the politicians so that they writhed on the ground screaming and begging someone to shoot them and put them out of their misery, then we could pull up the lawn chairs and break out the beer and pork rinds and enjoy the show.

But the negative consequences of political intrusions into the economy do not harm the politicians directly. They harm the rest of us in higher prices and shortages of goods and services that we need and want. And they harm the poorest of the poor in Third World countries who suddenly find themselves starving to death when they were only going hungry before.

I know that hoping that politicians will learn from this and stop issuing the kind of mandates that create distortions in the market is pointless. Politicians of both parties are every bit as addicted to the exercise of their power as the crack-whore on the corner is to her pipe or the shambling urine-soaked derelict is to his bottle of cheap wine. However the public can learn, sometimes. And a public who "gets it" can exert enough pressure on congress to make them pull in their horns at least temporarily.

Oh, and one more thing. Let's try - just this once - to unring the bell and kill the whole idea of ethanol.

Power shortage

From The New York Times:

GURGAON, India — This suburb south of New Delhi is where the fruits of India’s economic advance are on full display: sprawling malls, skyscrapers housing India’s acclaimed software companies, condominiums with names as fanciful as Nirvana Country.

But this fashionable address of the new India is also a portrait of ambition bumping up against reality, namely an electricity crisis that represents one of the major hurdles to India’s ability to hoist itself into the front ranks of the global economy.

Look up at the tops of buildings, and on any given day, you are likely to find three, four or six smokestacks poking out of each, blowing gray-black plumes into the clouds. If the smokestacks are being used, it means the power is off and the building — whether bright new mall, condominium or office — is probably being powered by diesel-fed generators.

This being India, a country of more than one billion people, the scale is staggering. In just one case, Tata Consultancy Services, a technology company, maintains five giant generators, along with a nearly 5,300-gallon tank of diesel fuel underground, as if it were a gasoline station.

The reserve fuel can power the lights, computers and air-conditioners for up to 15 days to keep Tata’s six-story building humming during these hot, dry summer months, when temperatures routinely soar above 100 degrees and power cuts can average eight hours a day.

The Gurgaon skyline is studded with hundreds of buildings like this. In Gurgaon alone, the state power authority estimates that the gap between demand and supply hovers around 20 percent, and that is probably a conservative estimate.

For all those who suffer from crippling power cuts in cities like this, there are others who have no connection to electricity at all. According to the Planning Commission of India, 600 million people — roughly half the population — are off the electric grid. For this reason, it is impossible to estimate accurately the total national shortfall.

But no matter how it is calculated, there is no doubt that India’s electricity crisis is becoming all the more acute for the roaring pace of the country’s economic growth and the new material aspirations it has generated.

The single largest obstacle to the growth of both China and India is the need to electrify those nations. How that electrification is accomplished is a matter of no small importance to the United States.

The rise in gasoline prices America is experiencing has many causes (and one of them is not oil comapny gouging) but one of the larger reasons is the increase in consumption in China and India. And there is a legitmate reason for environmentalists to be conserned as well. Neither of those nations has emmissions standards anywhere near as strict as those of the United States or Western Europe.

The best answer for India and China as well as for the United States and Europe is nuclear power. It is clean, cheap and safe.

A new (brain dead) energy policy

From The Washington Post:

House Democrats are crafting an energy package that would roll back billions of dollars worth of oil drilling incentives, raise billions more by boosting federal royalties paid by oil and gas companies for offshore production, and plow the money into new tax breaks for renewable energy sources, congressional sources said yesterday.

So let's review. We are going to pay more to heat and light our homes and fill our cars but in exchange we will have billions poured down various "green energy" rat holes.

Way to go voters!

There is one form of energy which can replace fossil fuels for the generation of power. Nuclear energy. It is clean and safe and produces small amounts of waste which can be disposed of easily through glassification and deep burial.

Even the French [spit] are smart enough to figure out that Nuclear power is the way to go. Are we really going to be dumber than the French?